Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Oct. 2nd, 2018

[Linda Lapointe]

Was the percentage of advance votes higher in 2018 than in 2014?

[Greg Essensa]

We saw a dramatic increase in advance polls. We had over 780,000 people vote in our five days of advance polls compared to 640,000 in 2014. It was a very healthy increase. A number of factors went into that. We moved to a spring election. We had longer daylight hours. There was a great deal of interest here in Ontario's election, given some of the changes that happened with some of the political parties. There was a great deal of media attention on that as well. I think all that contributed to a great deal of interest in the election and the increased turnout.

[Linda Lapointe]

For information purposes, what percentage of electors voted in 2018, in Ontario?

[Greg Essensa]

We saw a 58% turnout. We had just over 5.7 million Ontarians vote. That represented about a 7.5% increase from where we were in 2014. We saw a very healthy increase this election in voter turnout.

[Linda Lapointe]

Were you able to easily reach young people of 25 or less? Earlier, there was a fair bit of talk about social media. Did you use different means to reach young people of 25 or under?

[Greg Essensa]

We did this election. We had a very active engagement and outreach program in Ontario. There are 50 college and university campuses. We were on all 50. We were on them six months before the election doing pre-registration drives. We launched an e-registration tool this election where we had almost a million people come on board to check and see whether they were on the list or not.

During the month of March, we had the legislature deem it voter registration month, and we had an extensive outreach campaign. Again, we were back on the 50 college and university campuses with outreach campaigns, registration drives. Then we proceeded to be on a third time during the writ period. For many of them we provided opportunities for them to vote at advance polls and again we had registration drives.

We are digesting all the numbers now and looking at the 18- to 24-year-old demographic, but we anticipate we'll see a higher turnout in that demographic this election.

[Linda Lapointe]

You say you expended a lot of effort to incite university and college students to vote. Did you use other means to reach those youngsters, for instance, social media?

[Greg Essensa]

We had an extensive social media campaign; we started two years ago. I'm a big believer that we need to have more frequent communication in particular on social media, on our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. Our goal was to ensure we were the factual representative of the election. If people had questions about who could vote, where, when and how they vote, all those facts, we wanted to drive them to our website. We wanted to drive them to us to get that factual information. We began our social media campaigns two years out. We would tweet twice a week. Sometimes they were just innocuous tweets, but they were tweets about coming to us to find out who can vote. If you need to use a special ballot, here's the special ballot program. Over the course of those two years we consistently increased the frequency; we tried to communicate using this forum as a vehicle to get our information to everyone.

[Linda Lapointe]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you very much.

Now we'll go back to Mr. Nater.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Following up a little on the youth voter turnout, Ontario implemented the provisional voter register for those who are 16 and 17. It included an option to withdraw. I'm curious about the success of that provisional register, how many names are on it and how many people may have withdrawn their name. What privacy and protection of personal information safeguards are included for that provisional register? Who has access to it and is it shared with anyone outside Elections Ontario?

[Greg Essensa]

There are a couple of things. The changes in Bill 45 did provide us with the ability to establish a future voters registry of 16- to 17-year-olds. We did work with our outreach teams. We worked with CIVIX and some of the other outreach initiatives that we have in place for the election.

My belief is that we have slightly more than 1,200 people now on our register of 16- to 17-year-olds. When we built our register we made it completely separate. It is not connected whatsoever to our current permanent register of electors and there is high security around who has access to it. We do not share the information with anyone and there are clear opportunities for an individual to remove themselves once they have put themselves on the register.

When they move towards 18, they are automatically moved to the permanent register of electors, but we do communicate with them and they do have an ability to opt out at that time should they wish to. I don't have the figures exactly in front of me, but I'm not aware of a very high number of people opting out at this particular time.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Is there an automatic registration provision for when someone turns 18 who is not on the provisional register?

[Greg Essensa]

No. It's one of the challenges that all electoral administrators.... I've had extensive conversations with Elections Canada. It's an area we all struggle with because when someone automatically turns 18 sometimes the traditional means by which we get that information into our registers—CRA data or motor vehicle information, health information—is not as up to date as perhaps we would like it to be. It does create a bit of an issue for us in trying to get all of that 18- to 24-year-old demographic onto the register so that we can communicate with them effectively.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Certainly one of the issues I hear about from time to time is the issue of accessibility. In this last provincial election, there was a concerted effort to ensure that voting locations were accessible for those Ontarians who are living with a disability, whether it was a mobility issue or other less visible types of disabilities.

I'm curious as to what challenges you encountered in ensuring the accessibility of voting locations, particularly in smaller rural and remote areas. As well, there seem to be distinctly fewer voting locations compared to before. Could I get your comments on whether that was a direct link to the accessibility side of things?

[Greg Essensa]

In Ontario, we have the Ontarians with Disabilities Act that we have to adhere to. We have standards that every voting location has to maintain.

At Elections Ontario, many times, particularly in the rural areas that you speak of, we have to mitigate accessibility issues. Oftentimes we will put in temporary ramps. We will provide infrastructure support to a particular location, because quite simply, that's the only location that we can utilize in a particular community that we now have to make accessible. We do spend a considerable amount of resources to in fact make many of those locations accessible. There are occurrences where quite simply, due to the nature of the building, we just cannot make it accessible and we sometimes have to look at other alternatives.

I would suggest to you that it's rare. It's more frequent, though, in the rural parts of Ontario where there is a limited number of sites that we can actually use for elections.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

In terms of candidates, campaigns and political parties, are there any resources or rebates provided to campaigns or to candidates to make their campaign offices accessible or to make their websites more friendly for those living with a disability? Are there any types of rebates or resources available from that side of things?

[Greg Essensa]

Not currently in Ontario's laws, no.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

We have two minutes left. Would the Liberals like to give that to Mr. Cullen?

[An hon. member]

Absolutely.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Look at the cross-partisan collaboration that's going on.

I have one quick question about the per-vote subsidy. How long has it existed in Ontario and is there any assessment as to the impact on the way that parties organized or fundraised and the effect on reaching other voters? Are you planning to do any kind of an impact analysis on it or does that not involve your office?

[Greg Essensa]

We definitely are going to do an impact analysis after this current election.

This was the first cycle that we had a per-vote subsidy that we've provided. When the deliberation under Bill 2 happened and the government made the determination to eliminate corporations and unions from being eligible to donate, the trade-off somewhat was to establish the per-vote subsidy that we've had in place. We pay that quarterly to the political parties.

I think the analysis that we're going to have to do is an overall analysis as to how much money they fundraised in relationship to the elimination of the corporate and union donations. When I appeared on Bill 2, I provided some insight into that. Between 2011 and 2014, $50 million of the $98 million that the parties had raised came from corporations and trade unions, so it was slightly more than 50%. The per-vote subsidy does not fully replace all of that.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

No.

[Greg Essensa]

We'll do an analysis as to how parties have done on the fundraising aspect since we've eliminated corporations and trade unions, and what the impact of the per-vote subsidy has been overall to their spending abilities.