No, that's okay.
No other party has an amendment like this, and it does take some explanation. It also takes some sensitivity as to why I'm bringing this forward.
Let me just state at the outset that a previously non-controversial—I haven't seen anything in the media about it, but I think it's quite significant—portion of C-23 has been to create four new advance poll days. I'm certainly very much in favour of more advance polls. However, one of these days will forevermore, as a mandatory rule, fall on a Sunday. That's the first time in the history of Canada that we have had a profound civic engagement mandated on a Sunday.
Now, this country has moved a long way, and for good reason, since 1906 and the Lord's Day Act. It said that as much as the state could decree it, people could not be busy on Sundays. You couldn't keep your store open; you couldn't do things on Sunday. I'm certainly not trying to prevent people from doing the day-to-day things that an increasingly secular society wants to do on a Sunday. However, had this law been in place in 2011, we would have had mandatory advance polls across Canada on Easter Sunday.
I do know that the Conference of Catholic Bishops expressed concern when there was a mandatory advance poll on Good Friday in the 2011 election.
It should go without saying that the Prime Minister can choose to avoid such things as advance polls falling on such sacred days as Good Friday by choosing an election day that is further out than the mandatory minimum number of days. There is some flexibility about what days on which advance polls will fall.
In this case, there will be no way that any future prime minister, short of amending the act, will be able to avoid an advance poll falling on a Sunday. I have raised this in debate in the House at second reading. Conservative members of Parliament expressed the view that they wouldn't personally vote on a Sunday and that people certainly have the choice of not voting on a Sunday, and that a vast number of Canadians don't find it a trouble to observe the Sabbath because they don't.
My concerns are twofold. One is the impact on those who must attend at advance polls, and they will include scrutineers who volunteer, as well as poll workers, as well as Elections Canada folks. They will have to be engaged on a Sunday. There is an issue of their religious observances, which one might agree for a large number of Canadians happen to fall on a Sunday. The other concern, regardless of religious concerns, bears on the logistics. Quite a lot of polling stations in this country are co-located in churches.
My amendment proposes to move that extra advance polling date to a Saturday. A lot of churches have no problem whatsoever, and as a matter of fact benefit from having the polling station at the church on the corner. Everybody knows where it is. On Fridays and Saturdays, it doesn't make any difference.
But I think it's going to create a lot of logistical problems of real significance. Again, whenever we're changing how people vote, where people vote, it can create more confusion. I think this amendment will resolve and avoid both potential difficulties for practising Christians, as well as avoiding logistical difficulties for churches that serve as polling stations.
I would ask my friends in the Conservative party to support my amendment so there would be four advance polling days, but it will not include a Sunday.