Evidence of meeting #111 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 identification.
A recording is available from Parliament.
6:30 p.m.
Associate Professor, Carleton University, As an Individual
—and that's what I meant by the integrity of the system. It's very easy today to be challenged. Authority can be challenged by someone saying that you're playing games, you're making special rules, because—
6:30 p.m.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Except you wouldn't be doing be that if you knew the person, if you knew the nature of the person. What you're saying is the process is more important for you.
The evidence that we've heard, from not only the Canadian Federation of Students, but others, indicates that students face a particular challenge, and the challenge is that, although there might be many different pieces of ID they could have, it's the address that presents the problem. Some people have 80 plus different potential identification pieces, but they don't have identification pieces with their address on it. This is why the testimony of the students' federation was so strong saying this is making it difficult.
I have two questions. One, do you appreciate that students are in a different position in this, because they don't have the plethora of ID that other people have? Two, that the evidence that we've heard is that with the voter identification cards, there is no fraud. So, if you were given that assurance, that fraud was not an issue with the voter identification cards, would you support it? Do you recognize that students are in a different position because they don't have ID with their address on it?
6:30 p.m.
Associate Professor, Carleton University, As an Individual
I was hoping someone was going to ask this question of me, thank you.
I'm very familiar with the registrar's office, which, as you may or may not know, are present in every university and college.
6:30 p.m.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Yes, and they all operate differently, and some are aware—
6:30 p.m.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
—that the addresses can be provided, and some are not, and that's a problem for students. We heard that—
6:30 p.m.
Associate Professor, Carleton University, As an Individual
In the registrar's offices that I'm familiar with, and I'm pretty sure they're pretty standard, we must have an address. We will not register a student who will not provide an address, and they provide the address where they're living, on-campus or off-campus. Our students are also ubiquitous in terms of cell phones, and the bill is coming in to them wherever they're living. I simply don't accept the argument.
I talk to students all the time—by the way, I teach full-time, I'm not a part-timer—and they're very open and transparent, and they are very sophisticated. As I said, I do not know a student who doesn't have a cell phone, which means they have a cell phone bill with an address.
6:30 p.m.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Some of the bills are going to the parents. If you have students, and you're not aware bills are going to parents.... There are many bills that are going to the parents, and I may be one of those parents. The issue is that the testimony we heard today—and I've experienced this first-hand—is that number one, students aren't aware that they can go to the registrar's office to get that letter, and number two, registrar's offices aren't pumping those letters out, because they don't realize they have the obligation to present the letter.
6:30 p.m.
Associate Professor, Carleton University, As an Individual
I think that's a much more fair point. I don't agree with the first point. The second point is, there is an education process needed by Elections Canada to educate people, and not just about voting. There are people who don't know what they have to do to go apply for Canada pension cheques, but we don't say that they don't have to produce any ID, they can just walk in and ask for the cheque, and we'll give them the cheque, and they walk out. We don't do that. Likewise, at the border, if you say your forgot your passport, they just say that's just too bad.
6:30 p.m.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
It's a bit of a difference, though, comparing those things, because here we are in a situation where we are trying to encourage young people to go out and vote. We're not saying to them, “Okay, you're going to go to Florida for a week's vacation, so you better have your proper ID”. This is something where we are trying to encourage them and to whet their appetite to get them voting. We have to do what we can to make it easier, not make it harder and put standards on them, given they may not want to take extra steps.
If you were assured that the voter identification cards were not fraudulent, that they could be relied on, would you then say that you would accept those as a piece of identification for students?
6:35 p.m.
Associate Professor, Carleton University, As an Individual
I'm answering; I'm not ducking your question at all. I do not believe that the voter registration card—
6:35 p.m.
Liberal
6:35 p.m.
Associate Professor, Carleton University, As an Individual
I don't believe they can be made secure. I have had voter registration cards. I've been voting for a long time. I just turned 65 this year and I've never missed a single provincial or federal election. Every time I've had one of the cards, I've thought, my God, this is a really crappy, insecure system. It's just a piece of paper. I could make one of those. I could concoct one and make a pretty good facsimile.
6:35 p.m.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
The letter from the registrar's office, you think it's more thorough than that?
6:35 p.m.
Associate Professor, Carleton University, As an Individual
I'm saying it isn't very thorough. It is not up to the standards of Service Canada. It's not up to the standards of the other databases of the Government of Canada. It certainly doesn't meet the standards of our passport security system, which is very strong. All I'm saying is that we should have the same standard we have in all of our other government services and identification, a standard that has been mandated by you, the parliamentarians, a standard that I applaud.
6:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Thank you.
Thank you, everyone. My thanks to the witnesses, a very active panel compared to some of the previous ones.
6:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
I'm not saying they were bad; I'm just saying this one was very animated; maybe animated is the word I meant.
We're going to suspend while we go into committee business.
6:38 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Welcome back to the 111th meeting. We are discussing the second part. We separated two issues this morning and agreed to come back to deal with the second issue.
6:38 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Can I just get a quick update? Have we heard back from Twitter? They're sending us panicky notes from Washington. I just want to see if they've connected with the clerk yet.
6:38 p.m.
The Clerk
I have yet to hear back from Twitter, but I've had a couple of exchanges with Facebook.
6:38 p.m.
The Clerk
Thursday afternoon.
6:38 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Can we circle back to it when we're done? We need to know how many days of witnesses we have so that we can be sure of what we want to do about inviting them. They're at a training course, which is awesome. But we can Skype them in or Twitter them in, whatever technology they want to use.