Evidence of meeting #123 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 clause.
A video is available from Parliament.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Okay. Are you ready for the vote?
(Amendment negatived [See Minutes of Proceedings])
We are on PV-2. If this is adopted, CPC-2 cannot be moved, as they amend the same line.
5:20 p.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just out of interest for those members who are wondering what “PV” is, it is le Parti vert.
Surely, one day there will be another party with the letter “P”, Maxime Bernier's for example, but I want to point out that “PV” here refers to the Green Party.
I think it was when I first started doing amendments in the 41st Parliament that the government of the day was worried that if we called the amendments “G”.... They liked to hold onto “G” for “government”, but that's my hope, too. Anyway, never mind.
In the pre-election period, my amendment would, at line 22 on page 5, extend the pre-writ period. I think it's very good that this legislation is going to apply rules to the pre-writ period on spending limits and conduct. I'd love to see the pre-writ period begin on the day after an election. However, in this amendment I've extended it only by two months so that it would start on April 30 instead of June 30.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Chris Bittle Liberal St. Catharines, ON
Thank you so much.
I would like to agree with Ms. May and think that it should be extended; however, the legal evidence that we've heard is that there may be issues with respect to extending that period based on previous decisions, I believe, out of the British Columbia....
Mr. Cullen is going to correct me on this, but—
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Chris Bittle Liberal St. Catharines, ON
He would never suggest that I could be incorrect on this.
This was planned in order to make it at a point when Parliament was no longer sitting and to make the election period more compliant with court decisions.
5:20 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I have a question to our witnesses.
What was the pre-election period in Ontario for the last campaign?
You're saying it was six months.
It too was challenged in court as being too onerous. It survived that court challenge.
I think, as I mentioned earlier, Chair, that just with the bill as it is, there's tension as civil liberties and freedom of speech and those types of important values that we have in Canada go up against trying to set down limits.
I think Ms. May's interjection here, to extend the intention of what the bill does to make it more meaningful.... We know that much of that pre-writ period extends right through the summer, with fixed election dates at least. Am I right in saying that? If we go back from the election, the writ period, and then we go two and a half months back from that, we're mostly dealing with summer—
5:25 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
—in Canada, which I know is an impassioned political time for many of our voters. They're keenly tuning in to CPAC, as they are right now.
If what we're trying to do is level the playing field, then you certainly can't take that last two months or two and a half months and say, “This is the most fevered time. We have to move the pre-election limits.” We have to go further back, I think, because while Ms. May may be right that the election seemed to start right after the last election, the intensity certainly increases in that May-June-July period, and certainly in May and June before the House rises, typically.
I am supportive of the amendment and I think it is pretty strong in court, just to Mr. Bittle's concern that we have already seen it tested once, and Ontario just went through it. The results may have been terrible, but it wasn't this change to the Ontario election rules that caused the results that we saw.
5:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Could I just ask a question, Mr. Morin? Are there other people in the room from your department?
5:25 p.m.
LCdr Jean-François Morin
Yes.
5:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Feel free to call on them at any time. Don't worry about that.
Okay, are we ready for the vote on PV-2?
(Amendment negatived [See Minutes of Proceedings])
Now we'll go on to CPC-2.
Do you have a quick explanation of what it does?
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
It's in a similar vein, only we make “January 1, in the case of a third party” and keep the other dates for all other cases.
5:25 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
This would actually go back to Chris's point about constitutionality, that we have seen this aspect challenged.
Did you say “January”?
5:25 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
In terms of limitations on freedom of expression, I don't think extending it to January 1 would make it for six minutes in a court, so I try not to vote for those things.
(Amendment negatived [See Minutes of Proceedings])
5:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
We've spent a long time on clause 2, but I'm going to allow a little more time on this next one, NDP-1, because this vote also applies to NDP-2, NDP-3, NDP-4, NDP-5, NDP-6, NDP-7, NDP-12, NDP-13, NDP-14 and NDP-15. The result of this vote applies to all those amendments.
Mr. Cullen, do you want to introduce this amendment?
5:25 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Yes, absolutely, and all the consequential amendments.
Essentially, this is a question I put to the minister when she was here. We've had people testify on this issue. If the intention is that we are all democrats of various natures, we like people voting. We've seen a steady decline in voter turnout, with the odd uptick.
One of the things we've learned from past surveys by Elections Canada and the different provincial sections is that we don't have a five-day workweek anymore. We don't have a regular-hour workweek anymore. People work all sorts of hours, and this is essentially around Sunday voting. According to most international experts, the ability to allow this would result in a 6% to 7% gain in the turnout at elections.
The countries that do this, just to give people some reassurance that it functions in functioning democracies, are Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, Uruguay, and a whole bunch of others.
I don't know if Samara, which we have all referenced and used quite a bit, have testified on Bill C-76. Did they?
5:25 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Everyone testified on this bill. They highly support this. The former Chief Electoral Officer, Marc Mayrand, whom many of us know and who is held in high regard in terms of his running of elections, has said this:
Weekend voting would also increase the availability of qualified personnel to operate polling stations and of accessible buildings, such as schools and municipal offices, for use as polling places.
It's not just on the voter side of things. By all the evidence—and we're supposed to be an evidence-based committee, an evidence-based government, as I think they keep saying—the evidence for voters is helpful, but it's also helpful for Elections Canada in their staffing.
When did we start doing early voting as a major effort? I want to say it was 2006 when it started to really ramp up, 2004 or 2006. More and more early voting dates have become available, and voters like it. They like to be able to vote at their convenience rather than in long lineups. Some still like the tradition of voting day as the official day.
This amendment would simply get rid of an old aberration when maybe political times were different and the idea of having people work on a Sunday to staff the voting stations and having people participate in politics was seen as a negative.
That is clearly not the reality in Canada anymore. We're a diverse country. I think if we want more people voting and we want to help Elections Canada run elections, this amendment and the consequential ones would be good to vote for.
5:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Just to go on the record for people who are interested in this particular discussion, we did have a lengthy discussion at PROC on both sides of this. People who are interested can refer to that.
5:30 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
PROC has also done some work on this. There are some divided opinions on it.
We were looking around for what the evidence was. How does this hurt the democratic process? Does it hurt Elections Canada's ability to run elections? I don't want to be casual about it, but it was more that a feeling was behind people's opposition—“I just don't like it” or “It doesn't feel right”—as opposed to showing the evidence that it will make our democracy less effective.
Again, in all those 42 other countries that are doing it right now, it just works. It's not even a thought. Many of them moved to it quite some time ago.
5:30 p.m.
Liberal