I also extend my thanks to the committee for having me here today.
I present to you today on behalf of the London Homeless Coalition and the London Community Advocates Network; however, my comments also draw heavily on my experience working front-line as a nurse with people experiencing homelessness at the London Intercommunity Health Centre and on my current position as an assistant professor in the Arthur Labatt Family School of Nursing, where my research and teaching focus on the intersections of poverty, housing, and health.
There are two brief pictures I hope to paint for you, to in some small way bring you the realities, as the other witnesses have, of Canadian citizens experiencing homelessness. These are obtaining identification and then a picture of what happens on typical election day in London, Ontario.
Maintaining and obtaining identification is one of the key challenges faced by people experiencing homelessness in terms of barriers to exiting homelessness and exiting poverty in general. Both qualitative and quantitative research studies have continually highlighted the rapid decline of possessing current and accurate identification starting from the date of first homelessness. That is to say, the longer one is homeless, the exponentially less likely one is to have current and accurate identification. This particularly impacts those living with a mental health challenge as well as women fleeing domestic violence.
How is identification lost? Unfortunately, as others have said, it's frequently stolen along with one’s personal possessions. It's also lost in the chaos of people's lives. At times it's left behind if a person is unable to return to a shelter where their belongings are temporarily stored or if women fleeing violence are unable to go back and access their possessions.
Once identification is lost, as has been mentioned, the process to replace it is laborious, expensive, and long. Individuals often have to start right back at connecting with their community of birth to obtain a birth certificate, then wait four to eight weeks for this to come in before accessing the next piece of identification. This process is also a challenge as one requires a permanent address throughout the process for where that ID is going to. Fortunately, many agencies that serve people who are homeless are well-equipped and used to serving as a permanent address on a temporary basis. Unfortunately, due again to the chaos in people’s lives, the process of replacing lost identification is often interrupted. There are many times when pieces of ID, after being ordered, end up sitting unclaimed as the person enters a new cycle of distress. Therefore, on any given day a significant number of people experiencing homelessness in Canada find themselves without identification.
This is a challenge, but historically in London we've been able to rise to that challenge. Health and social service agencies in London mobilize every election day to ensure, as much as possible, that citizens who want to vote are able to in spite of their housing status and identification challenges. This community-wide mobilization focuses firstly on ensuring that individuals are using an agency for their permanent address and are thus able to obtain the voter ID card. For those who have not received that or if it's gone to a different place, the next level of mobilization is with the provisions under 143(3) of the Canada Elections Act, known colloquially as the vouching system.
As you are aware, under this section of the act, those with proper identification are able to vouch for another citizen within their polling area. Part of what we do is first make sure that the agencies serving the homeless know how it works—so, workers across health and social service agencies are made aware of these provisions and people self-identify who live within polling areas where many people who are homeless are located.
When a person experiencing homelessness but without identification enters an agency and expresses an interest in voting—often the agencies have a sign that says, “Ask us how you can vote”—they are connected with someone who can vouch for them, whether it's someone who works in the agency or another person who's homeless who's also said that they would like to vote. They will be accompanied by someone who can vouch for them at the polling station. This is made simpler in our community because one or more of the serving agencies use our polling stations and it makes it a little easier for everyone in terms of the walking.
So this gives you a bit of a picture of what we do.
To this statement I would like to add a bit of a clarification on the letter of attestation because this is something that, unlike the previous witnesses, we do use quite frequently within London. Unfortunately, the wording is that the person ordinarily resides and receives services at such-and-such agency. That works well for some people. If people have been in a shelter for a while, that works. For others, whether they're sleeping rough, transient from city to city, couch surfing and their address is changing, or whether they're recently admitted into social housing so their housing status is changing, that doesn't work. Although we do use the letter of attestation quite a bit, it still leaves a big gap, which is where the vouching fills in.
Under Bill C-23 the provisions of subsection 143(3) are removed. This will present a very real challenge to people experiencing homelessness across Canada and disenfranchise them from a significant part of the democratic process. Unfortunately, a full identification replacement is simply not achievable on time, in most cases. As hard as we try, it just often isn't there on time, and the agencies do try their best. This means that if Bill C-23 proceeds as written, a particular subset of the population would be adversely impacted. In any policy analysis, when a particular subset is affected, that is a red flag.
Thank you.