Evidence of meeting #98 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 pps.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Maybe what I'll do then is wait for a further round because I don't think I'll have much opportunity to....
Skeena—Bulkley Valley, NDP
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, gentlemen, for appearing today.
You said you were in conversation with the Privy Council Office. Are you also in conversation with the Minister of Democratic Institutions?
Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
The discussion is of a technical nature, taking place between my officials and those in the Privy Council who support Minister Gould.
Skeena—Bulkley Valley, NDP
They're in Privy Council, but they're not in the Minister of Democratic Institutions' office.
Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
Correct. They're public servants who work in the Privy Council Office.
Skeena—Bulkley Valley, NDP
That's curious.
You talked about the deadline, which you've let us know about. You've let the government know of this deadline. The homework was due in order to have the changes in place. Some of these are very substantive changes. The ones that are contemplated in Bill C-33 include expat voting, Canadians living abroad; your ability, or who does the investigations of potential election fraud; your mandate for public education, which is important; and vouching and ID requirements. Those are all contained in a bill that you said you needed passed by now. Is that right?
Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
We said it was all major changes to—
Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
That also includes the recommendations this committee has been supporting that are not part of Bill C-33.
Skeena—Bulkley Valley, NDP
So it was both the changes that were promised in Bill C-33, which was meant to undo some of the changes made in Bill C-23, the so-called Fair Elections Act—some said “unfair elections act”—plus any changes that this committee proposed after having studied the last election with Elections Canada about how to make the next election secure. Your recommendation to the Government of Canada, to Parliament, was to pass all of those changes through Parliament and the Senate by the end of this month.
Skeena—Bulkley Valley, NDP
Seven days from now. That's not going to happen.
My concern is that you also talk about compromises. Essentially, are you saying that some of the changes that the government promised in the last election and some of the changes that this committee has recommended either have to not be done or to be watered down in order for you to enact them properly and keep our elections whole?
Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
I would distinguish between changes to the law that provide discretion to the Chief Electoral Officer, which we may leverage at any point down the road to improve services to Canadians, to voters, to parties, and to candidates. That discretion may or may not be leveraged for the next election, depending on where we are are in timing. That's one category.
Skeena—Bulkley Valley, NDP
Let's take one of those; expat voting. Changing the rules around expat voting, changing the rules around vouching and identification, and changing the rules around how investigations are handled are not inconsequential changes. Those are significant changes. If you're going left or right into the next election, you said you needed to know that, in law, by the end of this month.
Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
That's particularly true of changes that have an impact on IT systems.
Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
Complex IT systems. When you want to make changes to that, you need to test them thoroughly before the election.
Skeena—Bulkley Valley, NDP
Can you give me an example of one of the proposed changes that would affect the IT system? As Mr. Simms pointed out, any mess-up on an IT system can....
Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
There are a number of them, including some in Bill C-33, but in our recommendations to Parliament, for example, we've recommended different categories of expenses to be a bit more fair. When you start playing with categories of expenses, then you need to design the systems to analyze the returns accordingly.
Skeena—Bulkley Valley, NDP
Right, so that's even for things about people spending inappropriately or appropriately, any changes with the way you're meant to govern that, changes the way your computers work, the way that reporting is done.
Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
There are different ways of implementing that. In an ideal world, we would leverage the opportunity of IT systems, and we would have them tested thoroughly.
Skeena—Bulkley Valley, NDP
Here's what confuses me. The bill to make some of these changes, to fix the problems that the government and that we and many Canadians agreed with, to fix the problems in Harper's elections act, Bill C-23, was introduced November 24, 2016, in Bill C-33, and hasn't been seen since. We don't have it at committee. It hasn't passed through the House for debate, yet the government was in court three weeks ago, fighting against a charter challenge of the unfair elections act.
Are you aware of this case?
