Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Oct. 27th, 2020

[Tim Garrity]

It's the same here on P.E.I. There was nothing that we could see.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you.

Next is Mr. Tochor.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

I'd like to talk a little bit about emergencies. My colleague brought up some of the emergencies that might confront an election. One reason we would be considering a snap election right now is that the Prime Minister would like to somewhat brush aside a lot of the emergencies that he's been facing and that have been, I would say, poorly managed.

When we talk about long-term care facilities in Canada—and I was surprised to hear that there are as many as 10,000 facilities across Canada—we know what happened in the spring. We had to send the military into some facilities. I think it would be a travesty to call a snap election; some of those people wouldn't be able to exercise their democratic right—

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

On a point of order, Madam Chair, the French translation is coming through on the English channel.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Mr. Clerk, can you help us with that?

[The Clerk]

Yes. We'll look into it to see what's going on.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Let's pause for a second.

[The Clerk]

Madam Chair, you can proceed. We'll see if the problem has been addressed.

Go ahead, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Mr. Tochor, could you repeat your question? I'll start the clock after you're done.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

I was referring to the emergencies that we were talking about earlier today and the emergencies we found in the long-term care facilities across Canada. The fact of the matter is that we had to call in the military to restore order and safety for our loved ones.

I think it would be a complete travesty for those individuals, who have been so put off because of the inaction of the federal government, to not have the right to vote in the next election. I think that is probably the most discouraging thing I've heard today; that long-term care facilities, depending on the zone they are in within New Brunswick, or in other parts of Canada, could be under other restrictions and that elections could not take place at those polling locations. I think that is something that we should all be on with protective measures, to make sure that it doesn't happen.

My question, though, is this. The chief medical officers in your respective provinces probably made some requests of you to change your behaviours. What were the toughest policy changes that the chief medical officer asked each of your respective provinces to do?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Go ahead, Ms. Poffenroth.

[Kimberly Poffenroth]

We submitted a document with our plan to the chief medical officer of health. Her office provided some minor comments. There really wasn't anything that was difficult to adapt to. We had already prepared what our changes and procedures would be. She simply reviewed those on a couple of occasions and provided comments. There was nothing significant that was difficult to adapt to.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

If I may, another question just popped up here. Quickly, for Ms. Poffenroth, how would you have treated someone who was in quarantine? The writ has been dropped and an individual has to be self-quarantined for 14 days. If, say, it was past the mail-in ballot portion, how would you have ensured that this person were able to vote in an election?

[Kimberly Poffenroth]

We dealt with a number of those individuals. They could email their application, and then we actually used staff at the returning offices to hand deliver and pick up ballots. It was done in a number of ways. They usually took a ballot box or they put the ballot in the individual's mailbox, called them and let them know it was there. They stayed in their car while they watched that it was picked it up, and then they put a box on the step and the ballot was dropped in.

It was very much about the returning offices figuring out what worked for them. Every effort was made. I'm very proud of our staff for making every effort to ensure those who were in quarantine could vote.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

I think some of the testimony today is that if we have low numbers or zero numbers, as we've said, elections can be held. On a smaller scale, you can make sure people's votes are actually counted, but on a large scale across Canada, I think the experiences were showing that if you have zero numbers you can hold an election, but if you have anywhere near what we're facing now, I think we're going to have a vast majority of Canadians being disenfranchised by having to vote during a pandemic.

Another question I have is, on election night, how did the scrutineers watch the count? This probably goes back to Ms. Poffenroth on the actual counting of ballots.

[Kimberly Poffenroth]

We use tabulation machines in New Brunswick so there's no hand counting to observe.

[Tim Garrity]

We do have a plan in place here where legislatively there are allowed to be two scrutineers per candidate per poll. We have nine polls within the district we're doing. We've made a formal request to the parties that it be limited to, at the very most, one scrutineer. Also, they are required to wear masks or face shields while they are there. We will do our very best to have the social distancing, but plexiglass, masks and face shields will be used.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you. That's all the time we have.

Ms. Petitpas Taylor, you have five minutes.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

I'd like to take this moment as well to thank Mrs. Poffenroth from New Brunswick for being with us today and also Mr. Garrity from P.E.I. We truly appreciate your time and your testimony today.

Being a fellow New Brunswicker, I have to say I'm extremely proud of the work that Elections New Brunswick did last month. You certainly stepped up to the challenge, and I have to say that I was quite impressed at how everything worked out, so thank you so much again for the work that was done.

I missed part of the testimony today. I was tied up with another meeting, so if this question has already been asked, I sincerely apologize.

I think the goal of members of PROC and all parliamentarians is really to ensure that we encourage Canadians to fully participate in our electoral process. That said, with an election perhaps being anticipated during a pandemic, we certainly recognize that there could be an increase in mail-in ballots.

My concern with regard to the province of New Brunswick, though not only New Brunswick, is that 20% of its have a literacy level below the national average. We also have many New Brunswickers who live with disabilities.

I'm wondering what system has been put in place to make sure that individuals will have access to mail-in ballots, because we certainly recognize that those can look complicated for some. How can we ensure that people will have access to mail-in ballots if using those is their choice?

[Kimberly Poffenroth]

That's a bit of a complicated question to answer.

We were very open to providing assistance over the phone if individuals had questions. This is something that came up earlier. We do have, I'd say, a bit of a luxury in New Brunswick in that we have 49 returning offices, so we have more staff than we would if we were to have a federal election, in which there would be only 10.

We provide a lot of information on our website, but with mail-in ballots, there is a bit of a challenge for those individuals with literacy issues. In New Brunswick there are systems in place to provide independent voting for individuals with disabilities, but those are actually not available for the mail-in ballots. They are used in the returning office so that individuals with various mobility challenges can vote in person in a returning office independently, and individuals can have assistance either marking their ballot or reading the ballot instructions. That's something that's available regardless of a pandemic, and regardless of whether it's a mail-in ballot or someone is voting in person.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

With the high level of illiteracy in the province of New Brunswick, has any thought been given to making sure additional services would be available for those folks?

[Kimberly Poffenroth]

I have to be honest. There hasn't been any consideration of additional services.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

During your testimony, you indicated that the Province of New Brunswick had relied heavily on long-term care staff to help our seniors vote, and you also indicated that you're looking at ways to simplify the voting process for the upcoming municipal elections that will more than likely happen in May in New Brunswick.

I'm just wondering, when you talk about simplifying that voting process, whether any thought has been given to how we would do that and what steps would be taken to simplify that process.

[Kimberly Poffenroth]

We're in the very early stages and are obviously still debriefing and looking at lessons learned from the last election, but before this election, when we thought we were going to have provincial by-elections, we had actually received approval from the advisory committee to pilot a system adapting a telephone voting process that was used in British Columbia for those with visual impairments. Basically a pair of voting officers take the vote of an individual over the phone during a pre-arranged appointment. That was the process we had looked at for long-term care facilities. We have to sit down and discuss whether or not we wished to implement that for the municipal elections.

Also, because every province does things a little differently with the applications for mail-in ballots, we're going to take a look at those to see if there are some best practices that can simplify the process, provided the amendments to the Municipal Elections Act provide me with that flexibility. The processes around mail-in ballots are quite prescribed in legislation, so I need some legislative flexibility to implement any of those processes that would simplify things for residents in long-term care facilities.