Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This relates to a recommendation from Mr. Mayrand in relation to bingo cards. People who are not familiar with voting day procedures won't know what we're talking about, but those of us who have been candidates know what they are. It's the information about who has voted and who hasn't voted on the day of the election. They allow poll workers for the various parties to run around and collect them, figure out who has voted and who hasn't voted, and call out your vote to make sure they get to the polls.
Bill C-23 does something that hasn't been done before with our election laws, which is to allow the cards produced on these days to be collected by the parties afterwards for additional personal information that they build up on the voting base. The purpose of my amendment is to remove this use of bingo cards as a further intrusion into personal information and also as creating a risk that the Chief Electoral Officer has mentioned, that this could, in some circumstances, require the returning officer to unseal a ballot box. The recommendation of the Chief Electoral Officer is that this provision should not be included in the bill.
My amendment seeks to change clause 67 on page 34 by just shortening it up. It would delete the lines around the representatives of the candidate’s party, and the providing after polling day, and read as follows:
with one copy of each statement of the vote in respect of the candidate's electoral district.
Thank you.