Evidence of meeting #4 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was election.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
Yes. According to surveys and based on what we're seeing elsewhere, we're looking at around four million to five million, but more likely four million, mail-in ballots. That is a considerable undertaking.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK
It most certainly is. Thank you for that.
My question then turns more to the security and integrity of the mail-in ballots. You will be mailing out ballots to those Canadians who request them. That's the process.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK
What are you planning to...? I'm not as much concerned about what happens when Elections Canada receives the ballot. I have full confidence in you and your staff to maintain the integrity of the ballots. You're not going to lose any ballots. You'll count them accurately. That part, I believe, will be in good hands. I'm more concerned about what might occur when the ballots are mailed.
How do you plan to ensure the integrity of the vote—i.e., if a ballot is mailed to a certain individual and someone perhaps steals that ballot from the mailbox? How do you preserve the integrity and security of that vote? For example, are you asking recipients to send in one or two pieces of identification with their ballots, such as photo ID or that type of thing?
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
Those who apply for special ballots do have to provide pieces of ID. They provide those pieces of ID with their application form. When we send out a ballot, first of all we strike the name of that person off the list so they are marked as having received a kit and they are, in principle, not allowed to vote at a polling station or a polling place unless there are exceptional circumstances where that may happen.
The kit includes an outer envelope with a bar code that is identified to that elector, and when the elector prepares their vote they put their anonymous ballot in a black inner envelope and put that inner envelope into an outer envelope. On the outer envelope there is a declaration they have to sign, so we have the elector's signature and their information. We need to make sure that all of that information and the bar code match this information that we have from the application form.
So a verification process takes place. Once it's confirmed and we receive the ballot, we separate the two envelopes, and then the inner envelope, which is unmarked and anonymous, is set aside for the appropriate electoral district. That's how security is ensured.
Liberal
Liberal
Omar Alghabra Liberal Mississauga Centre, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
It's good to see you, Mr. Perrault.
I have a question for you about the matter of moving an election day to a weekend. I see the rationale behind it. It makes sense, except we have a weekend vote through advance voting.
Can you tell me why we need two weekends to cancel the traditional Monday voting?
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
Absolutely.
Whether we need it or not, I think it is extremely useful mainly for three reasons—not in any particular order.
The first reason is to have access to locations. There are locations like schools that will not be available on a weekday during a pandemic. No school will give us access to their premises with children in the school. That's a major consideration.
The second consideration is poll workers. We cannot recruit on a Monday and hope to recruit younger working-age Canadians in the same numbers that we can on a weekend, so the recruitment consideration is critical.
The third has to do with distancing. Providing two days allows us to spread the vote. If we vote on a Monday, there will be distancing. That distancing will take place in lineups on the streets in the rain or in the cold, so it will be safe, but certainly more unpleasant for voters who have to line up two metres apart on the sidewalk.
Liberal
Omar Alghabra Liberal Mississauga Centre, ON
Thank you, Mr. Perrault.
Those are all good reasons, but I feel they would be addressed by having the advance voting on a weekend and maintaining another option of voting on a weekday.
As somebody who represents a riding that has a lot of condo buildings, those condo building spaces may not be available on weekends, because the party rooms or whatever facilities are usually booked on weekends.
I see the reasons, but I feel they would mostly be addressed by having advance voting on a weekend and then Monday. I guess we'll see where the discussion goes.
My other question is to follow up on Mr. Turnbull's question on the adaptation. Your recommendation is to suspend, I think, section 17. Can you put a frame around it instead of a blank suspension? For example, there's a power for adaptation to allow more electors to vote. What other framework would you recommend that we put around that adaptation instead of just a blank suspension?
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
Just to be clear, I wouldn't recommend suspending section 17; I would recommend expanding it somewhat.
Liberal
Omar Alghabra Liberal Mississauga Centre, ON
I'm sorry, yes, so instead of a complete suspension, if you were to put a framework around it, what would it be?
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
There is a framework around it the way it's drafted, the way we recommend it, and it has some limitations. For example, for good reason it does not allow me to extend the polling hours beyond certain hours. There are limitations there that I think are healthy, because there can be a lot of political pressure locally for extending the hours for one candidate who wants to get out the vote more.
If you're not prepared to use the language I'm proposing—and I have language in my recommendations report—then I would suggest as an alternative that you add to the reasons for the adaptations, which are currently for facilitating the vote and the count, “or the safety of voters or workers”.
I think if you were to do that, you would probably cover the needs I have.
Liberal
Omar Alghabra Liberal Mississauga Centre, ON
Talking about an additional four million mail-in ballots, do you see any need on the legislative end to give you new authority or new power to manage this significant increase in mail-in ballots?
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
No. Thank you for offering, but the challenge is one of logistics, not legislation. I think the challenge is less counting than it is processing the request. We currently have a largely manual process for processing the request, and we need to shift to an automated one. We're working on some online solutions for that to automate the application process.
As I said, if there's an election before that and if we can't service every elector, then we will have to prioritize and remind voters who are healthy and who have no special circumstance that they can attend advance polls and regular polling days. These will be safe locations. It's a communication aspect as well.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
Thank you so much. That's all the time we have.
I've tried to be a little bit flexible for everyone in this last round. We'll go back and start from the beginning at the top of the second round since we have quite some time. It looks as though everyone has a lot of great questions. I'm sure you have more. We will go back to Mr. Tochor for five minutes.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
Thank you so much for your time. I feel for you. I hope you're up to the challenge or that you like challenges, because holding an election during a pandemic is not going to be easy. There are going to be outcomes of this that are concerning, I think, for me and for Saskatchewan and, to a certain degree, for Alberta. If there are questions about how legitimate this election is, there are going to be revolts. The west right now has the feeling of alienation. If there's a feeling that this election wasn't run fairly or that there were any shenanigans, I suspect it's going to be bad for our country. I'm just warning all members here to think about that, think about our country, because I'm not sure if it can handle it.
One of the concerns I have is with the mail-in ballots from overseas. What is the plan in that regard?
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
That is the one thing that would not be affected by the pandemic essentially. We had an entirely mail-in process for the last election. I think there were concerns about having millions of overseas voters. The reality is we had 35,000. This could increase or not. I have no indication one way or the other but the numbers were relatively small. There is nothing in the spread of those ballots that indicated any special concern in terms of the integrity. The experience has been largely positive. That's one thing that I think would not be affected by the pandemic.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
The concern I have is specifically with Hong Kong. Right now, mainland China controls the mail system in Hong Kong. If we have hundreds of thousands of Canadians who are being threatened by mainland China and its controlling of the mail, I have serious concerns about that.
Coming back to our soil, what's the plan if we have someone test positive, be it a worker or a...? We know there's going to be a voter who attends a voting station and who is diagnosed with COVID afterwards. What do we do with that voting station?
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
We have a procedure in place. First of all, we will have contact tracing. On a voluntary basis, voters who come in will be asked to provide basic information that we can then provide to public health authorities. I have to say that an issue like that is first and foremost a health issue. The first thing that has to happen is that the local staff will have to contact the local health authorities and deal with it as a health issue in the same way that if there's a fire, they call the fire department; they don't call Elections Canada.
Depending on the circumstances...we will of course follow the guidance of local health authorities. That's why it's important in a pandemic election that there be clear connections—contact established locally—between the health authorities and the returning officers so that they know who to call during the election and what process to follow. That will follow depending on the authority in charge. We can't have a plan that's identical necessarily for all places. This may entail, for example, shutting down a returning office for a day or for some hours until it's cleaned and then we would have to resume operations or shift operations outside. There are things that we can do remotely. There are a range of circumstances, but the basic point is that returning officers and their teams have access quickly to the local health authorities to help manage the situation from a health point of view.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
These are all precautions that are going to tax your resources.
Going back to the cost of the election, do we have a rough idea of how much more this election would cost versus the last one? Do you have the resources—
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
We have some elements that we—
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
—at your disposal to make sure you have the ability to conduct it?
Go ahead.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
Apologies for that.
From a financial point of view, we have access to resources that we need. We know, for example, that the total cost of the protective measures, the masks and the sanitizer lotions, as well as the costs of the additional health campaign and the costs related to prepaid postage, are roughly $50 million. That's an additional cost.
The rest we don't know, in the sense that we don't know if we're going to be voting on Saturday and Sunday or Monday: What are the implications of that? We don't know our success in terms of recruitment and the implications of that. There are variations that we can't actually put a dollar on and that will depend on the circumstances. At this point, we've identified some $50 million in addition....