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.
6:10 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
So, if 40,000 people were contacted from the CIMS Conservative Party database and then misdirected to voting stations, that would be a terrible thing to do.
6:10 p.m.
Lawyer, Conservative Party of Canada
Do you have a source for that? I'm not aware of that instance.
6:10 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I don't know, the filing's in court. It's interesting that...
I appreciate vigour and determination on an issue, if it's applied equally. What causes me concern is to suggest that there are clear and present dangers to our democracy, but then not equally apply it across the political spectrum.
6:10 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Mr. Lee, the security of our voting system is very important to you. Voter ID cards are a problem, because you see them as not secure. Yet, at the very end, it's not contemplated in this bill, but you talked about electronic voting or online voting. Are an advocate for it?
I'm confused, because not just in this committee, but in a previous committee on electoral reform, we actually looked into that as a possibility, and were told that it's one of the most unsecure things we could do to our democracy, because a) there's no system we'd create that would be secure and b) when it became unsecured, when it became hacked, it would be very difficult to even be aware of that hack.
How do you—
6:10 p.m.
Associate Professor, Carleton University, As an Individual
My response?
You may or may not know that I'm a former banker from many, many years ago. I don't have any relationship with any banks, but I was 10 years in banking in my 20s and early 30s, and I worked in the building that you people expropriated, which is now the Sir John A. MacDonald Building. I was there for many years, lending a lot of money to people in the Trudeau cabinet, as well as senior members of Parliament.
Where I'm going with this is that the banking system.... I don't agree with you that you cannot make a voting system secure. You know, it's that old joke about a boat is a hole in the water into which you pour money; you can make any system secure if you want to spend enough money.
I'm talking about the Canadian banking system. It has, I believe, one of the most secure and robust IT security systems anywhere. If you look, and there's the evidence, for people who are going to challenge that.... We're getting off-topic, but I'll just give you the....
They have very tiny losses as a percentage of the total dollars flowing through. So, when you look at the empirical data, you see they have very small losses, which tells me it's very secure.
So, going to voting, electronic voting, I do believe we can develop—and I'm not saying it's going to be cheap; I'm not saying we can do it on the cheap, but we can.
Just very quickly, Mr. Cullen, because I think your party is very concerned about access to people—I made this very argument at the university. We're unionized at Carleton, and we still do archaic voting for everything in the union. I said, well, guess what: we have very tiny turnouts for the election. Literally 5% of the faculty are voting for the slate, because you have to physically show up on campus, the votes are held in summer, the professors aren't there, etc., etc.
Electronic voting will encourage and increase participation in the democratic process.
6:10 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Surprisingly, and we'll step off this topic. The evidence isn't that strong in supporting that, which surprises me, especially amongst youth voters.
However, I want to get over to the statement you made about the integrity and the belief in the integrity. You said not just the integrity but “the belief in the integrity of the voting systems”.
I want to talk about privacy for a moment. Under Bill C-76 the status quo is maintained: political parties are not exposed to any significant duties under the privacy laws of Canada, very few.
The data we all collect as political parties is shielded from the privacy commissioner or any independent observer of what we do with the data. There is no obligation to seek consent of voters or to inform them about what kind of data, personal information, we collect on them. Banks are obliged to do that, and private corporations. Do you think political parties should be as well?
6:10 p.m.
Associate Professor, Carleton University, As an Individual
I have come to that conclusion. Two years ago I didn't agree with that, but I've come to that conclusion because of what we've seen with the Russian hacking of electoral systems, and it's not just the Russians. It is undermining confidence in the integrity of the electoral system, so I think we're probably going to have to extend it to political parties.
6:10 p.m.
NDP
6:10 p.m.
Lawyer, Conservative Party of Canada
Due fairness is my opinion. Simply put, due fairness.
6:10 p.m.
Lawyer, Conservative Party of Canada
It means you will have a populace that accepts the integrity of the voting system when the populace buys that what you're doing is correct. When you talk about securing data and things like that, I am concerned that sometimes governments, and therefore legislation, do move at the speed—
6:15 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
So should we be subjected to the privacy laws of Canada? Right now, we are not.
6:15 p.m.
Lawyer, Conservative Party of Canada
I think parts of that sound attractive but would be problematic. On balance, I'm not in favour today of those privacy laws being applied to political parties.
6:15 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Do you think voters should have the right to know what information political parties have about them on an individual basis?
6:15 p.m.
Lawyer, Conservative Party of Canada
Sure. If they read the Canada Elections Act, they would know that the Chief Electoral Officer produces the list of electors.
6:15 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
That's not all that parties have on people's personal information.
6:15 p.m.
Lawyer, Conservative Party of Canada
It gives the personal information that political parties want, doesn't it?
6:15 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Oh, come on. Let's not be naive here. We know that political parties collect massive amounts of data.