Yes, Chair, you've been paying riveting attention, I know, and there's a test after, too.
What we found out last night, again through the fantastic analysis and work of my colleague Professor Scott, is that scrutineers now will be given the clear authority to look at ID. If you want to do so, you can use that power to slow things down. When you're into the game of voter suppression, chaos in the voting station is your friend, long lineups are your friend, people who don't have ID are your friend. That's the name of the game.
What we are saying is that at least on this one, if nothing else, we're either going to make an improvement or leave a stark example, for anybody who is listening and watching, that clearly they don't want people to vote. Otherwise, why on earth would they disagree?
The best argument we've heard so far from the government is that the information is already there. But as I said, none of us knew it was there. You can't find it. The operative word in the motion is “prominent”. The whole idea is that it would be prominent, in the hope that more people will realize that, although it makes no bloody sense, their voter information card is not the ID they need to bring to the voting station—even though common sense as well as facts would dictate that this is the way it should be.
So at the very least, let's let Canadians know the absurdity, so that they know that grabbing that card and heading out the door to vote is not going to do it, even though common sense says it should, especially when they arrive at the voting station and look down and see their name on the voter list, as it is on the card. But if they don't have that other ID, which didn't used to be there before, they won't be able to vote.
This is an attempt to try to salvage something out of this, to prevent some of the chaos, Chair. Again, this is to prominently put on the card that this is not ID for voting. That's all it is. If they vote against that, how could there be any defence to the allegation that this is voter suppression? It has been from the beginning, it continues to be. The only reason they're blinking now is that there's been so much pressure from Canadians, experts, international experts, and to their credit, the media, who have uniformly been opposed.
With all of that, we're down to this moment. If they won't even vote for this, then the last bit of the fig leaf, as ugly as that image is, is gone, and we know, and Canadians know, that this is all about trying to get the fix in for the Conservatives in every way they can and that voter suppression is alive and well in the Government of Canada.
Thanks, Chair.