Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 7th, 2014

[Élise Demers, Advisor, Citizen Engagement and Training, Table de concertation des forums jeunesse régionaux du Québec]

Good evening and thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am here today on behalf of the Table de concertation des forums jeunesse régionaux du Québec—round table of regional youth forums of Quebec. Our name is difficult to pronounce, even for francophones. Today, I will bring forward the concerns of regional youth forums with regard to Bill C-23.

Among the mandates of regional youth forums is to encourage the civic engagement of young people and to play an advisory role with regard to youth. We are funded by the Secrétariat à la jeunesse du Québec—Quebec's youth secretariat.

During provincial and municipal elections, we also have a financial partnership with the Chief Electoral Officer of Quebec. I want to point out that we have never had a formal or informal partnership with Elections Canada. We are also helping organize an electoral simulation in Quebec. That initiative is called Voters in Training, and it is also funded by the youth secretariat and the Chief Electoral Officer of Quebec.

For the federal elections, the Voters in Training project is undertaken in partnership with Civix's Student Vote. Similar programs exist in a number of countries, including the United States, where the program Kids Voting has been around since the early 1990s.

Youth forums are engaged in activities throughout the year to increase young people's interest in politics. During an election, we have outreach activities for young voters to stimulate their vote and inform them of the various terms and conditions of voting.

At the latest federal election, 37.4% of young Canadians aged 18 to 24 voted. Individuals aged 25 to 35 did a bit better, with a turnout of 48%. It is of the utmost importance to work on youth voting because studies show that young people who vote as soon have they become eligible for the first time are likely to continue going to the polls throughout their life. So working on youth voting is akin to working on the voting habits of all Canadians.

Why are young people not voting? Two types of factors need to be considered. There are factors related to motivation, such as political interest and relevant knowledge. There are also factors in terms of voting access, such as being on lists, lack of an ID or unfamiliarity with voting procedures.

The National Youth Survey measured the relative impact of all those factors on the decision to vote. That survey concluded that obstacles related to motivation had as much, if not more, of an impact as obstacles related to access.

Currently, at Elections Canada, the Chief Electoral Officer is already providing information on the technical aspects of the vote. So it's a bit difficult to understand the desire to legislate to prevent him from doing that, either through citizenship education, vote promoting public campaigns, or information on the main barriers to voting or aspects related to motivation.

Elections Canada must continue to be able to provide citizenship education because that is an effective approach. Elections Canada has commissioned an external review of the Student Vote program. The study shows that the program has a positive impact on many factors associated with voter turnout. Among other things, the program increases the young participants' knowledge, their interest in politics, and their perception that voting is a civic duty.

Of course, some young people can use the excuse that they did not receive information on where, when and how to vote. That's probably true for those who are living outside their home region, especially for studies.

However, we need to be a bit careful with those figures. We could put up posters all over the country, but if someone is not interested in politics, they could still say that they did not know where, when and how to vote. Claiming that information was not received sometimes conceals a feeling of incompetence or disinterest. After all, young people and people in general who have voted said in 98% of the cases that they thought the voting process was straightforward.

Vote promoting public campaigns also play an important role. They help create a healthy social pressure to vote. Here is what I mean by that.

Research indicates that people are sensitive to their environment when deciding to vote. Young people are especially susceptible to influences from their family, peers or society.

In Quebec, the Chief Electoral Officer has assessed those vote promoting campaigns. According to the results, 34% of people said that advertisement encourages them to vote. The fact that over a third of people are influenced by an advertisement is quite significant. The federal government itself uses those social ads, as they are called. For instance, an advertisement against cyberbullying is currently being aired.

I will now present our conclusions with regard to the bill.

We share the government's concern over providing quality information to voters and its willingness to make the actions taken as effective as possible. However, we think it is entirely possible and desirable to continue working on both the obstacles related to motivation and those related to voting access.

First, it's important to revert to the original wording of section 18 of the Canada Elections Act. That way, Elections Canada would maintain its flexibility to independently carry out campaigns more focused on motivation, information or both, at its discretion.

Second, we feel that the organization's research component is crucial, and that its findings must continue to be accessible to the general public and to organizations that, like ours, are working on the country's democratic health. That research helps ensure that the actions taken are effective and consistent with the known causes of participation or lack thereof.

Finally, education must remain at the heart of Elections Canada's actions, be it through projects carried out by the organization itself or through the funding of other non-partisan organizations dedicated to education and citizenship. I remind you that we are not part of that group of organizations.

The promotion of voting and democracy—be it through friends, family members, teachers, independent organizations or political parties—is critical for avoiding the free fall of the participation rate among young people.

We sincerely hope that the parties will be able to agree to amend this bill in order to work together on the country's democratic health.

Thank you for listening.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Merci.

We will go to our second round. Mr. Richards, you are up first, please.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Thank you to all of you for being here today.

I'm going to focus my questions on our two student and youth representatives here tonight, Ms. Demers and Ms. McCormick.

There are a couple of things I'd like to ask about. The first one is brought on by some comments that you made, Ms. Demers, about what leads someone to vote. You talked about motivation being one of those things. I certainly agree that motivation is an important part for someone choosing to vote or not. I think political parties and those of us who are candidates have a very important role to play in creating that motivation by bringing forward issues that young people or other voters care about. We can encourage them to vote based on the issues we're bringing forward and create that interest and the motivation.

That is one of the things we're responsible for. I think Elections Canada is responsible for, which it currently isn't doing a very good job of, providing that information, which is another thing that's important for people to have to be able to vote.

I want to quote from some research that Elections Canada conducted after the last election, talking about young non-voters and trying to determine some of the causes of their not voting. They discovered that for 25% of them, not knowing where to vote was one of the causes; for 26%, it was not knowing when to vote; and for 19%, it was not knowing how to vote. I suspect that a lot of them would be people who were not aware of different types of ID that would be available, those kinds of options among a list of 39.

Before I ask you to comment on the second question, I'd like to ask both of you if you have any comments on whether you feel it would be helpful for Elections Canada to focus a little better on their role in providing that information about when and where and how to vote, and whether that might help to facilitate more students voting.

[Élise Demers]

I will begin by answering your question on the role played by political parties.

I do think that political parties have a very important role to play in this process, but I don't think we can rely solely on their work. Since the 1970s, the membership in political parties has been declining steadily. That's a current reality. I am talking about Quebec, but I assume the situation is the same in the rest of Canada.

Young people are now less likely than their elders to be reached by candidates. They have a 40% likelihood of being reached by a candidate during an election period, while that figure is 75% for people aged 75 and over. That's a fairly significant difference. They're definitely more difficult to reach. That work should be done jointly by parties, independent organizations like ours and Elections Canada.

I will now talk about the quality of the information provided. It's entirely possible to focus the promotion campaigns simultaneously on information regarding the location, the time and the way to vote. As I mentioned in my opening statement, most of the time, using a lack of information as an excuse for not voting may conceal a lack of interest in politics. Yes, the information could be improved, but young people's knowledge will be increased through education on citizenship. That way, at election time, they will definitely look for the information themselves if they did not receive it at home—for instance, if they are in a student residence.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Ms. McCormick, I only have a little more than three minutes. I'm trying to keep it fairly brief so I can get my second question in as well.

[Jessica McCormick]

Yes, absolutely. I agree very much with what my colleague has said. I think that there certainly is a role for politicians to play in all this. That being said, I think that a lot of the youth disengagement that we see right now is as a result of not seeing the issues that matter to them being reflected in the candidates who have put their names forward, or in the platforms of the political parties, for that matter.

I'd be interested in knowing what report you're referencing when you cite the lack of information. The one that I'm looking at says that only 7% of the people who didn't vote in the last federal election cited a lack of information, and there were other factors at play. I think that Elections Canada certainly does a lot to provide information on where and when and how to vote. Of course we can always improve on the measures in place, but I think there is a role to be played there in talking to youth, people who don't generally vote, about the importance of engaging in democracy and the value of casting a ballot. I don't think that is necessarily primarily a role for political parties. I see Elections Canada playing a significant role in that education and outreach.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Yes, and I don't disagree. I really believe that the focus should simply be on how to vote, and where and when to vote.

I don't have a lot of time remaining, but I would like to talk a little bit about the second question and hopefully there will be time for you both to answer.

With regard to the ID, there are 39 choices. That's one of the things I think Elections Canada needs to do a far better job of informing young people and others about. One of the things for student voters—and Ms. McCormick, you talked about student voters—who are away at post-secondary institutions, they are sort of in that unique situation where they almost have a choice to make as to where they're going to vote. Essentially, it centres around them deciding what they consider their residence to be, whether they consider it to be where they are residing at school or whether their residence is actually their parents' residence that they'll return to back home. When they make that decision, obviously, their ID would centre somewhat on that decision.

So, if they make the decision that their residence is in fact their parents' residence, you've indicated that doesn't seem to prove who they are. Generally, the problem is proving something that shows their residence.

Now if they choose their parents' residence, obviously, if you're saying that all their information is going to their parents' residence, they can choose to vote by special ballot through their parents' residence. But, if they're in fact saying that all their correspondence goes to this other residence, including probably their voter information card which would also go there in that instance, they have to then make a decision about what they're going to do.

If they live in residence, obviously they can get an attestation of residence. If not, then they have other choices as well that they can use to vote at school. So, they have to make that choice and then that choice determines where their ID would come from that would prove their residence.

I didn't get a chance to ask the question, but I think you see where I was going with that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Richards.

Mr. Scott.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I'd like to start with Jessica McCormick and Élise Demers.

Elections Canada said about a year and a half ago that they were planning to add polling stations on a number of university campuses. It was obviously with some intention to increase engagement and student voting for a lot of the reasons you've given.

Do you think if they go ahead and do that in 2015 it will work better if two things also happen, that they make sure to enumerate the student residences on the campuses and they allow voter information cards to be used as one of the pieces of ID? Do you think the whole experiment in increasing student vote would go a lot better if VICs were part of the picture in 2015?

[Jessica McCormick]

I do think that would, in fact, be the case. It's not a bad thing that we are taking a look at the Elections Act. We should be taking steps to improve it and create a more flexible system of voting. The survey that was done after the last federal election cited a number of different reasons why people weren't casting a ballot. Many of them were that they were too busy or that they had obligations at work or school. Having polling stations on campuses eliminates some of those barriers.

We should be trying to reduce those barriers. Having polling stations, having opportunities to use the voter information card, for example, as a proof to cast a ballot, those are ways to reduce the barriers to voting. I think that many of the measures that are contained in Bill C-23 would in fact create more.

[Élise Demers]

Polling stations in educational institutions were tested for the first time during the Quebec election, which is actually wrapping up this evening. About 200 polling stations were set up in educational institutions and enabled 400,000 young people to exercise their right to vote at their school.

What was extremely interesting about this experiment was that it clearly did not take place on the same day as the vote, since the schools were closed on that day. It took place at the same time as the vote at the returning office and a special review commission. A young person could come to the polling station, vote and use the opportunity to put their name on the list at the right location, in case they had moved a while ago. Afterwards, they could also vote in their home constituency.

Let's use the example of a young person from the Gaspé Peninsula who is studying in Montreal. They came to their college in Montreal and voted outside their constituency. They were given a blank ballot, on which they wrote the name of the Gaspé candidate. That ballot was then delivered and counted that same evening.

Some 54,000 young people took advantage of that opportunity. Of course, the authorities had to advertise that option, as it was the first time it was made available to students. This Quebec experiment is extremely interesting. You will be able to analyze it because the votes will be added up soon.

Regarding the actual identification process, I must say that I am not an expert on that. I cannot say whether the identity card should be kept or not. However, I can say that any measures likely to restrict the ability to vote should be considered with the utmost care, and decisions should be based on reports of actual fraud cases.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Fraser, one of the things that has come out in our hearings from the Chief Electoral Officer and others is that the time has come to get parties out of the process of appointing or helping in the recruitment of election day workers. One of the biggest problems caused by the fact that parties are involved is that Elections Canada cannot fully get involved in the recruiting until partway through an election campaign. It gets in the way of really high-quality recruitment and advanced training.

What would you think of a program that would start well ahead of the of writ dropping, because we have fixed election dates now, that focused on teenagers and began to involve them in a civics education program about elections at the same time as recruiting them to be E-day workers? Do you think those two would be beneficial, at least on the civic education side, even though Elections Canada would not be able to do that as a result of this bill?

[Calvin Fraser]

One of the recommendations we put forward was to have a long advanced training program and to have workers there who are well trained. I think what's at the core of your question and at the core of a lot of non-voting is the concept of perceived fairness. When the vote is central to our democracy, there must be perceived fairness in addition to actual fairness in every aspect of that process.

My colleague to the left of me here mentioned a few minutes ago the democratic health of the country. Nothing saddens me more than to have a student come to me and say, “Why should I care? They're all the same.” So clearly there is a role for parties, but equally clearly, there is not perceived fairness in their homes. It seems to me this is absolutely the wrong time to discourage participation and to structure anything that contributes to that perceived unfairness.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I'll give the last minute to my colleague.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Christopherson, it's less than a minute, but we'll—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That's fine.

What I wanted to do was have an opportunity to give a shout out to the McMaster students union, MSU, in Hamilton. They're undergrads. Spencer Graham, the vice-president of education and David Campbell, the MSU president—I know him well—went to the trouble of sending me a letter. The reason I want to mention them this time is to thank them for that.

I also want to ask if each of you are encouraging other organizations. We're down to the wire. We have a few days, a few weeks, if we're really going to make the government back up or at least change things. And the credibility you have at your organizations...they made the statement in the MSU letter that promoting youth voting is the surest way to ensure the future of our democracy. How true. I just hope all of you are continuing the outreach personally and through your organizations. If you have any time to comment on what you're doing, that would be great.

Thank you so much for being here. You're making a difference.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Since Mr. Christopherson has left you no time, hopefully you can get that answer in under Mr. Simms.

That's not to take your time from you, Mr. Simms.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

The pressure is on me.

You can address that if you wish, but I'm going to quickly lead off with....

Ms. McCormick, you mentioned something earlier about the fact that a lot of the debate here has been the fact that for a lot of people one of the biggest reasons they don't vote is they don't have the information as to where, when, how to vote, which is being put out there by the government. That's not really the case, in your opinion, at all. There's a far more subjective matter here about disengagement of the youth vote in this country. In the letter you wrote, “With youth voter turnout in the 2011 federal election at just 38% our organization has done substantial work in collaboration with Elections Canada...”.

What are some of the things you told Elections Canada as a way of bringing that 38%, at the very least, to above half?

[Jessica McCormick]

I would say it's not just me that is saying it's not a lack of information issue; it's actually in the reports from Elections Canada that say only 7% of the people who didn't vote cited a lack of information.

In terms of what we had been doing with Elections Canada, prior to the tabling of this bill, to encourage youth voter turnout, we had been working with them to develop a strategy to implement polling stations on campuses and identifying larger campuses to run a pilot project. We'd also been involved in multiple consultations with Elections Canada that involved other civil society organizations and youth organizations to discuss some of the reasons that youth don't often vote and how Elections Canada can develop a more robust outreach and education strategy to tackle some of those issues.

Among them, and there were many, one was trying to encourage members of Parliament to play a role and really speak to youth, in terms of the issues they bring forward during elections, and political parties to do that as well. Those are just some of the things we had worked on.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Madam Demers, would you like to comment on that as well?

[Élise Demers]

Not to sound like a broken record, but I really believe that if a young person is interested in politics and feels they have a duty to vote, they will find the necessary information. Elections Canada could assess its youth outreach strategies. The agency could look at using campuses, for instance, to get that information out to young people. Campuses are places where young people abound. I think such a measure could vastly improve communication with young people at election time.

I think we need to be cautious about the figures showing that young people cited access to information as the biggest obstacle. As I told you, motivation ranks a bit higher than access to information when it comes a young person's reasons for voting or not.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Thank you, both of you.

Mr. Fraser, I turn to you.

Mr. Fraser, I'm a big fan of the student vote program. I think it's fantastic. I've been elected now since 2004 and certainly in the last election it was really good, not just because I won, but because I think it actually engaged citizens. I can even admit that my son campaigned for another party, but that's beside the point.

It says in your submission, “Teacher satisfaction was very high, with 95% of participating teachers saying they would very likely participate in the program in the future.” Something else I found very important was, “Over 60% of parents reported an increase in their own political interest and knowledge as a result of their child's participation in the program.”

The way the program works is we're not talking about just student elections; these are actual parties with the actual candidates who run in the federal elections running parallel. Because of the kids' involvement, the parents were also inspired to be involved as well. So there's a heightened inspiration to be involved in this and now it's gone.

Would you care to comment?

[Calvin Fraser]

It will be gone if this bill passes. We're certainly hopeful that it won't be gone. Those statistics are gathered by Student Vote Canada when the activities take place. They follow things up with a survey.

We also discuss it with our teachers at various activities. The support is extremely high. Indeed, one of the comments we would get is what you just said. The students go home and bring it into the homes. So the students are talking with their parents. It becomes a much broader discussion than in just a classroom. It's a very powerful process all the way around.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

To our other guests, you also touched on the public awareness campaign through Elections Canada which would obviously be eliminated. Elections Canada also provides that third party independent status. By doing this, it certainly gives it more legitimacy than just leaving it up to the individual parties. Obviously, the parties with the biggest budgets get to inspire more people. Therefore, it kind of creates an unfair place to be for the smaller parties indeed.

Would you care to comment on that?

[Jessica McCormick]

I think that I've already said that I believe Elections Canada has a significant role to play outside of just the political parties taking on that for some of the reasons you've outlined. Beyond that, I think that youth and student voters oftentimes don't identify with a particular political party, but I think would value the information and the reasons it's important to engage in democracy even if they aren't a member of a party.