Evidence of meeting #22 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 43rd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was vote.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON
Dr. Goodman, did you write that “the government has the capacity to provide MPs training on procedures necessary to ensure votes are successfully entered into the record”, yes or no?
Liberal
Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON
Dr. Goodman, do you advocate for an online voting system premised on MPs' verifying their vote selections, yes or no?
Assistant Professor, Brock University, As an Individual
Upon reflection, I think video voting would work best, so I would put in verification to double verify parties within the legislature.
Liberal
Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON
That's helpful. Thank you.
Dr. Goodman, do you advocate for “secure infrastructure that includes a government secured device, application and network connection”?
Assistant Professor, Brock University, As an Individual
Yes. That would be more for application- or web-based voting, but obviously we would need infrastructure to facilitate the video voting.
Liberal
Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON
Dr. Goodman, you talked about the positives of video voting. What positives might there be for application- or web-based voting?
Assistant Professor, Brock University, As an Individual
I think Dr. Essex might be good to chime in here, but I know that with the web-based and application-based, for example, it's easier to capture intent. It can be clearer, but there are other issues. I think in terms of security it would be email at the bottom, then web-based and application-based, but I think Dr. Essex should probably speak to that.
Liberal
Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON
Thank you.
You've talked about the positives for video voting. I'd like to hear what the positives are for web or application. You talked about four methods.
Assistant Professor, Brock University, As an Individual
Yes. The big positive for application and web is I think intent. Also, they can be very user-friendly. It depends on how they're designed. They work very well. In Estonia, for example, and Switzerland, they have worked well, but there are additional cybersecurity challenges.
Liberal
Conservative
Liberal
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Thank you very much. I have a little timer here that I'm going to start so I don't run over.
Thank you to my colleague Mr. Doherty for being so gracious and letting me have this time.
I want to start with a separate question relating to proxy voting. I haven't heard anybody speaking in favour of it. I wonder if we could just go around to the witnesses.
Maybe you can just quickly signal whether you are opposed to proxy voting or in favour of it. I'm not sure who to start with.
Why don't we start with you, Ms. Goodman, seeing as you're the person at the top of my screen?
Assistant Professor, Brock University, As an Individual
I'm not opposed to proxy voting. However, after some consideration, and reviewing remote electronic voting and proxy voting, I do feel that the remote electronic voting enables representation and inclusiveness more fully.
Associate Professor, University of Western Ontario, As an Individual
Proxy voting in a general election has a lot of problems. I know that they allowed it in Toronto and there were instances of abuse. I don't think that would be as easy to abuse in a legislative context where the voting would sort of be in many cases along party lines—
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
I'm sorry to interrupt there, and thank you for that, but what you've just said does imply that the MP is simply a functionary of the party and not someone who might vote independently. That's effectively what you've just asserted.
Look, I was setting you guys up. Here's the question I wanted to ask. Isn't it the case that we deal with—
Associate Professor, University of Western Ontario, As an Individual
Well, I—
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
I'm sorry, Mr. Essex. I'll ask you to come back in a second.
That's a concern I have. A second concern is, what about votes that occur without advance notice so that the MP cannot, even in theory, express their views to the proxy voter who's voting on their behalf?
I'm sorry, Mr. Essex. Now you can carry on with your response. Thank you.
Associate Professor, University of Western Ontario, As an Individual
I'm not implying that an MP is a function of a party. I'm a cybersecurity expert. I am aware of the notion of a whipped vote, which in that case would imply that there would be a sort of an understanding ahead of time on how members would vote, but setting that aside, in proxy voting, there of course would need to be time for a member to communicate their intention to their proxy.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Fair enough, Mr. Essex, and thank you. Forgive me for posing something that's outside your area of expertise. You just happened to raise the point that got me going.
Mr. Morden, can I go to you for this?
