Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 12th, 2015

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

That's the provisional balloting.

It can also occur at the polls under certain circumstances, but I can't remember what they are. However, they have introduced it for abroad. When they did it for people abroad, they said, “If we're going to do it for them, we're going to have to do it for the others.”

What it does is sustain, I'm going to call it, the sanctity of voting. If you go to the trouble of voting.... You have to remember people voting from abroad actually have to look at who the candidates are and put in the name of the candidate. If you put in the name of the party, that ballot is not counted.

Again it's another safeguard for people who are voting from abroad. They have to write the name of the candidate and it must resemble the name of that candidate.

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

All right. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you.

We're at the end of a round and we have a couple of minutes left, so perhaps we can have some one-offs, one minute asked and answered. If you want to take the minute to ask, you won't get an answer.

Madame Latendresse, you are first.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Very good.

I have a personal example that ties into your proposal for voting abroad. I grew up in the Montreal area, did my studies at Université Laval, in Quebec City, and went to Moscow university on an inter-university exchange. As a Canadian student who was overseas at the time of a federal election and who wanted to vote but didn't have any advance voting experience, I can tell you that providing proof of your address can be tricky. In Quebec City, I lived in a residence and hadn't moved around very much.

Another student in a similar situation may have had no plans to return to that city and had no one who could have provided proof of their address in the riding. The student may have opted to vote in their parents' riding, where they grew up.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Your minute is up.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Yes, but I'd like to know the witness's thoughts on how to meet the proof of address requirement.

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

That's where the provisions of the bill would come into effect, meaning that you would have to find someone who could, to some extent, vouch for you. I admit it's quite a demanding requirement. We might do well to advise Canadians, before they go abroad, of the requirements they will have to meet in order to vote. The chief electoral officer could prepare a document with that information, and the department of foreign affairs could distribute it. Unfortunately, no piece of legislation can address every situation. If the voter was unable to provide proof of address, the requirements in the bill would apply, and that would be quite a burden, I admit.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

That was Madame Latendresse's minute and Mr. Scott's minute.

Is there anyone else?

Go ahead, Mr. Christopherson.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thanks.

You made reference to using the VIC, the voter identification card—pardon me, the voter information card. We had that fight over and over again. It should be a voter identification card.

Anyway, you said that if that was used for the purposes of address only, you thought that would be sufficient. I want to step that out. If the voter information card had been accepted as voter identification, as it bloody well should be, given that it's the most up-to-date database in the whole darned country, how many other problems would that have solved in addition to the ID one and the address one you were talking about?

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

It would go a long way towards solving, in my view, the vouching issue as well. It would reduce the difficulties that have been introduced with the changes under Bill C-23. It's something that Canadians automatically did in the past, and I think they still do. They take the card with them because it has the address of where they go to vote on it. They put it on the fridge, so it became that. It was never issued with that purpose in mind, but they would do it, and we know that because we would get them at the polls.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

To be fair, the last piece of legislation made it illegal for that to be accepted as identification.

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

Yes.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Seeing no other points today, we will call it quits.

Mr. Kingsley, thank you very much for coming and joining us today, and sharing your information.

Members of the committee, we'll suspend for a couple of minutes and then we'll go in camera.

[Proceedings continue in camera]