Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Nov. 26th, 2020

[Nicole Brayiannis]

I would suggest that having a central place where students can go to access this information would be a huge benefit and a huge step forward. Students are really busy, honestly. I know that sounds like an easy excuse, but when it comes to parties putting forward these 100-page documents about what they want to do within their terms, that's not accessible.

There need to be simple language and simple ways to interact with the election so that students feel empowered and feel that by contributing, their voice will matter. I think that hasn't been there in the last couple of years.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Thank you.

I think that's all my time, Madam Chair. I do have more, if you want.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Actually, that's all the time we have for all the witnesses.

I'd like to thank you so much for your participation today. It was really great testimony we were able to get out of your opening statements and the lines of questions.

Mr. Clerk, I do think we have all the other witnesses in the room now.

[The Clerk]

Yes, Madam Chair. I'm just letting them in now.

I'll do a quick sound check for the one witness who wasn't here earlier, and then you'll be able to get under way.

Madam Chair, we tested the other two witnesses earlier, so, you're ready to go with the second panel.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Okay, thank you so much.

Thank you, witnesses, for waiting patiently. So that we have a smooth meeting, I should state right at the outset that we have interpretation services available at the bottom of your screen. Please pick the language you intend on speaking in. If you have an updated version of Zoom, I'm told there should be no issues in picking “floor”, but if you lack the proper updates, then it's best to select the language you intend to speak in. We'll do the best we can if you need to end up switching back and forth. It is your right, of course, to speak in both official languages, so be mindful of that.

All the questions should be addressed through the chair. Each organization will have five minutes for opening statements.

From People First of Canada, we have two witnesses here today. We have Mr. Earle, the president, and we have the executive director, Ms. Fletcher. From Canada Without Poverty, representing that wonderful organization, we have Ms. Renaud, the national coordinator.

Thank you to all of you for being present for our study on conducting a federal election during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mr. Earle, are you the one who is going to make official remarks today?

[Kory Earle, President, People First of Canada]

Thank you, Chair.

It will be Shelley and I going back and forth in our five minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Okay, perfect. You'll be sharing the slot.

Thank you. You can go ahead.

[Kory Earle]

Good afternoon, Chair, and members of the committee. Thank you so much for inviting us here today to speak on behalf of People First of Canada. My name is Kory Earle, and I am the president. I am joined here today by Shelley Fletcher, who is our executive director.

People First of Canada is the national voice for people labelled with an intellectual disability. People First is unique because we are the only non-profit organization to have a board made up completely of people labelled with an intellectual disability. Our board includes people from across Canada, representing provincial and territorial chapter organizations, all working for inclusion and accessibility in their communities.

People First of Canada is founded on the belief that people who have life experiences with an intellectual or developmental disability are the best people to represent themselves and other people with intellectual disabilities. Our membership closely follows the idea of “nothing about us without us”.

Currently, Shelley and I sit on Elections Canada's AGDI committee, the Advisory Group for Disability Issues.

We appreciate the opportunity to be part of the national conversation and share our feedback and recommendations with the committee.

People First of Canada has also worked with Elections Canada on the ground during the past two federal elections. We have been contracted to raise awareness and inform people living with an intellectual disability on where, when and the ways to register and vote. People First members put together 22 events in eight provinces and two territories. Our work is meant to reduce the barriers to voting faced by Canadians with an intellectual disability. We are happy to note that we have succeeded.

I will now pass it over to Shelley.

[Shelley Fletcher, Executive Director, People First of Canada]

Thank you, Kory.

We recognize that the COVID-19 pandemic could affect how the federal election is conducted. The special report by Canada's Chief Electoral Officer highlighted three main challenges as the provision of accessible, safe and secure voting services, the availability of election workers and the availability of poll locations.

We acknowledge that these would be challenges for everyone, but we know that they will have an increased impact on the people we are here advocating for today. Voting can be a challenge for people with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities even without a pandemic. It's important to consider their barriers to voting.

In considering the special report, People First of Canada strongly agrees with the statement, “Elections Canada is of the opinion that a variety of voting options continues to be the preferred path.” Having a variety of voting options is important to people who have issues with accessibility and transportation. We strongly support having as many accessible polling locations as possible.

Accessibility is one of the biggest priorities for our members, both accessibility around physical space as well as having a variety of accessible voting tools. We shouldn't sacrifice the number of polling locations across this country or the level of accessibility at polls. While we very much support the suggestion of having two days of polling, along with an increase to 16-hour days, one concern that may arise is the issue of transportation, particularly in rural communities. We would recommend consideration be given to moving the voting days from Saturday and Sunday to Friday and Saturday. Given the transportation issues faced in rural communities, we know they are even more limited on weekends. Having one weekday and one weekend might help with that concern.

Also, many Canadians view Sunday as a day of worship, so by moving to a Friday and Saturday vote day it would take the criticism off Elections Canada and the federal government.

Along with longer polling days, we support moving to shorter shifts, two eight-hour shifts. Our membership has specifically said that one of the reasons they don't apply to jobs with Elections Canada is the length of the shift. This would help address the anticipated challenges of finding available election workers.

Finally, the special report states that facility administrators will be reluctant to allow election workers to operate a poll in the lobby or common area, so election workers would go bed to bed.

We recommend that Elections Canada use more temporary, pop-up voting locations. This has been done on university campuses, so why not increase this to include long-term care facilities, day programs for people with disabilities and institutions? This could include using movable or temporary structures such as PODS, which could be placed outside different locations. They could be easily sanitized. They could be easily moved from one location to another giving vulnerable people an increased opportunity to vote.

[Kory Earle]

Thank you, Shelley.

We appreciate the opportunity to share with you our recommendations today on conducting a federal election in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We have come here today to advocate for those who have great barriers to voting, but who also have the right to contribute to the election process in a safe and accessible way. We hope that our comments will be helpful to the committee, so that Canada can support a federal election that is accessible and safe for all citizens.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you.

That is exactly our intention in inviting you here today. It is to make sure that we have a broad scope of perspectives to make sure that everyone is included.

Next, we have Ms. Renaud, please.

[Emilly Renaud, National Coordinator, Canada Without Poverty]

Thank you, Chair, Vice-Chairs, Clerk and members of the committee for inviting me to speak today on behalf of Canada Without Poverty.

For 50 years CWP has represented the interests of people living in poverty and has been led by people who have personally experienced poverty. Our work is guided by our lived experience. CWP operates on the belief that poverty is a violation of human rights. We seek to eradicate poverty through education and to promote meaningful public policy action on poverty-related issues.

People in Canada living in poverty have faced devastating hardship as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, women, racialized and immigrant communities, indigenous peoples, persons living with disabilities, young adults, seniors and folks living with intersectional identities have suffered the greatest impacts to their health, employment, housing and overall well-being. These communities in the past have also faced barriers exercising our most fundamental right as citizens: the right to vote.

CWP recently launched our poverty pandemic watch project and released a report identifying the various areas that pandemic relief policies have failed to address, including loss of income or reduced income, limited housing and emergency shelters, and food insecurity during the pandemic. Our findings detail the profound hardships that diverse communities in poverty are experiencing during this pandemic. These unique stressors can prevent people from feeling empowered in voting in an upcoming election.

We have several recommendations to safeguard and enhance voting participation for voters in poverty.

First, maximize the capacity to process and receive mail-in ballots in order to make voting accessible to those with shift work, living in remote communities, or needing to practice extra precaution because they, or someone in their household, are at greater risk of severe COVID-19 symptoms.

Extend early voting periods to accommodate those who are self-employed or are in shift work and may be not able to vote during the official voting days.

Moving the voting day to two eight-hour periods on Saturday and Sunday is a good step, but we feel it ignores precarious part-time shift workers who are more likely to work on weekends and are less likely to feel confident in confronting their employees to leave work early or for a long period to go vote. Further, it can be a barrier to single parents with school-aged children. We recommend extending official voting days to eight-hour windows on Saturday, Sunday and Monday—importantly, including a weekday in the voting days.

As our other witnesses have noted, translating information about party platforms and candidates to languages other than English and French will be essential, as will distributing these materials to communities where English and French are not the first language of the local population.

Similarly, translate all voting instructions into more languages and ensure that public health guideline signs at polling stations are translated based on local language demographics.

Allow incarcerated voters to request information about their local MPs and party platforms in order to overcome the barriers they face in accessing localized news media while incarcerated.

Finally, ensure that shelters, food banks and service centres can act as polling stations as long as they can meet those health guidelines for physical distancing. This will encourage voting in extremely marginalized and impoverished communities.

Of all our recommendations, CWP would like to stress the importance of mail-in ballots in ensuring that voters in poverty can vote, as they do not require voters to miss work, travel to polling stations, and risk COVID-19 transmission. Anti-poverty advocates across Canada have expressed that mail-in ballots will be key to engaging people in poverty to vote, both during the pandemic and in future elections.

Making voting processes, instructions and information as accessible as possible is necessary for encouraging and empowering marginalized and disadvantage people to participate in our democracy. It is vital that they exercise their right to elect leaders who they feel will represent and fulfill their needs as marginalized citizens.

I thank you again for your invitation today. I welcome any questions from the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you. That was excellent.

We'll start our six-minute round with Ms. Vecchio.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thanks, everybody, for coming today to provide some additional insight.

I'll start off with Canada Without Poverty.

I was fortunate enough to work in a constituency office for a number of years prior to becoming a member of Parliament. A lot of times when I was dealing with government services, one of the biggest challenges people had was getting proper identification.

What methods do you have to help people get the identification they need? I know you look at expired health cards or loss of birth certificates, and I know many churches have assisted with some of those additional costs. What is your protocol to make sure people have appropriate ID so that they can even go to the hospital and get served?

[Emilly Renaud]

Canada Without Poverty hasn't done extensive research into these issues. However, we witnessed a lot of people with lived experience, noting that they have had issues accessing identification. This has been particularly stressful in accessing pandemic relief programs.

I think just being able to increase awareness about how to access government IDs that allow them to vote.... Perhaps mail reminders out to communities in poverty, with detailed instructions in languages that are accessible and relevant to those populations to outline the instructions on how to attain these IDs, and doing this as ahead of time as possible. Sometimes it can take six weeks to two months to produce these IDs and deliver them to people.

Further, as you mentioned, let these communities in poverty now access these IDs at cost since renewing identification can be costly. Even if it's only $40, sometimes this is a big chunk of someone's monthly income.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Absolutely, for sure.

I remember one time having to get seven passports just so my children had some photo ID. I remember that bill was pretty hefty. I'm a very fortunate person, so I can only imagine the difficulty for some in getting ID or putting food on the table.

Continuing with Canada Without Poverty, with the shelter system, do you know if there's any framework there to try to help get those types of things, like identification, as one of the priorities?

[Emilly Renaud]

I know shelter workers can be there to assist people in retrieving their identification if it's been lost and they've never renewed their identification. We have amazing social workers in our shelters who do assist with shelter users in this process.

Further, it's great that shelters can be the primary residence where a lot of shelter users can register to vote. I believe there are already these great processes and systems in place that are helping to reach those extremely marginalized people who are homeless, women and gender non-conforming people who are fleeing situations of violence.

We also have to note that a lot of homeless people don't use shelters for various reasons, because they use drugs or feel unsafe, especially during times of the pandemic, when shelters have had to reduce capacity. A lot of shelters have fewer beds. Emergency winter shelters have fewer beds. Also, a lot of people are couch surfing and living in tent encampments.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Absolutely. Everything you're saying makes sense. A lot of times you look at what people need for identification to be able to vote. I think of the bigger picture. What do people need when they go to the hospital? What do they need when they do different things like register for school or for benefits?

It's not just about one time every four years needing identification. It's about needing identification 365 days a year, all of the time. I think that needs to be easier. Rather than change rules on what we do, we need to make sure people are able to get proper identification.

Thank you very much for talking about that.

I'll go now to Shelley or Kory, whoever chooses to answer this question. I greatly appreciate your both coming and sharing your information.

When it comes to ballots, I know we've had lots of discussion on what ballots should look like. People have talked about photographs, Braille and a variety of things we may need. What are some of the things you think we can do to enhance the ballot so that it makes it easier for those to vote who may have a little bit of a disability?

[Kory Earle]

Thank you so much for the question.

Across this country, 42% of Canadians have literacy problems. We've really been advocating to have photos of the candidates on the ballots, so that people who are marginalized and new Canadians can identify them. This would make a huge difference for them when they go to the polling station.

[Shelley Fletcher]

Just to add to that, through the work that we've been doing on the AGDI committee, this has been number one on our agenda since we joined Elections Canada, and we talk about it every opportunity that we have. We are very clear on the implications of changing the voting ballot to include photos. We are determined to keep advocating for that.

As Kory said, the illiteracy rates in Canada are ridiculously high. This is not just about people with intellectual and developmental disabilities; this is about a whole bunch of other Canadians who don't read or who don't have good literacy skills. As I'm looking around the screen and I'm making notes about who's on here, I'm having to reread some of your names three or four times to print them down, and I'm thinking, “How do you say that?” We know that names can be very confusing.

The other thing I wanted to say is that Quebec did this; it's been done in Quebec. They did have photos on ballots. We know it can be done. We know that we need MP support to do it. That's one of the things that Elections Canada has said to us, that we need to start talking to MPs about it, because there have been conversations with some MPs and they're very opposed to it for a lot of reasons.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Ms. Fletcher. That's all the time we have.

Mr. Turnbull, go ahead.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thanks to everybody for being here today. It's really incredible work that your organizations do, and I want to applaud all of the efforts you make to support Canadians. I've heard about your organizations for many years and the great work you do, so I have a lot of admiration for you and the work you do.

I have questions, as always, and I'll start with People First of Canada and Mr. Earle.

In terms of the variety of voting options, generally we look at physical polling locations, and then we've been talking a lot about mail-in ballots. Are there any other voting options that you would like to see this committee consider?

[Kory Earle]

We really want to make sure that voting is in group homes, institutions and long-term care homes to be able to have people have that opportunity to vote. As Shelley mentioned earlier, sometimes the challenge in different areas is transportation to get to the voting stations, so if it's more accessible to them, I think that's really huge. Shelley may want to add more on that. Long-term care, group homes and institutions, some of them don't have that as is, so it would provide that opportunity.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thanks.

Ms. Fletcher, do you have anything to add?

[Shelley Fletcher]

We've given some thought to the possibilities around telephone voting, where people would call in and have to answer specific security questions that Elections Canada would have. We've had some conversations around that, and I think there are lots of barriers that might be in place for people, particularly with literacy issues. They would have to know who the candidates are who are running in their area, whereas sometimes, if people have an actual physical ballot in front of them, they will recognize the name.

I don't really think I have anything else concrete to add to that.

Thank you.