Procedure and House Affairs Committee on July 6th, 2020

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

First of all, I wanted to underscore the points that others have made, especially Rachel Blaney. We're both on Vancouver Island, and I have to say that the Minister of Health for B.C. has asked the federal government for evidence that it's safe to pack the airplanes. I haven't seen that evidence. I don't think it's safe, so I'd ask my dear friends in the Conservative Party not to hope that I have to get sick to prove that I was right to be very concerned, so concerned that I've paid personally for the seat next to me that I'll be taking today to get to Ottawa in hopes that I might get some physical distancing.

My question is this: Has the Speaker been in touch with the British Columbia legislature, which is currently using Zoom for voting? I'm wondering if there has been a confirmation. As far as I know, that's the first provincial legislature in Canada that is using distance voting so that people are not physically congregating in Victoria.

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

We haven't been in contact as of yet. There has been some contact back and forth with many provinces. B.C. is one that is on our radar for the next week or so, and we plan on asking how it has gone and how it's worked. It's definitely something that we've discussed with other jurisdictions, but we want to make sure that we get all the input that we can beforehand.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you so much, Ms. May.

Mr. Tochor, would you like another minute? We had just gone over the five-minute mark there, but you hadn't had your complete six minutes. If you want another minute, you can go ahead with another question.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

My other question would be along the lines of the different options on cost. I'm sorry to be a stickler and a Scrooge here on rating the costs associated with the decisions this committee will make.

The most affordable one is a proxy vote, which seemingly all parties can agree on and which doesn't cost the taxpayer a dime, or some parties have put forward developing an electronic solution. Is there a middle ground? Maybe that's the pairing or the queuing of people.

Mr. Speaker, could you comment? Is there a middle-costed one that would cost in between the proxy and the luxury of an electronic voting app that allows you to vote from anywhere in the world? What would be the middle option on this?

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

That's a good question. I'll be honest with you. We haven't really looked at it from a cost perspective. It's more from an efficiency perspective, basically following the directions given by this committee and by the government and opposition House leaders in their letters. That's where we look at all the options that way.

Once we have all the options defined and we know what's being offered, then we can decide. Then we can cost them out and find out exactly for a final decision, but at this point, I don't have details on it.

It sounds like what you're saying makes sense. One is less expensive than the other. That would be the logical assumption, but what I've found with assumptions sometimes is that I'm not always right when I assume one thing and then find out that we didn't take everything into consideration. A lot of work has been done in the background for both of those cases to make sure that they are implementable.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Along those lines—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

That's all the time we have.

Next up is Mr. Turnbull, please.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

Mr. Aubé, I have a couple more questions for you.

For starters, I think the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security recently certified in camera video conferencing. Is that correct?

[Stéphan Aubé]

Yes, they did.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Great.

How would you compare the level of security needed for a public electronic vote in comparison to an in camera video conference meeting? Would you say that the in camera meeting requires a higher level of security than a public vote?

[Stéphan Aubé]

I wouldn't want to compare them, Mr. Turnbull. What I would say is that both require the level of security for the task at hand, sir.

We have been engaging also with the Communications Security Establishment on electronic voting. We've been meeting with them. They've worked with us to validate our tool box, validate the tool kit that we want to use, if ever we want to move forward with an application.

We certainly feel that the proper security measures and security controls could be put in place to make this happen, recognizing what we own here at the House of Commons.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

What level of security certification would we seek for an electronic voting system, if we developed one?

[Stéphan Aubé]

I would say that having the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security act as an auditor for the infrastructure that we're putting in place would certainly be the appropriate level of security for such an app, sir.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Okay, great.

I know Mr. Jones testified that the House of Commons would rank as one of the top organizations in the country in terms of IT security. Would you agree with that?

[Stéphan Aubé]

I think we pride ourselves on our security, sir.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Great.

Just to go back to this, the voting we're talking about is legislative voting. It's a public vote. We've heard that there are solutions out there. The U.K. obviously developed one that wasn't used but now is being used by the House of Lords. It is great to hear that that effort has not gone to waste. Members can log in. They can vote. They can confirm their vote. They can even view the public disclosure on the website of how they voted, to double-check it.

What kind of real interference could we have here? Mr. Aubé, can you tell me? I mean, the results are the results. If they're double-verified, how can someone interfere with our democratic process?

[Stéphan Aubé]

Mr. Turnbull, I believe that's the aim we're shooting for, sir. Excuse the expression, but that's the aim of the architecture. That way, there are multiple validations.

The only place where we feel there still could be a potential risk is someone trying to prevent someone else from voting, but we feel secure that the results will be the appropriate results. I would just say that if someone, such as a state-sponsored actor, tried to prevent someone from participating in the voting process...but this is a very minimal risk, we believe, sir, in the discussions we've had at this stage.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Could we not have a phone line system so that if someone were prevented from using the web-based tool, they could phone in and log their vote that way, in those very extreme and improbable circumstances that you mentioned?

[Stéphan Aubé]

You could, sir.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Okay, great.

I know that the House administration and your department pride themselves on reacting quickly and having really robust monitoring of all activity. I know we've had other members ask about that today. I know that you've highlighted in the past how a quick reaction time is key.

Can you speak to how quickly you think we could be reacting to any kind of threats or interruptions that may occur?

[Stéphan Aubé]

The plan, sir, if we decide to move forward with this, is that we would have people looking at real-time monitoring during these voting processes, sir, so that we could actually oversee and ensure that everything is properly happening during the voting process, both from a support perspective and also from a security perspective—hence the time frames that we've asked for to initiate the votes, so that we can turn our eyes to the voting process from a security perspective, Mr. Turnbull.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you.

The last question is for the Speaker, and maybe Mr. Dufresne, Mr. Robert or anybody else who wants to respond. What are the repercussions of a member of Parliament falsifying their identity? Let's say they wanted to give their PIN and contact information to somebody else. What would actually be the repercussions of doing something like that? I would think they would be pretty high. Can anyone speak to that?

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

It's a question of privilege. Basically, it would be contempt of the House. It would be very severe, and actions would have to be taken accordingly.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Based on that, do you think that most members...? I think you said they are quite honourable and that you don't question their integrity.

What do you think the chances are that members are going to put themselves, our democratic process and their integrity at risk by not wanting to log in and getting their kid, their wife or somebody else to log in and vote for them? Do you think that's really likely?

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

I can't say anything about the likelihood. All I can tell you is that I trust the members and their honour and integrity, and I would have to go with that.

Just as with anything else, when laws are put in place, they're not put in for the majority; they're put in for the exceptions, those who are going to break those laws. Overall, I have a lot of trust in members of Parliament, regardless of what party they're from or what their beliefs are. It is something that I believe is tantamount to being a member of Parliament.