Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thanks again, Mr. Kingsley. It's always good to see you and I appreciate your pearls of wisdom. They help us.
One of the concerns that Mr. Mayrand identified, and I'm coming back to something that's already come up, is the issue of changing the language. What we need to understand in this, and I'm not quite sure that it's out there in the public domain in its fulsomeness, is that the changes to what's acceptable voter ID are not just for voters voting abroad. The changes that are being made in Bill C-50 will affect every single polling station in Canada.
That's why Mr. Mayrand said in his analysis of that particular aspect that there “will be no way for deputy returning officers or those receiving applications for special ballots to readily ascertain whether an entity is incorporated in or otherwise formed in Canada”, because that's the new change. “The restriction is likely to cause confusion at the polls on the part of election officers, candidates' representatives and voters.” His recommendation was that the provision be deleted from the bill.
Again I remind all of us that I'm speaking to the change that Bill C-50 causes, which will affect every single voter, every single polling station, and it's this business of a piece of ID. The CEO may authorize only pieces of identification that have been issued by—and this is one of them:
an entity that is incorporated or formed by an Act of Parliament or of the legislature of a province or that is otherwise formed in Canada.
Nobody yet can tell us what that means. It'll be interesting to see what the minister says when he arrives, but I assume you agree that this doesn't work and that it's problematic.