Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, as usual I will make the first half of my remarks in French and the second half in English. There will only be one switch, other than right now.
I'm very pleased to be back before the committee which I attended for 17 years. The last time was almost four years ago already. My remarks will only take about 10 minutes. With regard to the time, I wasn't able to draft the same kind of text I used to, when I had people to help me, but with regard to the text of my presentation, I can tell you that I spent a lot of time poring over it.
This review of the 1992 Referendum Act was imposed by legislators like you. The law demands that you conduct this review.
I'm grateful for this opportunity to exchange a few observations that might interest you, I hope. I will not hide my satisfaction and pleasure in rereading my report to Parliament entitled The 1992 Federal Referendum: A Challenge Met. I hope you all have a copy of it; I noticed here that I forgot mine.
I remain very proud of what Elections Canada accomplished during the 1992 referendum and of the faithful testimony about this event presented in the report. This is why I will only discuss the main themes of the report while trying to elucidate a few issues in response to the questions that you raised with Mr. Mayrand, the current Chief Electoral Officer, Professor Louis Massicotte, and Mr. Neufeld, who until recently was the Chief Electoral Officer of British Columbia.
Holding two referenda that ask the same question and take place on the same polling day invariably causes major problems. The main one, to my mind, is the fact that some 10,000 Canadians were deprived of their right to vote because they became Quebeckers less than six months before polling day and therefore did not satisfy the requirements of Quebec law to be eligible voters. The Haig decision by the Supreme Court confirmed, seven to two, that the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada could not have them vote from their former address.
At Elections Canada we had developed a detailed plan, involving the newspapers, that allowed us to reach them and register them in case of a judgment of this nature by the Supreme Court. In a way, we appeared to want to lose the case, but we won it, and 10,000 Canadians were deprived of the right to vote.
Moreover, I'd made a speech at Collège Ahuntsic in Montreal listing the consequences of holding two referenda before the decision to hold two was made. That decision was made by two first ministers.
Another major negative effect resides in the fact that the key dates for these essential activities differ from one act to the next, which causes confusion in border areas where regional media do not respect geographic limits. I'm thinking of this region, where Ontario and Quebec are neighbours, as well as the region where New Brunswick and Quebec are neighbours. In border areas, the media do not respect those borders; a francophone newspaper published on the Quebec side may be distributed in Ontario and vice versa. So there was no way of having advertising without confusing people. Elections Canada talks to them or Elections Quebec talks to them, but how are they supposed to take into account the differences when it comes to early registration dates, review dates, or advanced polling?
In another connection, there was the problem related to the fact that one could not know whether there would be six questions or just one. Nor could we know the length of the text that may accompany the ballot because at one point, the idea of giving a text to each voter had been considered.
The answer to these questions necessarily resulted in three different scenarios: printing ballots, therefore the quantity of paper required, as well as the counting process. If you have to take into account six decisions, the counting takes an enormous amount of time and it's risky. You end up with three times more counting on the same night. The dynamics at the polling station also presented a problem because people take more time if they have three or six choices to make rather than just one.
The federal referendum cost some $105 million but it only addressed three-quarters of the Canadian population. The federal government reimbursed $35 million from the Consolidated Revenue Fund, not under the authority of the Chief Electoral Officer, pursuant to the Referendum Act. It was the Consolidated Revenue Fund that paid the Government of Quebec, following a government decision and not one by the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada. Of the $42 million that the Chief Electoral Officer had spent in order to manage the Quebec referendum, they received $35 million from the federal government.
I will now continue in English.
It is my distinct impression that both Alberta and British Columbia would also have held a referendum under their provincial legislation—they were bound to do so for a constitutional question—had they known that the federal government would reimburse them as it did Quebec. When both chief electoral officers contacted me at the time, I was not aware of any plan to reimburse the Quebec government, and told them so.
There are several positive aspects to the Referendum Act. The first concerns the whole apparatus or scheme concerning referendum committees: their need to register, to reveal their principals, their sources and amounts of funding, and their expenditures, all related to the right of electors to know who is intervening in the referendum process, all the while recognizing the rights of free speech of Canadians. This practical experience with referendum committees led to the present regime governing third parties under the Canada Elections Act, which puts Canada, in my view, at the forefront internationally when it comes to the matter of money in politics and elections in Canada.
The second positive aspect concerns the attribution of free time on broadcast media, radio and television: 90 minutes each to the yes committees and to the no committees who make a request to the broadcasting arbitrator once they are registered. To me, this constitutes the great equalizer between proponents of the yes and the no sides. This made the difference between the two. We know that the amount of money spent was quite out of whack between the yes and the no sides, but the great equalizer was the free broadcast time, allowing all shades of yes and no to express themselves, as opposed to being caught under umbrella committees.
By the way, the broadcasting arbitrator recommended that the law be changed to give committees seven days, as opposed to only two, for coming up with their ads to be broadcast on free time. This is in the report to which I alluded earlier.
Another positive measure concerned the need for the referendum question to be made available in aboriginal languages, following consultation with representatives of aboriginal associations. Every polling station in Canada had available, in the same format as the official ballot, another ballot containing the same question in 21 aboriginal languages. It was never before seen in Canada. I am so proud of that.
With respect to the desirability of melding the two laws into one or keeping them separate, I would like to offer the following. In the first instance, a decision must be made on whether referendums will consider constitutional matters only, as is the case at this time, or other matters as well. Obviously this will affect the frequency of federal referendums. If there are only constitutional ones, then one should wonder if it's necessary or useful to meld the two laws, except in several respects.
In the second instance--that is to say, a broadening of the Referendum Act to include topics other than constitutional ones--it behoves a committee, should the decision be made to broaden the scope of federal referendums, to consider seriously the possibly and desirability of containing within the same statute an election alone; a referendum alone; and a joint election and referendum. In the latter case, by the way, I once wrote to Mr. Preston Manning, who was then leader of the official opposition, because he had made a written request to me, and I answered that a referendum held at the same time as a federal election would add some $10 million to the cost of an election, as opposed to $140 million, which a federal referendum applied throughout the country would cost. This is in 1993 dollars.
Now we go back to that model of a statute. One section of the statute would contain the electoral procedures common to both elections and referendums--for example, the list of electors, the ID requirements for electors, the poll worker selection, how the count is to be conducted, and so on and so forth. These commonalities would be one section. Three other sections would deal with what is singular to each of the three scenarios that I raised above.
With respect to third parties and referendum committees, should there be a joint statute, they could both continue to exist under separate guises if they're separate statutes, and would coexist during a joint event, all the while reinforcing the anti-collusion articles in the statute. In other words, if you're setting up a referendum committee, you cannot be a third party. The principals cannot be the same. That would be anti-collusion, to prevent that from happening. Consideration would have to be given to harmonizing the legal requirements concerning them, such as thresholds for registration, limits on spending, and reporting requirements, as well as timeframes for doing all these things for them.
As in British Columbia, as Harry Neufeld related to you, referendum expenditures by parties and candidates would be reported as election expenses--end of story--and the ceiling would remain the same. So if a candidate for the House wishes to comment on a referendum or campaign, the expenditures fall under his or her campaign ceiling.
To address a concern raised by a member of the committee, consideration should also be given to the extension to third parties and referendum committees of the rules under the present statute governing contribution limits and sources. I'd like to elaborate on that if there are questions.
Last, with respect to the need for public financing--because there's none now for referendum committees--as a result of these tightening measures, I would submit that an enrichment of the free broadcast time to both sides may well suffice, given that the new rules applicable to them would seek only to control advertising expenditures at any rate.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
