Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Feb. 13th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

We'll call the meeting to order.

This is the 16th meeting of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

We're here today pursuant to an order of reference of Monday, February 10 to study Bill C-23, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act and other acts and to make consequential amendments to certain acts.

We're fortunate to have the minister with us today. We will be having an hour of questions and answers with the minister.

The committee will then have some committee business to do.

Mr. Christopherson will have the floor on his motion, in public, after we finish with the minister, for the start of the second hour.

Mr. Lamoureux.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Chair, I want to get a better understanding and I look for your thoughts on this.

My understanding of process is that typically you have a steering committee. The steering committee comes up with a number of thoughts concerning the days and times we would meet, the invitation list, and when the whole process would get under way. I think that is really important.

We need to recognize that we're doing something somewhat different here—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Lamoureux, we have the minister here for an hour, and there will be speaking spots in that hour.

The second hour is committee business on the steering committee, so I'm going to ask you to hold your thoughts and come to us in the committee business part.

We know that during this study we'll need to speak to the minister. We have him here today and I know there are many people here who would like to hear him.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Chair, with all due respect, I would love to hear from the minister too. I welcome the opportunity. I have a lot of problems with what the minister has done here; there is no doubt about that. We have a number of questions regarding the legislation. We want to see a lot of amendments brought to the legislation.

My concern is strictly about process. We could have asked the minister to come on Tuesday. There was no agreement among the three political parties that the minister should even be appearing here today or about whether there might have been an alternative date. We were led to believe, or at least one party was led to believe, that we would be canvassing outside of Ottawa. We hear in the news reports that this is not going to be taking place.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Lamoureux, when we last met, there was consensus. It may not have been a unanimous consensus but there certainly was consensus to proceed in the way we are proceeding, to have the minister here today. There was even thought of having a second witness. We are not able to provide one today.

In the method that this committee has always used in moving forward, we will in the second hour spend our time talking, as a steering committee of the whole, about how we'll move forward. If you'd like to use your time during the questioning of the minister to talk about that, I can't stop you from doing it, but right now, we have a speakers list and we have the minister present.

I'm going to recognize Mr. Butt as the first questioner of the minister.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Let me just conclude in 30 seconds, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

It's not that I disbelieve you can do it in 30 seconds, but you've never proven to me that you could.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Chair, just so that we are under the same understanding, we will hear the minister and then, after we hear the minister, the objective would be that we would go back to the normal process and set the future parameters for when this committee will in fact be—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

We will start that by.... Mr. Christopherson has a motion on the floor. It has been moved. He will get to speak to his motion, and we'll start the steering process with that.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Will there be no more meetings with other presenters until that issue has been resolved?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

That will be up to this committee. This chair doesn't make those decisions independently.

Minister, it's great to have you here today. I suppose you have an opening statement. You have some guests with you that I'd like you to introduce. If you'd like to do that, please carry on, and then we'll go to Mr. Butt as our first questioner.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Minister of State (Democratic Reform)]

We have here Matthew Lynch and Isabelle Mondou. They are two officials from the Privy Council Office. They will be helping with any technical matters with which the committee may need assistance.

As for an opening statement, I'd rather maximize time and accountability for questioning, so I have no opener.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Super. Thank you, Minister. It's always helpful to the committee to give them more time to talk, to some at least.

Mr. Butt, you may take seven minutes, please.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Welcome, Minister. It's excellent to have you here today. I'm glad that we're going to have lots of time for questions and answers on both sides of the table today.

Minister, you may be aware that prior to my getting elected to Parliament, I was for 12 years the president and chief executive officer of the Greater Toronto Apartment Association. The members of that association were owners and operators of multi-family apartment buildings throughout the greater Toronto area.

I certainly heard anecdotally from members about voter information cards that are mailed into apartment buildings. Residents will go to the mailroom, open their mailbox, and pull out whatever is there. Often a lot of it is flyers, but there's also the voter ID card, or the voter notification card, as I prefer to call it. It really isn't identification; it is a notification card. This card is often discarded in the mailroom, in a garbage can or a blue box, as the case may be. I have heard anecdotally that other individuals have subsequently gone into those mailrooms, have grabbed those voter notification cards, presumably for a reason, and I assume it's to use those cards to vouch for an individual to vote in place of the real voter, the tenant in that unit.

Therefore, I am very concerned about the vouching system. I think it needs to be cleaned up, because I think these kinds of abuses do take place.

By changing the system as you have proposed in the bill, Minister, do you agree that this is one of those things that will be rectified? The voter notification card will have to be accompanied by a proper piece of identification in order for that individual to exercise their vote.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

You've touched on two issues. One is vouching and one is the use of the voter information card as a form of ID. Let me address the latter first and the former second.

The voter information card draws its information from the national register of electors, on which one in six names has false information. It follows that one in six cards then is false. That allows for people to vote either more than once, or in places where they do not live. We saw an example of this in the Quebec television show Infoman, where two Montrealers received two voter information cards each. They each voted twice, and they called it the Elections Canada two-for-one special.

Canadians voted for many years without using the voter information card as a form of ID. It has been piloted in recent elections by Elections Canada. Due to the inaccuracy in the lists on which the card is based, we are ending the use of that card as ID. The card will still be available to inform electors of where they vote; they just won't be able to use it as ID. There will continue to be 39 pieces of acceptable identification that Canadians can use to identify their person and their address.

On vouching, I've regularly cited the statistic that in four ridings audited by the Neufeld review, there was a 25% rate of irregularities when vouching was used. If you look nationally, the same report found that there were irregularities in 42% of cases where vouching was used. Some 120,000 vouching incidents occurred in the last election, and there were 50,000 irregularities. It has been suggested more recently that these were small matters, a failure to dot the i's and cross the t's.

That in fact is absolutely false, and if you'll permit me, Chair, I'll quote directly from Elections Canada's own compliance review:

Errors that involve a failure to properly administer these procedures are serious. The courts refer to such serious errors as “irregularities” which can result in votes being declared invalid.

It goes on:

Too frequently, the errors are so serious that the courts would judge them to be “irregularities” that violate the legal provisions that establish an elector's entitlement to vote.

On page 10 it says:

Nonetheless, the case found that election officers made many serious errors in their duties on Election Day in the 2011 Etobicoke Centre election, and the Supreme Court made it clear that such errors in other circumstances could contribute to a court overturning an election.

I'll quote right from the Supreme Court:

In recognizing that mistakes are inevitable, this Court does not condone any relaxation of training and procedures. The Commissioner of Canada Elections appointed by the CEO has an obligation to ensure, as far as reasonably possible, that procedures are followed. Failure to live up to this mandate would shake the public's confidence in the election system as a whole and render it vulnerable to abuse and manipulation.

Those are very serious words from our Supreme Court directed at the CEO of Elections Canada in the aftermath of mass irregularities. We are going to end these irregularities by ending the use of vouching and voter identification cards to ID voters.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

You have under a minute, Mr. Butt.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Minister, could you give us a couple of examples of some of the 38 pieces of identification? You don't have to list them all, obviously, but perhaps you could mention some standard ones that most Canadians probably would have that they could bring on voting day to vouch for who they are.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Yes, there are student ID cards, provincial and territorial identification cards, liquor identification cards, credit and debit cards, public transportation cards, the CNIB ID card for the blind, firearms possession and acquisitions, status cards for first nations, attestation of residence issued by the responsible authority of a first nations band or reserve—the list goes on and on—one of the following, issued by the responsible authority of a shelter, soup kitchen, student or senior residence, or long-term care facility.... These are just a few of the many examples of acceptable ID that will continue to be allowed under the fair elections act.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you very much.

We'll switch now to seven minutes.

Mr. Christopherson, I think you're going to share, but we'll start with you.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Minister, for being here today.

Minister, you'll appreciate that in the making of laws there are two main components. One is the actual substance of the law being proposed and the implications of the changes. The second one in a parliamentary democracy is the process that we use to amend our laws. There's the substance of the law and then there's the process.

I have to say, Minister, that on process, you already have a democratic deficit. You did not consult with the Chief Electoral Officer beforehand, notwithstanding your little “Welcome. Nice to meet you. How are you doing?” meeting. To the best of my knowledge, I'm not aware that you had any kind of consultation, private or public, with groups across Canada. This was all done from within the Conservative world, and then sprung upon the people, rammed through the House, and then said, in justifying ramming it through the House, that the reason it's okay to do that is that we do all the real hard work here at committee.

We have asked, given the importance of this bill, for some cross-country hearings to get outside the political safety of the Ottawa bubble and let people have their say about their election.

Minister, and Chair, this is a substantive piece of legislation. It has significant implications for our democracy. We have serious concern that there may be around 120,000 Canadians who could lose their right to vote as a result of these changes. We're very concerned that these changes will bring big money back into Canadian elections. We're concerned, seriously concerned, about the apparent muzzling of the Chief Electoral Officer, among other concerns.

You call it the fair elections act. We're looking for a fair process. It looked like we might have some sunlight on this subject. Negotiations started, but they abruptly ended and the government said, no, they're not interested.

Given the fact that this Parliament felt that it was important enough, and we agree it was, in 2012 for the foreign affairs committee to go all the way to Ukraine to study their democracy, it's equally important here in Canada that we take the time and the money to study our own democracy. Not only that, in terms of arguing that it's too much money, the committee just approved the other day, notwithstanding our refusal to allow it to go through the House, travel for the trade committee to go to 10 cities across Canada and the U.S.

Minister, my question for you is a very simple one. Why are you refusing to consider hearings outside the safety of the Ottawa bubble? Why are you denying Canadians an opportunity to have a say about their election process in the communities where they live?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Well, I'm not. The committee is the master of its own destiny. It can hear any witness that it wants. I would encourage you to put forward a full list that is representative of the entire country as you consider the viewpoints of Canadians from across the land before this committee. I will leave it to you as the assembled members of the committee to determine where you hold those hearings.

That being said, you did make some comments about the consultations with the CEO. You weren't at the meeting, but it was not just a “Hi, how are you” meeting. I listened for about an hour to the CEO's suggestions, until, in fact, he ran out of things to say. I told him if he thought of anything else he should give me a call and that we could talk further. I also read his many testimonies before this committee, and reports, which are publicly available, and took them into consideration in adding 38 of his recommendations to the substance of the fair elections act. That is, I think, a very comprehensive consultation.

Furthermore, we'll look forward to hearing input from the many witnesses that you'll bring before you.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Well, Minister, first of all, I'd like to correct my own record, it was the transport committee, not the trade committee, just to be accurate.

I agree it's the committee's purview to decide whether we should go outside Ottawa. Let me ask you directly, then, in your opinion, would it be a more democratic and healthier process for Canadians if we took these committee hearings outside of Ottawa? Your opinion....

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

That really is a matter for the committee to decide.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

You're dodging, Minister. I have to tell you, this is consistent with what we've seen so far.

We are definitely concerned that a serial cheating government is trying to pre-cheat the next election before we even get to it.

All we're seeking at this stage is an opportunity for Canadians to have their say. The minister can be as cute as he wants by saying it's the purview of this committee, but we all know who's calling the shots. If the minister and the Prime Minister said there will be public hearings outside of Ottawa, there would be. They're shutting this down, and it's not a process we're willing to accept here.

Let me say that we want to get off the process issue. This is not where we want to fight. These are serious issues. We want to get out into the communities and talk about the bill, but we need a fair process. Ramming electoral changes through the House and then through this committee is un-Canadian and unacceptable.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

You have a minute left.

Did you want to give it to Mr. Scott?