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

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Nater.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I was going to follow up a little bit on what Ms. Sahota touched on. I think I got a pretty good sense of where Elections Canada is at.

You mentioned five million and other things. I'm just going to express a concern. I think vulnerabilities within our systems is a significant concern. I'm glad that CSE is involved. I'm glad that you use outside contractors to identify some of those vulnerabilities, but I just hope that there's enough resources to prevent that. I think that's a major concern.

I just have one other question. You can comment on that perhaps after that.

It has to do with staffing up for the general election. I was recently on the Elections Canada website. In looking at the list of returning officers, I noticed that, in a very small number of cases, an assistant returning officer who was acting on behalf of the returning officer when they were unable to do so.

In those cases, is it the returning officer themselves that appoints their assistant to take over? Who actually appoints the assistant returning officer to that position to begin with? Does the returning officer hire their assistant returning officer? What is the process?

[Stéphane Perrault]

There's a bit of a change in the rules with Bill C-76. Right now, we're at a point in time when it's fairly late in the game to start running competitions for filling returning officer positions. We want people to be in the driver's seat at this point. Where there sometimes is illness and a returning officer has to resign, the assistant returning officer that the RO has appointed will be stepping in as returning officer and we are assisting them.

For each region, there's a cluster of returning officers with field liaison officers. When there's a new player involved, they have the benefit of support from their colleagues in the neighbouring ridings and the field liaison officer.

You're right that the returning officer appoints the assistant returning officer. In Bill C-76, at our request—this is something that this committee, if I remember correctly, had approved unanimously when we did the recommendations—I now have a right of review. I need to be informed of the appointment of the assistant returning officer. If I have a concern with the appointment, if a person is hiring a friend who is not a competent person, for example, then I can have a say.

These are the new rules. I am satisfied that we have in place a very solid team of returning officers. We have a strong support network to assist them, even the new ones because there are some new ones.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

I think my adjacent returning officer is about 1,000 kilometres away.

Go ahead, Mr. Hardie.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll beg the indulgence of the committee. I'm the newbie here, so I'm going to probably ask some questions that you have thoroughly canvassed. If you don't mind, I will ask them.

Regarding voter ID cards, voter fraud and non-Canadians who vote, what does the system look like? What are the safeguards?

[Stéphane Perrault]

It's a vast topic.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

In 30 seconds or less.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Stéphane Perrault]

The voter information card will be a piece of ID at the next election, as per Bill C-76. It's important to remember that it's not a stand-alone piece of ID. Nobody can vote with a voter information card without another piece of ID. You'll need a second piece of ID to support that. That will assist the voters—a small portion of voters—who have challenges. Also, as I mentioned in my remarks, we are making efforts to improve the accuracy of the register of electors, so that will improve the accuracy of the voter information cards.

The greater concern for me is non-citizens. We've noted for years that for all kinds of reasons—tax forms being checked—we estimate that there are a number of non-citizens in the register. That is quite material. It doesn't mean that these people will vote, but they may receive a voter information card. If they're in the register, they will. That's been a concern for Elections Canada for many years, and we've sought amendments to the law to make sure that we can have access to data on non-citizens that is held by Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

That's been many years in coming. We now have that authority, and we are negotiating a transfer of data agreement, an MOU, with the department, to make sure that we can purge non-citizens from the register. That will be an important effort in the spring.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

You mentioned that if somebody puts an item on Facebook that's false, misleading, etc., it has kind of an organic reach. If they boost it, however, does that then start to count as paid advertising?

[Stéphane Perrault]

That's something we have to consider. There's a process for guidelines and interpretation, those we do in consultation with the parties. That is something we are going to be looking at with the parties, whether this amounts to, essentially, paid content. The challenge there of course is that the boost can come from all kinds of sources. It's not an easy issue to tackle, but we need to tackle this before the election.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

I have two questions in one.

You're now back in the business of promoting voting and educating people about the process. What will that look like? If I as an individual MP want to spread the word in the riding, through a ten percenter or a householder, can I take the information that you provide on this issue and run it again unchanged?

[Stéphane Perrault]

I would just caution you on one thing. In terms of polling places, for reasons of a flood the night before, a burst pipe, whatever the situation, poll sites are subject to last-minute changes. We're always concerned.

This could be just a week before. If you do door hangers with poll site information, you run a risk of sending your supporters to the wrong polling place if there's a change. We'd much prefer that your information—your door hangers or whatever you use—refer them to our website, where they will have up-to-date information to avoid good-faith errors that then can lead to rumours of disinformation. It gets out of control.

If you push your supporters to our website, that's the safest way.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

In terms of the other things, how to register, what to watch for and so on—

[Stéphane Perrault]

Absolutely. We have a website called Inspire Democracy. What we do at Inspire Democracy is equip intervenor groups, groups that work with new Canadians, young Canadians, and indigenous communities. We give them the tool kits to educate them about the electoral process. They are trusted partners for these communities. These are the people whom they serve on a regular basis. We don't know those communities, but they do. When they do events, they can download....

In the last election we had 50 partners. In this election we'll have 150. Even those that are not partners can take the content, the material we have, and use it. This is not information that's time-sensitive. It's not about the polling places. It's an explanation about the voting process. We'll have some information this time around on how to be a candidate. Parties can use that if they want to use that tool to assist them. We have some resources on our Inspire Democracy website for that purpose.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Great. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

Mr. Cullen.

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

I'll just step back a bit to the critical incident protocol group. Was Elections Canada consulted on its formation, design or activities?

[Stéphane Perrault]

No, we were informed ahead of time, but we were not consulted on the formation. We have been working with the departments and agencies for a long time now to plan for the election, but that is an overlayer of that. We were not consulted on that. It's a government initiative.

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

Sure. We share that experience then, Mr. Perrault. We weren't consulted on it either. It just sort of happened, yet the mandate of that critical election incident public protocol is, could we agree, significant. It is significant to have that tabled together, be fed information from our spy agencies as to whether a critical incident has happened, or a political party has been hacked, and there has been enough traffic to show a foreign or domestic attempt to influence our election, which is the bedrock of everything we do here.

[Stéphane Perrault]

Correct.

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

One of the things that we've heard in testimony at this committee and others is that when a hack takes place, it's often the case you don't get to learn about it until well after the fact. Has that been your understanding in looking at this issue?

[Stéphane Perrault]

That's exactly one of the challenges that we will face if something happens. The issue is not defined until later on. Disinformation being sent to voters about a polling location may be the first sign that a party database has been hacked. From the fact of this information being sent, you don't automatically jump to the conclusion that the database was hacked. In fact, it may be that this disinformation is an error. Is it a disinformation campaign? Is it errors? Was the database hacked? Was it hacked by foreign actors? It takes a lot of intervention to understand a situation.