Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 8th, 2014

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Most of my questions are for Ms. Fahmy, but I do want to start with just a couple of quick questions for Mr. Rowland.

Mr. Rowland, you in fact have been a political candidate in the past. Can you tell us if that's accurate or not, and if so, for which party?

[Simon Rowland]

That's correct. Direct Leap is one of the principal voter—

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Can you answer my question, first of all? Have you been a political candidate in the past?

[Simon Rowland]

Yes. I was a candidate for the federal New Democrats in 2000. My company is one of the voter contact firms that does voter contact for the New Democrats.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Sure. So you and your company performed voter contact services—

[Simon Rowland]

Exactly.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

—for the NDP in the last election.

[Simon Rowland]

I develop telecom equipment specifically for voter contact, and I've worked on lots of different products, so I have a knowledge of both the voter contact process and the technical infrastructure of carriers.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Okay. Thank you. I just always feel it's important that a witness fully disclose their connections—

[Simon Rowland]

Yes, for sure.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

—that may be potential conflicts of interest. So thank you for doing that.

Ms. Fahmy, I want to turn to you for some questions. You were here talking somewhat from the perspective of youth in terms of their participation in voting and the political process. That's something I have an interest in as well, and I'd like to ask you a few questions, if I can.

There are essentially two topics I'd like to cover, if we have the time; hopefully we will. The first is looking at the reasons that voter turnout among youth is unfortunately lower than among the general population. Obviously there are a couple of reasons that young people choose to vote or to not vote. One of them is obviously the motivation they have. There are various ways that this is created. Obviously it can be encouraged by family members. It could be political parties. I submit that it's largely political parties that should be responsible for creating that motivation.

[Miriam Fahmy]

Sorry, I can't hear you very well.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Sorry. I submit that largely political parties should be responsible for creating that motivation. It's our job to make sure as candidates that we encourage and motivate young people to vote.

But there's another problem for young people. This comes from Elections Canada's own data. After the last election, they looked at the reasons young people didn't vote, and some of the biggest things they found were logistical problems and lack of information. For example, there was not knowing where to vote; 25% reported that as a problem. As well, 26% reported not knowing when to vote, and 19% cited not knowing how to vote as playing a role in their decision.

Obviously, I believe that the requirements of Elections Canada to better focus on ensuring that young people do have that information about where, when, and how to vote...and one of the biggest things I think we've seen through a lot of the testimony we've had is not knowing the IDs that might be required, or what might be on the list of 39....

Do you think having Elections Canada focus a little bit better on that role of letting people know that information would be helpful in encouraging more young people to get out and vote?

[Miriam Fahmy]

Thank you. I think there are a number of questions in what you just said.

First, I am in favour of having every effort made to ensure that young people know where and how to vote. If there are new, more effective strategies to be implemented, then I believe they should be. That being said, this is not my area of expertise so I am therefore not in a position to tell you which strategies should be used over others.

However, what you are saying is that you think that it is up to the parties to motivate young people to vote. The second reason why young people don't vote, which has nothing to do with logistics and more to do with motivation, must be dealt with by the parties, as you said. I share your opinion. It is the parties' responsibility to make voters and future voters interested in the ideas they want to promote in democracy. That is part of the democratic process.

That being said, I believe that Elections Canada also has a role to play. It has a different role in that it is a non-partisan agent that is at the service of Parliament and Canadians. This distinct role allows it to speak to young people in a different way and generate interest as well.

I am tempted to say that they are not mutually exclusive. Every possible effort must be made.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Okay. Thank you. I do agree they have a role to play. I firmly believe that role needs to be focused better on providing the information people need to vote.

That leads me into the next question. We don't have a lot of time left, but hopefully we can get there. It really centres around students voting, and students who are away at post-secondary institutions, and not—

[Miriam Fahmy]

I'm sorry. I can't hear you.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Sorry. The acoustics aren't great in the room, I know.

It centres around students who are away from home at post-secondary institutions. Obviously in that situation a student has the opportunity to determine where their residence is for the purposes of voting. Now, my understanding of the act is they're supposed to vote where they consider their residence to be. That's the choice they obviously make, as to where they determine their residence to be.

They have the option of choosing to vote at home, where their parents live, if they intend to return there and consider that their residence. If they choose that option, they obviously can vote by special ballot without having to return home. If they choose to vote at the university that's away from home, of course there are other options available to them such as, if they are living in a residence, having an attestation of residence from the student residence.

I'm curious if you can tell me how many students, if they choose to make the university their home residence, live in residence. Do you know the numbers or percentages of students who live in residence away from home?

[Miriam Fahmy]

Unfortunately, I cannot answer your question, as it is on technical aspects that are not part of our area of expertise. I would be happy to look up that information and provide it to you at a later date.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Super. Excellent. Thank you, Mr. Richards.

We'll go to Mr. Scott for seven minutes, please.

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

Thank you to our witnesses.

I did want to acknowledge the role the Council of Canadians did play in revealing publicly through the court process the little that we do know. I want to thank you for your efforts. It did produce a ruling by one of the leading judges in this country, Judge Mosley, who did find, as you indicated, that there was “an orchestrated effort to suppress votes during the 2011 election campaign by a person or persons with access to the CIMS database.” We know that database is the Conservative Party's database, and he found that the most likely source of the information used for the robocall fraud across the country was that database.

It's all the more worthy of our thanks that you persevered in getting that ruling, despite the judge also noting that you had to face “trench warfare”, attempts to “block these proceedings by any means”, and attempts to “derail” these proceedings by the lawyers of the Conservative Party representing the MPs, who probably had no say at all in how their case was being conducted, I must add.

You also indicated here, and I think this is really important, how crucial the database is, and I'll be getting to Mr. Rowland on this. You indicated that how quickly those who have access to the database in the Conservative Party could determine who downloaded the database when and, frankly, from where. And we do know in recent days that a certain individual at the head of the Conservative Party, a Mr. Soudas, was traced back to a download that resulted in the Prime Minister releasing him from his duties. Yet somehow we cannot find who downloaded this data in the case of 2011.

Mr. Rowland, you've given some extremely powerful suggestions that indicate, if I'm right, that the robocall system put in the act is minimalist at best, and not likely to actually catch the kind of robo-fraud that occurred in 2011. Would that be your opinion?

[Simon Rowland]

That's correct.

The laws that govern requests for evidence, in the case of telephone fraud investigations, are designed around 19th century search and seizure protections to prevent people from being arbitrarily searched, but when you're accessing telephone records, it needs to be a lot easier. Accessing telephone records is the principal obstacle to identifying each of the call centre firms that were used to disseminate the fraudulent phone calls, aside from RackNine.

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

My understanding is that you're saying it's not just important that, as the Chief Electoral Officer recommended, calling service providers provide the numbers to the CRTC but also that Elections Canada, through its compliance and enforcement processes, has direct access to the carriers being able to—

[Simon Rowland]

In exactly the same way as the CRTC does.

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

Right.

[Simon Rowland]

It needs to be a simple process of requesting the data, just as the CRTC does.