Thank you.
Mr. Chair, the assertions made by Mr. Christopherson are incorrect.
The Chief Electoral Officer reports to this committee. Mr. Christopherson will be aware, and others on committee will be aware, of the fact that I have expressed frustration on numerous occasions in regard to the opaque nature of his reporting, of how difficult it is to tease out actual detailed information on things as simple as whether or not any individuals have been prosecuted, and if so, how many and where, for voting fraudulently.
I've mentioned examples of how his reports are frequently very short of information on the specifics that we—effectively, his board of directors—need to review. This committee has the opportunity to ask any question, and indeed, it would be my intention to ask questions about these subjects afterwards.
As everybody knows, I've mentioned on a number of occasions how I was very proud to have set up the meetings of groups of disabled people—or a group of disabled people—that led to the inclusion of certain provisions in clause 7 of this bill, Bill C-23, which will amend section 18 of the Canada Elections Act, specifying and requiring the Chief Electoral Officer to ensure that people can get out and vote and that they know how to exercise their rights, rights that are there in principle but not in practice if people are unaware of how to exercise them.
These are rights such as the right to become a candidate or finding out how to put your name on the list of electors if it was left off. The voter information card simply says, as one knows if one looks at it, that this shows you were on the voters list. But you don't know that you're not on the voters list if you don't have the voter card, right? This includes how to vote—different times and dates and locations, including voting by mail, voting at the returning office and so on—and how to vote if you're disabled, if you have problems getting access to the polling station, and so on.
These are all things that we have to enumerate in the law because they weren't being done adequately. I point to this all to make the point, Mr. Chair, that it's actually pretty difficult to figure out how to make sure that he then reports adequately in the future. I'm serving notice now that, statutory requirement or not, it is my intention—assuming we have someone on the committee after this law goes through after the election occurs, and if I'm still elected—to be asking him how he complied: how much money he spent, did he spend it in both official languages, and did he do a review afterwards.
If he doesn't have answers to that, I'll be very critical. It's his obligation to keep accurate records on these matters, and it's our obligation to ensure that he does so in a competent manner.
There is one final note, Mr. Chair, which is interesting with regard to the issue of competence in the administration of the vouching procedure, something that was, after all, the issue on which the litigation over Opitz v. Wrzesnewskyj in Etobicoke Centre took place. In that matter, the CEO did nothing to audit or investigate until such time as the matter was before the Supreme Court.
Then and only then did he ask Mr. Neufeld to prepare a report, so I would not say that alacrity in dealing with problems associated with voter verification has been very high on his priority list, and we seek to make sure that it will be, in order to ensure that all Canadians actually are able to exercise their section 3 right, which includes the right to have my vote count. It doesn't count for much if an election can be controverted where I voted legitimately and others did not, thereby changing the results in the riding.
That, of course, is the entire point of the security measures we're putting in place. They're reasonable. They are absolutely balanced to the issue at hand. We seem to forget—or at least members on the opposite side forget—that there are millions of Canadians who can be deprived of their section 3 right if their vote is cast in a meaningless manner because other votes were cast improperly by those who were not eligible to vote, or perhaps even fraudulently.
Thank you.
