Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 30th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Well, I don't know.

Mr. Simms. I'll ask for some brevity.

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

Pardon me?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I've asked for some brevity. Your chair can ask. You don't have to follow.

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

That's a tall order for a short man.

I'll try to get away from repetition because a lot of stuff I wanted to say has already been said by Mr. Scott.

I want to talk about the amendments following this that obviously will not go through, but the idea about vouching, to me, was something that was fundamental to any great democracy, in order for people to vote. I always found it a bit disingenuous when people—well, when the government primarily—would say, “You don't need to show this type of ID just for this”, whether it was cross-border shopping or whatever it is you wanted to do. None of that would prove to be an inalienable right. This is an inalienable right, however, as stated in section 3 of the charter. For that reason I thought the testimony, and I won't rehash all that was said in testimony, was such compelling evidence. Not only was it compelling, it was so overwhelmingly of the same opinion. In my 10 years of being here, I have never seen stronger coalescence of opinion around one direction since coming here.

Again for the sake of brevity and repetition, I want to stress how I think that in the next election we will face some serious problems and complaints, especially from one segment of the population that I know exists as a majority in my riding, seniors. This voter information card has been relegated by the government as something of a tool that was used to circumvent rules—whether it was irregularity or fraud, I'll let them decide—but I simply found it so egregious to turn their backs on something that was a fundamental piece, a pathway, to exercising a democratic right.

I remember going to many seniors' homes and asking people to vote for me. They would talk about voting and all that, and that card was prominent in their rooms, in their houses. It was somewhere where they saw it every day. This was a ticket to their own democracy that they exercised, and I think in the next election it will continue to be that. I genuinely hope that by changing this there will be some program, quite literally. Maybe Elections Canada should do this. I don't know if the government has thought of this. You should write on this voter information card in bold letters, “You cannot use this piece of identification for voting”. It needs to be in bold letters, because we will have problems if that's not done.

I want to reiterate what was said earlier by Professor Scott about the importance of these voter information cards. I know that's repetitive, but I honestly believe it is very, very important that these VICs remain as important as they used to be, and if anything, make them stronger. Again I reiterate, you had best tell the Canadian public that his thing is no longer a piece of ID for that third pillar, which is to prove your residence.

I don't understand why they decided to push ahead, eliminate the element of the population that they have some suspicion of, and try now to reverse engineer mistakes they think they have made.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you very much.

Madam Latendresse.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

I have a question for my colleagues across the table. I hope someone has an answer for me. It has to do with Mr. Reid's response to what Mr. Scott said. This is about having to know the elector personally, but do we have a definition of what it means to “know the elector personally”? I have a bit of trouble with that. At what point do you know someone personally? Obviously, it can't apply to someone you see every day but never speak to. But there aren't any real guidelines on that, so it could be open to interpretation.

Furthermore, will it cause delays at the polling station? Are people going to be asked how they know one another and what the nature of their relationship is? I'd really like to know how people at the polling station are going to determine whether the two individuals really know one another or not.

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

That's why you sign and attest an oath.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

The oath says whether you do or don't.

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

I have to sign an oath saying I know you and I know that you live in this polling station, and if I'm lying I am subject to a fairly significant fine. That will be explained to me by the polling official before either the voter or the attester signs and co-signs the oath.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

I'll repeat my question. At what point will the attestor be deemed to have lied if it turns out they don't know the elector personally enough?

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

I either know you or I don't. I don't know you well, perhaps, but I know who you are.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

The question isn't whether you know the elector or not, but whether you know them personally. At what point do you know someone personally?

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

I know you personally.

I don't think it's as big a problem, or any problem, frankly, as you're trying to suggest it is.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

I am not suggesting anything, I just want to know. My linguistic background may be to blame; I was a linguist before becoming a member of Parliament. To me, the definition of “personally” is somewhat abstract.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Christopherson.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Chair, certainly, first off, I would concur in my colleague's remarks. She's absolutely right. Make no mistake that there are going to be problems with this.

However, the first thing I want to say is that this not just an ordinary flip-flop. This is a flip-flop of historic proportions. This is a double backflip somersault with a twist in terms of flip-flops.

Before I get to my argument, the first thing I want to say very clearly is that had there been proper consultations in the beginning with all the people who we ultimately heard from, who convinced the government through public pressure to change their position, we could have avoided all this.

If they had simply knocked on the door of the Chief Electoral Officer, the elections commissioner, and a few other experts, we could have avoided all of this. This is what happens when governments bring in legislation that significantly changes important things and they don't consult with anyone. This is the kind of thing that happens.

Let's start at the beginning. If everyone recalls, the government started talking about this because there was so much fraud, because there was so much potential for fraud. In fact, the minister was reading out Mr. Neufeld's report, holding it up and saying, “There's the proof right here. It's in the report. Mr. Neufeld did this study, this expert study, and here's what it said.”

What did Mr. Neufeld say when the minister used his report to say that there was either widespread fraud or the potential for widespread fraud? Mr. Neufeld said, “I think any fair-minded person who reads that report would come to the conclusion that he”—meaning the minister—“has not been fair in his assessment of my findings.” He also went on to say, “there was no evidence of fraud whatsoever”. He also said that he had “only been privy to a handful of cases of voter fraud” in his career.

That was the argument. That was the foundation the government laid out for denying vouching. Then, of course, we all heard the minister's talking points. They were repeated here for a while, but anybody who has followed this closely saw those talking points soften up just a little. Line by line they sort of disappeared, and as time went on, they stopped defending....

Then they went back, and now we're here with this amendment, and it needs to be said, the Prime Minister in particular.... I don't normally mention the Prime Minister at the committee level, but I have to tell you, I sit right across from him and he's been getting up every day when he has the chance and saying that the NDP has this extreme position that people can vote with no ID.

Meanwhile, the vouching available in the last election meant exactly that. People could walk up with no ID and they could get someone to vouch for them, and Mr. Neufeld's report said, “there was no evidence of fraud whatsoever”. So there's nothing extreme about saying that maybe we should use the same vouching system that let the current Prime Minister be elected Prime Minister.

Now, it's cute, if you'll notice.... I'll be shocked if they utter the word “vouching”. They won't use the word “vouching”, but that's what this is. They've brought it back because they knew they had to. It was not going to stand, so they tried to find a clever little way to make it look like it's not really vouching while at the same time they spin out a political message that the NDP has this extreme position about people voting without ID. Of course, they don't mention the fact that this is exactly how he became Prime Minister, and that this system was in place, and that the experts who reviewed that election said, “there was no evidence of fraud whatsoever”.

So why was this even brought in? Get ready for your tin hat throw-out comment, because this is exactly the sort of the thing that the Republicans in the U.S. are doing, and it's about voter suppression. Make no mistake about it. These little things they're throwing in here, like “personally” and a couple of little factors are all meant to hang on to as much of the voter suppression technique as possible, because it works, unfortunately.

Rather than just being up front, because they have no idea how to be up front; that's just a foreign concept to them, as evidenced by Bill C-23 landing here without even asking the Chief Electoral Officer what he thought.... Rather than being up front and saying, “You know, we got the vouching thing wrong. We really did. We're going to go back to what we had because clearly there's no problem.”

That's not what's happening. Instead, they refuse to use the word “vouching”. They say “attestation”. Fine, call it whatever you want, but it's vouching. Somebody is saying, “I know them personally and I know they live there”, and under any definition, that's vouching.

They're trying to be too clever by half. Nobody is going to be fooled. Is this better? Yes. But make no mistake. It's the bare minimum they could do facing the avalanche of public criticism they received not just in Canada but internationally.

Again, it would have been a lot easier in the beginning, or even now, if you'd come in and said, “You know, we got it wrong”. You'd have taken some heat for the flip-flop, but it's the flip-flop with the double twist and the double somersaults and still trying to come out on top, that you didn't go to vouching but you've still got a bit of your voter suppression technique in there. There will be Canadians who otherwise could have voted in the last election, who can't this time because the vouching has been limited.

I have no doubt that tomorrow we'll see the Prime Minister get back up again and talk about the NDP's extreme position. I want to emphasize again that the extreme position the Prime Minister is saying the official opposition has is exactly the system that was in place in the last election. That was fair enough to let Prime Minister Stephen Harper get elected, but somehow that's not supposed to be a fair basis to have for the next election. Nonsense. It's voter suppression.

Thank goodness for the integrity and honesty of our officers of Parliament, current and former, including Madam Fraser, who came forward and said that this bill is an attack on our democracy. And there were all those Canadians who came in here knowing how vicious this government is. People are frightened of this government, but they still came down here and they said this is wrong.

Thank you to all of those Canadians who did that. Every Canadian who attended a rally, signed a petition, sent an e-mail, all contributed to getting back some of our democracy that this government was trying to take away in this bill.

We will be up front. Our intent is to vote for this section because it is an improvement. It does reintroduce vouching as an important and positive tool in our electoral system, but we will vote against the clause. At the end of the day, the government is still taking away democratic rights and access to voting that Canadians had in the last election. They will not have that in the coming election. We're going to continue to do everything we can do to get this fully changed.

We're not at the end yet, Chair, although I am getting close.

With regard to the process, we're not at the end yet. We still have to go through these amendments. It has to go back to the House for report stage and third reading, so there's still time. There's still time to push them to do all of the right things. If we can get half a loaf of democracy, which is a shame in Canada that we get half a loaf of democracy, we'll take it.

We will continue to persevere so Canadians can have their full loaf of democracy, which they not only deserve but they had in the last election, and this government is going to take it away in the election coming up.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Christopherson.

Ms. May, a short comment.

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

I appreciate that, Mr. Chair. As you know, I have a number of amendments on the same point regarding vouching.

My short comment is really in response to some of the argumentation from my friend Scott Reid. In the balancing between the citizen's right to vote and the perfection of the process, in other words, excluding someone who had no right to vote versus the importance of someone who has the right to vote voting, the Supreme Court of Canada was quite clear in the Etobicoke Centre case.

I'm not going to make a long point, I'm just going to quote from page 100 of the majority decision of Rothstein and Moldaver, “The current system of election administration in Canada is not designed to achieve perfection, but to come as close to the ideal of enfranchising all entitled voters as possible.”

Scott was referring to balancing. It isn't a level balance. It isn't a spirit level. The balance is that the overwhelming priority, the ideal, is to ensure that everyone who is entitled to vote can vote, and that if in the process of achieving that ideal a few people vote in the wrong place, or vote where they weren't entitled to, that's not an issue to the Supreme Court. The issue under the charter is that every entitled person be allowed to vote.

I will just remind Scott Reid how large a part of the Green Party voting base is people who just wandered out of the woods or were abducted by aliens, and I hope he'll be sympathetic in future.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Ms. May.

Mr. Scott, please.

I'd like to finish this section, and then we'll take a small break when we get there.

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

I appreciate that, Mr. Chair.

I have two amendments I'd like to propose.

As I started out by saying I would, I would hope to persuade the government, but I'm not sure we have. I think it's important before I table the amendments to realize that hanging over people's heads when vouching, of course, is the potential of being prosecuted. That's what the oral advice that's referred to in the provision is intended to signal, that the person knows when they vouch for somebody there is the potential to be prosecuted.

That's as it should be, because the system does require that kind of enforcement piece. I understand why the government has that. But if somebody is then told, “Here's one of the criteria. You have to know the elector personally; otherwise, do you know the oral advice I just gave you? You could be prosecuted,” my worry is not just the outside alien examples of my friend Scott, it's whether the average person will take a step back and say, “Okay, well, I can attest to the fact that the elector resides here, but what do you mean by, that I know the person personally?” They're going to ask the poll clerk or the deputy returning officer or the central poll supervisor, and they're not going to be able to tell them.

Mr. Lukiwski, in his answer to Madam Latendresse, at one point said “I know who you are,” and then said “I know you.” Those are two very different things.

I'm not sure how anybody in the election day worker system will know how to answer that question. Do you know what the result will likely be? People will say, “I'm not signing this. Do you mean you could prosecute me because somebody determines that I don't know them well enough? I've known them for the last two weeks. I just moved in next door. Is that enough?”

I just think that the disincentive potential, when people know that this is a criterion and they can be prosecuted for it is where we have to see the issue.

Now, I think Tom may have laid his hands on a possible solution because he answered the question by saying it's an attestation. If we could somehow find a way for this to be rewritten or amended to say you still have to swear this, so it relies on your own sense of good faith and honour, whether you know this person personally, what does that mean? You swear to that, but this is not part of what you can be prosecuted for. You could be prosecuted if, by chance, somebody was able to prove that you did not know that the elector resided in the polling division, it turns out the person did not and you knew that. That's a much easier thing to prove than whether you knew them personally.

What I would like to do is move an amendment that would say, “That Bill C-23 be amended in clause 48 by adding after item 143(3)(b)(v)”—so that means by adding there subsection 143(3.1)—“(3.1) No one may be prosecuted for any offence under this act on the sole basis of not having complied with item 143(3)(b)(ii).” That is the provision that says they know the elector personally.

It stays as a standard. It taps into the sense that Scott's been talking about, the sense of honour that we prefer to bring. What we prefer to think of is what voters bring to our system. Just as when a person swears in court to tell the truth, the average person would take it seriously enough, but they would also have the protection of knowing that for that one thing, they can't be prosecuted.

If what I've just suggested isn't accepted or a wording that's technically better, then I think you're going to have this huge dissuasive effect for anybody willing to step up and vouch. It will cast a fairly wide penumbra, not just in an aliens landing with tinfoil hats scenario. People are going to say, “I don't know that this satisfies knowing a person personally and I'm not willing to put myself on the line by vouching. Nobody in this polling station can tell me what it means.” And no wonder; it's quite subjective and abstract.

That's the amendment I would like to move. I don't know if I've properly worded it in a way that anybody else can improve on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

A great idea was given to me by a fantastic clerk. We will suspend for five minutes. It gives the clerks a chance to look at this, and it gives us all a little break at about the halfway point for this evening.

The meeting is suspended for five minutes. Please come back at that time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I'm going back to Mr. Scott. He's going to tell us where we are.

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

On the amendment, for the benefit of everybody, I wonder if the clerk would do me the favour of reading it out because I don't have a copy.

[Philippe Méla, Procedural Clerk]

That Bill C-23 be amended in clause 48 by adding after section 143.3(b) the following: “3.1 No one may be prosecuted for any offence under this Act on the sole basis of not having complied with section 143.3 (b)(ii).”