Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Oct. 22nd, 2020

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

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much to the Chief Electoral Officer for joining us today.

This is a very important topic at this time and we just don't know how the cards will be played.

I want to focus on the senior aspect of this. In your report you noted that approximately 50% of the people working in our polls are seniors. We also have to look at palliative care, hospitals, long-term homes and all of those things.

Let's start by looking at the polling stations and the workers in the polling stations. Many times with the logistics involved, you'll have two people sitting at a table. What is the idea of having people sitting at these tables together? Do you have any thoughts on rapid testing? How are you going to keep them safe, or are you looking more at the distancing where they are two metres apart and working together?

[Stéphane Perrault]

That's a very, very good question.

We will be shifting in the pandemic to a single poll worker. This is a model that's in use in other jurisdictions. We will not have two poll workers sitting next to each other during the elections.

The poll worker functions and the poll clerk functions would be combined and we'd have a single person. That person would be equipped with gloves, masks, sanitizing lotion and a face shield—everything they needed to maintain safety.

There would be, for integrity reasons, a supervisor walking around and looking at what's happening at the different tables, so we would be reducing the proximity of workers.

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

Excellent.

In looking at this, people talk about clusters.... In our polling stations, where we have six to eight different polls in one location, some of the concerns I have is that there would still be a number of people who have to go to those polling stations.

We talk about having the one person at the table, but another concern that we have to look at is with regard to scrutineers. Many parties will have scrutineers coming throughout the day. What are your restrictions on scrutineers going to be?

[Stéphane Perrault]

I will require scrutineers to wear masks at all times, like poll workers. We will want to make sure they maintain a distance from the poll workers and voters. They will be present, but within some parameters.

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

That's good to know.

Looking at some of these polling locations, currently there are many churches, municipal buildings and things of that sort that are not open to the public. What are your plans that if something.... I mean, here in Ontario—Ottawa of course, and Toronto—they don't have a lot of things open. However, I'm looking even in my own community, and the churches are not open; there are no members of the public allowed into schools and municipal buildings, if it's not by appointment or they're in class.

What are your options there?

[Stéphane Perrault]

There are two aspects to that. One is making sure that we have polling places that are large enough, which will be one of the challenges we'll be facing. We want to have distance between the tables and so forth, so we do not want cramped polling locations.

In terms of accessing those locations, a good example is what's happening right now in Toronto. The public health authorities have made it clear that while access to certain buildings is restricted, it is not restricted for the purpose of conducting the election. We are limiting the number of people present at one time during the election in the polling places, but those places are accessible.

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

I have a question on that right now. For instance, in my city, where we're already past these stages, our arenas are still not open. Our arena has 10 polling locations there.

What would you do with those types of sites where these municipal buildings are still not open to the public?

[Stéphane Perrault]

I can't say for sure because we would be engaging your local health authorities, but if it happens in the way it has happened in Toronto, we would have access to other places that otherwise would not be open to the public for the purpose of conducting an election. Given the need for the place, given the distancing measures and the other safety measures in place, there would be parameters around that in order to try to get access to those places. I can't promise that we would; that's part of the challenge. We would have local returning officers, with our assistance, working with local health authorities to negotiate those aspects.

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

I know my time is coming to and end, but when you do this recruitment—as I indicated, many of these poll workers are elderly—you also have to look at the training. What types of on-hand training or virtual training will you have, because you have to recognize with seniors that sometimes that can be a difficulty as well? What types of training would you have for these persons, so they can get the type of training they need with safety measures taken into consideration?

[Stéphane Perrault]

There are two aspects there. One aspect is the learning, the online learning system, which we're currently developing and will put in use when it's ready. Meanwhile, we'd do as we're doing in these by-elections. We're having small group training sessions. We're reducing the number of people present to ensure distancing. However, that does require more training sessions, more trainers, so those are some of the challenges.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you so much.

Next, for five minutes, we have Mr. Turnbull, please.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Perrault. I really appreciate your being here and all the incredible work that you do. I recognize the challenging position you're in with the incredible responsibility of being ready for an election at any time.

There is one question that I have. I know from your opening remarks, and in your report that I read through, that you've asked for an expansion of adaptation powers. I want to understand that a little better. Can you explain to me what flexibility you might require or need over and above what you have currently?

The other similar but related question is, how do you anticipate using that power if it were given to you?

[Stéphane Perrault]

The current adaptation power is quite wide, but it is restricted to varying provisions of the act in order to either facilitate the vote or facilitate the count. It does not directly deal with matters, for example, of safety or security.

For example, right now in Toronto we have voting in person in two long-term care facilities, and the candidates have agreed that they will not send their scrutineers there because for health reasons that's not practical, but that's based on the agreement of the candidates.

I cannot adapt the act to enforce that except in a twisted way, for example, to say that were it not for this, then there would be no vote and therefore restricting access is, in fact, facilitating the vote. I am not sure that's really what was intended. I want to make sure that, where it is necessary for health reasons, I can adapt the legislation.

In terms of how we do that, if you look at our website, you will find that whenever there is an adaptation—and in every election, whether it is a by-election or general election, there are always adaptations—we provide text of the adaptation with the justification for the adaptation in both languages, so there is transparency on that, which is available for everyone to look at.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you very much for that.

I have one other question. I know that in your report you've indicated that about 47% of election workers are over the age of 60 years. I retained that fact and I thought that I didn't know that before. Does this inform your recruitment strategy, given the fact that elections requiring individuals from an older population means that you may in this case have to target a different group of election workers? I don't know how you've adapted to that, but can you speak to that a little bit?

[Stéphane Perrault]

Certainly. We will certainly adapt our messages to recruit younger workers or a broader range of age groups.

The key there for me is really to vote on the weekend, because as long as we're voting on Monday, our basic population for workers is retirees and people who do not have a job, and some students who may be available, but we are quite significantly constrained in who we can hope to recruit when we're voting on Monday. That's one of the driving factors for having voting on the weekend, to have a broader pool of potential workers.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Okay, I've got that.

I should have made my point more clearly, but given that the public health risk is higher for people who are older in age, do we envision more of those potential election workers not being willing to actually take on those roles, given the pandemic, and therefore do we need to be targeting a whole different age category altogether potentially? Do you foresee that as being—

[Stéphane Perrault]

Absolutely. We have surveys showing that older workers are less likely to want to work in this election than they were in the last election, and we have comparative surveys to that effect.

We are seeing recruitment challenges in Saskatchewan as we speak. Whether or not those are tied to the age group, I don't know. Saskatchewan does not have weekend voting as B.C. does.

Absolutely I expect this to be a challenge, and we will need to target and recruit differently.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you.

What variations do we anticipate in long-term care facilities? I know you're asking for flexibility there.

I recognize that the state of different long-term care facilities will be different, but what real flexibility do you need to adapt to those facilities? Can you give us some idea?

I know one of my colleagues asked you to table some documents about any consultations you've done, but can you give me an example of a variation that, again, you might not have the flexibility to account for right now?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

That's all the time we have, unfortunately.

I want to give it back to Monsieur Therrien. I know he had a question earlier.

I don't know if you would remember that question at this point, Monsieur Therrien, but you have two and a half minutes.

[Alain Therrien, Bloc, La Prairie, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I would like to come back to the situation of CHSLDs in Quebec and seniors' residences elsewhere in Canada. You said that one of the problems was that there might be people there who could serve...

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

Madam Chair, I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Go ahead, Mr. Lukiwski.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

I'm very sorry, Mr. Therrien, for interrupting. I don't normally do this.

I'm just checking on this, Madam Chair. I don't have a copy of the complete speakers list in front of me, but I thought that in the second round there were two Liberal and two Conservative questions. You're now appearing to be in the two-and-a-half-minute round, which is the third round of questions. Did we miss my question or am I wrong?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

No. We haven't missed your question. It will be coming up. This is the effect of the motion that we passed during routine motions, wherein we moved up the two-and-a-half-minute rounds.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

You're right. I'm very sorry. Yes, I completely forgot about that. My apologies.

My apologies to Mr. Therrien.