Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 2nd, 2015

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

Okay, fair enough, yes.

Assuming a five-year electoral cycle, or a four-year electoral cycle, it is essentially renewed every time. That may or may not be defensible, but I want to be clear it's not quite as presented.

[Prof. Henry Milner]

It's not part of the law.

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

I do want to ask you, though.... You mentioned both the Chief Electoral Officer and the past chief electoral officer, Mr. Kingsley. May I take it from that, that you have read Mr. Kingsley's—

[Prof. Henry Milner]

I read the transcripts, yes.

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

Okay.

One of the things he suggests, which struck me as being quite innovative—it hasn't been mentioned by other witnesses, but seeing as you're here I'll ask your opinion on it—is the idea of what he calls a provisional ballot. What he means by a provisional ballot is that a person no longer resident in Canada requests a ballot, it's sent to them, they fill it out and vote however they're voting, they slip it inside an anonymous envelope, which is put inside another envelope addressed to the appropriate location, and it is sent back to Canada.

They engage after the fact in determining whether it's a validly cast ballot and it was sent to the appropriate constituency, as opposed to the present system in which we try to establish all of this information in advance. On election day, it's assumed everybody who has a right to vote is capable of voting and everybody who doesn't have a right to vote has been excluded, neither of which appear to be true of either people who are living outside of Canada or of people living inside of Canada.

I'm not the expert on this. My colleague, Ted Opitz, who had to experience some of the problems that resulted from this, can speak at greater length.

Do you think the provisional balloting proposal might serve to resolve many of the problems? You can tell I think so. I'm asking, am I right in thinking Mr. Kingsley has a good idea, or am I not right?

[Prof. Henry Milner]

I'm not sure it's the particular answer to the question of people outside the country. This is not the first time Mr. Kingsley has suggested this. I think since we now insist you can't just show up at the voting booth with the card you've received from Elections Canada and say this is where you vote, which many people still think is in fact sufficient identification, that creates problems. He says the best way to resolve this is to let people who have arrived without sufficient identification vote provisionally and then have an opportunity to provide that identification in another way, rather than being told, “Sorry, you can't vote”. He is much more knowledgeable on this than I am. I think that would make sense.

I'm not quite sure if it would work that way that easily for external voting because people have to show passports, so their identities are not in question. What seems to be harder to establish is that they live where the riding is and where they're entitled to vote. That's the complication in terms of producing identification.

If they didn't happen to have that at the time, would some kind of provisional set-up work? I don't know. I haven't really thought about it, but I don't think that's the solution right now. I think the main solution is simply more time. The idea that all this has to be done after the writ strikes me.... I can't possibly understand why that seems to be the case because that way, if you do send in insufficient information, then there is time to add the additional information in the ways the law could provide for.

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

I think his point was that you get the extra time after the end of the writ period. Effectively, some of those ballots won't be counted for some time after the writ period has ended, which as I understand it is how it works for overseas ballots in the United States, for example. There's a bit of a time lag.

[Prof. Henry Milner]

Extra, yes.

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

Essentially, where do you get the time? Do you get it before the writ?

The obvious problem is.... Right now we have our first fixed-date election, and if we get a majority for one of the parties in the next election, I assume we'll stick with that. We sometimes don't know when our election's going to start, so it's hard to say 60 days before we start some process, whereas figuring out when it ends is easy, and in establishing that you have a limited time period to sort out these problems of identity and residence.

[Prof. Henry Milner]

I think there were recommendations in the previous presentation, something that had to do with a period linked to the fixed election date—six months, or a year, or whatever it is. It wouldn't necessarily resolve the issue if we have an unexpected election and so on, but that would be the main solution. The primary solution for that is to extend the period.

Once we get into getting on the list, I think it's a question of whether or not we have to have a new list for each election. For most people, if the place they're living is the same and the last address hasn't changed, I don't see why they should have to go through a whole new proof of all of that. Why can't they just apply for a ballot?

I think there are ways of changing it without necessarily introducing provisional ballots. If we introduce provisional ballots for domestic purposes, sure, it might also make sense to introduce them in this way.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Alexandrine Latendresse]

Thank you very much, Mr. Reid and Professor Milner.

Welcome back to our guests in B.C. Some questions might be directed to you.

I'm going to Mr. Scott for seven minutes now.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to ask one question to each of our guests, starting with Mr. Biggar, and thank you all for being here. You spoke very well about the false or the fictitiousness of individual fraud. I want to talk a little and ask your opinion on the existing international register for voters abroad.

We heard from the Chief Electoral Officer that they do test, they check it out. They send out mailings to ensure that a person is still there, and if the person doesn't reply within a certain time they're taken off the list. From the time that checking mail has been sent to the time the election is nearing, what are the chances of fraud in the following scenario?

Elections Canada has a person on the international register. They've confirmed they're there. They send them a special ballot at the time of the election, but it turns out the Canadian has since moved and they've forgotten to take their name off the register in that period of time. They've either moved back to Canada or they've moved somewhere else. Say the Canadian was in Mexico City, and a Mexican now lives there. That Mexican opens the special ballot envelope, fills it out, and votes fraudulently in the Canadian election.

Do you see this as a real scenario, a really likely problem of that form of individual fraud, which the minister seems to be concerned about?

[Jamie Biggar]

No, certainly not. It's very difficult to imagine any scenario like that resulting in any impact on the Canadian election, or a person who would commit such fraud being motivated significantly to do so, given their knowledge that it would have essentially no impact.

To take this a little further, the degree to which the notion of individual voter fraud by people living abroad, to think about how absurd it is but on the flip side how strong the barrier would be, it would be unimaginable for the political parties to create a situation whereby nobody could donate to them during an election period unless they had registered for the opportunity to donate to them prior to the election period. There is no chance that any political party would accept that kind of situation because they would understand that it would create an unnecessary and unreasonable barrier to people participating.

The barriers that are being created here are very strong, while the problem that's being imagined is essentially non-existent.

[Josh Paterson]

I would agree with Mr. Biggar, Mr. Scott.

Even if there were a Mexican so committed to the partnership of NAFTA that they wanted to have a say in our democratic process, we would just see that as being a very unlikely scenario. To balance that out, we're looking at a situation in which every single Canadian living abroad is going to face these barriers that will potentially disenfranchise thousands of them, even among those who want to vote and who try diligently to vote, who move the very instant the writ is dropped wherever they are in the world to follow through on this.

The evidence before the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in the Frank decision was that during 20 years of the current system, there was simply no evidence of any complaint, no evidence about any serious concern having been raised about voting by Canadians living abroad either within the five-year limit or by those Canadians living abroad for more than five years who work for international organizations, who work for the Canadian government, or who are families of those people abroad. There was just no evidence whatsoever, so we don't think that's a serious concern.

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

Thank you.

Professor Milner, you situated your presentation in the general decline in voter interest particularly amongst youth. One of the concerns we have with this bill, apart from how it generally signals that it should be hard for everybody to vote, is the not uncommon scenario in which a student goes abroad and takes up residence for graduate work. Thousands of Canadian students do that and they have wherever they went to university listed as their last place of residence. The problem is that almost everybody they would know who could attest to their last place of residence would also have been students who quite likely would have moved on.

Do you believe that is a problem on top of the fact that the minister has drafted a new provision intended to make sure that no identification issued outside of Canada can be used to prove address? That's not the way it's been worded. It's been worded in a very clumsy fashion and it actually excludes individual leases, so if a student has been in a house rented by an individual person, that lease can no longer be used as proof of former residence. Do you see those two barriers on their own as being indicative of the problem that this bill represents?

[Prof. Henry Milner]

I have to admit I haven't thought of these things. All I can say is that for that particular age group, especially when they're away from their own home communities, even at a school or university in Canada let alone outside the country, they're going through a situation in life involving many changes. We know that at that point in life the likelihood of their doing what's necessary to vote is reduced. Therefore, anything that makes it particularly hard, in many individual cases, I'm sure would just be the straw that breaks the camel's back. They'll say, why bother?

It would seem to me we should be doing the opposite. We should be identifying the groups abroad and asking what their particular needs are and how we can better meet those.

You're right about a student in another country who has all kinds of personal concerns, residential concerns, and academic concerns. Let's say he's doing graduate work, or he may be doing undergraduate work in Montreal or Toronto or Ottawa. Is he going to try to track down someone who's there for him to testify to his having lived there and so on? As you say, he can't use a lease. I doubt if he would even have a copy of that lease with him to begin with. What would be the motivation for any young person in that situation to make the effort?

When we are doing this, we have to put ourselves into the minds of the people affected, and I don't see how this law does that kind of thing.

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

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Alexandrine Latendresse]

Mr. Simms, you have seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to thank our guests in British Columbia, and here as well, for joining us.

This issue about provisional voting came up the last time. I think the concept is being put out there as a way of encouraging voting, but my opinion is that we're overlooking the obvious every time we bring up provisional voting. In other words, it may be a solution to some people in certain cases, but if you restore the international permanent list, it goes much further.

With provisional voting, as my colleague from Cape Breton would point out, all we're doing is moving the house in order to tighten up the clothesline. What we should be doing is saying that the international list should be created permanently. As Mr. Biggar pointed out, we want low barriers, high motivation.

I'm going to start with Mr. Biggar on this one. Obviously the high motivation is in your domain, given Leadnow and what it does to get people to vote. However, the lower barriers issue, which you pointed out in the beginning, is becoming very uncertain. We can no longer use the voter information card with Bill C-23.

I would assume—yes or no, Mr. Biggar—about the international list on a permanent basis....

[Jamie Biggar]

Yes, I think that would be strongly worth considering. I think there are growing examples from around the world that we could look at to set the bar in a different direction: creating longer lasting lists; easier registration; and lower barriers to voting, potentially though electronic means.

I appreciate the direction of the question, which is that we should be moving the bar in the other direction, towards greater accessibility, instead of reducing it. There are simple methods of doing it that are increasingly common around the world.

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

Mr. Biggar, do you come into contact with a lot of expat voters, people living outside of Canada?

[Jamie Biggar]

We do. We've heard from quite a few of them on this issue.

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

Are they primarily American?

[Jamie Biggar]

Well, I couldn't speak to that; I'm not sure where they're from.

We haven't done that analysis, but they're people from all over the world.