Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 26th, 2015

[Dr. Ian Lee]

Right.

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

Therefore, what he is saying, which I agree with, is that we cannot make it.... In other words, all your information here is outlining the fact that most people, the vast majority of people have the right amount of ID.

[Dr. Ian Lee]

I argue everyone does.

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

But I think that everybody has a right to vote, which goes to the Constitution, which says we should make sure that everybody has the right, which really.... Every government has a responsibility to make it as easy as possible for people to vote.

[Dr. Ian Lee]

Mr. Simms, let me answer this very quickly because I looked up something this morning before I came here. I didn't disclose this last time because I never thought to look it up.

I thought to look at all the seniors, so I looked up CPP. I'm going to be applying in two or three years probably, because that's when I become eligible.

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

Is that at 65 or 67?

[Dr. Ian Lee]

It's at 65.

I have to bring two pieces of primary identification. Primary means government-issued, by the way. If we go back to that section that was being discussed earlier, proposed subsection 143(2.11), all that's doing is saying you have to bring official government ID as opposed to a union card or an identity card that Ian Lee gives you or something.

I just had two wonderful grandchildren born nine months ago. Did you know that in Ontario within three months, a mother must register a child with OHIP by law? She has to go to them to register a child to get a card to be able to access the system, so duties are imposed. Even though you have a right to health care, you have to go and register a child's birth, if you will, with the health care administrators.

To get OAS or CPP, I have to go to them with primary identification. There are no stories of people being denied health care across this country in large numbers or being denied old age pensions in large numbers or being denied CPP. There's just no evidence. When you look at it, there's no evidence of people being denied fundamental services that require ID. I think it's a giant Venn diagram. All of these identification systems intersect, and at the centre there's zero.

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

The only thing I can ask you to do is to join me in the next campaign. Why don't you come on election day to see how many people are turned away from the polls? That's all I ask.

But anyway, Dr. Lee, I appreciate and I don't disagree with a lot of what you're saying, but fundamentally, it comes down to the Constitution, and I think, sir, you've missed the point.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Alexandrine Latendresse]

Thank you, Mr. Simms.

Mr. Richards, go ahead for four minutes.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Thank you.

There's one thing Mr. Simms and I can agree on, and it's the difficulty of having to follow Mr. Christopherson. I'm glad he was able to bring us slowly back towards reality a little bit. Mr. Christopherson can take off his tinfoil hat and we can look at the reality of the matter here. People can cast all kinds of aspersions on the reason for something, but at the end of the day, obviously, the purpose of this legislation is to be able to ensure that there's fairness, to be able to ensure that the same requirements are in place for non-resident voters who are voting by special ballot as for those who are resident Canadians when they're voting by special ballot, in terms of having a process that's fair and equal for all.

I just wanted to ask a couple of questions to you, Professor Lee, because I know you seemed to be fairly rushed to get through some of your opening remarks, and maybe didn't get chance to focus on Bill C-50 as much as I'm sure you would have liked to. I'd like to come to you on that with that very principle, the idea of ensuring fairness and creating a single process for both residents and non-residents who want to vote by special ballot. I want to get your comments on that. Obviously the change being made here is that rather than automatically being sent a ballot at the beginning of an election, and that ballot ending up somewhere it shouldn't be, this will require a non-resident voter to apply for a special ballot, just as the average resident Canadian would have to do.

What are your thoughts on that? Do you think that's a fair change?

[Dr. Ian Lee]

I support, as you know, the previous changes because of this unbelievable plethora of identification, and I didn't even discuss utility bills. If you include utility bills—and all of us have utility bills with name and address—it explodes the number of identifications easily up into the 300-million to 400-million range, probably.

We are in a modern, complex society where you have to have identity to do anything. Even to go to the library and check out a book requires an identity card called a library card.

Now to answer your question, I think we need a symmetrical system whereby we have the same requirements for identification. I think there are up to 44 pieces under the bill that became the act, and the same standard should exist for people abroad. There were some suggestions about voting in embassies. I'm saying this as somebody who has been out of the country before during elections, in the nineties. It would certainly be easier for someone like me, when they're out of the country, to go into an embassy and vote, for example, and I do agree with the idea that we should be using electronic rather than snail mail. Snail mail is just so archaic and obsolete it's not funny.

There are things that could probably be fine-tuned. I fundamentally reject the idea, though, that any Canadian abroad lacks ID, because you can't get into another country without your passport. I've travelled to over 50 countries around the world. That's a quarter of the countries on the planet. I've never been able to get into a country without a passport, a valid passport that is not expired. I've been to some pretty strange countries too, not just France and Germany but some very third world countries.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Along that line, one of the changes in this is to have electors who are voting outside of Canada provide proof of citizenship. That's something that has already been required administratively by Elections Canada for some time, I believe. The citizen voting act would simply make that common practice, enshrined in law.

Do you see any problem with having someone who's living outside of Canada proving that they're a Canadian citizen in order to vote? Do you see any issue with that?

[Dr. Ian Lee]

I'm sorry. I'm having trouble hearing you. Did you ask if I have difficulty with somebody having to—

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Do you see any issue with someone who's outside of Canada proving their Canadian citizenship?

[Dr. Ian Lee]

No. I mean—

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Is there any reason why that shouldn't be the case or is there any problem with doing that?

[Dr. Ian Lee]

No. This is why I say over and over that I find this whole debate of the past year just astonishing. In every area of life we have to identify ourselves. If I go to talk to CRA, the revenue people, and say that I want to talk about my tax returns, they're not going to say sure and start talking to me without asking me who I am. I have to identify myself to them.

The whole Privacy Act is grounded in the idea of identity because, by definition, to keep something private and let only some people access that information means you have some kind of an identification system that excludes some but allows others. The whole idea of privacy requires and necessitates an identification system.

I don't know why we've suddenly developed this aversion to identification systems when they are completely embedded throughout Canadian society. I don't just mean voting. To access student records, you have to prove to the university that you are who you say you are. When I go to the bank every time, they won't just let me walk in and say, “I don't have any ID here today, but by the way give me my money.”

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Alexandrine Latendresse]

I'm really sorry, Mr. Richards. Your time is up. We'll have to go to the next in line.

Mr. Scott, you have four minutes.

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

Thank you.

I'm wondering if I could ask you a question, Professor Pilon. You were very gracious in just summarizing your paper, assuming that we've all read it. I think we have, but those following these proceedings might not have.

One of the two sets of concerns you had was about the inconsistent application of rules. You indicated that in the literature put out with this Bill C-50, the so-called citizen voting act, the government argues that its citizen voting act “will ensure that Canadians living abroad follow the same rules as those living in Canada.” On that claim by the government, you're absolutely right, that's what the minister claimed and that's what all their literature said.

Is that an accurate claim?

[Prof. Dennis Pilon]

Well, I don't think it's an accurate claim, because we have two sets of identification rules. People in the country don't have to present a passport but people outside the country have to present a passport, so if the government is suggesting that they're going to make things the same, then they really should do that. In terms of the registration process, if people inside the country can register at any time between elections, how do we justify saying that people outside the country cannot do the same?

The question was asked earlier: is there any compelling reason why we should want to have this process that's been set out in this bill? Frankly, I can't come up with any reason.

There are reasons sometimes to put specific rules in place to protect the security of something, but you need some rationale. You need to be able to say that we anticipate this problem, so here's our anticipated solution. In this case, it just seems punitive that we can't allow people outside the country.... If the government argues that they have to register in between elections—and, again, that's different from everybody else, because everybody else doesn't have to keep registering—if they want to do that for various reasons, then why wouldn't someone have to re-register at any point before the electoral cycle begins again? It seems to me that if the government's concern is that they know those people are eligible to vote, then there's no reason to restrict that in the way that it appears in this bill.

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

Okay.

From your perspective, having read the bill and knowing identification rules, when it comes to digital databases and what they might reveal about people versus actual physical identity usable in voting in an election—which are extremely different things—would you agree with me that nothing in this bill makes use of the citizenship database for those voting abroad, the tax return database, or the previous voting record database? None of that is used as an easy way to confirm where somebody lived or to confirm any aspect of their identity.

Is it true that none of those databases are used in this bill?

[Prof. Dennis Pilon]

Well, it seems to me we could use the databases that have been suggested. If the goal is to solve the problem, then the citizenship database and the Elections Canada database on where people have voted before would provide us with the evidence of the riding they had been in before they left the country.

There are all sorts of ways in which we could solve this problem without having to try to create a very onerous process of trying to get people to prove it. For instance, people live in rental accommodation. There may be nobody left in the place they lived in two years ago. There could be a very high turnover. In my research on voter registration, I've found that Canadians are incredibly mobile between elections. There's a huge number of people changing their addresses.

Again, I think this is based on an assumption that people are sedentary and stay in one place and not on the kind of dynamic society that Canadian society is today.

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

Right, so my conclusion, from what you've said, is that however much digital databases could be used by a government wanting to create a combination of access to the vote and security of the vote, they might be able to use those databases but they have not done so in this bill, which suggests that at least one of the witnesses we have here is talking about something completely irrelevant to this bill.

That's all I have to say.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Alexandrine Latendresse]

There are no more names on the list. So if any of you have specific questions you would like to ask, I will give you an opportunity to do so in the few minutes we have left.

Mr. Scott, go ahead.

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

Dr. Woo, you've approached this from the perspective of somebody who has voted in a number of elections from abroad and you can put yourself more easily in the shoes of people voting from abroad. You've told us of the delay factors.

You may or may not have all the needed identity to easily vote. You might have a driver's licence that shows the address. If you don't maybe you have easy access to people living back in your riding who will vouch for you to say you used to live there. I'm not sure what the factors are.

I have two sets of concerns about the vouching requirements in the bill. If you can't show your address, because a passport does not show one's address.... In your own hand you can scrawl it in but it cannot be used to prove address, unlike what we were just told earlier. You have a passport but you have nothing showing your previous address so you have to go and get somebody to vouch for your previous address.

Would you consider either of these to be barriers? One is where you have a family of four, all of whom are over 18 and therefore are Canadians who can vote, and you only know two people in the previous riding where you lived—maybe your two parents, for example. That means, according to this bill, only two of your four family members can be vouched for easily. Would you consider that to be a possible scenario, and if so, a problem?