Mr. Chair, I'm sorry for jumping in to point out that this wasn't identical. It was in the sense that the representative shall be appointed based on merit.
The significant difference from previous amendments that is found in this particular amendment, PV-27, is based on recommendations from the Chief Electoral Officer, as well as from Democracy Watch, as well as from Mr. Neufeld particularly.
There's no question there has been controversy throughout the period since the first reading of Bill C-23 over the content of the Neufeld report. There's no question the review of the 2011 election by Mr. Neufeld commissioned by Elections Canada reflected that there were a number of errors. The errors were not, as you will recall from testimony, related to attempts at fraud, apparent fraud, or even suspicion of fraud. What they did relate to is that our electoral system depends on a lot of people who are hired at the last minute and who do not necessarily receive adequate training.
The key difference between this amendment and previous ones is to allow the returning officer to appoint the central poll supervisors 180 days before the writ. You will recall from Mr. Neufeld's testimony how significant he feels it is that we stick to fixed election dates. Then you know when the writ's going to be dropped and then you can start bringing in the chief election day workers well enough ahead that they get the training they need to reduce error rates.
If you stepped back and were inventing our electoral system from scratch, you wouldn't invent the system we have . We've eliminated the enumeration. We don't have a voters list that's reliable. We're now relying on multiple pieces of identification. We have a bunch of people picked by political parties who are appointed at the last minute and not given adequate training.
This is an attempt to say that in the case of those central poll supervisors who play such an important role, let's hire them early and make sure that they're the bulwark of the system with adequate, in fact excellent, training.