Evidence of meeting #8 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 election.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
I have 30 seconds remaining. Have you done or will you do any kinds of exit interviews with returning officers to discover best practices and to learn?
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
Every returning officer has written to us a post-election report on their experience, positive and negative. That's critical to us. We have a summary of that and we can share it if you're interested.
We were planning, until yesterday, to have face-to-face meetings with all returning officers in April, but with the current COVID-19 situation we've decided to cancel those. We'll be having teleconference and video calls. We've had to adjust, but we have reports from every returning officer.
Liberal
Bloc
Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I would like to begin with questions on party funding. An article published in La Presse on April 1, 2019, unless I am mistaken, talked about the possibility for a minor to fund a political party. The article reminded readers that the situation is different in Quebec, where only adults can donate to a party.
The Bloc Québécois has censured itself, in a way, by accepting only donations from people aged 16 and over, as that is the minimum age for acquiring a party membership card.
I would like to hear your comments on the possibility of amending the federal legislation to avoid minors being able to participate in the funding of a political party, as we can assume that this could lead to the practice of using other people's names in some cases.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
I don't have a definitive stand on that issue, but I am certainly not against the legislation being reviewed in that respect. Donations can be a way for young people under the age of 18 to participate in the democratic process, as in the case of membership cards that can be obtained starting at the age of 16. Care must simply be taken not to set an age that is too high.
Furthermore, as you say, we must avoid people using other people's names. If someone's age seems to be implausible at first glance, it will give rise to suspicion that could lead to an investigation by the elections commissioner.
Bloc
Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC
To your knowledge, have there been cases where very young people were investigated? Do you have any statistics on that?
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
I don't have any statistics, but I don't recall any investigations that led to penalties in cases where young people were using other people's names.
I remember the case of a minister whose 16-year-old son made a political contribution, which was reported in the newspapers. That situation is not unusual because there are indeed 16-year-old donors, but I am not aware of any relevant investigations.
Bloc
Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC
My next question is also about public funding. We know that the public funding system that provided subsidies to parties in proportion to the number of votes they had received has been abolished. Do you occasionally conduct studies on the potential cost of reinstituting that public funding system for parties?
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
It would be fairly easy to do that, but the result would depend on the chosen variables and conditions, which may not be the same as those used in the past.
A while ago, we published a study on the impact of various political funding reforms from 2004 to 2014—there were several during that period—including the system of quarterly allowances you are referring to. We also analyzed the consequences of those changes on the party's finances. All that is available on our website.
Bloc
Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC
I will keep to the issue of public funding for parties. I may then move on to another topic.
We see that the vote tends to be increasingly fragmented. We are currently in a context of a minority government, and the parties are splitting votes quite a bit.
As we know that a candidate must obtain 10% of the vote in their riding to be entitled to a reimbursement, would it be a good idea to carry out a study on voting trends—in order words, on the way the vote manifests and the consequences of that minimum threshold of 10% of votes on the party's funding? Should that be reviewed and those requirements adjusted based on the type of electorate?
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
My role consists in providing basic data, and it is up to parliamentarians to examine the issue and determine the correct threshold.
That said, I intend to prepare a cyclical report in order to publish much more data on political funding, among other things, and on trends. We have to leave it to parliamentarians and others to study that data and draw conclusions from it that would help determine whether the current reimbursement ceilings or thresholds are too low or too high and whether they should be reviewed.
I think those conversations can only be held based on evidence.
Bloc
Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC
I will continue on the same topic.
Correct me if I am wrong, but, to obtain a reimbursement on a national level, a party must have secured at least 5%—it may be 2%, I'm not sure—of votes in all the ridings in which it ran a candidate.
In addition to the vote fragmentation, there seems to be some sort of vote regionalization, where regions like the prairies vote mostly Conservative. In those conditions, it seems to be more difficult for a party to reach that threshold in all ridings in which it runs candidates.
On the one hand, do you believe that could also be subject to review? On the other hand, do you have any figures related to that trend?
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
I could pull out figures and we could look at them because we have the voting results. Without getting into financial reports, we can know which parties reached those thresholds.
The threshold is 2% nationally—so 2% of the overall vote or 2% in ridings in which a party ran a candidate. In the case of the Bloc Québécois, the threshold of 5% is likely more relevant. That threshold has been in place for a very long time. The data will enable us to see whether, compared with previous elections, there has been an evolution in terms of parties' eligibility to reimbursements.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
Thank you, Mr. Perrault.
There's not very much time left, 10 seconds.
We'll go to Ms. Blaney.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
Thank you, Chair.
I thank you all so much for being here today.
You talked in your report about Manitoba. I know that in the election of 2019, the Interlake region within the riding of Churchill—Keewatinook Aski in Manitoba had to be evacuated due to a severe snowstorm that hit a lot of communities. The storm impacted largely indigenous communities. As the evacuations took place during early voting, hundreds of voters were not back in their home communities on election day, which meant many first nations were not able to vote. Really, to me, that means they were disenfranchised.
I'm just wondering how Elections Canada has moved with this. Has there been any internal investigation done on what went wrong leading up to this election day in that particular area?
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
I'll say a couple of things. If you look back at what happened in Manitoba, what was unique in this election compared with others in the past—because there have been floods in Manitoba, and there have been evacuations in the past—typically the evacuation was mandatory. This meant that the entire community was brought into, typically, Winnipeg at a single location. What we would do in those cases was essentially transfer the polling place to that location, and we had the entire community. We had the poll workers and the voters.
What was extremely challenging in this election is that the evacuation was not mandatory. Some people left; some people stayed. That was true of voters, and that was true of poll workers. Those who left did not all go to a single location. They were spread out around the Winnipeg area, not in a single location, so we could not use the traditional approach. Also, in some cases, the power was not back on, even on polling day, so it was a prolonged period.
We had a central megapoll in Convocation Hall in Winnipeg for all of the displaced voters, but they had to travel there. There was transportation organized. We also opened the polls in the evacuated communities for the people who stayed behind. Where there was no power, we had to have reduced hours because it was getting dark, there were security concerns and we needed to coordinate the process.
I think, in these very difficult circumstances, we did quite well. If you look at the turnout, there was a small dip in turnout in the communities. Churchill was the most affected. There was an 11% dip, but for the others, we're talking about 3%, which is in line in some cases with what you see in other provinces, and it depends on which province.
I think there was tremendous work done at the local levels. Returning officers shared their staff. They coordinated their work. I'm extremely satisfied with the work that was done.
Looking forward, we had three major weather incidents during the election, and we need to plan for more of that. We had one out east when we tried to open the polls, the RO offices. We had one in Montreal on polling day, and we had Manitoba. This is a significant challenge on the organization and on the workforce, because when these things happen, you lose not just the voters but the workforce as well.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
There was also a record that Elections Canada officials from Ottawa were making decisions and not really listening to the people who were there locally. I'm just wondering how you figure out that process to make sure, because I think this is really important when looking at rural and remote communities, even if they are in a more urbanized Winnipeg area. There are specific things that local people would know and it doesn't sound like the communications.... I'm just wondering. What are you doing to look into improving that communication line?
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
I can assure you that I was on the phone with each returning officer of the affected communities and their teams every day, and sometimes twice a day—every day during the storm period—to understand exactly what the situation was and the extent of the impact on their operations and on their teams. We also had the returning officers from other neighbouring ridings who were not necessarily affected but who were on the calls to help and share polling locations and staff. This happened on a daily basis all the way from the beginning of the storm during the advance polls to the polling day.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
You said transportation was left out after voting. You said earlier that it was not as organized because of the nature of this particular issue. I understand it wasn't mandatory but I'm sure Elections Canada didn't want to decide for people how to make decisions about their safety and well-being.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
I'm just wondering. How did you coordinate to make sure that these people actually had access to the transportation? I would like to hear more on that.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
I'll let my colleague Michel add to my comments, but just to come back, of course, in the past when the evacuation was mandatory it was not mandatory by Elections Canada. It was the local authorities that created a mandatory evacuation. In this case, there was a provincial state-of-emergency but the evacuations were not mandatory, so we had a fluid situation with people basically going everywhere.
Also, through our connections with the Government of Canada security organizations, the RCMP and the GOC network, we had some intelligence on the situation of the power, on the situations on the ground. We had a network of partners that helped us understand exactly what the situation was.
On the transport, Michel, perhaps you have information, but we can come back to this with more information.
Michel Roussel Deputy Chief Electoral Officer, Electoral Events and Innovation, Elections Canada
It was arranged by the Red Cross in Winnipeg. In the various locations where we knew there were evacuees, we made arrangements with the Red Cross to provide transportation a number of times during election day to take them to Convocation Hall to vote.