Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Dec. 4th, 2007

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

As just a clarification on Mr. Lukiwski's statement, regarding this box to be checked on the income tax return, is this not strictly under income tax privacy laws, that people or an individual are authorizing Revenue Canada to share the information with you, in the sense that it's not a question of saying yes, I want to be on the list; this is just one way of being on the list? But with a driver's licence, a permit, and so on, health insurance, even if somebody checks the “no” box on the income tax return, he could very well end up on the voters list through other means, right?

[Marc Mayrand]

Yes. Normally we would check consent, however, because our register is built around the consent of electors, but you're right, we have other sources.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

But a voter or a resident could say no to income tax, as Mr. Lukiwski was saying, because their chartered accountants or their specialists will say, “Don't allow this because there might be additional information from your return that will be given to them,” but they could be on your voters list from another source.

[Marc Mayrand]

Yes, from other sources.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you, Mr. Proulx.

We are on our next round, which is five minutes.

Mr. Epp, please.

[Ken Epp, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and my apologies for not being here. I was at another committee for the first hour, from 11 to 12. I'm called “the committee guru” around here.

Sir, I have a question for you, and this may not be the right time to bring this up, but maybe it should have been brought up before the bill was even drafted. I'm thinking of all the remote areas in the Prairies, where I live, and also in the Northwest Territories, where people primarily use box numbers or whatever to get their mail.

Everybody, or I should say, most people—the homeless would be an exception—live at a specific place, and that specific place can easily be identified using what are commonly called GPS coordinates, latitude and longitude. I have a little Canadian Tire GPS worth about $220 that locates my location, where I live, to within about 10 feet. It's just for sports people.

Have you considered, or would it be reasonable to say, that for people to identify where they live in Canada and which riding they would be in, you would use GPS coordinates? You'd have to enumerate that location but once, and then after that, basically, those points don't move. Have you considered that?

[Marc Mayrand]

I'll let Mr. Molnar address that, but I want to reiterate that currently we have a location for all these electors. No elector gets assigned to a polling division without having a physical address. The problem is that the physical address is generally not displayed on most documents maintained by electors, thereby creating a problem when they come to the polling station trying to evidence their residence. The documents they have will not display their physical address; it will display their postal box or other type of address.

Again, the issue here is not that we cannot assign an elector to a polling division. I'm not sure if we're using GPS for that, but we have systems that assign each and every elector to a physical location that's linked to a polling division.

[Ken Epp, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

That's good.

The other question I have is with respect to voters' cards. I know we don't have them in Canada; you have to have some other ID. It would be a very costly thing to have a voter's card—I recognize that—but again, it could be a card that is related to an individual but not a specific address, and with modern technology, you pass that thing under a bar code reader, and zippo, it immediately accesses the computer database that says this is who this is, where he is, and so on.

Would that be a way of identifying a person, if he or she is in possession of a physical voter's card, and that could be used then just for people who are in these remote locations?

[Marc Mayrand]

That is one option that I believe this committee, or a predecessor of this committee, considered at some point in time, the possibility of having a voter card. I think there were issues regarding technology, privacy, and costs. We didn't see this initiative move forward, but if there was any indication from this committee, we would certainly explore the feasibility of such a method.

[Ken Epp, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Thank you.

Then this is my final question, Mr. Chair, with respect to Bill C-18.

Am I correct in reading your notes--because I didn't hear your actual presentation, but I am scanning the notes--that you feel that the issues you identified are properly and fully addressed in Bill C-18?

[Marc Mayrand]

Correct. Yes.

[Ken Epp, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you, colleagues.

Is there any further questioning from members? I see none. I did have a suggestion from a member from the floor. Did you want to proceed with that?

Madam Redman, please.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you, and I'd like to thank the witnesses for coming.

My suggestion was going to be that after we've dispensed with the witnesses, Mr. Chair, we have the first report on the steering committee, which apparently we haven't dealt with. So after we've dealt with that, perhaps we could go to dealing expeditiously with Bill C-18. My understanding is that Monsieur Mayrand has really answered the only question anybody had, and we certainly want to see this unintended consequence of our previous bill corrected. So I suggest that after dealing with the steering committee report we move to concurrence and report back to the House supporting Bill C-18.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Are you suggesting we move to the steering committee report first and then dispense with this?

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

So there's a motion on the floor that we stop this business, move back to the steering committee report, and then come back to Bill C-18. Is that it?

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

At which point I would suggest that the committee concur in the report and report it back to the House.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Okay. It might be more expeditious to move that the opposite way and deal with Bill C-18 first. However, the motion is there. It's a debatable motion.

What I could do is maybe ask colleagues if they need the witnesses any further, and if we do not, then I can certainly....

Thank you very much, colleagues. Seeing that there are no questions, on behalf of the committee, let me thank our witnesses, Monsieur Mayrand and his team, once again for being so well prepared and helping us make the decisions that we have to make. We appreciate your being here, and we can dismiss you at this point.

We have a motion on the floor.

Madam Redman, just so that it's your wording and not mine, could you read into the record what you would suspect to be the wording of your motion and then we'll proceed.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Chair, I move that this committee immediately proceed to the consideration of the report from the steering committee, and after that has been dispensed with, move to concurrence in Bill C-18, and that that report be reported back to the House forthwith.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Again, I'm not wanting to change your motion, but you're suggesting that we move to clause-by-clause consideration.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Okay, thank you.

Is there any debate? Mr. Lukiwski.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Well, hopefully it would be a friendly amendment, and that is to follow up basically with your suggestion to reverse the order, to ask for concurrence of this Bill C-18, and then immediately go to the report on the steering committee.