Evidence of meeting #113 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 elections.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Professor Emeritus, Political Studies, University of Manitoba, As an Individual
Yes, I know, but that—
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I'm running out of time. I'm not keeping this tight enough.
You see this is a restoration bill, Mr. Cooke, in part. The inadequacy around privacy.... The threat is that if this bill goes ahead as written, unamended—with respect to the lack of consent, oversight, and verification, which was once described by a former chief electoral officer as the wild west—we just don't have any rules around privacy and how parties handle the personal information of Canadians.
Do we pass this bill with those provisions as they are right now? How can we assure Canadians that their data is acquired and held with any type of security?
Member of Council, National Office, Green Party of Canada
In June 2011, the Conservative Party of Canada was hacked. Their donor database, with addresses and email addresses, was exposed. This has happened—
Member of Council, National Office, Green Party of Canada
No, this is the “hash brown” scandal. I'm trying to remember the name of the hacker. It's something unpronounceable.
Member of Council, National Office, Green Party of Canada
This has happened. I work in engineering. The saying goes that everything has a mean time to failure. Everything will eventually break. That means the security of your party's systems, my party's systems, and all the party systems will eventually be broken into. It's just a matter of statistics. What are the procedures in place to make sure that all our parties are adhering to the best standards? I think the answer is that the Privacy Commissioner needs to have mandates to go in and review us.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I think it was you—I'll say it's you for now—who offered something novel, where there would be some sort of gold seal, or a seal of approval from the Privacy Commissioner, that would work with each party vying for seats in an election. At some point prior to election day—prior to the writ, hopefully—we would be able to say, “I've worked with the Green Party. I've worked with the Liberals. I've worked with the Conservatives. Here's the grade. These folks will handle your data securely and safely.”
I would imagine for some voters, at least, that would be a factor in how they cast their vote.
Member of Council, National Office, Green Party of Canada
In almost every other organization that voters and Canadians interact with that have to meet privacy laws, there are privacy risk assessments. An external auditor would come in and say, “Here are some deficiencies that we'd like you to address. Here are some others that we think are adequate.” A lead time is given for that organization to meet those requirements. This is how the banks, telephone companies, everyone deals with private data.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
The government has argued that those were different. They were special.
Member of Council, National Office, Green Party of Canada
Most Canadians don't see it that way.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
What? I'm hurt by that assessment.
I put the same question to you. There are aspects of this bill that you've agreed with, what I'll call the enfranchisement components. There are others that either have problems, or raise more questions than we have answers to right now. What do you think the government should do with this bill, with days left on the spring calendar, and with Elections Canada saying they needed a bill passed by May 1?
Member of Council, National Office, Green Party of Canada
The time allocation approach is unfortunate.
Member of Council, National Office, Green Party of Canada
As you said, planning.... If this were started further ahead, if the electoral reform special committee had produced better results, perhaps people would feel better. Again it's risk-reward. I would say we need to have this passed—
Member of Council, National Office, Green Party of Canada
The whole thing? It's a tough decision. I'll withhold my comment on that.
Conservative
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
You were talking about technology a few minutes ago. Basically, I was in technology before as well. What are the limits of the role of technology in elections, in your view?
Member of Council, National Office, Green Party of Canada
I'll speak as a voter, not only as a member of a political party. Technology is useful because we want to have results quickly and things done efficiently, but the maintaining of the paper ballot is also vital. If ever there's any doubt, any question, into the legitimacy of any election, Canadians want to know there's a paper trail and that everyone and their grandmother can connect the dots and actually count up the results. I think that is vital.
Member of Council, National Office, Green Party of Canada
Especially my grandmother....
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
I forget who it was, but I think a couple of you mentioned it. We were talking about lowering the voting age as opposed to just the registration age. Is that something you're interested in seeing?
Member of Council, National Office, Green Party of Canada
Yes. Elizabeth May has put forward a private member's bill to do precisely that. We see it as very useful. Think back to when you were 16 years old, about to graduate from high school before the next federal election. To cast your vote that first time, before you left home, before you found a career or went off and had an education, perhaps in another town, to be part of the democratic process ahead of that, would incentivize you just psychologically, while you were at university or settling into your first apartment, to go and vote again. I think that would be vital.
