Thank you, Chair.
Two guys walk into a bar, and the older one says, “You know, this younger guy here may not have ID, but I can vouch for him”, and the bartender says, “I'm sorry, pal, but this isn't the Constitution we're talking about, and we're not voting”.
Voting is an inalienable right, as enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That's what this is about. This is why the institution of vouching exists, not only in this country but in many modern democracies that do not want to disenfranchise someone.
I'll give you an example. Professor Louis Massicotte sent this along. In a recent The Australian newspaper column, Dennis Shanahan, who writes for the Murdoch papers, said the following:
Canada’s Conservative government, embroiled in a furor after disenfranchising 120,000 voters by changing identification standards, has demonstrated the way not to go about important electoral reform.
Australia’s changes should be driven by parliament’s multi-party Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters.
What a refreshing idea.
As my leader, Justin Trudeau, said on the subject of withdrawing—and he has a valid point—the process by which this was done was so egregious towards democracy that we need to step back and think, if we ever do this again, about how it should be done. Obviously, without the numbers, we can't withdraw this bill, but I will say this. Every time they bring up polls, and every time they bring up testimony, during which they say people spoke wonderfully, glowingly about this bill, I think that's somewhat overemphasizing the positive aspects of it, which as has been displayed, we voted in favour of in certain circumstances. But when they bring up polls, and they bring that up, it's almost as though they did it on a gamble, really, because now they're saying that if they had gone through the process of setting up a multi-party system or a multi-party committee or consultations that started with the very people who run our elections every four years, they would have lots of evidence to say the government is doing the right thing.
I would love to find out what was brought to the Conservative caucus way back when that made the former Minister of Democratic Reform turn back and start all over again. I would love to know what was in that, compared to what is in this.
We do talk about how it was a climb-down and that sort of thing. I'll even give them credit by saying that they listened on some varied aspects of vouching, and to a small degree, they've restored vouching. It's at a level that is not good enough, but it's a positive step. It's not just with us here inside this bubble we call Ottawa, but it's out there in the communities and people are talking about it.
We also have to give credit to the Senate study, the pre-study, and to some of the senators—both Conservative and independent. When you look at what they said, they made some very valid points.
I'll give you another example. Preston Manning was here and he gave very good evidence about what should be done about taking the shackles off the CEO. As we've discovered, it wasn't quite followed the way Preston Manning would have liked. They did make a positive step, but still the CEO is far more legislated and put into a box than is really necessary.
I'll end with this. In many respects, so many clauses and so much angst that you see coming from this side of the house—which I think is legitimate—goes to an expression that's been brought up time and time again. A lot of the measures in this bill were solutions to problems that never existed.