And my colleague understands.
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Minister, for coming here today. We appreciate it.
Jumping right into it, the first obvious question we've had of witnesses, including the Chief Electoral Officer, was whether or not the international registry is broken. Nobody so far has said that there is any kind of problem with the existing registry to lead us to eliminate it.
That would be the first question. I'm going to ask you three, and then my colleagues will deal with some of the amendments you've suggested.
So the first question is: if it's not broken, why are you fixing it?
Second is the issue of only being able to apply for your ballot after the writ is dropped. For the life of us, we can't figure out why on earth the government would want to limit the application for a ballot until after the writ is dropped. The Chief Electoral Officer spoke to the difficulty and time-consuming nature of checking all of these applications to make sure everything is okay. Then to say that you're going to limit it to after the writ is dropped.... Why not allow it at any other time? What is the big prohibition against allowing people to register some time before the actual writ is dropped?
Also, Minister, you made reference to proposed subsection 143(2.11). You offered a modification, I believe, about the chaos that's going to happen as a result of using language about ID issued by an entity “otherwise formed in Canada”. Originally in the bill, this was going to change in all voting stations right across Canada, not just when voting outside Canada. I understand you're limiting it, but that still just limits the chaos.
The Chief Electoral Officer has said that he doesn't understand why on earth you would have to bring in language that makes it so unclear. Here's what he said, exactly:
First, it's not clear from a legal point of view what this actually means.
I'm making reference, of course, to identification that's “incorporated or formed by or under an Act of Parliament” or of a legislature “or that is otherwise formed in Canada”. We didn't know what that meant.
We asked the Chief Electoral Officer. He said:
First, it's not clear from a legal point...what this actually means. Certainly, it is broader than simply entities incorporated under Canadian law, but what exactly is meant by “otherwise formed in Canada”? Does it include entities incorporated abroad but registered in Canada? What else does it include?
I cannot see how election officials, especially deputy returning officers at ordinary polls, will be able to decide whether a particular bank or credit institution, such as Amex or Visa, was incorporated or formed in Canada.
This is at ordinary polls, but it is still applied to polls outside Canada. We need some clarification there.
I have to say that, as much as Mr. Reid seems to be quite enamoured with this legislation, as far as we're concerned, really this is just the unfair elections act, part 2. There's nothing here, in our view, that helps. In fact, the Chief Electoral Officer started out:
It is clear that these new rules will make it harder for electors abroad to vote.
Now, I remember that this government didn't have an awful lot of respect for the Chief Electoral Officer. When the government completely changed all of our election laws, he wasn't even consulted. But Canadians still care what he says. Given, Minister, that you're saying it's going to help and he says it's going to make it harder for voters to vote abroad, I suspect most Canadians are going to trust an officer of Parliament, the Chief Electoral Officer, rather than the sponsoring minister of Bill C-23.
There are questions in there, Chair. I will leave it to the minister to—