Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 2nd, 2019

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you.

If there end up being significantly more Canadian electors voting abroad than the estimated—let's just say 100,000—will Elections Canada have the necessary resources to deal with such a significant increase? Perhaps while you're addressing that you could also address the numbers at home as well, to avoid massive delays in voting. Perhaps you can start with the voting abroad.

[Stéphane Perrault]

We're not at all worried about the numbers of those voting abroad. We have excess capacity to triage large mail numbers. We are acquiring new machines to triage the mail. We will be prepared. I'm not worried about that.

In terms of the voting in Canada, what we are seeing is a trend in the last election, a trend that we've seen provincially and internationally: there is a tremendous increase in voting at advance polls. In New Zealand, they're at 50%. In Australia, they're at close to 50%, and I would suspect that they're going to get to 50% in this election. Federally, we could be well into 30% or 35% in the next election.

There are a few things that we've done. We've streamlined the paper process at the advance polls. We've increased by 20% the number of advance polls. That will also serve to reduce the travel distance in rural areas. It's not just the volume. It will get the polls closer to the people. There's an increase in the voting hours. They used to be only from noon until 8 p.m., and now it's from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. There's a range of tools that we've done.

The other thing that we've seen in Ontario and Quebec provincial elections is a dramatic increase in voting at the returning office. It was 400% in Quebec and 200% in Ontario, so we have streamlined the special ballot process that is used for voting at the RO's office to make it more efficient. We're increasing the capacity as well.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you, Ms. Kusie. Now we'll do the standard question for votes on estimates.

Shall vote 1 under Office of the Chief Electoral Officer carry?

OFFICE OF THE CHIEF ELECTORAL OFFICER

Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$39,217,905

(Vote 1 agreed to on division)

Thank you very much for coming. We appreciate having you back. I'm sure we'll see you many times in the future.

We'll suspend while we change witness panels.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Good afternoon. Welcome back to the 152nd meeting of the committee as we continue our study of the main estimates for 2019-20. We now turn our attention to vote 1 under the Leaders' Debate Commission.

We are pleased to be joined today by the Right Honourable David Johnston, the Debates Commissioner. He is accompanied by Bradley Eddison, Director of Policy and Management Services at the Commission.

Thanks to both of you for making yourselves available today. I'll now turn the floor over to you, Mr. Johnston, for your opening remarks. It's great to have you back.

[David Johnston, Debates Commissioner, Leaders' Debates Commission]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. It's wonderful to be back.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee today.

Thank you inviting the Leaders' Debates Commission to review our main estimates. You've kindly introduced us, so let me jump right in.

As you know, the mandate of the commission is to put on two debates, one in each official language. Within that directive is also a commitment to important elements such as transparency, accessibility and reaching as many Canadians as possible. Since my appointment as debates commissioner in late 2018, the commission has been working to achieve these goals and help give Canadians the best debates possible.

Let me begin with a brief overview of the 2019-20 main estimates. The commission is seeking a total of $4.63 million overall for its core responsibility, which is to organize two leaders debates for the 2019 federal general election, one in each official language.

Before I tell you how we plan to use the funding to carry out our mandate, I'd like to talk a bit about what we've accomplished thus far.

Since work began in December 2018, the commission has completed the first phase of our mandate, consulting with over 40 groups and individuals with a wide range of expertise and views. This includes accessibility, youth, indigenous, academic and journalistic groups. We've been pleased with the positive responses from these groups on the existence of a debates commission and our mandate. Our consultation process will continue throughout our mandate.

We have also met with the leaders of the Liberals, Conservatives, NDP, Bloc Québécois, People's Party and Green Party. Overall, there was a positive response to the commission and our mandate. Furthermore, we have set up our communications infrastructure; initiated the process for hiring a debates producer through a request for interest followed by a request for proposal; and, appointed an advisory board of seven members.

We are very proud of the board we have assembled. We're heartened by the enthusiasm from this group of great Canadians to join our cause. Also, I am especially delighted with the quality of the people on our small five-person secretariat.

We are now entering the second phase of our mandate, which will bring us well into the summer. lt consists of initiating an outreach program through partnerships with different groups and enterprises; choosing a debates producer; engaging with the political parties and producers to ensure successful negotiations; and, developing a research strategy that will enable us to measure the impact and engagement of the debates.

The third phase, which will start with the election call, will consist of ongoing consultation on the production of the debates, raising public awareness of the debates and the national outreach initiatives that foster a wide understanding of the importance of debates. We will also be evaluating the interest in, engagement with and influence of the debates.

Lastly, the fourth phase of our mandate consists of developing recommendations and reporting to Parliament.

Let me return to the $4.63 million that is being sought. As you know, this is the first time Canada has entrusted a debates commission with the tasks that we are now undertaking. The funds we are seeking represent an “up to” amount that will allow for our work to be guided by the independent pursuit of the public interest. However, as I emphasized previously, we intend to ensure that the commission operates cost-effectively in everything we do, in keeping with the direction provided to us in the order in council establishing our mandate.

I will cite a few examples. Our goal with our request for proposals for the production of the debates will be to focus commission expenditures on areas not generally provided by past debate organizers, such as accessibility initiatives. We are also working to identify and build relationships with existing entities in our work to both raise awareness about debates and assess their effectiveness. Additionally, it is our intention to provide a detailed report on our expenditures in our report to Parliament after the debates so that policy-makers can assess how to resource a future debates commission should that be the path chosen.

I hope that overview of the commission's main estimates for 2019-20 demonstrates how we plan to fulfill our mandate in order to deliver the debates Canadians deserve.

Once again, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to provide you with this context in which the Leaders' Debates Commission operates.

We would now be pleased to answer the committee's questions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you very much, Commissioner.

We'll go to Mr. Simms.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Your Excellency.

That's right, you have a “thing”; every time someone says “Your Excellency”, as you said last time, you come prepared. I believe you have a charity.

[David Johnston]

You have a very good memory and you offend frequently.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Actually, it's Mr. Bittle who brought it up with me this morning. It's his memory that's the good one.

Just so you know, we're all in for your charity.

[David Johnston]

May the habit be contagious.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

That's good. Okay, I'll keep that in mind.

Thank you for coming here, and thank you for all the work you've done thus far. I say that because it's always difficult to start from scratch, isn't it? That's essentially what you're doing here. But it's not like a leaders debate is a new concept, obviously. It goes back to the advent of television and radio way back when. I forget when the first one was; it was in the seventies, I believe.

So this is somewhat from scratch, but there are two ways of looking at this—how we have done this in the past and how other countries, such as the United States, have done this. Can we talk about best practices? What would you say are some of the best practices you've discovered so far in your research?

[David Johnston]

We look also to the provinces and the leaders debates there so that we have some built in Canada examples. As we think about civic engagement, we look to the other occasions when debates, discussions and animated exchanges on political issues are encouraged, right through to an interesting series of experiments going on in the high schools. In several provinces they have local and regional competitions on staging what would be a leaders debate. That's fascinating for me as a teacher.

Two of our senior staff people were in Washington about three weeks ago for the international debates commission meeting. I was there briefly. In fact, I spent some time with the executive director of the U.S. presidential debates commission, which is entirely non-governmental. That has about a 35- or 40-year history. Typical of our American friends in institutions of that kind, they could not be more gracious, welcoming and enthusiastic in sharing their U.S. expertise, which is quite unique as a model. In fact, that non-governmental commission not only carries off the debates but also handles all of the production and dissemination of it. That is, they actually do the production studio, managing the format and so on.

I should just add that other international contacts have come through that. The United Kingdom has a very different experience. The European countries have a different experience. We'll try to capture that, particularly in our final report to Parliament.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Yes, okay.

I think in the case of Great Britain a public broadcaster was involved or not involved. Of course we have the same sort of dynamic different from what the Americans have, obviously. Their public broadcaster is not as prominent as ours.

You say you have a production team.

Is that correct?

[David Johnston]

We do not, the U.S. does.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Are you looking at creating this type of production team for our...?

[David Johnston]

No.

We will have a request for proposals. We would expect a consortium would emerge that would undertake the responsibility for the production and the distribution of the debate with high journalistic qualities to make the feed free of charge to a number of other entities. At that point we will also encourage that number of other entities to be as widespread as we possibly can, reaching out in different languages to different regions of the country. Then try to engage social media to be sure we are best taking advantage of that new phenomenon since the debates began 30 years or so ago in a way that's quite encouraging and stimulating.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Yes, dissemination is not what it used to be, as someone once said. Dissemination can take all sorts of forms. I guess what you're doing is open access for any type of platform, whether it's a Facebook element or the CBC or what have you.

[David Johnston]

Yes. All of what you said plus more.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

When it comes to the journalistic standards—let's look at that one for a moment—how do you decide?

Obviously in the case of the format, who asks the questions? Who determines what is pertinent to a particular election? What are the main issues?

How do you get into that issue of deciding that journalistic principles are upheld?

[David Johnston]

Those are two very important questions.

First of all, in our terms of reference in the request for proposals we will establish the conditions that come from our mandate as to the kind and type of debate in the public interest that we want. We'll ask for commentary on the matters that you have just raised. Once a decision has been made to go to a particular consortium to carry off at least the two national debates in each official language and their dissemination, we will enter into further discussions with them as to how one can push the outreach, perhaps more enthusiastically then we've seen in the past, and continue in discussions with that consortium right up to the point of the debate.

The actual format, questions to be asked, etc., will be in the hands of the successful consortium, not our hands. But through the process of following that successful request for proposal and awarding the contract we expect to be in quite frequent discussions to have some sense of how those things are evolving, but not to have the ultimate responsibility.

With respect to journalistic standards, a condition of the feed that will be provided by the successful consortium will be anybody using that feed will have to respect appropriate journalistic standards and quality. That could present some questions down the road. There's nothing in our mandate that permits us to enforce that, nor I suppose in the hands of the consortium other than to seek an injunction or some remedy after the fact.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

If you felt they weren't handling it with journalistic principles in mind.

[David Johnston]

If we came to the conclusion that this was happening there would be a discussion with the successful consortium to seek what remedy was available. Within our mandate we do not have enforcement powers to step in and say thou shall not do that.

In the U.S., the commission on debates, because it is the producer and disseminator of the debates, has a greater degree of control over all the things you mentioned, including the venue, the format, the moderator, the type of questions, the themes, etc.