Thank you, Chair.
First of all, it's interesting that it's an outside person, but here's what's sticking with me. These are my thoughts, not the reflections and wisdom of all my colleagues. This is just my view of it.
It's interesting that the government's going out of its way to ensure in a clause in the law that there is an audit or a review of issues pertaining to—guess what—its favourite subject: vouching. It just strikes me, Chair, that the government is not putting in legislation that there has to be a review and an audit to ensure that the Chief Electoral Officer did sufficient outreach and sufficient education, to review whether he did everything possible to encourage people to vote. That's not the audit. The audit isn't who was turned away at the voting station and why, to learn lessons about improving the bill to make more people vote. No, the audit part is not to look at and make sure that people's democratic rights were protected. That's not the priority here. In fact, as far as I know, that's not even in the bill.
However, its little subject matter around voter information cards—how they can't be used as ID; how it's not sure what the term “personally” means; how people are going to be told, “Boy, you'd better know that if you're signing this document and vouching for someone, this is all kind of serious”—is the only area being proposed for review. Sections 143 to 149, 161 and 162, and 169 pertain only to vouching for an address. That's the only part of the whole bill the government has said it wants to go back and examine after the election. Is it to look at and determine whether or not everything was followed and everything was done to help Canadians vote and to make sure the system works? No, the audit is in the reverse. It's on the negative. Were they allowed to vote? Who were they?
We all know from the submissions that were made which populations will be affected by the changes to vouching. I reiterate that this is just one more small part. If you add up all these parts over the days—and I don't think we're even halfway through the bill yet—we've been able to point out bit by bit.... I say to the government that there are intelligent people who follow these things, who know a lot more about law-making than we do.
My colleague is a professor. For days and days, as he was analyzing the original bill, he'd come to me and say, “Dave, I can't believe what's here. Every time I go through another clause, there's another layer”. All of that fits. That's why there was no consultation done in the beginning. This was all done probably with outside lawyers. It's all very well crafted. That's why they took so long.
I just can't help but think that this is just one more piece of this overall structure that is meant to do the opposite of what we want, in my view. If the government wants to prove that I'm not accurately reflecting its attitude, I sure would welcome amendments that show how it's going to do audits and reviews of all kinds of things that speak to people's rights.
The last point, Chair, is, once again, to point out the disrespect shown by specifying that it has to be an outside person. The government still sees the Chief Electoral Officer as an opponent. Canadians see the officers of Parliament as their friends. Again, it is not this government's view that the Chief Electoral Officer would be competent and professional enough to do a review that would give an honest reflection, seeing as last night it said, among other things, that the Chief Electoral Officer did things to create an illusion.
Again I point out that this just underscores one more aspect of how the government views the Chief Electoral Officer as somebody to be controlled and opposed; whereas the opposition and, I think, the vast majority of Canadians think people like Auditors General and Chief Electoral Officers are some of their best friends here on the Hill.
Thanks, Chair.