Well, well, well.
Evidence of meeting #36 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site.) The winning word was clause.
A video is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #36 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site.) The winning word was clause.
A video is available from Parliament.
9:40 p.m.
An hon. member
Well, well, well.
9:40 p.m.
NDP
Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON
—in the 87% to believe that the question they were asked is about whether you have ID. The question was on proving who you are. No wonder 87% reasonably thought that proving who they are and where they live is essential.
I think that's a fairly important correction.
The subamendment that I'd like to move, Mr. Chair, to amendment G-5 is a short one. It's that Bill C-23, in clause 48, in proposed subparagraph 143(3)(b)(ii), be amended by replacing “they know the elector personally” with “they know the elector”. This would eliminate the word “personally”.
Since we've lost on the other amendment, I'd like again to give the government a chance. This is much closer to the examples that even Mr. Richards was just giving. I hope the government would come halfway by understanding our argument about why the word “personally” is superfluous, especially when the examples given by Mr. Richards included the question, “Do you know the person well enough to know where they live?” which is already there as a criterion.
If we eliminate the word “personally”, I honestly think we have something resembling a fair meeting of minds. I don't think the concerns we've been presenting have been unreasonable. In a context in which the government has yet to vote in favour of a single opposition motion, I would really welcome some support on this one.
I hereby move that subamendment.
9:40 p.m.
Conservative
9:40 p.m.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
Equally short on the issue, I think Mr. Scott brings up a very good point, and I congratulate him for doing that. I think including that word does create an onus on the individual, and they may feel it's just not attainable, when in fact, it is pure disenfranchisement. I think what he's done here is he's made a pretty reasonable amendment.
I think we should all vote for this.
9:40 p.m.
NDP
Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON
I'd like to attribute the suggestion to my colleague, Alexandrine Latendresse—
9:40 p.m.
Some hon. members
Hear, hear!
9:40 p.m.
NDP
Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON
—because I might have skipped to something more desperate. I think this is a much better solution.
9:40 p.m.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
Well, there you have it. It's a birthday gift to all Canadians.
9:40 p.m.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
9:40 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Never mind the cake, give us some legislation. Give us some democracy.
9:40 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Whenever you mention cake, we get in trouble.
Let's vote on that one, then. It will be a recorded vote on the subamendment to amendment G-5.
(Subamendment negatived: nays 5; yeas 4)
We're now at amendment G-5, with a final subamendment.
9:40 p.m.
NDP
Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON
There's no preface. We know where we've ended up. It's that Bill C-23 be amended in clause 48 by deleting proposed subparagraph 143(3)(b)(ii) as set out in amendment G-5.
I'd like a recorded vote, please.
9:45 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Seeing no speakers to it, let's do the vote.
(Subamendment negatived [See Minutes of Proceedings])
Now we're voting on G-5.
(Amendment agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])
If G-5 is adopted, NDP-30, LIB-18, PV-29, NDP-31, and NDP-32 cannot be proceeded with.
We're on NDP-27.
9:45 p.m.
NDP
Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON
Mr. Chair, I'd like to move NDP-27.
We're on page 25 of the bill. We've moved on to the voter information cards now that we've restored a form of vouching, vouching by address. The voter information card is what this clause seeks to re-establish in a limited sense, because it seeks to give the Chief Electoral Officer back the very power he already has by saying as follows:
For greater certainty, the Chief Electoral Officer may authorize as a piece of identification for the purpose of establishing the elector's address a notice of confirmation of registration that is sent under section 95 or 102.
That's the act's way of talking about the voter information card. Let's not talk about the technicalities; that's what it intends to do.
Voter information cards, as everybody is well aware, are cards that are produced through the intersection of multiple databases that Elections Canada has access to, including driver's licences in every province, so they automatically include whatever level of accuracy exists in those databases—tax records, citizenship records, and the list goes on. It's no wonder the Chief Electoral Officer testified that in his view it is likely that the voter information card is more accurate than the driver's licence.
One of the reasons we should think about the problem with driver's licences is that Elections Canada has an active, proactive approach to updating its list. It's not an enumeration approach anymore; it's doing what it can to keep lists current. Whatever gaps do occur in a mobile world will occur as people move.
For a lot of driver's licences these days, at least in Ontario, the time period on them is a minimum of five years, if not longer. People move around, and I can tell you that from experience.
This is my time for anecdotes. We've heard a lot of anecdotes in the last two months from colleagues on the other side. This is my anecdote. I won't name them, but I have quite a few friends who will confess to having a driver's licence and driving on it even after they've moved and they may not have gotten around to notifying the authorities.
I think that's not an uncommon thing. With driver's licences there will be lags. This is not on purpose. These people were not planning to break the law. They were just taking a little extra time. It's an example of why the driver's licence...although it's the gold standard in the system, if you have one. It has your address. It's listed as the kind of photo ID plus address plus name where you can vote with it alone. The voter information card list already builds in driver's licences.
The second point I need to make very clear is that in the last election, a major pilot project, which we heard about—“pilot” is the wrong word—a major authorization was given by the Chief Electoral Officer for somewhere around 900,000 people to be able to use the VICs in three or four situations—aboriginal reserves, college and university campuses, long-term convalescence homes, and seniors residences. Indeed this is what happened, and in different contexts, a large percentage of those authorized to use the VICs did indeed use them. The report was that it sped up and simplified the process greatly. The report's back. What it allows you to do is not to vote just with the VIC; you're supposed to be bringing another piece of ID that's on this list, this famous list.
Mr. Chair, do you remember how many are on this list?
9:50 p.m.
Conservative
9:50 p.m.
An hon. member
The memory of an elephant.
9:50 p.m.
Conservative
9:50 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
9:50 p.m.
NDP
Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON
As long as you have one of the authorized 39 pieces and the VIC, which was primarily authorized to show address, then you could vote.
One of the reasons for the project was that in fact the requirements for the new ID requirements only entered into force after amendments in 2006 and 2007 to the Canada Elections Act, before which there actually was pretty much a trust-based system of voting in this country in terms of ID not being necessary.
What it did is it produced enough evidence that people were not voting, not even going to the voting stations, because they were either confused or couldn't find the pieces of ID to put together, and it was decided that the VIC, which already existed as a notification of registration, could be used and authorized as a form of identification for this purpose. It worked as a major initiative. It led to—now didn't lead directly to, but in Mr. Neufeld's report, he had two corresponding recommendations. He had a bunch of recommendations about how to deal with irregularities, including better training and recruiting, but he ultimately said that one of the other goals should be to reduce the amount of vouching needed, not to get rid of vouching but to reduce the need, and one way to do that was to increase the availability of the VIC as a second piece of ID to show address, and that led to the Chief Electoral Officer saying It is indeed his intention to authorize the use of voter information cards in the next general election.
Perhaps completely unrelated to that, Bill C-23 was tabled in the House of Commons and eliminated the ability of the Chief Electoral Officer to authorize VICs, not just in the case of the 900,000 who were able to in 2011, but every Canadian who would have been able to use it in 2015.
The last point is that one of the kind of anecdotal scenarios in the last two months has been the multiplying VIC, the VIC that ends up in somebody's hands with the name in more than one way, with the formal possibility being suggested that the person could thereby try to vote multiple times. Another scenario has been the VIC that travels in groups, in lobbies of residences, and is picked up and somehow or other, in the fictional imagination of one Conservative MP, is then distributed to others who can then vote with them.
The problem with these scenarios, apart from there being no evidence it ever occurs along those lines, is that you need a second piece of ID to vote. You need to produce the ID that shows your name, your identity, that then gets used with the VIC. You would have to be motivated not just to say, “Ah, I can vote with this VIC, and I'm not going to vote in my own name.” You'd have to be that kind of person too, because you're not going to show up at the same polling station and vote twice under different names. The VIC would have to have been sent or get in the hands of somebody who otherwise can't vote, or doesn't want to vote in their own name, and then you'd have to be motivated to forge the second piece of ID.
Not likely, and so therefore it's not that surprising that the minister in the House, I believe it was Monday, giving all the examples to back up his claim that people receiving multiple VICs voting multiple times could not be backed up by virtue of the fact that the only two examples he continues to be able to give is of a satire show, Infoman, charting two people who ostensibly tried to vote with two VICs, but—you know what?—could not, and I won't go into the details about why they could not. So there are, in fact, no examples available to the minister of people using VICs fraudulently.
Yet, we have a proposal by the government to get rid of, certainly, the most accurate piece of federal ID as one piece of ID that can be used in tandem with another. It cannot be used on its own, according to the current system.
All this is, really, is an attempt to return the law to where it was and also, I hope, to avoid huge chaos in 2015, when all the people who were first introduced to the fact they could formally use VICs as part of their voting will now have to be reprogrammed to make sure they do not try to vote in that way this time and instead look for other pieces of ID. Many of them will be able to find these, with different degrees of effort, but certainly, let's say, at least in the thousands will not.
I'd like to move this amendment NDP-27, to achieve the return of voter information cards as something the Chief Electoral Officer may authorize.
April 30th, 2014 / 9:55 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
Mr. Chair, I'd like to speak against this amendment.
As I've pointed out on a number of occasions in the past, notwithstanding the strange claim that this is the most accurate piece of identification in the Canadian arsenal of identification, the reality is that the Chief Electoral Officer, in his own report following the last election, observed that there was a 14% error rate as to addresses in the voter information card. He indicated that there was about a 10% error rate as to identity, so for one in ten persons, the system has the wrong person.
He also indicated that there was over a 20% error rate in 10 constituencies across the country. He did not specify which those constituencies were, but in the past we've seen that in Trinity—Spadina, just to take one example, where there was a special investigation subsequent to the 2006 election, there were literally thousands of people who had to be dealt with and signed up on election day because they weren't on the voters list.
Remember that the voter information card is, by definition, only as good as the voters list. What the CEO seems reluctant to state, but it's a fact, is that the voter information card comes from the preliminary voters list, not the final voters list, which actually is more accurate. But the voter information card, if it's used as information.... You know, something that tells me I should go and vote at this poll and that has an 80% chance of being right is.... In fact, I don't think it's that good, but it has an 80% chance of being right as to where I should go to vote. That's the information function.
As an identification function, what if your driver's licence in certain parts of the country had a 20% chance of identifying you not as Joe Preston, but as some other person, and some other person as Joe Preston, not you? You might be upset when you learn that you have had your driver's licence and your ability to drive revoked because somebody else was caught driving under the influence one time and was fined. That's pretty significant.
The voter information card was never intended to serve this purpose. The CEO conducted a series of experiments in its use as a kind of identification in a number of locations, as he said, on aboriginal reserves—not all aboriginal reserves in Canada, but some of them, quite a large number—in some seniors residences, in long-term care residence facilities, and finally, on campus. He reported considerable success in two of the three locations.
The success rate was very low for students, but it was interesting to see how he calculated his results to give the illusion that they achieved greater success than they actually did. He said, “Here's the number of people who turned up to vote, among these groups that we were testing, who carried the voter card with them.” That does not mean that x% of these people, of potential voters, were identified using this card. What it means is that of those who actually turned up to vote, x% brought it with them. I can't remember the exact numbers. It was in the 70% to 80% range, I believe, for the first two named groups. It was much lower for students.
Now, if you take another survey instrument that was done by the CEO, the study of youth voters and why youth do not participate, lack of a voter information card was cited as a reason that they don't vote by three of the five subgroups of young people who were not voting.
The voter information card is useful only for those who get it. There's a high error rate, where those who are getting it are not actually getting a correct card. Others are not getting it at all. They don't seem to be included at all in the CEO's statistics. It's yet another frustration for us, as the de facto board of directors trying to watch the professional management of Elections Canada, when we get these statistics that are denying us information that seems to be designed as much to hide that agency's incompetence as to reveal what it's doing.
In short, Mr. Chair, I was alarmed to learn that the CEO was intending to expand this experiment to the entire country. I am relieved that the option no longer exists.
On that basis, I'll be voting against this proposed change.