Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 15th, 2021

[Stéphane Perrault]

That's absolutely correct, either way.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Great. Thank you for that. I appreciate that.

In terms of the voting period, I know that there's a little [Technical difficulty—Editor] or two days. I think you've suggested either the Saturday or Sunday or just reverting back to the usual Monday.

I know that this committee heard from witnesses who were adamant about having the Monday added on being very important from an accessibility perspective. I think that's why, in my view, the legislation coincides with what we have heard from witnesses: women, shift workers, people who rely on public transit to access polls and people with disabilities. Those are the people I think we heard from in the testimony given at committee.

Do you recognize the importance of ensuring that they have access to those polling locations?

[Stéphane Perrault]

Absolutely. It's a valid point.

Now, of course, whenever a writ is dropped, I will be writing to assisted transit authorities to make sure they're aware of the needs of electors. However, I recognize that for some electors, Monday may be preferable for those reasons. That's why I've put all the options before the committee.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Great. I appreciate that.

I had another question related to this. I know you've mentioned recruitment is a challenge. Obviously site selection, I think, in terms of voting places becomes a little more challenging when you need a Saturday, Sunday and Monday. First, is that because you're considering schools to be the primary places for voting?

[Stéphane Perrault]

At the last election, 46% of polling divisions were in schools. That is a very significant proportion of the population voting in schools, yes.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I got that.

The reason I'm asking is that I have specific concerns, and I think many of my colleagues would express these as well. With children and the new variants of concern, there is a higher incidence of cases of COVID-19 with the delta variant specifically within the younger age categories [Technical difficulty—Editor] population. Therefore there's some increased exposure risk associated with utilizing schools as polling places.

Are you putting in measures to decrease that exposure risk for children in those schools? This is if, in fact, you are going to use schools as sites.

[Stéphane Perrault]

This will be school-specific. In any case, the returning officer will have to work with the local schools to decide whether or how the facilities can be set up to avoid commingling students and the general voter population. I expect that in a pandemic, many schools would not be open for us to use as polling places. Certainly in Ontario they've given that indication if it's on a Monday. Other provinces.... Manitoba has said the same.

When the election takes place, whether the vaccination is rolled out completely or whatever the situation is, I'm certainly not counting on schools. That's why we have to look at alternative places.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Okay.

The other point I wanted to make was this. Aren't some of the same challenges present with advance polling locations as would be present with Saturday, Sunday and Monday for the voting period itself?

[Stéphane Perrault]

The main difference is that, in the last election, we had 6,000 advance polls compared with over 15,000 regular polls. The options are greater because there are fewer polls at advance polls. It's the same challenge but with fewer places to find.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Okay.

The other question I have relates to what you said, which is that we, obviously, anticipate an increase in the volume of mail-in ballots. You also said in your testimony here today that you have seen a significant uptake in the advance polls.

Would this naturally take the pressure off the voting period and allow for more distancing?

[Stéphane Perrault]

Certainly, the increase in advance polls is something we need to prepare for. It creates, of course, additional challenges because we have to recruit earlier and earlier. In every election, the increase in uptake reduces the time for recruitment, but it does take the pressure off regular polling days.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you.

The final question, if I may—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

That's all the time we have, unfortunately.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Okay. No problem, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Perrault.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

I would like to thank all of our witnesses today: Monsieur Perrault, Monsieur Roussel and, of course, Ms. Lawson. Thank you all for being here today.

Now we will end our formal portion of the rounds of questioning and move back to Mrs. Vecchio's motion, which she just moved. If anyone wants to speak to that motion, please raise your hand. I see some hands up already.

Mr. Blaikie, go ahead.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I have just a very few remarks. I'll start by saying I very much appreciate the sentiment of the motion and I think in an ideal circumstance it would behoove the committee to hear from the people that Ms. Vecchio has identified as potential witnesses.

I do think it's important that the bill be reported back to the House as soon as possible for the reasons I was mentioning earlier, that we've heard for a long time now from Mr. Perrault that he's confident Elections Canada can deliver an election that is safe from a public health point of view, but what remains is the question of whether or not enough Canadians are going to feel comfortable enough to vote. What C-19 offers for me, and one of the reasons it's always been very important in light of the CEO maintaining consistently throughout the entire pandemic that they could run an election that's safe from a public health point of view, is that I have tended to see C-19 and the virtue of legislative amendment as being more about ensuring that we actually get people comfortable with voting and that they can do that in ways that not only are safe but also feel safe to them and don't become a barrier to voting.

I know also in the example of Newfoundland it wasn't necessarily that Newfoundland couldn't deliver an election that was safe from a public health point of view. It was the perception of poll workers and voters that caused people to feel that they shouldn't be going out to the polls. What that would mean for the result of the election caused there to be a delay in the election day, in fact many delays, because people recognized that it's not enough to have an election that's safe from a public health point of view. You also have to have enough participation to make the results legitimate, or it wasn't worth having an election in the first place.

I see that as being the virtue of C-19 and that's why it's imperative that we deal with it and report it back to the House quickly. I would have preferred that we not have a months-long filibuster at the committee. It would have created a lot more time for us to consider C-19 properly, but I can't change the past. What I can do is play the hand dealt and to work at what I think the priority should be, which in this case is reporting the bill back to the House.

While I regret that we were tied up for a long time and we weren't able to do this important work in more depth, that's the situation in which we find ourselves. I also just don't have the same faith in Mr. Trudeau that perhaps my colleagues in the Conservative Party seem to have that he won't put his own self-interest ahead of the interest of the nation. If I really felt we weren't going to have an election this summer and that the Prime Minister could be trusted to do the right thing, then we wouldn't be on the timeline that I believe we are on, which is trying to get this bill in place before the summer, because I think it's very unlikely that we're coming back in September.

I don't usually play pundit. It's not a role that I'm comfortable in. I like to work to change outcomes and to decide outcomes rather than to comment on what other people are thinking or doing, but in this case, there are so many signs of a summer election, including the take-note debate tonight for MPs who have announced they are not running again. I can't fathom why a government would agree to that unless they had an intention of calling an election. There are a lot of signs leading towards a summer election. That's why I think it's really important that we get this bill passed and back to the House.

While I would really like to hear from these witnesses, I don't think we're in a position to do that. I think our committee has burned up the time that we would need in order to do that. The important thing right now is to get the bill reported back to the House in order to put Canadians more at ease with the options that they'll have for voting, and to make sure that they feel they're doing that in a safe way and that the legitimacy of the result isn't compromised by low participation. That's why I do not intend to support this motion. Although I think, ultimately, it would have been very nice to hear from these folks, I don't think that a realistic timeline allows for that.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Mr. Nater.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I will be brief.

First, I want to assure Mr. Blaikie that I, too, do not trust the Prime Minister. I, too, do not have faith in the Prime Minister, in terms of what he may or may not do over the summer months in terms of triggering a unilateral election during the summer months or early in the fall before the House of Commons returns. I just want to make sure that's on record, about my lack of trust or faith in Justin Trudeau. That was more of a side note.

Very briefly, in terms of this motion and the recommendations from my colleague Mrs. Vecchio, I think it's incumbent upon us as a committee tasked with reviewing a very important piece of legislation that we do our due diligence. We could have had these witnesses and we could have had this discussion weeks ago had there not been a filibuster. That's the unfortunate effect that the Liberals placed us in.

I don't think we should let Liberal partisan games get in the way of us doing our job. That job is very simple: that we review this piece of legislation and make recommendations and amendments to the very best of our abilities. To do that, I think we need to do our job and hear from witnesses. It's a relatively pared down [Technical difficulty—Editor]. It's not going to take weeks and weeks. I understand we're under the time crunch when the House of Commons will be adjourning for the summer.

Again, it behooves us to do our job and to hear from witnesses. We've heard from the Chief Electoral Officer and we've heard from ministers. We've heard the partisan spin from the minister, and we've now heard from the agency responsible. I think we need to hear from others as well.

I'm going to leave it there. I'm pretty good at counting, so it's pretty clear where this vote will go, but I do think it's important that we go forward with these witnesses. I will leave it there, and I will yield the floor.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Mr. Nater.

Madam Gill, go ahead.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to make a few points. First, I want to pick up on what my colleague, Mr. Blaikie, said. We need to move fairly quickly as a whole. We certainly don't want to filibuster. We want the work to proceed smoothly [Technical difficulty—Editor] months of filibustering in the committee. The work hasn't been very constructive. I still find it unfortunate that we're being asked to proceed very quickly after we took a fairly long break due to issues unrelated to the purpose of our work. That's the first point.

The second point concerns the motion moved by Ms. Vecchio. We're told that the government is giving several signs that it may want to call an election within a certain period. In my opinion, the fact that the government has certain electoral, political or partisan intentions shouldn't influence how we work in the committee. In my view, that isn't an argument for rejecting Ms. Vecchio's motion to hear from many more witnesses. It also isn't an argument for speeding up our work. Like Ms. Vecchio and other members, we would have appreciated hearing from other witnesses in the committee, including representatives of the Institut national de la santé publique du Québec.

We're ready to proceed with the clause‑by‑clause consideration because we want the report to be sent quickly. I also want to reiterate that neither the government's intentions with respect to the election nor the months spent failing to work as productively as possible on Bill C‑19 should influence our decisions today.

Regarding the motion, I can't support it. However, perhaps we in the Bloc Québécois, [Inaudible—Editor] for other cases.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Madam Gill.

Seeing as there are no other speakers to speak to this, we can go to a vote.

(Motion negatived: nays 6; yeas 5)

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you.

I will now ask everyone to transition to the in camera portion of the meeting, so that we can wrap up our draft report on prorogation.

[Proceedings continue in camera]