Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 12th, 2020

[Stéphane Perrault]

As we said earlier, this was a fixed-date election with a majority government, so we had many years to plan. Of course, when you have those years to plan, you take advantage of that.

In the summer leading up to the election—so in the summer of 2018—we considered the situation of the conflict with Jewish holidays. We had some conversations with members of the Jewish community. Our impression there, at that point, was that having some accommodation for observant members of the Jewish community would be satisfactory.

Based on that—and I'll come back to that in a moment—we began a number of planning exercises that were important for the population as a whole. We began having conversations with school boards to have PD days to allow access to schools, which are accessible, and to have young workers, who are typically good workers. We examined the polling divisions and used some technology to do some proximity analysis in terms of potential polling locations. The entire planning of the election was based from that point on—basically from September 2018—on a fixed date of October 21.

In the spring of 2019, I started receiving representations that there should be a move of the date, that it would be preferable—that, in fact, it would be necessary—for some voters, and particularly one potential candidate, to have a different voting day.

At that point, I made what I consider a very difficult decision: to maintain my recommendations, to basically not recommend to the Governor General a change of polling day, but to have a very ambitious action plan for accommodating observant Jewish electors. In 54 ridings where there was a 1% Jewish population, we engaged with the representatives of the Jewish community. We offered a range of services, and they determined for their community what was most suitable to them.

I can say, looking at the turnout, that there was a small downward variation, but not a major variation. It was a 2% or 3%, sometimes 4%, variation in the top 10 ridings where there was an important Jewish community.

I think the way forward is that we need to do a better job at engaging earlier. If we're going to have a fixed-date election, we need to clarify these issues well in advance. The law currently provides that I can make a recommendation to the Governor General until, I believe, some time in August—August 5 or something like that. That is much too late in the calendar, so we will need to revisit that. We need to do a better job of consulting, but we need a process that provides certainty for everybody a year out from the election.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Perrault.

The last question I have is also.... I'd like to give you an opportunity to talk about the confusion that happened towards the election day about NGOs advocating for causes or issues that they care about and whether that would have been considered an election interference or expense or not.

[Stéphane Perrault]

It was a bit of a unique circumstance. There was confusion as we got close to the issue of the writ. During the pre-writ period, there was confusion on the rules governing third parties. This was what I would call second-hand confusion in the sense that, because of the new rules on third party expenses other than advertising—especially for the pre-writ period but also the new rules during the writ period—we did a fair amount of outreach and information to alert third parties, which can be anybody, individuals or groups, about the new rules and the fact that they need to be sure to comply with the new requirements.

Through those training and awareness sessions, some people became aware—through second-hand confusion—of the rules, and the confusion that arose concerned pre-existing rules, rules that have been in place for 20 years that have not changed regarding issue advertising. There was this impression that nobody could talk about the environment or a particular issue without running afoul of the legislation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Mr. Duncan.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Thank you very much.

As per usual, I have about 10 questions. I won't get through all of them today, I know, but....

My previous experience before being a member was being a campaign manager three times at the federal level and at the provincial level, so some of my questions are a little more technical. I know that we're meeting later this month, and I have a full list to go over with you on some things.

I want to build a little on the social media influence and your comments on voter registration and getting people there. I agree with the initiative or the goal. I think that the way of going about it—obviously, you pulled back—wasn't the best way.

From a technical perspective, what work do you do with post-secondary institutions in advance? Are there privacy rights issues that you have in terms of going to, for example, Carleton University, where I went? Do you go to the residence organization or association and say, “Give us a list two weeks before the writ drops of the people who are currently in this building”, or does privacy mean that they can't give you that information? Is that an issue? There are seniors homes—and it goes on and on—where this is an opportunity. Can you outline what that is?

[Stéphane Perrault]

Privacy rules—typically provincial privacy rules—restrict the ability of institutions, be they seniors homes, be they universities, to give us information about their communities, their students or their residents in some cases.

We do have our own data from the voters list of course, and we do target revision in seniors homes. On campuses it's a bit different. On campus, students sometimes live in residence and sometimes they live in the city. In the city they may be in their home riding or they may be in another riding. It's a much more fluid—

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

[Inaudible—Editor] to vote in that case.

Just knowing the limited amount of time, you don't go to a university residence and ask to be given their list, or you don't have the power to do that.

[Stéphane Perrault]

No, we don't.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Could there be something, a recommendation or a willingness you would like to have? Wouldn't that eliminate the problem of your having to go door to door, if we could get through the privacy issues, by just asking if they could provide a list at certain times?

If the legislation says you have the right to do this for electoral purposes, would that not solve a lot of time and work and effort?

[Stéphane Perrault]

It may create other issues, because the provincial legislation would bind the authorities. The federal one, if it's written properly, would override the provincial ones, but in practice this may cause confusion and concern.

I'm not closed to it. We can look at that. Again, the issue of youth registration is an important one. We've made some good progress. We've gone from 72% to 78%, which is significant. We do have polling places in university residences, and that works well. The issue is more about the others who are not in residence.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

That's fair.

Also I will say that I equate the exact same challenge of university residences to seniors homes as well. It's a little different in terms of how to get those lists, and I'll comment on that further.

What's your relationship with the provinces? Do you have any form of relationship whatsoever, in any way, with Elections Ontario, Élections Québec, Elections B.C.?

[Stéphane Perrault]

Absolutely. We have ongoing discussions with each of the electoral management bodies. We've created a secretariat to collaborate more closely.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Do you share any data, not just voter statistics per se, but again, the national list of electors? Does that go back and forth? Is there tight cohesion with that?

[Stéphane Perrault]

There is. It varies from province to province. There are some slight variations, but for the most part, yes, we do receive and give data on the voters from the national register of electors.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

On cybersecurity, you mentioned that there weren't many issues. That's good. Part of the challenge is.... I'm wondering if it's going to be in your report. In my understanding the Ontario election in 2018 used more technology. They had computers at voting stations. They used voting tabulators. You had done a trial with that, and I believe you pulled back on going further with that because of cybersecurity concerns.

Can you elaborate a little on that? Can you confirm that the experiment or that aspect will be included in your report on why it didn't work and what we might need to do to get there to try that going forward?

[Stéphane Perrault]

I'm happy to talk about it, but it won't be in my report. It isn't in my report because we never even made it to the pilot, which is why I didn't use it in the election.

The solution, which was an electronic poll book, not for tabulation but for processing the voters, was not ready to be used, partly for security reasons but for other reasons as well, in pilots, in by-elections in the year leading up to the election. That being the case, I was not prepared, not having tested it, to deploy it in a general election.

Moving forward...and again, in a minority there is a limit to what we can do, but we will need to pursue that avenue, do some by-elections and see how we can leverage that to reduce the footprint of the workforce.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Again, in our meeting I may be advocating to include some sort of aspect on that, because it is an important point going forward for future elections, those challenges and how it didn't get there.

I'll just note that in Ontario tens of thousands, I will say, of polling sites used this technology, I don't think without issue, yet at the federal level it couldn't even get to a pilot, so if you had concerns and did not get to a pilot, how did Elections Ontario have thousands of these in use in the province in June 2018?

Again, that may speak to some differences they have in what they consider cybersecurity, but I do think it might be something to pick up on.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

We're over time at this point, though.

[Stéphane Perrault]

That's my fault, sorry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you. They were good questions.

Go ahead, Mr. Turnbull.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Perrault, I just want to say thank you for being here and for the work that you do. To echo my colleague, Mr. Alghabra, we really appreciate the work you do.

So far in your answers I've heard a real commitment to constant improvement, which I really appreciate. I have three questions. Let's see if we can get through all of them, but I'll definitely probably get to ask two.

Related to contingency planning, I know there were extreme weather events. In Ontario we actually had the potential for a teachers' strike leading up to the election, which would have caused quite a bit of reshuffling to identify additional sites for polling stations, etc. For me these were top of mind. I found the returning officer in Whitby, in my riding, to be incredibly responsive to the concerns we had and very communicative in terms of identifying potential alternative sites.

With coronavirus being a major topic of discussion right now and a cause for concern, and the possibility at any time of a snap election, I wonder if you could go a little more in depth and tell us about any situational analysis or scenario building that you do and how you come up with mitigation strategies specific to the kinds of things we might anticipate, such as the outbreak of a virus, for example.

[Stéphane Perrault]

A federal election is a very large undertaking, and you can't easily pivot on a dime. You referred to the strike. We had issued voter information cards all across Ontario when the strike emerged, and we came very close to having to reissue three million VICs in the Toronto area. I was personally calling all the schools and school boards to make sure we had the.... It's very hard to pivot.

There is provision in the legislation for cancelling an election, which is the last thing we want to do. In Manitoba we had to consider that. The question is whether or not we can offer voting services to Canadians in a particular electoral district. We go out of our way and we adapt the rules, which I can do under legislation, to adjust the service offering.

Right now we have two tasks. One is beginning to look at how we could better adjust to weather incidents. I think what we did in this election—for a range of reasons, not just weather incidents—was to use special ballot kiosks for the Jewish communities but also in Manitoba for the line workers and the emergency workers. We used special ballots to create kiosks where they could vote out of riding.

We'll need to explore how we can better prepare for that. One of the challenges is the workforce. In Manitoba we had to fly our headquarters staff into Manitoba because there was nobody left on the ground to work at those polls. We were literally pulling people from the floors in Gatineau and putting them on flights to Manitoba, so there's a limit to what we can do.

In terms of the virus, we are in contact with health authorities. I know that next week, for example, in France they're having municipal elections. They've decided to go forward. They will provide some hand sanitizer and they're asking their voters to bring their own pencils and pens to vote, so we'll examine how that works.

One of the questions I have is—and I don't have the answer yet—does it make sense for Elections Canada to procure a whole lot of hand sanitizer at a time when it could be better used in hospitals or other places in the country? Is it for me to stockpile masks or hand sanitizer, or should it not be for the government? We have to have those discussions and decide what the best way forward is.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you for that answer.

One other thing that you mentioned and that I saw in your report was that there was a larger proportion of workers who were recruited and who did not show up—between 5% and 15% as I understand it. I think you made a comment about maybe operating with fewer people in the future. I don't know if that's the overall strategy for how to move forward, or whether it's just increasing engagement and ensuring that people show up.

Could you tell us a little about what you plan to do to address that gap, which is probably a major concern for you?

[Stéphane Perrault]

It is a major concern and the answer would be both.

We need to look at our recruitment strategy. There were possibly—and again, we'll do the analysis for the next report—a lot of unintended consequences. For this election, returning officers were allowed to hire from within neighbouring districts. We know anecdotally—and we'll get some data on this—that some people signed up to work in two different districts and then chose to go to one at the last minute because their friend was working at the same one. We need to have systems in place that flag these issues more centrally to avoid this. These are the kinds of issues that we need to look at.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Mr. Perrault.

We'll go with Madame Normandin, for one minute please.