Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Oct. 7th, 2010

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

And there were no issues, were there?

You also addressed the matter of partisan signs. You are recommending that the posting of partisan material on or within 100 meters of the premises of a polling site or office be prohibited. In shopping centres, however, it happens that campaign offices are located near polling stations.

Were you also intending to recommend that no campaign offices be located within a certain distance of a polling site?

[Marc Mayrand]

We have only looked at signage. I'm not sure that I want to go that far. Sometimes that's inevitable.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Right.

[Marc Mayrand]

I think everyone is trying to secure the same facilities at about the same time when an election is called.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Yes, exactly. If you have a campaign office, it's inevitable and there has to be signage.

[Marc Mayrand]

Mind you, if we know that a candidate will be setting up his campaign office in a particular place, we try to avoid putting a polling station in the same building, insofar as possible.

[Louis Plamondon, Bloc, Bas-Richelieu—Nicolet—Bécancour, QC]

I would like to clarify something. I imagine that when a chief electoral officer leases space in a shopping centre, when signing the lease, you ask for exclusivity, so that no other party can rent space in the same shopping centre, do you not?

[Marc Mayrand]

Yes, if we are the first ones to lease space.

As I say, it would be quite exceptional. It would only happen in markets where there really is no commercial space to lease.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you.

Mr. Christopherson, it's good to have you back here today. It's your turn.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

For better or worse, I'll likely be around for a bit. There are four or five of your files that are mine, so I'll be visiting regularly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

We're happy to have you here.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I'm sure you are, sir. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for your presentation. It's an enormous amount of work. I'm very impressed.

I would just start with one issue that caught my eye, in no particular order of importance: the issue of nicknames. It sounds like a small matter, but we're dealing with the actual, visual ballot that people see, and it has a lot to do with what goes on at the moment they're about to cast that ballot.

I'm having a little difficulty understanding this. The basic thing you're looking for is that the English reflect the French. I get that. The English, as I understand it, currently says “provide evidence of the acceptance of a nickname”, and some of the notes comment that this is difficult to enforce, etc. I'm curious as to how that plays out right now in English-speaking circumstances.

[Marc Mayrand]

I'll ask my colleague Mr. Perrault to comment.

[Stéphane Perrault, Senior General Counsel and Senior Director, Legal Services, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer]

Well, it's largely difficult to define public recognition; people will have to provide examples of newspaper clippings where their nickname is used or other information that could show this, whether it's correspondence in which they're known by that nickname.... It's a bit difficult, and in our view, unnecessarily so.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Right, but what currently happens, though, if somebody comes in, wants to make a change, and wants their nickname to show? The example here is “Buddy”. How does that happen right now?

[Stéphane Perrault]

The returning officer will ask for the information to show public knowledge and acceptance.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Then in one of those circumstances you've described, there has to be something.... But if it's being raised in French, where someone is asking for their rights under the law in their preferred language, French, they wouldn't have that obligation under the current writing. Is that correct?

[Stéphane Perrault]

Well, both provisions, the French and English, have to be read together. Also, this is administered locally, so we're not necessarily always involved on how the decisions are made for accepting a nickname or not. Variances may result.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

So let's bring it to where we are now. What are you proposing going forward, then? What would be the process for bringing in a nickname? Are you concerned about any potential abuse?

[Stéphane Perrault]

We haven't seen any significant abuse. The concern is to avoid people ridiculing the electoral process by inventing names out of the blue, so there has to be some measure of control over this.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Could they not also take the nickname of someone who is the incumbent and has a known nickname? If you change it to “I want to be known as Superman,” you could have anything you want there.

That's my concern: if you leave it that open-ended, there are.... We all take the election very seriously, but there are others who have a different reason for participating, and winning may not be their major objective. I'm just wondering, how do we...? In the extreme, you'd have a ballot with Donald Duck and all kinds of crazy things, so what's the check there?

[Stéphane Perrault]

There would still be a requirement of public knowledge, so they'd have to show--

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes.

[Stéphane Perrault]

What's difficult to show is public acceptance. The fact that his name is known is something that can be shown; whether it's accepted publicly is something that's more difficult.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

So to drill down a little on that language, that means if I'm a new candidate and I'd like my name to appear as whatever, how do I go about that?