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.