Evidence of meeting #35 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site.) The winning word was advertising.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
NDP
Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON
Yes. This goes back to Monsieur Bellavance's earlier amendment that I foreshadowed in my comments.
So that everybody knows, effectively, at the moment, the Canada Elections Act allows for the Chief Electoral Officer to carry out studies on voting that include alternative voting processes. It could be different ways to organize polls, it could be.... You can imagine what that might mean. It also would include e-voting, electronic voting, as a test or an alternative process.
At the moment, this committee and an equivalent or a parallel Senate committee are the only ones that have to give permission for such tests. What the government has done in Bill C-23 is it has taken one alternative process out of all the others, that's e-voting, and made it subject to the plenary approval, that is, the entire House of Commons and the entire Senate. It's no longer within this kind of committee structure.
Now, e-voting is not just of interest to the younger generation and the Internet-connected generation; it's of interest to anybody who believes that at some point in time the combination of security, efficiency, and encouraging people to vote is going to require us to at least have e-voting as one feature of our system, and we want to be ready. To me, this signals a structural reluctance to even test it. It's also, in some sense, I have to say—I'm speaking clearly as an NDPer here—offensive to add to the authority of the Senate in testing on something that's involving electoral process. Symbolically, it's nuts. I honestly do not see the logic here beyond wanting to create extra hurdles for this one process.
In committee, we had an interesting perspective. I think some of you might remember my saying to the witness, “I hadn't thought about that.” It was disability rights witnesses. In particular, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, if I'm not mistaken, were specifically expressing real concern about this. That also probably involves people with mobility disabilities too; it's less likely for them to easily get out to vote. They basically said that this is a provision that doesn't just affect students, but it's the kind of provision that affects them, because it's through e-voting that they can imagine they would be more included in the electoral process.
I'll end there and simply appeal to the government to let it go back to the way it was and not have this extra hurdle that involves not just us in plenary session, but the Senate.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Chair, I just wondered if the government would be good enough to give us a rationale why we're switching from just a committee of the House of Commons and a committee of the Senate to the full-blown houses. Can they give us what the rationale is for that change, Chair?
Conservative
Senior Officer and Counsel, Privy Council Office
We'll defer to the government members.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
That's all.... You wonder why we wanted to do this publicly. It really wasn't all the grandstanding. That can happen anywhere. Here we are. Here's a prime example. The current process for going into the future requires the approval of a committee of the House of Commons and a committee of the Senate. If they both agree, then we can go ahead and have the experiment, the trial, the test. The change now says that it has to be the whole House that votes and the whole Senate.
We respectfully, and I believe politely, asked why, and they won't give us an answer. Have we really come to this, that the government is now even refusing to give their spin rationale? They're just going to sit there and say, “We don't have to answer, so we're not going to. We're going to use our majority to ram it through, and you're just going to have to live with it. And why we did it remains a state secret.” Unless one of the government members wants to provide the why, the question becomes why is it even here?
I'm willing to bet that without offering a public reason why, the majority are going to use their power to ram this through. Above and beyond the no consultation and all the other nightmare revelations there have been since this was first tabled, now we've reached the point where we're at a public setting with a legitimate question about a relatively important change, and we've respectfully asked the government for their rationale, and there is none. Yet they're still going to ram it through.
That's the state of affairs right now in dealing with our election laws. The government of the day in Canada will not even give an answer to why when we ask a simple question before they use their majority to make it the law of Canada.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
I just love hearing you talk, David. That's the only reason I was waiting until you finished.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
No, I haven't. I'm actually checking my e-mails here.
The answer is quite.... I'm actually quite surprised, because on the one hand you were arguing just a few moments ago that Parliament should have the right to approve many things concerning the travel and the activities conducted by the Chief Electoral Officer, and now you're saying no. It makes no sense to me. I think it's probably appropriate that Parliament does approve it.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Mr. Chair, now we're really getting.... We're probably better off with silence than that one, because the fact of the matter is that this committee exists as a subset of the House of Commons, and they have delegated their authority to this committee. That is the approval and sanction of the House, and as I understand it, it's no different from the Senate.
Currently both houses have said that they give their committees the authority to say yes. We've all accepted that. I'm not aware of anybody recommending a change, not from any of the caucuses or any of our witnesses. In fact, for that matter, I stand to be corrected, but I don't recall any recommendations coming from any Chief Electoral Officer's report, nowhere, and I still haven't heard an answer. Why are we going...?
Here's what I think, Chair, and then I'll end, if they really don't want to say anything. That whole government can't come up with one phony reason to put out as an answer. They're willing to just stay silent. Here's what I think, Chair. I think they want to do this because they want to do everything they can to slow down the implementation of e-voting, recognizing that nobody wants to rush into it until we're sure. I don't know when that will be, but I do know that we need to move in that direction, and the government doesn't want that to happen.
Why, Chair? Because it's likely that more people will vote. It's another aspect of voter suppression, passive-aggressive voter suppression, because measures that would encourage people and make it easier for them to participate have now been made more difficult by virtue of the process. That's why this is here. That's why they don't have an answer, unless suddenly they've come up with an unexpected rationale.
Tom can respond to me and that's fair game. When I'm done, he can go at me. But I'd still like to hear at least one legitimate reason why it improves our election law to take this approval away from the committee level and move it to the full chambers.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
I was just trying to get the size of David's head to fit him for a tinfoil hat, because of another conspiracy theory.
Many other jurisdictions, as he should know and I don't know if he does know or not, have studied e-voting and point out many concerns. I know he would understand this. Even in their own NDP leadership convention, there were many problems with electronic voting.
There's yet another conspiracy theory. You're something else. This would be clearly a fundamental, and some would consider almost radical, change in the way Canadians have voted.
To suggest that you want only a certain set of eyes to deal with this rather than the entire Parliament I think is being extremely disingenuous, particularly as I point this out time and time again.
Mr. Christopherson said, “Why not Parliament? Why can't Parliament have a say in this? Why should it only be restricted to cabinet? Why should it only be restricted in this case? Why should it only be restricted to committees?”
For something of this magnitude, I believe Parliament should be extensively consulted and debate should occur, pure and simple.
NDP
Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON
I just want to put what Mr. Lukiwski said in context, which is that this is about a test, pilot projects, and alternative voting tests. This is not about going to e-voting. It really doesn't quite work.
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
You can assume it's to be a recorded vote, unless we say otherwise. That would make it easier.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
I like excitement.
(Amendment negatived: nays 5; yeas 4 [See Minutes of Proceedings])
We'll go to PV-16.
Ms. May, would you give a short summary of what you're trying to accomplish on this one.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
This is related to the last amendment, but different. When we're going through these experimental pilot projects with e-voting, the Chief Electoral Officer, under my amendment, would only need the prior approval of the Senate and the House of Commons in full if the experimental process was being undertaken during a general election.
It would provide, I think, some rationale for the government's current position that there's any justification for raising this from the level of parliamentary committee and Senate committee, and saying that if you're experimenting with e-voting and wish to do it during a general election, even if it's a one-off, you'd better have the House of Commons as a whole and the Senate as a whole provide prior approval.
Perhaps, speaking of approval, this one might gain approval here at this table. One hopes.
Conservative