Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 7th, 2015

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

That existed with the former international list?

[Marc Mayrand]

Yes.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Okay. Did you want to add to that? No?

I have a final question on the coming into force. We're not far away from October 19. In light of the changes made by Bill C-23 that have to go through, and now this, Bill C-50, time is really tight. Is it possible to enact all this?

[Marc Mayrand]

It is going to be very tight, as I indicated in my opening remarks. I doubt very much that the arrangement with Citizenship and Immigration can be put in place and implemented usefully for the next GE.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Sorry? It cannot be put in place usefully for the next GE?

[Marc Mayrand]

Implemented for the next GE.... As for the other changes, we'll have to find workarounds.

My biggest concern remains with the changes to ID requirements in terms of the issuer of those ID documents. This is less a timely implementation issue than an effectiveness implementation issue. What I mean there is that I haven't figured out how I can instruct field personnel on the polling day to determine reliably whether the issuer of a document is Canadian or not, has been incorporated in Canada or not, or has been formed or otherwise established in Canada or not. I don't know that we can effectively, reliably, and consistently provide guidance on administering those provisions.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

For this upcoming election?

[Marc Mayrand]

Yes—

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

For all—

[Marc Mayrand]

—and ever, honestly. These are legal concepts. Normally if you want to know the nature of any entity, you will have at least a law clerk to a bit of research to determine whether it's a company in Canada, a foreign business registered in Canada, a co-op, or whatever other form of entity that can exist. The act doesn't provide any guidance there, so I don't think it's fair to ask electoral official poll workers to do that analysis and come to a reliable conclusion.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you.

We're going to go to Mr. Reid in this second round, please, for a four-minute round.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

In the absence of a clarification to that particular part of the bill, would you essentially issue an interpretation bulletin on what would be considered to qualify and to not qualify?

[Marc Mayrand]

I'm not sure I could, because first of all, there's not sufficient direction in the act. It doesn't say what is meant by being “formed in Canada”. It's not a legal concept. It's a new concept, and it would have to be defined in the act.

The other thing is that I'm not sure of the criteria. The only criteria that comes to mind—and I'm not sure that it's even very useful—is that if the document shows the issuer with an address from another country, then that document should be excluded. But again, you may have, for example, a statement of dividends that is issued by a foreign company for which there is very little reason to doubt that this is a legitimate address on the document.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

What about “incorporated in Canada”?

[Marc Mayrand]

On “incorporated in Canada”, I'm sorry. The problem is that it's up to the poll official to determine if a company has been incorporated in Canada or not.

For Amex, most of us would assume it has some form of incorporation in Canada, but who knows for sure without looking at the corporation registry? That's the thing that we're asking poll officials—

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Amex, of course, is actually incorporated both in Canada and in the United States.

[Marc Mayrand]

I would assume so, and in many other countries.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

That raises the question of whether the document you have is from which of those two branches.

[Marc Mayrand]

My point here is that we're tasking poll officials with a function that they cannot reasonably be expected to fulfill as accurately as we would expect normally for their other functions.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you. That's helpful.

In my remaining time, I will note that the problem of dealing with overseas voters is one that Canada is not unique in having to face. Other countries in fact have much larger expatriate populations as a percentage of their own population, and indeed just in absolute numbers, including a number of European countries that have been the source of large numbers of immigrants.

A number of these countries have dealt with this by creating what are known as “overseas constituencies”. For example, I'm looking at a map right now of how Italy deals with this. They have one constituency for the Americas, one for North America, one for South America, one for Europe, including Russia and Turkey, and another one for Africa, Australia, and most of the rest of Asia. Similarly, France has this and Macedonia has it, as do a number of other countries. There's even a Wikipedia article that provides a helpful list of about a dozen countries that have such things.

That's one way of dealing with the problem. It's not the status quo, and it's not what's being proposed by the government, but the danger is always that you get the way that Canada dealt with this a century ago. Temporarily, we had a large number of overseas voters in the form of soldiers serving in the battlefields of Europe. Something called the Military Voters Act was proposed at that time and put in place. It allowed for large numbers of voters to have their votes moved to ridings chosen by the parties. This gave the incumbent party, Robert Borden's national government, a huge and, I think we would all agree, unfair advantage.

That's the danger that one has to worry about, albeit on a much smaller scale. There are places in the world where there are large numbers of Canadians, legal Canadians, Canadian citizens with a nominal or no real connection with Canada. We saw what happened in 2006 in Lebanon when large numbers of people purporting to be Canadian—some of whom were, some of whom may not have been—said that they expected their government to help them move out of that country. I thought we dealt with that difficult situation competently.

The danger is that something similar could occur with regard to voters being collected and their names and identities being submitted. I believe that is the issue that we would need to deal with.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Reid.

We'll go to Mr. Scott, please, for four minutes.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thank you.

The minister has said that Bill C-50 simply extends the rules in Bill C-23 on what the forms of ID are, and that's actually completely erroneous, because the new proposed subsection 143(2.11) is a new restriction on what you, as the Chief Electoral Officer, are allowed to delegate as ID across the board. Is that correct?

[Marc Mayrand]

It introduces new criteria for determining which pieces of ID are acceptable.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

So in no way is it an extension of Bill C-23, and you have recommended, I believe, that this provision be deleted, correct?