Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Feb. 7th, 2019

[Stéphane Perrault]

That is why we are so concerned about branding Elections Canada as the source of information on the voting process. For Canadians, it's great that all of you and other candidates push out information, but if they have any doubt, in fact, they should check with Elections Canada.

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

I love your hopes for the average elector, I really do, but I see the trends on where Canadians are getting their news from, and it's increasingly social media, and even though they have suspicions, they believe most of what they read on social media. If something looks like an Elections Canada post, as we've seen in the past, but now on steroids, saying that your voting station has been changed....

[Stéphane Perrault]

Yes.

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

That's a crude example. That's not even in the major fake news and the lies and all the rest. I just don't know if we have the capacity to alter that effect.

[Stéphane Perrault]

We are working with social media platforms—and we don't have the solution yet—so they would automatically refer Canadians on their platforms to our website.

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

I'd love to see whatever protocol you're able to get them to commit to, because they don't commit to much, legally I mean. Sure, they say nice things.

Thank you.

[Stéphane Perrault]

Thank you.

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

Thank you, Chair, for the extra time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

For the last question, we'll go to Madam Lapointe.

[Linda Lapointe, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, Lib.]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I thought I'd never get a chance to talk.

Gentlemen, thank you for being with us today.

I want to come back to what you said earlier about student access to polling stations at colleges and universities. You mentioned 4,000 students and the fact that the number of sites will increase from 39 to 115. Did I understand that you will be sending information on the selected sites?

[Stéphane Perrault]

We are in the process of finalizing that. It will be known in advance.

[Linda Lapointe]

Right.

Will students at these institutions have the option to vote for a candidate in the riding where they're from or in the riding where they are?

[Stéphane Perrault]

Under the act, students, like people working in labour camps, must determine their usual place of residence. It is up to them to do it. Some students have left home and will never return, and they consider the riding where the university they attend is located to be their usual place of residence. However, many of them consider that they still live in their place of origin.

Voting on campuses is done by means of a special ballot, as is the case with labour camps. Voters first determine their place of ordinary residence and vote in that place of residence using a special ballot. It's a cumbersome mechanism. In the last election, it was lengthy. We have therefore greatly reduced the average voting time by redesigning the process. We will try to make the process more efficient for voters.

[Linda Lapointe]

In principle, students in the northern suburbs attending Collège Lionel-Groulx and Cégep de Saint-Jérôme or a university in Montreal will be able to decide where they really want to vote.

[Stéphane Perrault]

They must determine where their habitual residence is.

[Linda Lapointe]

In your opening statement, you mentioned the efforts that had been made with regard to workers, but also people living in CHSLDs, long-term care hospitals.

How will this situation be improved?

[Stéphane Perrault]

This process is repeated at each election. These are places where, unfortunately, the turnover rate is high. People come in, people die. In long-term care centres, we conduct targeted reviews before the election to ensure that people are registered at the centre where they are located. We establish protocols for a mobile vote to take place. The returning officer visits these premises, and the ballot box is brought into the rooms of the voters.

[Linda Lapointe]

What about people who are severely physically disabled?

[Stéphane Perrault]

Often, these people don't have identification. So there is a voter information card. In the past, a targeted review was done. The person was told that we were going to register them. We came back two weeks later, and asked them to prove that they did, indeed, live there. These people, who are bedridden, don't have any identification with an address on it.

[Linda Lapointe]

I'm going to change the topic a bit. Earlier, several people talked about social media platforms. My colleague mentioned the ads and publications that were relaunched. On the topic of third parties, you said that you would inform those you knew, but that you did not yet know what would happen to the others. You say you provide a lot of information from Elections Canada so that people can recognize all its ads, but we don't yet know who the third parties are.

How are you going to do that?

[Stéphane Perrault]

We don't really have the means. First, I would like to point out that third parties can be 27 million Canadians. They are also an infinite number of groups of Canadians. These groups may already be created, created before the election or created during the election. Of course, in many cases, we cannot reach groups that do not yet exist. However, we may publish the information on our website. People are now used to using websites. They try to be visible and as clear as possible. It must be said that the rules have become extremely complex for them. Our role is to try to simplify this and alert people. For those we do not know, the vast majority of them, we will have to deal with them when they come to us.

[Linda Lapointe]

Thank you, Mr. Perrault.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Actually, that was the second-last intervention.

Mr. Reid.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

I'll let my intervention go. It was actually a comment on Nathan.

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

Chair, we're done here. That's it. Bang the gavel.