Evidence of meeting #103 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was process.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Nominee for the position of Chief Electoral Officer, As an Individual
Correct.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Then a private interview with the minister.
Nominee for the position of Chief Electoral Officer, As an Individual
Correct.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Okay.
I'd like to pass the rest of my time to Mr. Simms.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
First, I neglected to mention, happy National Seal Products Day to everybody, by the way. I just wanted to do that, because I'm sure all coastal MPs agree.... Well, I'm not so sure about you, but happy Seal Products Day.
One of the things you talked about was the electronic poll books. Are we really going to be ready with this material for the next election? I've heard a lot about this, and I think it's a wonderful thing, but to what extent are you confident that this is going to be working the way you want it to work for the next election?
Nominee for the position of Chief Electoral Officer, As an Individual
Things are progressing well in accordance with our schedule, so I'm happy to report on that. We're completing the design of the procedures in the poll book as we speak, and we will be using the poll book in a by-election as a pilot next fall. In all likelihood, there will be some by-elections next fall, so before we use it in a general election, we want to be able to use it in a by-election.
The other thing is that we have decided to roll out the poll books progressively. We will be rolling out poll books at the next election only at advance polls, so we're taking this in bites. For the subsequent the general election, we're looking at rolling out poll books across both regular polls and advance polls, but for the first general election, we want to use them at advance polls where we had the lineups at the last election and where we will have lineups if we don't do anything about it for the next election.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
One of the things I fear in this case is.... Obviously, some will still resort to the paper way in which they did it before. Some will be creating bottlenecks in the system, which I gather is what happened in the last go-round. Certainly, avoiding all these bottlenecks is going to be crucial, given the fact that there is such a large reliance on what is going to be electronic in the next election.
Nominee for the position of Chief Electoral Officer, As an Individual
Yes.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
I want to go back again to the prospect of foreign voters, or I should say, Canadians outside of Canada who want to vote. That was a big issue in the last election, with the five-year rule and so on. Where are you on that file right now? There was a huge push-back in the last Parliament from Canadians living abroad who felt that their rights had been taken away.
Nominee for the position of Chief Electoral Officer, As an Individual
Yes. As you note, this is a matter that's also before the courts as we speak, but it's also part of the Bill C-76.
Nominee for the position of Chief Electoral Officer, As an Individual
We foresee a fairly manageable increase in participation from voters abroad. We are not concerned about the volume increase, and we are confident that we can manage that. When we look at the longer-term future, what we have to improve is the ability to enable those voters to cast their ballot in a timely way.
Voters who are living outside of capitals or large cities have a hard time sending in their ballot so that it can be counted on time, so it made them—
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
That was a question I had, the fact that for people living outside of capital cities, it must be extremely—
I'm done, is that what you're saying, Mr. Chair?
Can I get a final comment on that?
Nominee for the position of Chief Electoral Officer, As an Individual
This is a project we have put aside for the next election because of everything else that is going on, but right now people can apply online to receive a ballot kit. The ballot kit is sent by traditional mail, and it has to be returned by traditional mail, so there's a two-way traditional mail exchange that is quite long.
In the future, we would like to have a downloadable kit. They apply online and they receive the kit online. They download it, they print it, and then they send it by traditional mail, so hopefully, that will reduce the impact.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Thank you.
Some questions today have touched on this a little, but I don't think we've really gotten to the key point of the matter. Last time you were here, you indicated to us that April 30 was the drop dead date at which we would need to have changes in place to make it possible to fully implement them before the next election. Obviously, that deadline has passed. We saw legislation come forward that day, but it has certainly not passed and it's nowhere near that stage at this point.
You indicated at that time that anything beyond this would require some compromises in its implementation. You also indicated today that there would be some significant changes which, if this legislation were to pass, you would probably have to defer until the next election.
Can you give us some indication of what some of those compromises will be with the piece of legislation before us now and what some of the changes are that couldn't be implemented in time for the next election?
Nominee for the position of Chief Electoral Officer, As an Individual
The first thing I mentioned was that in many ways the proposed legislation provides the CEO with discretion to do certain activities or not to do them, to redo the voting procedures at the poll in a different way. We will not redo the voting procedures at regular polls for this next election. This is something that I told this committee last February, because of where we were in the cycle. We are, however, working on the advance poll scenario.
The bill also allows us to provide a new service, which is a mobile advance poll. In remote areas, where there are often not enough populational workers to support four days of advance polling, we could do mobile advance polls. At this point, we do not know whether we'll be leveraging that capacity, because it has an impact on some of our systems to produce the voter information card, and the priority will go to system changes that are mandated by the legislation. That's an example.
There are major changes to the political finance regime that have impact upon IT systems. We will focus on those changes that are critical to process the reimbursements for candidates and the party returns.
Some of the reports, whether related to Bill C-50, the fundraising report, or third parties, will be posted in PDFs. A PDF is searchable online, but it's not searchable across reports. The level of transparency by PDF report is thus not optimal. Of course, in the future we'll move away from PDFs, but for this election, this is the kind of compromise we have to make to ensure that we are ready to roll out the election in an orderly way.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
You mentioned also that you would be doing preparations based on the current framework and then some alternative preparations based on the potentially new framework.
What are some of the major differences in that regard, in terms of the preparations? What's your confidence level that you would be able to do two sets of preparations?
Nominee for the position of Chief Electoral Officer, As an Individual
A number of differences affect the process at the polls. For example, all of the oaths will have to be redone. The process of attestation will now, if it's passed, become a vouching process, which we're quite familiar with—it was done before. There's the issue of the voter information card as proof of address, as you're well aware. These do not present major challenges in terms of implementation.
There is quite a bit of work to do on the implementation of the Canadian Forces vote. That will be critical work.
There's quite a bit of work to do as well on the political financing side. The new categories of expenses, the new reimbursements level—all of that—is processed currently with IT systems that are fairly antiquated and not very flexible. There's a fair amount of work there.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
The political financing is obviously a pretty critical element. Can you give us a bit more detail as to what you see the challenges being and what compromises might be required there?
Nominee for the position of Chief Electoral Officer, As an Individual
We will implement this law. The reports will be published. The question is whether they'll be published in the PDF format or in a fully searchable database.
For candidates, I'm quite confident that they will be published in a fully searchable database that allows doing horizontal audits across campaigns and through the EDAs to make sure that contributions are not exceeded, for example. We'll focus, then, on those areas in which technology is more critical to the process and to the timely reimbursement of candidates' expenses. You rely on those reimbursements for the next general election or by-election, and we have to make those reimbursements as quickly as possible.
