Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Nov. 3rd, 2020

[Anton Boegman]

Yes.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

All we have time for, I guess, are the Bloc and NDP questions. I'll allow for those, and then we will say goodbye to our witnesses and carry on into the subcommittee meeting.

Madame Normandin, you have two and a half minutes.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much.

I would like you to give us an order of magnitude for the wait time for the in-person vote. Could you tell us what the average wait time is, or, within the shortest and longest range, how many minutes it can be for each voter?

I'd also like to know if, in order to better distribute the vote during the election, you have considered doing something similar to the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit procedure, that is inviting people born between January and April to register for one day and people born between May and August to register for another day, for example. Has this formula been considered?

Perhaps Mr. Boegman could answer first.

[Michael Boda]

I would say, first of all, that we did not experience long lineups. That was by intention and design in the system, beginning August 15 with voting by mail, and that was quite a success, I believe, in Saskatchewan.

Your other question was...?

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Did you try to divide the vote by inviting voters to vote on a particular day based on some criteria?

[Michael Boda]

Well, unlike what is being requested federally for Saturday and Sunday, we requested advance voting over a five-day period, with a significant number of hours available. Then on election day we allowed for a regular time, but we had the schools closed so that students weren't in attendance. We also had an outlet with the vote-by-mail option which, again, spread out the process. Physically we maintained about the same numbers, only with increased numbers of polling locations, but we had a very long period in which you could apply for a ballot by mail.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Could you also answer, Mr. Boegman?

[Anton Boegman]

We also planned our election to spread the vote out over all opportunities, including voting by mail, advance voting and voting on election day.

Our legislation calls for six days of advance voting, including a Saturday and Sunday, from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. each day. Using my powers to adapt the legislation, I added an additional day so that we had seven days, running from the Thursday through the Wednesday preceding voting day, when advance voting was available.

We don't have a formal way of tracking wait times, but anecdotally there were no waits during voting day. We achieved our goal of spreading out voters, especially on that day.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Madame Normandin.

Mr. Blaikie is next.

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

I want to ask quickly about the length of the writ period. This is something the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada has mentioned in his recommendations. Can you speak to the advantages or disadvantages of having a longer writ period in the pandemic context?

I'll start with Mr. Boegman.

[Anton Boegman]

In British Columbia, by law there are two different models for the length of the campaign period. In a fixed-date election, the voting day is the 28th day after the election is called. For an “on demand” election, it varies between an additional four to 10 days that are added to that period. The idea is that it will, depending upon the day the election is called, ensure that voting takes place on a Saturday.

In the context of a snap election in a pandemic, having more time was critical for Elections BC to be able to establish our offices, to be able to send supplies and to be able to establish the telecommunications network that enabled us to communicate with our offices.

My bottom line would be that more time obviously is better from an election administration perspective, especially when it's an “on demand” election.

[Michael Boda]

Our writ period is from 27 to 35 days. The writ period was the shortest possible for our election. However, because we had a set election date in legislation, we were aware in April that we were getting ready for an election for October.

I'll agree with Mr. Boegman that stability and preparation are extremely important in election administration, particularly in a COVID context in which you are preparing to make the voting safer for everyone. A longer period would thus be better.

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

In a minority Parliament context, would giving some clarity about the confidence convention be helpful, from the point of view of electoral administration, so as to have a little more lead time or a sense of how a snap election might be triggered?

[Michael Boda]

I would speak to the overall approach of offering a longer period of time for preparation. How it is achieved, I'll leave to the legislators.

[Anton Boegman]

I'll certainly agree with the comment that Dr. Boda made.

From our perspective as election administrators, in a minority government it's our mandate to be ready. We were ready, in a non-pandemic environment, in February 2020, and we pivoted. We immediately embarked on learning about the pandemic, learning how it would impact voting processes and what adaptations we needed to make to our processes to have a safe election. This was our focus through the summer, and as it turned out, it was good that we did so.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you.

Thank you to all of the participants.

We especially thank our witnesses, Mr. Boegman and Dr. Boda. We really appreciate it. I know that your testimony today will help us in formulating a good report. Hopefully, good recommendations will come out of it. Thank you so much for being here.

To all of the members on the subcommittee, a separate email was sent out with the log-in details. Please log in as soon as possible after logging out of this meeting. I'll see you in the subcommittee.

Thank you. The meeting is adjourned.