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.
President, Commoners' Publishing
They are relevant in the sense of losing the right to vote, and I believe you raised that issue. Part of the reason I think we should learn from the past is so we don't repeat the mistakes of the past.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
So we don't take away the right to vote of 170,000 people today. I agree with that. Thank you.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Blake Richards
Thank you.
We will now move to Mr. Reid for five minutes.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Before I ask any questions, I want to make a little editorial.
The fundamental issue that relates to people being able to vote without identification, the various mechanisms that have been provided, such as the use of the voter information card and so on, all comes down to the question ultimately of whether people have the right to vote. Some people turn up with ID—I've done it myself—who sometimes don't have time to get back. Sometimes, maybe in rarer cases, they don't have ID and you don't want to deprive those people of the right to vote. On the other hand, if enough people turn up to vote fraudulently, then you can have everybody in that riding effectively deprived of their franchise. That is not a small thing. The pretense that we don't have, and have not had, fraudulent voting in the country is just laughable.
I know when we were debating this stuff during the last minority government, I was contacted by the wife of a Liberal candidate, a former Liberal MP from downtown Toronto, who argued that her husband had been effectively deprived of his elected office due to fraudulent NDP voting. Was that true? I don't know, but it was plausible enough that she was willing to say this to me. These things have to be taken seriously.
There is a way it could be resolved. I suggested it to the minister. It's practised in other countries, including respectable democracies like the United States of America, and that is provisional balloting. You vote when you don't have ID. I'd say, “I am Scott Reid.” They'd take my word for it. They'd put my ballot into an anonymizing envelope, just like a vote that's been cast by mail. That gets dropped into a second envelope, which I'd sign. Later on they'd verify whether or not I really am who I said I was. We add up those ballots, if it's necessary, because the number of ballots outweighs the number of the margin of victory.
I merely throw that out. That would resolve this entire problem. It didn't make it into the bill, and I regret that.
However, I have a separate question on an entirely different issue for you, Mr. Cooke. It is on the question of the leaders' debates. As you know, a debates commission is being set up, not under this bill or indeed under any bill, but under government auspices. There is a very good chance that it will set up leaders' debates from which the leader of your party will be excluded. Alternatively, they may include the leader of your party then cut off someone else, such as the leader of the Bloc. This creates an inherent problem.
I have no clever solution for the problem of the fact that there's no clear division between the major parties and the parties that are not major. Can I get your thoughts on that?
Member of Council, National Office, Green Party of Canada
We've discussed through this bill and through many bills prior all the different rules around elections: spending, advertising, whether the government can advertise, third parties, and political parties, yet still there are no rules on governing the leaders debate. All of us can recognize that the leaders debate is possibly the most pivotal moment in any writ period, but it is not governed by election law. This is a curiosity to the point of...it's almost absurd, really.
The Green Party would like to see some rule, any rule, saying who should be at the leaders debates.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
I guess you don't mean literally any rule because it's easy to imagine a rule that says we cut off the line after the three major parties and the Greens are out, or maybe you do accept that. I don't want to put words in your mouth.
Member of Council, National Office, Green Party of Canada
I think the Green Party would be satisfied with any rule that was clear. Let's say the rule was that a political party has to have at least 5% of the national vote to be at the next leaders debate. I think the Green Party would be prepared to accept that because now that 5% becomes the high-water mark we need to reach.
Conservative
Member of Council, National Office, Green Party of Canada
The last time? I can't recall.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
You know why I'm asking that, right?
This is one of the fundamental problems we had. In the Figueroa case before the Supreme Court, Mr. Figueroa was challenging a law which said that you had to have contested a certain number of seats in the last election in order to qualify for certain rights in this election, which of course was designed to freeze out new parties that had widespread support. It was introduced by the Chrétien government after the Reform Party and the Bloc Québécois came out of nowhere. It was clearly meant to ensure that couldn't happen again.
The court ruled, I think rightly, that trying to quash populist movements like the Reform Party and the Bloc Québécois is unconstitutional, a violation of section 3. Do you see what I'm getting at? Isn't the 5% number based on the previous election also essentially saying that preferences that haven't been expressed for four years are somehow less worthy than preferences that are four years old or more?
Member of Council, National Office, Green Party of Canada
Yes and no. Let's say the criteria was 2%. By the way, the Green Party would still be the last party that meets that criteria.
Member of Council, National Office, Green Party of Canada
I think even at 1% we'd still be the only one to qualify.
Member of Council, National Office, Green Party of Canada
Right, my apologies.
I think it has to be fair that some kind of criteria should be established, and I think that democracy and an electoral system need to be resilient enough to say if there is a movement or a party that is coming forward that is getting a lot of populist interest...that to go from zero to a national leaders debate within less than one election cycle, is probably not healthy for our democracy, but within less than two election cycles, so step it back. Let's say we call it the Purple Party. It gets 4% somehow in the next federal election, then by the next leaders debate after that, they would potentially have a seat at the leaders debate. I think that would be reasonable.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
I don't agree with you, but I did ask for your opinion, so thank you.
Liberal
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to begin by thanking each of you for your time and your testimony today.
Professor Thomas, I'm going to begin with you. I appreciate your compliment to the work of the procedure and House affairs committee. I'm not looking for more compliments but to just to make you aware about our work with respect to elections, the CEO did appear before this committee with his report, and we spent 22 meetings with that report. Each meeting is an average of two hours.
In addition to that, we'll have had by the end of this week, by my calculations, about 30 hours of testimony. The last two days have been a little more difficult because we've had votes, which is just a function of this place. I just wanted to let you know of the time that we've spent on this.
You mentioned the comment, and it came out in the CEO's report with respect to some of the changes that have been made in this legislation. The VIC and the vouching are two, as well as the preregistration of young voters, both of which I believe you support. You see them as good.
Are there other provisions in this bill that you are also very pleased to see and that you think are important to implement before the next election?
Professor Emeritus, Political Studies, University of Manitoba, As an Individual
Yes. If you read my brief, you'll see that my compliments go beyond simply what I have said today.
I recognize that you did an extensive review and three reports and heard from the acting CEO and maybe Mr. Mayrand before that, so I know you've studied this. That's why I thought the work shouldn't be swamped by the late arrival of this bill. It has complicated things; we should have had action before this. That's my opinion.
Yes, there are other things in the bill that I like. I like the fact that the commissioner is now being moved back inside the administrative framework of Elections Canada. I mentioned already the educational mandate that the CEO should have. That's important work to do to create a healthy and vibrant democracy.
There are lots of other things. There are lots of nuts and bolts of election management that go into this bill. One thing I'm saying in my main theme is that we have to move away from the tradition of highly detailed, prescriptive legislation. In this dynamic world we live in, when we have these technological changes and changing political practice, we have to give more autonomy and scope to improvise on the part of Elections Canada—as I said, a diverse toolkit of instruments that they can use.
I like the idea, for example, that no longer are you going to have to take someone who violates elections spending rules to court. That costs time and money. We have to find a better way. We have compliance agreements now. Now there's this whole toolkit that has to be built up.
When I did studies in the past, I noted that the U.K. election commissioner has far more authority to engage in the management of this process. You're doing, as I said, a number of good things in this bill in that direction, such as being able to hire half the staff before the date closes when the parties can nominate returning officers. That's a step forward, especially in today's context.
Yes, we're going in the right direction. I just think that longer term there needs to be a broad grant of statutory authority and delegated regulatory power. That's where the modern election agency needs to be.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Mr. Chair, do we have a copy of this report? I don't have the paper in front of me.
The Clerk of the Committee Mr. Andrew Lauzon
Yes. We have to get it back from translation, but I expect it back very shortly.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Okay.
Mr. Thomas, just so that you know, we don't have your submission in front of us. We're waiting for translation.
Professor Emeritus, Political Studies, University of Manitoba, As an Individual
It will help cure your insomnia.
