Evidence of meeting #22 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 vote.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Mr. Neufeld, we're well past Mr. Scott's time. I tried to give you a chance to finish your thought, but the members of our committee love to ask a question with their time absolutely run out so that you get to take more time. We won't go through that route today.
Mr. Simms, you're up for seven minutes. If Mr. Neufeld would like to finish his thoughts through your questions, that would work fine.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to quote something from Opitz v. Wrzesnewskyj, and it's from paragraph 45. I just want to get your comment on this, just to start. It says: “The goal of accessibility can only be achieved if we are prepared to accept some degree of uncertainty that all who voted were entitled to do so.”
Citing all the irregularities that you found in 2011, do you think that's a fitting way to look at how what they've done here is far too egregious against the average voter who deserves accessibility?
Electoral Management Consultant, As an Individual
Well, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, this is a fundamental right. The franchise is an absolutely fundamental right that's guaranteed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in treaties that Canada is a signatory to, and in the charter.
There's this balance between the integrity of the process and the accessibility of the ballot. There's a tension there, but what I find is that there's no improvement as a result of Bill C-23's elimination of vouching and the elimination of the voter information card as a form of address ID. There's nothing in it that improves integrity, but what it does is that it very seriously and negatively affects accessibility and, I would say, disenfranchises voters.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
We're talking about an incredibly large number of people who would be disenfranchised by throwing out the entire system of vouching.
Electoral Management Consultant, As an Individual
And possibly even a larger number if the voter information card is no longer allowed in any form as ID.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
Right, and at no point in the report do you link vouching with fraudulent voting.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
Okay.
Let me ask you this, because you point out the question of addresses, and many of the IDs cited by the minister, such as the most basic of ID, which is a problem I have in rural areas.... For example, there are the people who live in seniors homes. I know of one particular senior in my riding who lives in a home, and the only way that she was enfranchised or able to vote was because of her voter identification card.
The minister cites health cards. In our province, there is no address on that card. All of the ID he cites—well over 30, the very basic ID, with the exception, of course, of a driver's licence, which this woman does not have—disenfranchises her, and now, for the first time since Confederation in Newfoundland and Labrador, she cannot vote, period.
They talked about bracelets. I have yet to see a bracelet with an address.
Do you think this is an oversight that you're stunned by, this fact that they would say that all this ID can be used, when in fact the disenfranchised voters, such as first nations, students, and those in rural areas cannot vote because of the address? And now the one thing they had is eliminated.
Electoral Management Consultant, As an Individual
Address ID is a real problem in this whole equation. I don't know of a single other piece of federal documentation that is widely accessible to eligible voters that could be used to prove address. We're moving more and more into an electronic society, where Canada Post is promoting epost and electronic delivery of mail.
Electoral Management Consultant, As an Individual
There are all sorts of good reasons for that, but it presents a problem. People have ID, but they have problems with proving their address of residence.
In some cases, driver's licences have post office box numbers on them, and everybody knows that you don't live in a post office box. That's not adequate to prove what your residential address is. They're challenged that they have to have another piece of ID.... I've seen this, where they're very frustrated. If they're a regular voter and they weren't allowed in the last election to use their voter information card as address ID, they're scrambling around, emptying their wallet, and trying to figure out how they're going to get a ballot. Their driver's licence, which they thought was going to be enough, isn't working because it has a post office box on it.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
Speaking of scrambling around, the minister keeps distorting a lot of these facts within Bill C-23, and they're quoting you, or partially quoting you, like, for example, what we're witnessing here today. I don't know what province.... I believe there were four provinces that were cited earlier, but I do know...and I've seen this, where vouching does take place in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Nevertheless—I'd love to be proven wrong—I do think that what you have here in the report is something that I think is so egregious by eliminating the entire system of vouching.... Internationally, vouching is also held up in jurisdictions like those in Europe.
Electoral Management Consultant, As an Individual
It's used in jurisdictions all over the world where there's a requirement to show ID in order to obtain a ballot, because it's sort of the final safety net for people who cannot provide the combination of identity that's requested in law. It's not the only option. There are other options that are available. But it's the one that's been selected in many countries.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
Has the government ever approached you about some of these options—for example, to improve the system of vouching as opposed to eliminating it?
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
Again, I go back to what was said here from Opitz v. Wrzesnewskyj: “The goal of accessibility can only be achieved if we are prepared to accept some degree of uncertainty that all who voted were entitled to do so.”
Here you have a situation where they have disenfranchised an incredible number of people across this country, but this information was available to them beforehand, as stated by your report. And you never were consulted.
Electoral Management Consultant, As an Individual
No. I was at one point asked for a confirmation of all my contact particulars, but nothing ever came as a follow-up call or email or letter or anything.
Conservative
Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to build upon what my colleague Mr. Simms was going through. Really I think, in fairness, I'll make sure you get a copy, because I think a lot of Canadians don't realize that vouching really is not used. In fact, your report mentions that many jurisdictions don't use it.
Your report also mentions that built-in resistance to change is strong, within even the elections community. I think this act shows that change and evolution and improvements will lead to mixed views, if I can put it mildly.
One key quote I have is from page 27 of your report on vouching and whether we can fix it. Your conclusion was: “...reducing the current rate of serious errors during...vouching transactions forms an immense challenge that should not be underestimated.” So fixing it appears difficult, immense, impossible. The Supreme Court decision has shown that procedure, even asking people to follow procedure, is not disenfranchising them, and in fact it's maintaining the integrity of the process.
I'm going to ask you about what's on Elections Canada's website, which is basically voter identification at the polls. It's annex C of your interim report, which is the identification. You talk about 85% or more of Canadians having the quick one-to-three-minute time at the polling station. Those are people who are generally on the official list of electors, and they would come in with identification and go through. The 15% you talk about, the 17 exceptions that are required, some of those are physical assistance, disability, a whole range of those 17. But the ones that seem prone to error are either registration issues, which you're addressing through training and other improvements, or vouching. The audit showed that more than 120,000 vouching transactions produced 95,559 errors. Your report said there was a 42% error rate as a minimum, but it could go as high as 80%, but you couldn't conclude an exact figure because in some errors there were multiple errors. So what I'm quoting here—95,559—are errors but one transaction could have had two errors. Is that correct?
Electoral Management Consultant, As an Individual
You have serious errors and you have incidental errors. Some of the errors are not of huge consequence. An example is that it's election day and somebody doesn't record the date in a voter registration form that they're taking. It's a given that it's on election day, but it is an error in that the instructions say you have to fill in the date that the registration was taken.
Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
So is it fair to say that between serious errors—the 42% rate your report identified—and less consequential ones—80%, well in that range—over half the vouching transactions have errors, rather serious or less serious?
Electoral Management Consultant, As an Individual
There's a huge number of errors with vouching; no doubt about it.
Vouching is not the only alternative here. If you're willing, I'd be happy to describe some of the other—
Conservative
Electoral Management Consultant, As an Individual
I appreciate that, because—