Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Oct. 20th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Mr. Turnbull, I know you keep getting interrupted, but there's a lot of static from your microphone. I'm concerned that the interpreters may be having a difficult time because of it.

I know in the past that unplugging one's microphone, and re-plugging it back in has helped. Could you give that a try?

We can't hear you, Mr. Turnbull.

[The Clerk]

Mr. Turnbull, it still is problematic, so we'll have an IT ambassador reach out to you to try to help you figure out what the problem is.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Can we suspend for a moment while I get this resolved?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Yes, I was just about to suggest that. Let's suspend for a few moments.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Point of order.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

My apologies, everyone. I've never had any problems with my headset before.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Yes.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Why would we suspend when we have another member who is waiting to bring forth or talk about a motion? Why would we just suspend at this point?

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

I'll answer that point of order if I could, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Yes, I guess I can give my opinion at the end. Go ahead.

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

It's been normal practice in this committee, absolutely, that when any member drops out we will suspend until every member can be present. Just because Mr. Turnbull—

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

All right, fair enough. Thanks, Mark.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

I was just going to say that when someone has the floor, I need to allow them to finish making their complete thought before I move on to the next person. If a person, as stated at the beginning, isn't fully able to participate, then we allow them to get the help that's needed. I would do the same for you, as well, if you had the floor.

Let's hope it only takes a few moments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Sorry for that interruption, but we know these things happen from time to time.

Without further delay let's get back to Mr. Turnbull so we can get somewhere today.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm sorry, committee members, for the technical difficulties. They really were beyond my control. I think I had just worked too many hours and the Surface tablet was overheating. That's what IT said; there were just too many things open.

My apologies for that.

I will pick up generally where I left off. I can't remember exactly. Would you like me to start from the beginning? What makes the most sense?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

The beginning is what I'm seeing signals for.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Okay.

My motion reads:

That the Procedure and House Affairs Committee conduct a study of the challenges posed to the normal conduct of federal elections by the COVID-19 pandemic and identify the measures to be taken to adapt the approach and conduct of a General Election to preserve the health and safety of all Canadians. This study should begin with the top priority on a review of the recommendations made by the Canada’s Chief Electoral Officer in the Special Report of the Chief Electoral Officer: Administering an Election during the COVID-19 Pandemic

—that's the name of the report the chair was referring to earlier—

and shall proceed to studying additional and related challenges. The committee should hear from witnesses including but not limited to: (i) Canada’s Chief Electoral Officer, (ii) provincial Chief Electoral Officers who have already run elections during the pandemic, (iii) Public Health officials, (iv) advocates for those who face barriers to voting; (c) that the committee report its findings to the House no later than November 16th, 2020.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Okay.

Do you wish to speak to this motion? How is it different?

I guess they are very minor differences from Ms. Blaney's motion. I have them out in front of me and I didn't get a chance to look at your motion.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I don't think it's substantively different from Rachel Blaney's original motion. It does shorten the timeline slightly. It prioritizes the recommendations in the report, some of which suggest that some legislative change may be required.

I read the report last night from the Chief Electoral Officer on administering an election during the COVID-19 pandemic. I think three important recommendations thus far have come out of the working group they've formed. I have a bit of a summary of those. Essentially, it's extending the voting period. It's looking at how voting in long-term care facilities can be better managed to preserve the health and safety of our seniors and those individuals working in those facilities. It's also adjusting the adaptation power that the Chief Electoral Officer has to adapt procedures during an emergency situation like the one we find ourselves in today. I think those are high-level and pressing concerns, it seems, with the thought that an election could be approaching at any time. We don't know when. It's a minority Parliament. To my understanding, it is PROC's duty to review these reports that are produced by the Chief Electoral Officer. It seems that given the unknown of an election, we probably should tighten the timelines slightly.

The other thing the motion did was to take out some of the very specific topics that were included in Rachel Blaney's original motion. That's not to say that we shouldn't study those; I just wanted to keep it general, because I think we may want to cover a considerable number of other topics. I figured the motion would be easier, hopefully, to get through this committee and get support for if we took out some of those specific topics and left it open for us to have further discussion on how we undertake that study as a committee. Obviously, we can look at many topics. I know that the pandemic's circumstances are impacting a lot of polling locations, predominantly at public schools. We're going to have to think a lot about how an election happens when we don't have those locations to use, potentially. There are also the mechanisms to keep voters and poll workers safe. Obviously, social distancing within those locations will change the operation of them.

I saw statistics that the issue of voting by mail and the capacity to do that is also being flagged for further study and discussion. On evaluating possible changes to the Canada Elections Act, I think we should be staying neutral at a time like this. Those recommendations are being made to us as a committee, but we need a fulsome discussion and study on those recommendations to either endorse them or not. In some cases, we may want to recommend something slightly different from what's been proposed. I think that's our duty.

I think all of this is couched within what I see as the most essential process for our democracy—namely, that people can exercise their right to vote, and do so safely, within a pandemic. We're all committed here. I know that as PROC members and members of Parliament we want to keep Canadians healthy and safe above all else. I really think we need to have a tightened time frame on this for perhaps at least a portion of the study. I think this work is high priority given the current circumstances and a minority Parliament.

I'll stop there for now. That was some of my rationale for why I think this should be the top priority for us.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Mr. Turnbull.

We have a speakers list going. We have Mr. Blaikie, Ms. Vecchio and then Mr. Doherty.

I did want to just give a little bit of feedback on what you said. When I spoke to the Chief Electoral Officer, I mentioned that there is a motion on notice to study an election held during this pandemic, and I'm sure, if he comes to our committee soon, he'll let us know in person as well, but he did urge us to try to dispose of the recommendations they made and to give comments and feedback on them as soon as possible.

Even if we were to take on a larger study with your timeline, Mr. Turnbull, or with another timeline—whatever the committee decides—he was hoping that at least those recommendations could receive feedback from this committee as soon as possible, even if we were to carry on with a longer study.

Go ahead, Mr. Blaikie.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you very much.

I want to start by maybe giving a little context to where this motion comes from on the NDP side. In addition to having a couple of other critic portfolios, I am the NDP's democratic reform critic. Back in June, I wrote to all the parties, to the various democratic reform critics and a member of the government, expressing concern over what was then on Elections Canada's website, which was essentially just a kind of advisory that the pandemic posed a lot of challenges to running an election under the current legal framework for elections.

The website went so far as to say that Elections Canada has had, since its inception, the power to essentially nullify the writ, either in particular ridings across the country or in entire regions of the country, if they don't feel satisfied that they can deliver an election according to the legal requirements of the Canada Elections Act.

I found that quite alarming, because whether it's a particular riding, a set of ridings across the country or entire regions of the country, not only would it be unfortunate if Canadians in those areas weren't able to avail themselves of the opportunity during an election to decide who they want to have representing them, but I think that could also become politicized very quickly by certain people at the time. I'm not saying who it might be, but any political actor might at that point decide that it's in their best political interests to attack the legitimacy of the electoral process rather than compete within the rules. This is something that is very important to avoid, whatever your political stripe or orientation within Canada. I think we can all agree that we all want to have the rules of engagement at election time be clear, and we want political parties and political actors to be competing for the support of Canadians within an established framework, rather than trying to get political advantage by attacking the legitimacy of the framework itself.

I found that quite alarming. I wrote the parties. Unfortunately, I didn't hear back over the summer. That letter included an invitation to begin discussions on some of these questions in coming to an agreement on the best path forward. Without hearing back on that letter, our next step was to try to bring it in a more formal way to a committee of the House—PROC obviously being the committee of the House it would go to—in order to try to get some action on the file. That's where Ms. Blaney's motion came from. It came from that letter seeking some way to move forward in this parliamentary session.

That's the background.

In terms of which motion we proceed with, I'm going to start by saying that my preference is still with Ms. Blaney's motion. It's not because I don't want to consider the recommendations of the Chief Electoral Officer. I think those are important and should be an urgent matter of business within the framework of that study. I do think that while Ms. Blaney's motion does raise some particular issues that are worth studying, it's very clear that the study would include but not be limited to those items. I think we have the latitude we need in order to be able to pursue right off the hop a detailed study of the Chief Electoral Officer's recommendations.

One of the issues of concern—and I don't think this is on purpose—is one of the things that I note about the shorter termination date for the study in Mr. Turnbull's motion. While with Ms. Blaney's motion we would have the flexibility to issue an interim report that might address exclusively the content of the Chief Electoral Officer's recommendations, Mr. Turnbull's motion would effectively end the entire study that early.

When we look at the sitting calendar in terms of the days remaining, I'm not sure there are enough days to do justice to the subject matter, particularly not if we consider Ms. Blaney's motion for a moment. Some of the things that are in there go above and beyond, and I think part of the role that PROC can play here is to go above and beyond what Elections Canada was doing. It was doing its job, and I have confidence in Elections Canada to do it well, but Elections Canada doesn't provide advice to political actors on how to campaign, for instance.

That's something we all do and something we all know how to do. We may do it in slightly different ways, but to be able to have a discussion not only with non-partisan officials but also among ourselves as partisan political actors, about how we campaign and what kinds of campaigning practices might be acceptable in the context of a pandemic in which normal campaigning practices, we might all agree, are important—or that PROC might recommend that we suspend, or alter to make sure that we're not trespassing on public health measures—is also very important.

I think the original motion that was on notice with the committee provides a little more latitude in timing, without making the object of Mr. Turnbull's motion impossible. It rightly names, for the sake of transparency for Canadians who will be following this, some of the particular items concerning which PROC can add a bit of value, if you will, to what Elections Canada is doing by considering some of the more partisan elements of campaigning and elections during a pandemic.

It also gives us a little more time to play with, which does not in any way prevent our reporting on an interim basis on such items as the recommendations of the Chief Electoral Officer, which we might consider to be more urgent.

I'll put on the record just a little bit of puzzlement—and I look forward to some clarification from the Chief Electoral Officer when he has occasion to come to the procedure and House affairs committee—about the urgency to hear from PROC on his recommendations.

It's not because I don't agree that we need to move quickly on this; I absolutely do. I would have preferred our being able to start on it in the summer, frankly. All three of his recommendation areas involve legislative changes, and of course those aren't going to happen by a recommendation from PROC; they're going to happen when the government introduces legislation. I presume that once the legislation passes second reading in the House of Commons, if it does, it will come to PROC, and at that moment PROC will be seized with the question we really need to discuss, which is the government's legislative response to the Chief Electoral Officer's recommendation.

It's not that I think it's premature for PROC to be considering those things, but I wonder at the urgency of PROC's needing to report on them before we have a sense of what the government is going to do and what kind of legislation they'll be drafting to meet what they see as being the legislative commitments that come out of those recommendations.

We actually do have a little more time and wiggle room, then. It would be different if the government had already tabled legislation, but I think PROC is going to have not only this opportunity, but also the opportunity that study after second reading would afford, to consider those recommendations—and with the benefit of knowing what the government's concrete response to them would be

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Let me interject with a quick question for you, without your ceding the floor, Mr. Blaikie.

I am wondering about the timeline. I have heard from Mr. Barnes, the analyst, that November 16 would be very difficult. November 23 they could make work—not that I'm suggesting, nor is he really suggesting, that date. He is just saying that from a logistical standpoint they could possibly make it work, but November 16 they cannot.

I completely understand what you're saying about the legislation. That legislation would be then coming to this committee as well.

Would you want to entertain amendments to Mr. Turnbull's motion—I am just wondering—or do you want to procedurally go through voting eventually? We have a speakers list, and obviously we won't go to voting until everyone has spoken, but I don't know whether, before you speak or—

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Sure.

What I might suggest for the sake of expediency—and of course I'm not prejudging the reactions of any member of the committee.... My sense is that we might find agreement more quickly if we were to seek unanimous consent to dispense with Mr. Turnbull's motion, move Ms. Blaney's motion, and consider it adopted.

Then, within it we can begin talking about the parameters of the study, including hearing the Chief Electoral Officer on Thursday and trying to get going as quickly as possible in order to be able to issue an interim report, if we see fit after hearing from the CEO of Elections Canada, on a more expedited basis that speaks directly to his recommendations.

That's just my sense of how we might find agreement more quickly and use this meeting time to flesh out what the study looks like. It is, however, something that I believe would require unanimous consent, not simply a vote.

I would, then, put that to the committee, Madam Chair, if it's all right with you and if we could get unanimous consent for it. If we can't, then we can begin figuring out how we dispense with the various motions before us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Yes, absolutely.

Next on the speakers list is Ms. Vecchio, and then Mr. Doherty and Dr. Duncan.

Perhaps we'll move in that order and see what they have to say.