Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Sept. 26th, 2024

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

I'm sorry, but is that legislated in the Elections Act?

[Stéphane Perrault]

It is legislated, yes.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

That could be another amendment to help ensure that indigenous languages could be—

[Stéphane Perrault]

There would be other benefits to removing the stub and counterfoil. Again, this is a security control, but it is not one that is commonly used; in fact, as I said, at the provincial level, it is not used.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

As Nunavut is only one riding with 25 different locations, have you seen what barriers Nunavut has? I especially remember medical patients who were not in their home communities who tried to go vote in Iqaluit. What opportunities would you recommend to make sure that, in that one riding, for example, people can still vote even if they're not in their home community?

[Stéphane Perrault]

Right now, they can vote by special ballot but only until day six, and that's a limitation.

In order to remove that limitation, we have to introduce electronic lists of electors, which is a project we have for the next election, but not necessarily in Nunavut. It will not be wide-scale for the next election, but down the road, because it is a single riding, it would be possible with electronic lists to have a strike-out to make sure there's no double voting and therefore allow more opportunities of that nature.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thanks very much, Ms. Idlout.

Colleagues, we are going to head into the second round of questioning, which means there is a little less time.

Mr. Cooper, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Perrault, the date of the next territorial election in Nunavut is October 27, 2025. Is that correct?

[Stéphane Perrault]

That is correct.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you for that. I find that very interesting, because October 27, 2025, happens to be the same day that the Liberal government's Bill C-65 proposes to push the date of the next federal election back to.

The fact that Bill C-65 would set the date of the next federal election to the very same day as the Nunavut territorial election demonstrates that the story the Liberals have told Canadians about the need to move back the fixed election date by one week, namely to avoid a conflict with a holiday and with the Alberta municipal election, is completely disingenuous. It is about as dishonest as it gets.

They have moved it back for one reason and one reason only, and that is so that soon-to-be-defeated Liberal MPs who would not qualify for their pensions if the election was held on the current fixed election date would suddenly qualify for their pensions. It is a pension bill disguised as an election bill, and if the Liberals were honest, they would name the bill what it is, and that is “the loser Liberal pension protection act.”

With that, I will cede the balance of my time to Mr. Calkins.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Thank you for being here.

I have a couple of questions.

First of all, can you elaborate a little more on the importance of the stub and counterfoil in ballot security and control? How important is that?

[Stéphane Perrault]

The stub and counterfoil take us back probably to 19th century concerns around what is commonly referred to as “daisy chain fraud”, whereby a voter walks in, obtains a ballot, does not return it to the poll worker, walks out with a blank ballot and then hands it over to a candidate or party operative. In exchange, they start a chain whereby they can give ballots to future electors, and these ballots would be pre-marked. In that chain, fraud could occur whereby the marking of the ballot actually takes place outside of the poll in successive waves to influence the vote.

This is not something that has been seen in modern times. I don't know, in fact, that it has been seen in Canada. Risks of fraud in this day and age are more of a digital nature than they are of this nature, and that's why I don't believe—and I may be mistaken—the counterfoil and stub procedure exists anymore at the provincial and territorial levels.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Okay. Still, fraud prevention and the integrity of the election is paramount. This does sound like something that could potentially happen. I don't know why we would expose ourselves to that if we ever decided to move away from that.

I have some other questions. I'm not a linguist—that's my daughter, who's good at this kind of stuff—so I'll be asking some questions. I don't know who best can answer them.

Just for clarity, from your description, it sounds to me like Inuktut is more of a phonetic language, using the syllables, than it is a grammatical issue. You can have several candidates with similar names. These things happen. You have now 343 or so ridings that will be in play in the next election. Are you confident that you'll have enough people who are fluent in the various dialects, for lack of a better word? What do you do at that point in time? If the variance between the names is so little, even on the English and French sides of the equation, then one could only assume that they would be very similar in the various regions where the languages are used in Nunavut. Will this be a problem?

[Stéphane Perrault]

This proposal, this pilot, would not add to this problem, because the candidate's name would also continue to be required in the current language, which is the French or English language, as the case may be.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

But the purpose of this exercise is that people don't speak English or French. If what we're trying to do is engage more people who might not be able to engage in one of the official languages of English and French, and we don't have consistency in the Inuktut language, is this potentially problematic? Would the political parties' names be changed? Will the ballot be consistent across all of the territory in an election?

[Stéphane Perrault]

The ballot will be consistent. The party names will be decided by the parties. Elections Canada is not going to translate or transliterate. Some parties' names currently, the Bloc Québécois being one example, do not exist in English. There are English party names that do not exist in French. Parties don't have to have a translated name, even in French and English, as we speak.

Similarities in names currently exist. There are mechanisms to add a mark or add a middle name to make that difference in the current framework, without the additional concern of Inuktut. I do not believe it adds to the confusion. In fact, it may reduce it because of the additional language.

That said, there are two things to keep in mind. The vast majority in Nunavut do speak English or French, and we always try to have poll workers who speak Inuktut. We don't always succeed, but we certainly try to do that. They can help the voters understand the ballot if there are questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thanks very much, Mr. Calkins.

Mr. Turnbull, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thanks very much, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Perrault and Ms. Morin, for being here today. It's great to see you.

I'm really happy to hear about the work we did on PROC. I'm looking at Lori Idlout for her advocacy in this area and for the incredible contributions she has made. Lori, it's really great to see you back here.

I'm glad to be back on PROC. I'm glad to see this pilot moving forward. I think we can all agree that it's a real step in the right direction. Thank you for your commitment and your work on this. I do have a few questions, but I wanted to show my solidarity for your hard work to make this happen.

I read your opening remarks. I think there might be some differences, perhaps, in what you said and what you wrote ahead of time. I note that at some point towards the end of your remarks, you said that you envisioned coming back to the committee, or coming back to Parliament, with “operational and legislative issues” that might need to be remedied in order to make this pilot “a permanent service offering”. I think this is the way you said it, which is great.

What do you anticipate those might be? It sounds like you already have an idea that there will be some challenges that need to be overcome, or some legislative changes that may be necessary, in order to do this more permanently. What do you anticipate some of those to be?

[Stéphane Perrault]

We are simply cognizant of the fact that it is not as simple as it may appear at first glance. We've tried to do consultations and work with territorial partners who've done this, and consult locally. We think we have everything covered.

You will notice that in the document I shared, in the legal variations there is a final clause that would allow me to make any additional change necessary for the implementation if something arises. It's not a policy direction change. It's if there's a technical issue. This is why it's a pilot. When we come back, we will take stock of what took place and how well it went. I'm confident that it will go well, but the nature of the pilot is to draw lessons and enable Parliament to make a permanent decision on whether to go forward with this or not, or to go in a different way.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you for that.

Are there other precedents in areas where you have the power to make slight changes to your operations where necessary? Do you then justify those in writing? How does that work?

[Stéphane Perrault]

There are two powers in the act.

One is for the implementation of the special ballots in various forms. There are adaptations I can make that are similar in formulation to this, where it's necessary for the carrying out of the provisions. There are regularly some adaptations that are made for that. They're always published on our website, and they're shared with the parties and candidates as we go.

Then there's a provision in section 17 of the act that is more for unusual and unforeseen circumstances. You can think about electors who are displaced by a flood or a fire. We have to allow them to vote out of riding. This is a fairly common occurrence, and it's expected to be more common in such a big country. There is a power there and, again, these adaptations are made publicly and transparently. They're published on the website and shared with parties and candidates.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I led you to that because I had a feeling that you were going to say that. It's not unheard of that you have some flexibility within your operations and that you justify that and document it so that people are aware. There's a level of transparency there that we all agree is paramount to upholding our institution here, which is very important. Thank you for that.

I think that sets the stage, perhaps, for you coming back later at some point in the next Parliament to report back on how things went, which leads me to my next question. You've talked about how this could perhaps be a permanent service offering. I think that in our previous work and deliberations as a committee there was quite a lot of support for this pilot. I think the underlying objective is to remove barriers and increase voter engagement.

My question is, how are you going to measure the success of this pilot? You've mentioned doing focus groups and getting feedback, which I think means you're open to continuous improvement—which is fantastic—but how will you determine whether or not this is successful?

[Stéphane Perrault]

Essentially, there are two aspects. One is, from an operational point of view, are there hurdles that we had to confront? What were those hurdles? There's a technical aspect to success in this way.

The other one is the voter experience. That's where it's important to get out into the communities and speak to the users, and not simply do a survey that may or may not have much uptake.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

I'm sorry, Mr. Turnbull. That is all the time we have for your line of questioning. Thank you.

Ms. Gaudreau, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Once again, I found it very interesting how the relevance of the pilot project will be measured and the results it will produce.

I like pilot projects, in that they are tests that also allow us to have long discussions afterwards. Maybe that's why I don't have a lot of questions for you, but I do have one.

In Quebec, we put candidates' faces on ballots.

Is that also the case currently in Nunavut, or is the situation somewhat the same as in the rest of Canada?

Have you thought about that situation?