Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 30th, 2014

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

There will be anyway.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I have a ruling on your amendment.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

As long as it's inadmissible; I wasn't going to move it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Well, if you're not going to move it, then it takes it out of play anyway.

An amendment to a bill that was referred to committee after second reading is out of order as beyond the scope and principle of the bill.

We'll now go to amendment NDP-24.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I'll give the legislative clerk notice that I am not going to move amendments NDP-24 and NDP-25 in order for us to get to a vote on clause 23, which we will be voting to delete and expecting the government to as well, and in order for everybody to know that this is part of the process, which Tom might want to speak to as well, of, when we get to that point of deleting, returning the Canada Elections Act back to its existing provisions on central poll supervisors.

The last thing is that I will be moving to add a new subsection 42(1), which is the same in substance as this. But that's after we get rid of....

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Right now we're on clause 23.

Mr. Lukiwski, were you about to speak?

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

I was just about to say the same thing, that the government will be voting.... To confirm what I said yesterday, the government will be voting down clause 23 so that we revert to the status quo.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Okay, so clause 23 has been voted against.

[An hon. member]

A recorded vote.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Do you want that? Here I was basking in the unanimity.

(Clause 23 negatived: nays 9; yeas 0)

I'm going to go to Mr. Scott because he has a new thing.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Everybody has NDP-24 in front of them. I basically would like to move this in the following way: “That Bill C-23, in Clause 23, be amended by adding, after line 34”—although it has been deleted—the following.... Then, where it says section 42, that would read 42(1). Then the text would be the same as you see in front of you: “In making appointments of electoral workers, returning officers shall give special consideration to recruiting youths”—I guess that's English—“who are 16 years of age and older”.

Proposed subsection (2) would read:

The Chief Electoral Officer may develop programs designed to assist in the recruiting and training of youths as electoral workers, which programs may be part of, or otherwise connected to, public education and information programs, including civic education in schools, colleges and universities.

I'm going to hand this over in writing because I've written the “that” part here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I think that makes it official.

You've moved it.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I've moved it, and I think it's obvious that this can stand with everything in the Canada Elections Act that has been kept in place or slightly modified by Bill C-23 to this point. It's still the case that returning officers do appoint people, for example, when parties have not used their right to nominate people who end up getting appointed.

In that context, one of the recommendations that has appeared in at least one Chief Electoral Officer report is that one of the best opportunities to inculcate a sense of civic engagement in youth is to realize that they're a source of election day workers. The ones who are in their late teens, in the last two to three years of high school, for example, might potentially be available in by-elections, etc., and for more than one election. As part of this, they may be more likely to be engaged by the democratic process.

That's the thinking behind the amendment, and I'll leave it at that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Scott.

Is there further comment on the amendment of Mr. Scott? I see none.

It's a recorded vote.

(Amendment negatived: nays 5; yeas 4 [See Minutes of Proceedings])

It is defeated.

(Clause 24 agreed to on division)

Next is PV-26.

Ms. May.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Chair, PV-26 moves us into a really important area of substantial amendments to the bill. It was one of the problems with the current way political parties operate, which was identified by numerous commentators, both by Chief Electoral Officer Mayrand and by Democracy Watch, and by a number of people who testified before the committee. It certainly has troubled me ever since I left the NGO world at Sierra Club, where we had to abide by the Privacy Act in the treatment of the names of our members, to find that Canada's privacy laws don't apply to registered political parties.

We have a lot of examples of fairly invasive practices by political parties, in maintaining databases of huge amounts of information on Canadians, without their knowledge and without their permission. Of course, if political parties were not exempted from the Privacy Act, such behaviour would be outrageous. Somehow, political parties are outside the normal rules of privacy protection of every other body and agency that operates in Canada.

My amendment would create a new clause, 24.1, to be inserted on page 18:

24.1 The Act is amended by adding the following after section 54: 54.1 (1) In order to ensure that the collection, use, disclosure and retention of Canadians' personal information by political parties is subject to commonly accepted principles of privacy protection, transparency and accountability, political parties shall develop and make available upon request policies and practices necessary to ensure compliance with Schedule 1 to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

The rest of it is consequential to that.

Obviously, there's a paragraph 3: (3) If a political party fails to comply with subsection (1), the Chief Electoral Officer may withhold from that political party any information contained in the lists of electors.…

I find it very troubling that in the world of big brother, nobody has bigger databases on Canadians than the larger political parties. No offence to my colleagues across the way, but I think the CIMS database has them all beat. We have information on what people buy, what they own, where they shop, where they worship, and I really think that all of us, as members of political parties, should be troubled by this exemption.

I don't have a lot of hope that you're about to pass it, but I really want to make the case that I bet your constituents would be really proud of your voting to ensure that political parties are not above the laws of privacy in this country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you.

Mr. Lukiwski, sorry, I have to catch your—

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

No, that's fine. I'll speak out if I want to be heard.

For the benefit of Ms. May and anybody else who may be watching and listening to the discussion, I just want to inform the committee why the government will be voting against this clause. It is simply because the CEO Mr. Mayrand indicated in his last report that he would be consulting a newly appointed advisory committee of political parties on this very issue. That is probably the best way to proceed, rather than arbitrarily making a decision with a new clause inserted in the fair elections act. I think the consultation process with the committee of political parties would be the best way to go. I know that discussion will be held, this issue will be dealt with, hopefully, at that time, and I think that's appropriate.

That's why we will be voting against Ms. May's endeavour.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Scott.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I would like a point of clarification from Tom, then.

When did the Chief Electoral Officer announce that?

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

It was in his last report.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

In his last report? I missed that. That's interesting. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

The vote is on PV-26.

(Amendment negatived)

(On clause 25)

Mr. Simms.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

My apologies for the lack of notice and the second language notice as well, but I want to do this orally. This is something we decided to do this evening, so I'm going to give people some time to look it up.

This is on page 18, clause 25. Now you can go to line 11, but proposed paragraph (a) is where I'll read from:

(a) the name and political affiliation, if any, of each candidate, as stated in the nomination papers, in the order in which their names are to be placed on the ballots; (b) the name of the official agent for each candidate….

I am proposing that the wording be:

the name, postal code, community, and political affiliation, if any....

Basically, I'm including the community in which they reside and the postal code of that community.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

This is on a ballot. Am I right?