Actually, Bill C-76 was designed in a way that would allow maximum flexibility.... Well, it's not “maximum” flexibility in that it's not unrestricted flexibility. Nevertheless, it would give a lot of flexibility to the Chief Electoral Officer in managing polling stations on polling day and at advance polls.
I would point you to page 17 of the bill and to proposed section 38, which states:
A returning officer shall keep a record of the powers and duties that he or she has assigned to each election officer, and of the time at which or during which each election officer is to exercise a power or perform a duty assigned to him or her.
Proposed section 39 states:
An election officer shall exercise or perform, in accordance with the Chief Electoral Officer’s instructions, any power or duty assigned to him or her by a returning officer.
The Canada Elections Act used to designate many functions at the polling stations—for example, the poll clerk, the deputy returning officer, the revising agent, etc. All of these titles have been removed, changed to the generic “election officer”. The Chief Electoral Officer will now be able to manage personnel better at the polling station on polling day by assigning different functions to various election officers.
This motion and a few other motions would just remove some of that flexibility, but of course Elections Canada presented this model of modernized polling stations in its recommendations report and intends to continue administering elections in an—