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.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Aleksander Essex  Associate Professor, University of Western Ontario, As an Individual
Nicole Goodman  Assistant Professor, Brock University, As an Individual
Pierre Roberge  President, Arc4dia
Michael Morden  Research Director, Samara Centre for Democracy
Ali Ghorbani  Professor and Director, Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity, University of New Brunswick, As an Individual
Guy-Vincent Jourdan  Professor of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Chris Vickery  Director of Cyber Risk Research, UpGuard, As an Individual
Clerk of the Committee  Mr. Justin Vaive
Andre Barnes  Committee Researcher

11:55 a.m.

NDP

Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC

Mr. Essex, do you have anything to add on predictability around voting times?

11:55 a.m.

Associate Professor, University of Western Ontario, As an Individual

Aleksander Essex

I will approach this question from my experience in general elections. Predictability is right at the core of the democratic principles that you might have for an election, and the predictability would feed into the notion of fairness and that everyone has an opportunity to vote.

Unpredictability has, of course, very detrimental consequences to the democratic process. One example from the other day was the curfew in Washington, D.C. at the same time as people were voting, so there was interference there between the police curfew and the actual voting. There was some exemption given to voters, but then law enforcement wasn't quite adhering to that, so it created a very unpredictable environment. Of course, that's deeply concerning.

Yes, predictability in votes, whether they're in a general or legislative context, is an absolute must.

11:55 a.m.

NDP

Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC

My final question is for Mr. Roberge. One thing that you talked about in terms of our security is the importance of creating those relationships and collegiality. I'm wondering if you could speak to that. I know that one of the biggest challenges for all of us is that we're not in the same space in the same way that we usually are, which is where we build relationships across party lines. I also think it's important to connect that personal connectedness with our ability to manage security.

Noon

President, Arc4dia

Pierre Roberge

Having been running a decentralized business for 10 years, I know that we need to meet as often as possible as a whole team to build up that collegiality.

In the case of Parliament, what I see you needing to do to avoid future big problems.... I don't think it's a problem at the moment, but there are subtle attacks that could be made. For example, someone could lower the quality of video and connectivity of people temporarily when they're actively debating until it frustrates them and they disconnect. There are very subtle and different levels of attacks that we will be facing in the future.

Noon

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota

Thank you, Mr. Roberge.

Next up is Mr. Brossard for five minutes, please.

Noon

Conservative

John Brassard Conservative Barrie—Innisfil, ON

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses.

Dr. Goodman, you talked about the potential of flexibility and accessibility. On the one hand, you said that you agree that during a crisis it's a good mechanism to move to remote voting. The Constitution dictates that Ottawa is the seat of Parliament, so there are some challenges. You mentioned as well circumstances where an MP may have busy constituency schedules, the issue of maternity leave and the other examples you gave.

However, there are circumstances where members, for example, could use that as a reason not to be in Ottawa, and there may be situations where they do have a busy constituency schedule and need to be back in their ridings and not come to Ottawa. It could happen when there's a close election and they don't want to be in Ottawa, and they would use remote voting as a mechanism to not be back in Ottawa. There could be situations where an MP is facing, for example, very serious criminal charges and doesn't want to face the scrutiny of the parliamentary press gallery.

How would you propose to differentiate between what would be, as you said, those convenient situations and the other types of situations I mentioned that have MPs avoiding being in Ottawa?

Noon

Assistant Professor, Brock University, As an Individual

Nicole Goodman

Thank you very much, MP Brassard, for allowing me the opportunity to clarify.

With respect to the birth of a new child, there's precedent there in other legislatures with proxy voting, and there's a good argument to be made there for extending that to electronic voting.

With respect to individual MPs, I wasn't necessarily thinking of busy schedules, I was thinking more of crises. For example, say there were some kind of flood in an MP's community and that MP needed to be there, or there was a big fire or some other kind of crisis. With COVID now we think of ourselves as having a macro-crisis, but I'm thinking of a micro-crisis in a constituency, “micro” being small because it affects a particular area. That could be very well defined so that it wouldn't be taken advantage of.

With respect to sickness, no example comes to mind right now, but I have seen or heard of situations where a member was battling cancer and either wasn't able to attend a vote, to participate, or some members have come while they are very ill to vote just once. In cases of sickness like that, the member could stay in the hospital or at home and rest and be able to participate. I'm thinking of extenuating circumstances, not just busy schedules.

Noon

Conservative

John Brassard Conservative Barrie—Innisfil, ON

Thank you for that clarification.

The other question I'd like to ask is of Mr. Roberge.

Some of the existing mechanisms that we have include, for example, pairing of MP voting, and there's the potential for proxy voting and for applied votes.

On the issue of hardware and software, what would be necessary to ensure the integrity of remote voting, and what financial costs would we be looking at, other than the normal mechanisms that exist, to develop or create that type of technology?

Noon

President, Arc4dia

Pierre Roberge

Thank you. That's a good question.

With regard to the costs, I will go in reverse order. They could be kept to a minimum if we played the cards of redundancy, where we have two or three voting mechanisms and make sure that a vote makes it through and is reliable. That way we could use a less costly solution.

In Eastern European countries, they have SIM cards in their cell phones they use for signing transactions and documents, or things like that. They're effectively really cheap, and the cost of implementation is relatively cheap as well.

Technologically, for voting, it's fairly inexpensive to implement and very efficient.

12:05 p.m.

Conservative

John Brassard Conservative Barrie—Innisfil, ON

My next question is for Mr. Morden.

Mr. Morden, you talked about radical adaptation in radical times. I think that's what you said in your presentation. We can all agree that these are not normal times.

We heard in earlier evidence—and perhaps you followed this from Great Britain—that the time to look at these types of changes is not at the height of a crisis but afterwards. Would you agree that the right time to look at the potential changes Parliament could enact to deal with future crises is when we're in normal circumstances?

12:05 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota

Unfortunately, that's all the time we have.

Mr. Morden, can you answer that with a yes or no?

12:05 p.m.

Research Director, Samara Centre for Democracy

Michael Morden

I'm not sure. I guess the answer is no.

12:05 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota

Next we have Dr. Duncan.

12:05 p.m.

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good morning to all of our witnesses. Thank you for coming and for your tremendous expertise.

I'll start by saying that democracy does not have to stop in the face of a crisis. We can rise to this challenge. We can evolve during this unprecedented time, and I think we have been evolving.

I have a limited amount of time for questions, so for the first few questions I'm going to be looking for yes-or-no answers. I'll begin with Mr. Morden, if I may.

Mr. Morden, do you believe it's possible for members of Parliament to regularly attend Parliament in person right now, with the travel restrictions, health vulnerability and concerns that their returning home from Ottawa will expose constituents in vulnerable areas? I'd like a yes or no, please.

12:05 p.m.

Research Director, Samara Centre for Democracy

12:05 p.m.

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

Mr. Morden, do you believe that all members should be empowered through remote voting, yes or no?

12:05 p.m.

Research Director, Samara Centre for Democracy

12:05 p.m.

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

I'll turn to Dr. Essex, if I may.

Dr. Essex, did you and Dr. Goodman argue in Policy Options on March 25 that online voting is “entirely possible for MPs”? I'd like a yes or no, please.

12:05 p.m.

Associate Professor, University of Western Ontario, As an Individual

Aleksander Essex

I believe that was in the title of the article, so yes.

12:05 p.m.

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

Dr. Essex, did you write in the same article that “Parliamentary voting...is entirely workable from a cybersecurity perspective”, yes or no?

12:05 p.m.

Associate Professor, University of Western Ontario, As an Individual

Aleksander Essex

Under the right conditions and with careful design, yes.

12:05 p.m.

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

Dr. Goodman, you've spoken about this today. Did you write that it is possible to verify an MP's vote online?

12:05 p.m.

Assistant Professor, Brock University, As an Individual

Nicole Goodman

Yes, with the right security software.

12:05 p.m.

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

Dr. Goodman, did you write that “the federal government has the resources to provide MPs with the necessary cybersecurity infrastructure to ensure the protection of electronic information”? Again, I'd like a yes or no, please.

12:05 p.m.

Assistant Professor, Brock University, As an Individual

Nicole Goodman

Yes, with outside consultation with experts who have done this before.