Evidence of meeting #20 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was elections.
A video is available from Parliament.
12:15 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
That was part of our past reports, yes.
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
12:15 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
I would have to go back to some notes. I can't say for sure if we discussed that, but certainly he did not indicate any—
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
More importantly, his concerns about the commissioner going to a separate office.... Independence did not come up from him, no?
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Thank you.
At this point it probably would be safest if we suspend and go to votes.
We've finished that first round. I don't think there's time to do more than one more person in a four-minute round.
12:15 p.m.
NDP
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Twenty minutes, but I can't do a whole round of any shorts in that time. We're best to save it at this point. We'll go to votes; we'll come back, and we'll run a whole—
12:15 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Chair, just to avoid any possible confusion, would you please roll out exactly what's going to happen from the moment we rise here until the end of this meeting?
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Yes. I'm planning that when we get back here, we'll have time to do one whole round, which works out to 51 minutes, if members stay within their talking points. We have finished our seven-minute round, and really we should be going to our four-minute rounds, and we could do that.
I'll leave it to a quick discussion with each party.
12:15 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Do we lose the time if we don't do it now, or do we pick it up at the other end?
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
I plan on.... We won't finish until we finish what would have been a full round of questioning today.
12:15 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Whether it happens now, before the vote, or after, as long as the time is not lost.... That's the thing. I think the fewer the interruptions, the better, so maybe if we can come back, and then continue uninterrupted until we're done, it's probably in our best interest.
12:15 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
You're telling me that time is the same, that there's nothing lost by going now or later. Is that correct?
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Not provided Mr. Mayrand can stay and unanimous consent to keep talking is there, so I'm okay.
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
We'll come back to order.
I'd like to share with the committee that our normal speaking rotation is 51 minutes if we go from top to bottom, including a seven-minute round and then all the four-minute rounds. It's my proposal that we start fresh and that will give us 51 minutes' worth of questioning from here on.
Mr. Reid will be starting for his side. I think he might be sharing with Mr. Lukiwski.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
How much time do we have in total, Mr. Chair?
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Seven minutes for this round. Then we'll go to four-minute rounds.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Mayrand, as you know, I have been articulating for about a decade now a concern with an overall lack of capacity or competence at Elections Canada, which predates your tenure, to ensure that there is no voter fraud in this country, or even to monitor the extent to which it exists. I'm hardly the only one to do so. A decade ago Duff Conacher was drawing the attention of the Canadian public to the fact that there were about a million irregularities on the voters list. Other individuals have tried to bring this to light by demonstrating that fraudulent voting can take place.
One example was a man named James DiFiore, in 2006, who wrote an article about how he had voted three times in Trinity—Spadina. There's an interesting quote from the article:
I've heard Elections Canada has set up a program allowing people with no fixed address to exercise their democratic right. Shelters are providing homeless citizens with special forms they can use at designated polling stations....I ask a shelter volunteer if I can use the form to cast my ballot even if I live in an apartment. He says the system is set up by Elections Canada to provide every citizen a chance to vote. He hands me a form and instructs me to head to the polling station at 34 Oxford....I simply hand the form to the young lady and say, 'I was told I could vote with this'....She hands me my third ballot of the day and points to a booth behind her. I return the ballot and say I've changed my mind. “Whatever you say”, she remarks.
Mr. DiFiore was charged by Elections Canada with having voted fraudulently. He was the only person charged in that election with voting fraudulently. Elections Canada's position is that only one case of voter fraud could be found in the entire country in that election.
In the next election, one case again was found. It was an American exchange student who had voted in order to demonstrate that there was a problem, and had written about it, and again got prosecuted.
As far as I can tell, unless you write an article announcing that you voted fraudulently, Elections Canada doesn't prosecute.
I note that I asked your predecessor how many prosecutions had occurred in the 1993, 1997, 2000, 2004, and 2006 elections collectively, and he said they had to look it up. The answer was eight. Either we only have eight irregularities per five elections, or your office is simply unable to monitor these things when they occur.
Assuming the second one to be true, based on the fact that your office finally responded and did a compliance review to see how you were performing only after the Supreme Court was dealing with the irregularities in Etobicoke Centre, I note that the compliance review, the so-called Neufeld report, states that there were 165,000 cases of irregularities in the 2011 election. That's on page 6 of the final report. It has been suggested by some individuals that these irregularities are minor, technical, or merely administrative, but that is not so. The Supreme Court of Canada said in its ruling, “The term 'irregularities' should be interpreted to mean failures to comply with the requirements of the Act, unless the deficiency is merely technical or trivial.”
By definition, any technical, trivial, or administrative non-compliance is outside the 165,000. They made that ruling in October 2012, and Mr. Neufeld in the compliance report used their definition when he came up with that 165,000. I mention this to make the point that there is a serious problem here.
Let me add this point as well. Of that 165,000, 50,736 examples were irregularities in vouching; so about a third were irregularities in vouching. The problem with vouching can be measured a different way. How many cases of vouching actually took place? The answer is that about 140 or so took place. According to the compliance audit, in the 2011 election, 42.4% of vouching was irregular. There's a breakdown of the kinds of irregularities. But again, an irregularity is the kind of thing that can lead to the overturning of an election, something which is of significance. Three of the seven judges on the Supreme Court said that the Etobicoke Centre election should be overturned because of these irregularities.
The other four, who I actually think were correct, said that it shouldn't be because the irregularities, in that particular unusual circumstance of a closed access long-term seniors care residence, could not have caused individuals other than those who were actually living there to have been capable of voting or voting more than once. It was only this fact that caused that election to be saved. This was not the fault of either the Conservative or Liberal candidates who were fighting it out. This was the fault of a set of rules that do not allow Elections Canada to do its job.
That, I submit to you, is what this bill tries to correct via such measures as eliminating vouching.
I'd like your comments on that, please.