Evidence of meeting #5 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 poffenroth.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:40 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
Had you already gotten to the question, maybe there would have been some leeway for the witnesses. I always give some leeway.
Mr. Therrien, you have the floor.
11:40 a.m.
Bloc
Alain Therrien Bloc La Prairie, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I welcome our two witnesses. We are very grateful to them for being with us.
My question is for Ms. Poffenroth.
We heard from Mr. Perrault last week. He said he would prefer to have as long an election campaign as possible. Unless I'm mistaken, the election campaign in New Brunswick can last between 28 and 38 days, and the government decided it would be 28 days.
Ms. Poffenroth, did this cause you more problems? That's my first question.
My second question is this. If you had to choose between 28 and 38 days, based on your experience, what would you have chosen?
11:40 a.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections New Brunswick
Thank you for your question.
In the case of an unscheduled election in New Brunswick, the period can be anywhere from 28 to 38 days.
The 28-day election period presented us with a number of challenges. Some of them would have been presented regardless of the pandemic.
Setting up a modern election office with all of the technology and telecommunications that are required was very challenging with our service provider. We had a 28-day election period and we were at the end of the second week of that four-week period before every office had phone and Internet. Given that we used a digital voters list, allowing people to vote early was challenging because we didn't have access to that digital list. Receiving calls requesting mail-in ballots was a problem.
With the COVID challenges, of course, there was a large increase in the volume of requests for mail-in ballots. We require a signed application; they can't be sent by email. A lot of people who weren't leaving their homes didn't have access to printers, email and whatnot, so getting those requests, processing them, sending out the ballots and getting those ballots back in a 28-day period proved very challenging.
The only word I can come up with is “unfortunate”, which I think is an understatement when it comes to one's franchise and the importance of the vote. We know that ballots arrived late. They arrived too late for people to get them back in time. That was a challenge.
Certainly, if it were my choice I would select a 38-day election period.
11:40 a.m.
Bloc
Alain Therrien Bloc La Prairie, QC
Thank you for your answer, which was very clear.
I'd like to ask you another question about this general election. After the election, did you see an increase in COVID-19 cases? Was there an increase in infections following the election?
Have you studied the public health implications of this election? I'm not blaming you at all. You had no choice...
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
October 27th, 2020 / 11:40 a.m.
Liberal
Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
Maybe you can give him his time back to re-ask that question, Madam Chair.
11:40 a.m.
Bloc
Alain Therrien Bloc La Prairie, QC
Given that a general election was recently held in New Brunswick, did you notice an increase in cases after the election year? Have you looked into this? I don't want to point the finger at you, because I know you've done a great job.
That being said, were there any public health implications?
11:40 a.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections New Brunswick
Yes, absolutely.
We were following that very closely because we didn't want to be the cause of an outbreak, and there were no new cases within 14 days of the election day. We were following both our advance voting days and from the opening of the returning office. We did have an increase in cases in New Brunswick, but that was probably more than a month after election day. I personally felt comfortable that this wasn't a result of the election.
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
You have two more minutes, Mr. Therrien.
I stopped your clock in between.
11:45 a.m.
Bloc
Alain Therrien Bloc La Prairie, QC
Thank you for your response and congratulations. If you didn't have any more cases, it means you did a good job. With regard to sanitary measures such as disinfectant, mandatory masks and so on, did you have any difficulty getting the necessary equipment, given that you were in a general election?
In the same vein, I'd like to ask you a question, Mr. Garrity. How much money did you budget for the implementation of these health measures?
My question is for both of you.
11:45 a.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Prince Edward Island
Thank you very much for the question.
We did have some challenges in procuring enough PPE, but due to the smaller size of the by-election, we were able to manage that. As I said, we did start to gather up some of those supplies in advance. On my part and some of the staff in the office, if we saw some Lysol wipes at the grocery store, we were buying as many as we could and bringing them back to the office so that we would have them available.
We did work with our provincial authorities in the chief public health office because they had started to procure face masks, face shields, and hand sanitizers, so we were able to jump on board with them to get some supplies. To run a full provincial election, we gathered up enough masks to provide them to electors within the district, which is around 4,200 electors just for this one small district. If we were to do it provincially, it would pose some additional challenges, although I think and I hope we would be able to get there. It would be more with the cleaning supplies and such things that would be a little more challenging to have enough. It is a significant increase in cost as well, as was highlighted earlier by my counterpart from New Brunswick.
11:45 a.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Thank you very much.
Thank you to both of our witnesses for sharing your time with us here today.
I'm curious to know, throughout the course of the election or subsequently, if either of your electoral authorities identified challenges for particular groups, either people with disabilities, indigenous people—urban indigenous or people living on reserve—or students, who oftentimes will vote on campus, for instance. Are there any particular groups that stand out as having faced challenges above and beyond what everyone is facing in a pandemic context? Were there additional barriers or a worry that particular groups of people had been disenfranchised because those barriers were just too high?
11:45 a.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections New Brunswick
I will answer that first.
New Brunswick generally has quite a robust campus voting program. I believe that in 2018 we were on 18 university and community college campuses, which for a small province is quite significant. We did not have any on-campus voting during this last election. That was in large part due to the fact that it was an unscheduled election more so than to the pandemic. However, the pandemic did come into play because we really were uncertain as to how many students would even be on campus, and that varies quite significantly from university to university here even in New Brunswick.
That was a concern that the student groups expressed—our not having that presence—but in all cases there were polling locations very close to the universities, so I don't know, ultimately, that they had as large a problem accessing.
A bigger issue would have been for those individuals, whether seniors or those with underlying health conditions, who were concerned about going out to the polls to vote, whether to advance polls or even to a returning office, and so were accessing mail-in ballots. It's the issue that those who are most vulnerable, be they seniors or those with disabilities, may not have the technology at home, particularly around the type of mail-in application processes that we have in New Brunswick. If you don't have a printer, it becomes very difficult. You need to sign your application even if you can email it.
Then it's getting those ballots to people. We were doing everything we could to facilitate that delivery because we knew there was a short turnaround time, so we were allowing friends and family to pick up and deliver ballots for folks. If they didn't have that, we had returning officers and their staff going out and hand delivering ballots, and then going back and picking them up. I would say that the field staff went above and beyond to try to ensure that everyone was able to vote.
Another challenge, of course, was individuals in long-term care facilities. We facilitated and tried to make the mail-in ballot process as easy as possible for those individuals, but it was a challenge. It relied on the staff of long-term care facilities to assist the residents, and as you all know, during this pandemic they are quite overworked as it is. In some cases, there was a lack of understanding of what needed to be signed. We have a certificate envelope in New Brunswick with the ballot inside that needs to come back, and they weren't signed and that sort of thing, so there were individuals who exercised their right to vote, but by the time the ballots got back, the procedures hadn't been followed correctly. That's one of those things that we want to look at—how we can simplify the process—for our elections in May because we do anticipate that those will be held during the same situation.
11:50 a.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Mr. Garrity, was your experience substantially similar, or is there anything you want to add to Ms. Poffenroth's testimony?
11:50 a.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Prince Edward Island
I would like to highlight the challenges around—and I know she did; she did a very good job of it—the long-term care facilities. We have one long-term care facility that's within this small district, and even here with zero cases right now in P.E.I., there still are restrictions to going into those places. They are even restricted to certain family members and things like that, so it's very challenging.
The reality is that I had the luxury of happening to know the administrator of the facility. I was able to contact them. I personally went with full protective equipment on—a face mask, face shield, gloves—and with enough applications, enough new pens, enough certificates, to register any of the residents myself. I was able to help them with that process. However, just as Ms. Poffenroth was saying, we have the requirement that those applications be signed. That can be very challenging for people. I was able to go out. I was able to bring the applications, have them pre-filled, and just have them sign them, and I was able to get those back. I hand delivered the ballots so that those folks would be able to vote. However, that, going across Canada with approximately 10,000 long-term care facilities, will be one of the major challenges of the next federal election.
11:50 a.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
When we talk about the challenges facing people who were trying to vote from home, particularly when it was an issue of technology, are there any best practices that emerged in the course of your experience that you want to share with the committee that you think might be of use to Elections Canada in the conduct of a federal election? By the end of the election, was there anything about which you thought, “Wow, I wish we had thought of this at the beginning because now that we have learned how to do this, it has really made a difference”?
