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.