I thank the chair and members of this committee for inviting me here this afternoon.
I'm Keith Archer, the Chief Electoral Officer of British Columbia, an appointment I have held since September 2011. Prior to this appointment, I was a professor of political science at the University of Calgary for 27 years.
Bill C-23 contains more provisions than I can address in the short time available to me. Consequently, my comments focus on two themes that go to the heart of some of the key provisions of the bill and which were discussed by the minister responsible in a newspaper article yesterday. They are first, voter identification and accessibility of the ballot, and second, citizen engagement in the electoral process.
Let me start with voter identification and accessibility of the ballot. Because Canada does not maintain a national citizen registry or issue universal national identity cards to all citizens, the federal jurisdiction and many provinces have adopted some variant of the same framework to provide proof of identity and current residential address for voting. That is a type one document, which is a government issued identity document with photograph, name, and residential address; or two type two documents, one of which has the person's name and one of which has the name and residential address; or a type three process as a fail-safe mechanism, which is the use of vouching.
Bill C-23 makes it more difficult to satisfy voter identification requirements by removing the voter information card from the list of approved type two documents and by eliminating vouching, the fail-safe method. I would encourage a rethinking of both these changes.
Only about 85% of Canadians possess a type one identity document, such as a driver's licence. For those 18 or 19 years of age, it's about 60% and falling. For those over 65, it's about 70%.
Type two documents are necessary to ensure that the millions of other eligible voters who don't have a current driver's licence can still exercise their section 3 charter right to vote. The list of type two documents that are approved is quite extensive. The independent non-partisan election administration agency approves type two documents usually following extensive discussions with various service providers to ensure that classes of voters are not administratively excluded from voting. We recognize that these documents considered individually are imperfect. Requiring that voters produce two such documents increases one's confidence that they establish that the voter is who he purports to be. This is added to other checks in the system such as having voting taking place in a public space, providing candidates the opportunity to scrutinize the voting process and to challenge voters on their right to be registered and to vote, hiring election officials from their local communities, and levying substantial penalties for voter impersonation.
The type two identification requirements strike a balance between proof of identity with certainty while ensuring an accessible ballot. The only document on the type two list controlled by the election agency is the voter information card, or in the case of British Columbia, the where to vote card. As we focus our efforts on continually improving the quality of the voters list, we continue to improve the quality of the VIC or the where to vote card.
The other identification issue in Bill C-23 is the removal of the vouching procedure.
In the 2013 general election in British Columbia, vouching was used by about 14,000 voters. It was just under 1% of all votes cast that were by voters who were vouched for.
Our analysis reveals that vouching is more common in rural districts and in mixed urban-rural districts. There is no doubt that vouching adds complexity to the voting process in B.C., and since the election official overseeing this process only receives three hours of training on all aspects of voting administration, we recognize there may be minor administrative errors in completing this process.
However, let's not confuse minor administrative errors, such as a voter not signing a vouching form in the right place, with election fraud. An analysis of administrative errors in vouching in B.C.'s 2013 election showed that fewer than 1,000 such minor errors occurred among the 1.8 million votes cast, and there was no indication of election fraud in any of these cases. Simplifying vouching procedures can dramatically reduce error rates.
The bottom line to vouching is this. Vouching allows tens of thousands of voters in B.C. and hundreds of thousands of voters in federal elections to exercise the franchise for which their citizenship entitles them. There is no evidence which I am aware of that links vouching provisions in Canadian elections with voter fraud, and there are many safeguards in place to ensure this is the case.
Let me talk briefly about citizen engagement. The last point I wish to make concerns citizen engagement in Canada's electoral process. In British Columbia, Elections BC is the province's window into the world of election administration. We are the people who are engaged to think about these issues every day of the year, to understand current research, trends, and best practices in other jurisdictions, and to ensure that expertise benefits our citizens and provides the best advice possible for policy-makers.
We have a particular role to play in removing barriers to participation so that all eligible electors can exercise their franchise. At times this could mean focusing extra efforts on citizens who face more substantial barriers than their neighbours. The right to vote is not diminished because a citizen is young, or a new Canadian, or because they have recently moved and their identity documents have not been updated.
It also means that we have a role to play in fostering public discussion about electoral matters. I was very pleased recently to head a panel in British Columbia that issued a report to the legislative assembly regarding the issue of Internet voting. We've benefited considerably from the previous work of our colleagues at Elections Ontario and Elections Canada. We also recently collaborated with the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions, at UBC, on a conference on the 2013 B.C. election.
All of that is to say there are a number of groups that have an interest in fostering the democratic process: political parties and candidates, civil society organizations, scholars, activists, and not least of all, election administration agencies. Indeed, our election administration agencies in Canada are the only group specifically designed to take an independent non-partisan approach to citizen engagement.
I would encourage the committee to reconsider limiting the role of Canada's independent election agency from this important work. Elections Canada's current and past work stands as an international exemplar of election administration best practice.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I'm happy to turn the floor back to you.