Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the opportunity to appear today and tell you about our experiences in the 2006 federal election in Edmonton Centre.
My motivation in being here is the concern we all share for fair elections in Canada and perhaps to dispel the notion some may have that election fraud does not happen in Canada.
None of what I say will be an indictment of Elections Canada, but the simple fact of human nature is that there will always be those who, for their own gain, will want to cheat, whether it is on their taxes, EI claims, insurance claims, or elections. Election fraud will probably always be attempted, and to some extent, will always succeed. Elections Canada's job and our job is to try to stay a step ahead of people who will always try to find new ways to get around the rules and will always try to find new holes when old holes are plugged.
We were concerned about abuse of voter identification cards in 2004. We knew that many people received more than one card, and the availability of extra cards and the lack of other ID requirements created an environment that made fraud much easier. Scrutineers reported many cases of voters using VIC cards and nothing else for ID. We also knew that it was not uncommon for stacks of VIC cards to be left in the lobbies of apartment buildings and condominiums.
Although VIC cards were not intended to be ID in the 2006 election, that's how many people used them. All you needed was a VIC card and a name on the voter's list. That also encouraged some people to try to make a few bucks by selling them. I personally received one phone call during the campaign offering to sell me hundreds of VIC cards. It was in the heat of the campaign. I simply declined rudely and got back to campaigning in what was a typically tight election race in Edmonton Centre. Ultimately, in the 2006 election, we had scrutineer reports, some of which I have given to the clerk, about voters using only VIC cards for ID.
Another hot topic at the moment is vouching. Again, in 2004, we had reports from scrutineers of groups of voters arriving by bus and being vouched for by one person. In 2006, we had scrutineers trained like pit bulls, and we had reports from scrutineers of having turned away van loads of perspective voters and of insisting with DROs who seemed willing to go along with it that we were prepared to take immediate legal action to stop it. Again, in the heat of election day, our interest was on getting through the day without allowing any fraud, intentional or inadvertent, to take place.
The really important circumstance for us in 2006 was the very considerable errors in the Elections Canada voter list. We received an email from a lawyer, who advised that another lawyer had been bragging about the number of times he had voted for the winning candidate in 2004, based on the number of leases he held in the riding, which numbered 14. We weren't given his name, but obviously, that put us on high alert.
Partway through the writ period, my campaign manager, Vitor Marciano, had a conversation with an Elections Canada official who told him that she had already stricken about 700 people off the Edmonton Centre voter list for being clearly improperly registered. She had to discontinue that scrutiny due to other assigned duties, and Mr. Marciano is willing to testify to that information.
We received what was to be the final version of the list five days before the election and we put a team together all night going over the list of some 92,000 voters looking for anomalies. We found them right away, with as many as 20 or 30 people registered to vote from the same address, most of which were obviously non-residential. I would be happy to outline some of the fraudulent addresses during questions.
We immediately went public with a press release, news articles, and other aggressive electronic media. Official complaints were filed with the commissioner of elections by our campaign manager, Vitor Marciano, and by our national campaign co-chair, John Reynolds.
About 400 people were removed from the voter list, and we knew of several hundred more who we just didn't have time to get to. We made it clear that we would challenge suspect voters and that we would seek to press charges against anyone attempting to vote fraudulently. We can never know how many people we deterred from cheating, but we went from losing by 721 votes to winning by 3,600 votes. Obviously, there were other factors at play, but we were determined to win or lose honestly.
At no time did I then, nor will I now, accuse my opponent of participating knowingly in what went on. Simply, there are sometimes volunteers or supporters who are more enthusiastic than the law would normally allow.
I have with me some copies of the questionable listings, some handwritten scrutineer reports, the media release, the official complaints, and the final response from Elections Canada, which I have given to the clerk.
The final response from Elections Canada to our campaign manager was dated November 22, 2006. The investigation concentrated on 93 voters who had cast ballots, 74 of whom were actually contacted, and it was found that 16 had voted in the wrong electoral district. They concluded correctly that this small number of ineligible ballots had not affected the election result, this time, but I would remind the committee that the winning margin in Edmonton Centre in 1993 was 12 votes, and many other elections are won by the tiniest of margins.
If one does some simple math with the 16 out of 74 voters checked against all of the names removed, the number of potential voting errors, intentional or accidental, would number well into the hundreds. Such numbers could, indeed, influence the outcome of an election.
Mr. Chair, my aim today is simply to help people understand that election fraud at some level is, regrettably, part of every election, and we all need to take every measure possible to make sure elections are fair. I know we all want to see voter turnout increase, but personally, I would rather have an election with certainty of the result than an election with a large turnout of questionable voters.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I would be pleased to answer any questions.