Evidence of meeting #127 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.
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
My goodness, do I ever want to do this.
Are you ready? Can I read this?
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Thank you.
It is that amendment CPC-192 be amended by (a) replacing the words “replacing lines 1 to” with the words “adding after line”; (b) replacing the words “376 Schedule” with the words “(2) Schedule”; and ( c) deleting all the words after the words “Cold Lake”.
(Subamendment negatived)
(Amendment negatived [See Minutes of Proceedings])
(Clause 376 agreed to on division)
(On clause 377)
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Clause 377 has a new CPC-proposed amendment. It's one of the new ones. We're discussing reference number 10008651.
Stephanie, could you present this amendment?
12:15 p.m.
Calgary Midnapore, CPC
This is, again, in regard to the new relationship that we have between the polling station and the polling divisions. This allows us to determine the applicable polling division when counting ballots and reporting results during judicial recounts. Like several of our other previous amendments, we.... Certainly we have faith in the abilities of Elections Canada. Certainly as a former public servant, for 15 years, I know in the public service, you truly are among the best and the brightest.
We'd like to just determine as much clarity as possible in regard to the procedures with these new methodologies, just to ensure the legitimacy of our electoral process. We believe that this amendment provides for that.
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
Chris Bittle Liberal St. Catharines, ON
This amendment seeks to legislate the process for the counting of certain ballots, and that's not necessary.
(Amendment negatived [See Minutes of Proceedings])
(Clause 377 agreed to on division)
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
12:15 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Don't bring me down, Chair. I was feeling good for a moment.
This is, as was expressed by my Liberal colleagues earlier.... I enjoy studying things, looking them over carefully before we imprudently move ahead. This one requires the Chief Electoral Officer to make recommendations, after study and consultation, about lowering the voting age to 17. The reason we think this is a good idea is that there have been a number of attempts in parliaments to lower the voting age even further, to 16. Seventeen has been the number that folks have landed on because that is the age at which someone can be conscripted in Canada. To deem 17-year-olds able to handle certain responsibilities like holding a gun and pointing it at somebody, one would by association also deem them possessed of the capacity to vote freely and fairly.
In combination with that—and we talk about this, all parties do, in Parliament—are the many decisions we make that are much longer in nature than just affecting us. They affect the folks to come.
I have moved legislation in the past. I think the first bill I helped support was one promoted by a Liberal. It was backed by a Conservative at the time, Ms. Stronach, and a Bloc member and me. This may be hard to imagine these days, Chair, but we went across the country and held town halls just to talk about lowering the voting age.
I have one small reflection on that. I think we were in Edmonton and we had a whole bunch of high schools come to a big forum. A young woman came to the mike and said, “I think this is a terrible idea.” She was 16. We said, “Okay, tell us why.” She said, “If I were voting in the next election, I would have to look at all the candidates, study their platforms and understand what each of those platforms meant for me, and that's just a lot of pressure. I don't want it.” It was a fascinating disclosure because that's exactly the voter you'd want. As we know, most voters don't walk into the polling station with one-tenth of that consideration of what their vote means.
In this day and age, some people—usually the older generations—despair for the generations coming. My sense of things is that they are certainly the most informed and most connected generation in history. Their ability to engage in issues is beyond what it was for you and me at 16 or 17. They can connect into communities and understand laws that are being passed or proposed.
I think this is a very tentative step. This is not saying we're going to do it, just that Elections Canada will be able to gather data on what the impacts would be. Would higher voter turnout happen? What would the consequences be for other things that we don't anticipate? We could just prudently step forward.
We've heard, of course, from Daughters of the Vote, from the Canadian Federation of Students, from the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations and on down the line that the motivation among young voters would increase dramatically if they were able to actually participate in voting.
The last thing I'd say is that, from all the research that has been done by Elections Canada and other elections agencies, we know that if a voter participates in an election at their first opportunity, the chances of their voting in consequential elections goes up dramatically. The reason 17 is important is that, obviously, most 17-year-olds and those approaching 17 are still in school. Once they hit 18—and most people don't vote right at 18 but just at the next election that comes—they're out of high school. They may be in another form of education, but oftentimes they're in the workforce and otherwise. What an educational opportunity it is to be 16 going on 17, with an election on the horizon and part of your education is getting yourselves and your classmates ready to vote in that election.
The chances of voting would be dramatically higher. We imagine polling stations being right in or near those high schools. Those are the merits of voting at 17, but these are the things we'd want Elections Canada to look at. Will it increase participation? Will it increase lifelong participation in the democratic process? None of us, I hope, are opposed to that.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
To be clear, I don't think this amendment addresses lowering the age, which I guess is what you want to be doing, ultimately. Your final objective is to lower the age of voting—
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
—which is a laudable objective and one I would personally support, lowering the age.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
This motion requires the CEO to make a policy recommendation to us, through its website, and to the Speaker, which seems like a really odd thing to do. They give us all kinds of recommendations on how the election went, and so on and so forth, but saying, “This is what we believe you should do on a policy question”, not a procedural question, I think that's outside of the scope of what we'd normally ask Elections Canada to do. Correct me if I'm wrong.
12:20 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
We've done it six times today. We do it all the time. When the CEO comes to us, as he has recently done—the new CEO and the previous one—we ask for policy advice. Really, we do. We ask whether this will enable that? We ask about the consequences of vouching and other things. We've relied on that advice very consistently, particularly because Elections Canada has some primary roles and functions: free and fair elections, etc. In the policy advice we've gotten, I've never had a hint of partisanship or advantage or anything like that. They just do what they've done very well historically—run elections fairly.
This is the gathering of evidence from a non-partisan source who is, I would say, best placed to look at this and knows who the experts are on elections. I might be asking about the effects on the election, whether the experts support the policy of lowering the voting age, or whether we have evidence enough to overcome the resistance from a broad sector of Canadians. As you know, a large number of our constituents did not think this was a good idea, present company excluded.
This does not bind this committee or Elections Canada to a policy doctrine, one way or the other. This is simply recommending that they go out and ask what the effects would be, positive and negative, and report back to Parliament, which, I think would help Parliament. If any of you have been to high school classes and talked about politics, I'm sure you found a very engaged group of folks. I would say these students are more engaged than an average roomful of Canadians would be if you gathered 30 or 35 of them together and asked them about the policies we deal with all the time. They're studying, and that's what they're supposed to be doing. I think this has merit.
(Amendment negatived [See Minutes of Proceedings])
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
NDP-28 is inadmissible because goes beyond the scope of the bill, as the bill does not relate to the report.
12:25 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I guess if promises made by politicians were all inadmissible, there wouldn't be much we would move in legislation.
One very senior prime minister adviser, Gerald Butts, once told me that nobody cares about this issue. I think it was borne out that a great number of people actually care about electoral reform. Hope springs eternal. We've just heard from the new Quebec government, I believe, that they are looking to bring in legislation within the year. B.C. is voting in a week or so, and P.E.I. will soon be voting as well. This issue was supposed to die in the weeds, according to one close friend of the Prime Minister, but somehow, in this one instance, he's wrong. This is just our attempt to get back to promises made to see if they can be kept.
I don't appreciate your ruling but I respect it very much.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
12:25 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
It's like a last cigarette before going out to the execution squad.
This is a tricky one for us because, as many of us have heard from the minister just recently, the idea of a debates commissioner has been coming. At first it was promised in legislation, which I greatly appreciated because that would allow Parliament to debate it and a committee like this to study it and make improvements. Not everything that emanates from the Prime Minister's office comes out perfect, from my experience. The delays have just been going on and on, which is at least consistent for this department. They're not quick. This was an attempt to bring the debate commission into this process so we would have something we could talk about as parliamentarians.
This is my primary concern with the process used here. My advice to this minister early on was that the debates commission cannot in any way have any hint of partisanship for it to have credibility with Canadians. I think what happened in the last election was very unfortunate, when the then sitting Prime Minister was refusing to cede to a debate in the proper way. It became an election issue for a lot of Canadians, which I didn't ever suspect it would. Obviously we support the idea of a debates commission. My advice to the minister and to the Prime Minister's office was to include the other parties in constructing that commission. Then you would have the input and it would credibly be seen as a non-partisan effort. The fact that the government has again insisted on keeping it entirely in-house runs the risk of people accusing whatever comes out as not being fair.
The debates should just be the debates. Three or four podiums, a moderator and let's go. I don't get it. This is not a partisan thing. I just don't get the strategy to consistently keep it so close to the vest and then run the risk, as happened with the first ERRE committee structure, which was seen as flawed. There was never a conversation with the opposition as to how to build the process to design a new electoral system for us. That blew up and then on the back of a piece of paper we had to create a new one, which I think worked well in terms of a committee process.
That's a weird twitch of this government, and there it is again.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Thank you.
NDP-29 is inadmissible as it goes beyond the scope of the bill as the bill does not deal with an independent commissioner for the leaders' debate.
PV-19 is tabled because of our procedures for parties that are not part of this committee, but I rule it inadmissible as it goes beyond the scope of the bill as the bill does not relate to the leaders' debate.
(On clause 378)
Clause 378 has amendment Liberal-64. Does someone want to present that amendment?
You have the floor, Ms. Lapointe.