I would like to, for the sake of the chair and formalities and everything else, move NDP-16.
On page 11 in the bill, there is a new provision, proposed section 23.1, which states:
An election officer shall not communicate with the public by the use of calls, as defined in section 348.01, that are unsolicited.
The problem is that section 348.01 refers to two kinds of calls, automated and live voice calls. I understand the rationale probably for this is trying not to set things up so that people think Elections Canada can engage in automatic calls, but Elections Canada engages in unsolicited calls when they're trying to recruit officers. It's not always a matter of people coming to them and they already have lists. Any direct call to somebody to say, "We've heard via this process and that process" is an unsolicited call to recruit. The amendment would simply be:
(2) Despite subsection (1), an election officer may communicate with the public by the use of calls, as defined in section 348.01, that are unsolicited in order to recruit persons to work on polling day.
I'm hoping that if the government votes this down, this will be the kind of thing that the courts and everybody else will just ignore as an issue because technically, it could create a problem.