Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Nov. 20th, 2025

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome, everyone, to meeting number 13 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3), the committee is meeting for its study of challenges regarding special ballot voting.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders. Members are attending in person in the room and, potentially, remotely by using the Zoom application.

Before I continue, I would ask all in-person participants to consult the guidelines written on the back of the cards on the table. There's a QR code that links to a video. It's important to protect the health and safety of everyone present, especially our interpreters.

I'll make a few comments for the benefit of members. I remind you that all comments should be addressed through the chair—that's me. For members in the room, if you wish to speak, raise your hand. For members on Zoom, if there are any, please use the “raise hand” function. For witnesses on Zoom, you've all been told about the translation feature, as questions will be asked in both official languages.

I would now like to welcome our witnesses for today's panel. We have Élise Fraysse, associate professor; Toby James, professor of politics and public policy, the University of East Anglia, Norwich; Therese Pearce Laanela, head of electoral processes at International IDEA; and Holly Ann Garnett, class of 1965 professor of leadership, Royal Military College of Canada.

Each witness has up to five minutes to make their opening statement.

I start with Professor Fraysse for five minutes, please.

[Élise Fraysse, Associate Professor, As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

Members of the committee, it's a pleasure and an honour to appear before you today. Thank you for inviting me to testify.

I am representing the French perspective at this meeting, since I have in the past been interested in the voting of French expats around the world. I wrote a paper on the issue. I'm interested in the subject because there are 2.5 million French expats around the world, which raises interesting constitutional issues, in my opinion.

To begin, I can summarize by saying that French expatriates have a very bad name. France has constitutional mechanisms that make it possible to include expatriates very broadly in political decision-making processes, such as national and local elections.

French citizens residing abroad have been allowed to vote for a long time, since the early 20th century. This right was gradually strengthened as a result of World War II and globalization.

Today, one can say that it is very easy, at least from a legal standpoint, to vote abroad if you are French. Expats can vote from abroad if they're on the consular lists. For legislative elections, they now have the option of voting online, which is unheard of in France. They can also vote by mail or by going to a consulate or embassy.

They can also be registered, almost fictionally, on the electoral list of a French commune, or municipality, if one of their descendants has already been registered, or if one of their parents up to the fourth degree, such as an uncle or nephew, has already been registered. This allows for fairly broad participation of French expatriates in national, local and European elections.

There were quite a few challenges with expat voting in elections in France, which led to online voting. It also led to a number of challenges. So the question of generalizing the practice arises. I won't say more about that since my time is limited, but perhaps we'll come back to it.

The second thing that I think is quite interesting and that I wanted to talk to you about is the specific representation of French citizens living abroad. Since 2008, French expatriates have been specifically represented by members and senators in the French Parliament. They have 11 members of Parliament, representing 11 ridings around the world, and 12 senators. This also created a number of challenges, even though it wasn't the subject of much debate in 2008.

The first issue is voter equality, since some ridings have a lot more voters than others. It can happen that a member representing French citizens living abroad does not represent the exact same number of voters that another member represents.

More broadly, we can also question the legitimacy of this special representation of French citizens living abroad. They may never have lived in France, but nevertheless have representatives in the National Assembly and the Senate.

To conclude, I would add that, in my opinion, the issue of voting by French expats is linked to the issue of voting by foreigners. This is where the situation in France may differ from the situation in Canada.

In France, since 1992, European nationals have been able to vote in French national elections. In the interest of balance, we wanted to strengthen the ability of French expats to vote once foreigners were able to vote in France.

Thank you very much for your attention. I am available to answer any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Thank you so much.

We'll move along to Professor James for five minutes.

[Toby James, Professor of Politics and Public Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, As an Individual]

Thank you so much.

I'd like to start by thanking the committee for the opportunity to contribute in a small way to this study, which is a great honour.

I am a professor of politics and public policy at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, in the United Kingdom. I think other witnesses are much better positioned than I am to describe the Canadian system and the experience of Canadian voters. Instead, I want to focus my comments on describing the U.K. experience of overseas voting, which I think might be helpful, alongside a few comments about the international experience as well.

The United Kingdom has recently removed a 15-year limit on the exercise of voting rights for citizens living overseas. This enfranchised, in theory, many voters in the 2024 general election. There are some estimates—they are only estimates, as there are no official figures—that there could be around five million people eligible to vote in U.K. general elections who are living overseas.

The U.K. system relies on two mechanisms to enable such people to cast their vote. The first is postal voting, where citizens can apply for a postal vote in advance. Importantly, these ballots do include a list of candidates. They are the same as normal ballots that are issued on election day. Therefore, they cannot be published or posted until very late in the electoral cycle. The second mechanism is proxy voting, where you can nominate someone you trust, who is a resident in the United Kingdom, to vote on your behalf on the day of the election. An individual can cast up to four votes on behalf of overseas voters.

The system works in one sense: It enables many people to vote who would not otherwise do so. At the last general election, 191,000 people were registered to vote in the election. Roughly half of those were registered to vote via post, and it's estimated that 52% were actually then able to return that ballot. Around 50,000 people were voting from overseas via the post. There's no data, unfortunately, on the number of overseas proxy voters, but clearly proxy voting is very important in the United Kingdom to enable, in practice, people to cast their ballots.

There are also some problems in the United Kingdom, which will probably strike a similar chord to the Canadian story. Postal votes take a long time to be dispatched and returned around the world. Some votes, in practice, are not counted and are not included in the final results. The parliamentary timetable is a challenge. Overseas electors often have little knowledge about their electoral rights and the process. Out of that possible five million eligible people, very few actually have their vote cast and counted at the end of the process.

As a scholar of elections and electoral integrity around the world, I'll add a couple of other very quick observations. It's clear that measures such as special ballots, postal voting and proxy voting are very important in terms of enabling people to vote who might not otherwise be able to do so. It does bring greater inclusion into the voting process as a result. However, these measures inevitably bring complexity and administrative challenges for electoral officials.

Factors that are also important in terms of the safe delivery of elections are therefore ensuring that the electoral officials receive sufficient resources and investment in training to be able to run the elections, and making sure that the electoral timetable makes the election deliverable. Investing in voter education and voter understanding of the process—what's possible and what they need to do for their part of the bargain to make sure their vote is counted—is essential as well.

The committee might want to consider some options such as proxy voting, which is widely used in the United Kingdom, to enable more Canadians to cast their vote, but support for electoral officials and continued investment in the wider electoral framework in Canada are important as well.

Thank you for the time. I'm very happy to take any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Thank you so much.

At four minutes and 57 seconds, that was excellent. I truly appreciate that.

Next, we have Professor Laanela, please.

[Therese Pearce Laanela, Head of Electoral Processes, International IDEA]

It is such a pleasure to be with you here today.

I'm calling in from Stockholm, Sweden. I'm the head of electoral processes at International IDEA. This is an intergovernmental organization of which Canada is a very prominent member. We're very pleased to work with Elections Canada, Global Affairs Canada, the election authorities in the provinces and your excellent academics in Canada. It's always a pleasure.

I should say, since I do work with electoral processes globally, that I want to reassure you that you can be very proud of Canada. Canada punches above its weight in election management, election research and election assistance abroad through Global Affairs Canada, so you can be very proud of that.

There are challenges worldwide, as you are noticing with calling this committee. On out-of-country voting, again, if I can reassure you, it is not just Canada grappling with it; this is something all over the world. Toby has just given you the example from the U.K., and Élise has given you information about France. It's really difficult to get it right. If we co-operate together or have the ability to look at global practice, you can get ideas to pull from from other parts of the world, and we're here to help with that.

I have sent, through the clerk, our handbooks on overseas voting. There are a lot of case studies, including some from this year, on experiments in overseas voting.

As I see it, there are two issues that are really important to solve in Canada. One is very similar to the one that Toby just described, which is the fact that voters, in good faith, register on the international register of voters with Elections Canada, receive their voting kits and send them back, yet the votes are not counted, because they arrive too late. This is a systemic problem. It is nobody's fault. Everybody's doing the best they can.

The fact is that Canada doesn't have fixed elections. An election can be called at any time, which limits the election calendar and makes the timing for sending out those voting kits and getting them back very tight. Add to that that you're dealing with two post offices—you're dealing with Canada Post and the post offices in Iraq, France, Senegal or Guinea—and the risk of those ballots not coming back on time is a real one. That's what Elections Canada seems to be very worried about as well.

The second problem that you've identified is getting people on that register. How do you know where those Canadians are? Where are the eligible voters, and how do you get them to be on that register?

I think that these two challenges also bring two great opportunities for Canada. One secret little trick that I'm going to tell you is that, for most countries, out-of-country voting is a little bit of a gateway to test or pilot innovations that might influence voting in the future. New ways of online voting or new ways of doing things are often tested in a small way with a group of out-of-country voters. I think this opens up an opportunity for you to solve one of these problems, which is your timing problem.

The other opportunity that this opens up for you is more international co-operation. We're seeing this trend globally, but the fact is that voters cross borders, as does money or influence, so working with agencies overseas and involving your diplomatic community intensely is one way of solving your reach problem.

I have just one minute, so I'll just open the conversation, but I hope we can continue the conversation about how to solve the timing problem. If you are going to pilot new voting arrangements, what would you consider? The postal system is in two transactions. One is getting the voting kits, and one is sending them back. If you could replace, for example, getting your voting kits with some kind of a digital option, that could be one experiment that you might want to try. The other experiment that you might want to try, perhaps with another group or a target group, would be to do both online: you get your voting kit online and you supply it online, as was the case in France. It's not optimal, and it doesn't work everywhere, but it is being experimented with throughout the world, and I think it is the way of the future, as much as we prefer to vote in our polling stations.

I'm at four minutes and 59 seconds, but I'd love to continue this conversation in questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Thank you very much.

I think the members know that I'm not too much of a tyrant when it comes to time.

I wanted to let you know I think you'll be happy to learn that the streets in front of Parliament Hill are decked out in the Swedish flag. I'm sure it was in anticipation of your testimony and probably nothing to do with the king and queen being here.

I appreciate your opening remarks.

We'll move now to Professor Garnett for five minutes, please.

[Holly Ann Garnett, Class of 1965 Professor in Leadership, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual]

Thank you for this opportunity to speak to the committee today.

Unlike my colleagues, I am coming to you from just up the road in Kingston, Ontario.

My understanding is that this meeting is focused on the challenges faced by electors casting their ballots from abroad. Specifically, there are far more eligible electors living abroad than are being issued special ballots, and even fewer ballots are being returned on time, at an estimated 56%, with another 19% being returned too late to be counted and another 24% not being returned at all.

Why is this a problem worth looking at? I believe this committee would agree that these figures present a challenge to Canada’s democratic electoral system: first, because robust turnout is required for democratic legitimacy, and second, because, as decided by the Supreme Court, all Canadians, including those living abroad, have a right to cast a ballot. As it is for Canadians living within Canada, there should be options that allow them to do so without facing undue barriers.

Why is this happening? There are a number of factors related to Canada’s election laws and procedures that exacerbate the issue of unissued and unreturned special ballots from Canadians living abroad. The first is the short election period, as Therese mentioned, with as few as 37 days to receive and cast that special ballot. With minority Parliaments that can fall unpredictably, there can be very little notice of when an election will be called. The second is the reliance on the postal system to deliver the ballot, which can have variations in its reliability, both in Canada and abroad.

What can be done about this? What I wanted to do is present you a menu, so to speak, of the different options. However, I caution that each of these options comes with additional risks, and those have to be weighed in relation to the possible benefits.

Globally, I'd say there are three main ways of facilitating the voting of citizens living abroad: in-person voting, for example at embassies; postal voting, like our special ballots; and electronic voting methods by email, telephone or online.

I’m happy to speak about the in-person and the fully online voting options in the Q and A, but given that I'm not entirely sure there's a lot of interest in those being implemented in Canada in the future, I'll focus on some smaller changes that could improve the reliability of the special ballot voting system for electors abroad. Again, these all come with advantages and drawbacks.

First, currently, ballots must arrive at the Elections Canada office by election night. In some jurisdictions, however, ballots can still be counted if they are postmarked by election day. That's something you might want to look at, perhaps by looking at American jurisdictions that do that.

Second, ballots could also be sent by the voter to an embassy, consulate or mission in-country and then counted and forwarded from there, rather than having to make their way all the way back to Canada by the election date. Examples for that could be New Zealand and Finland.

Third, other jurisdictions use private couriers to deliver ballots rather than the regular postal system, which could potentially be more reliable or trackable. I actually voted from abroad for both the Ontario and the Canadian elections in 2025, and I received my Ontario ballot via FedEx in just a couple of days.

Fourth, in some places, voters can print their ballots at home and mail them in, reducing the lead time required to receive a special voting package. Again, I'll highlight New Zealand's external voting procedures, which are really interesting in this regard.

Fifth, New Zealand also allows voters to scan their ballots and submit them via an online portal. Other countries will use email or fax. Some American states also require you to follow that up with the physical ballot mailed in after the fact, but then at least your ballot is getting counted on election night.

Finally, just to mention something that has gone through this committee previously, there is the possibility of allowing all voters to complete a special ballot by writing in the name of the party, rather than the candidate, so they can return their ballot earlier, as was proposed in Bill C-65.

I want to highlight again that each of these changes would come with its own advantages and also potential risks, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend all of them, but this at least gives you an idea of some of the options that could be on the table. I am happy to elaborate on some of the pros and cons within the Q and A period that will follow.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Thank you so much.

Everyone did very well on their five minutes, and the chair does appreciate it.

We will now go to questions, starting with Mr. Van Popta of the Conservative Party for six minutes, please.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for spending some time with us today on a very important topic. We appreciate your perspectives and your professional input.

I'm going to start with Dr. Garnett.

I looked at a University of Ottawa study by two professors, Daniel Stockemer and Michael Wigginton. It was a 2024 study that looked at Ontario's municipal voting processes, which now include, as an option for the municipality, Internet voting. The question the study's authors put to themselves was this: “How does the decision to adopt internet voting, the mode of adoption and the timing of adoption influence turnout?” Surprisingly, at least to me, the answer was, “Generally, we find that allowing internet voting, regardless of the availability of in-person voting, does not influence turnout over the long term.”

Professor Garnett, I wonder if you have any comments about that. You might not be familiar with the study, but you would be familiar with the concept.

[Holly Ann Garnett]

Absolutely. Yes, in Canada, the best example we can look to in terms of Internet voting is how municipalities and even one territory have decided to adopt it. There's certainly research suggesting that convenience voting measures, be that Internet voting or other measures, may not improve overall turnout across the board.

When I study this, I think the interesting thing is to look at which population groups might be affected. How can different special voting measures make elections more inclusive for certain population groups that may not otherwise have the option to vote? For example, if I'm here in Kingston, whether I can vote online or I can go to a polling station, I'm going to vote regardless, but there are definitely individuals for whom, maybe due to a disability or because they're living abroad, that accessible measure is really the only measure they have to vote, and I'm really concerned about those people having a right to vote. While it might not improve turnout across the board, there are some population groups for which it might be essential.

Also, while we're talking about the Internet voting issue in Ontario municipalities, I think a really interesting case study would be to look at issues of security, privacy and other concerns we might have about introducing this form of technology into the voting process, which I can talk about as well if there's interest.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC]

That's good. Thank you.

This study actually did say that people who used Internet voting were most likely people who were already highly motivated to vote, so I don't know if your theory stands true that Internet voting makes it more accessible for people who otherwise might not vote. If you have some evidence or data or statistics that would point otherwise, I'd certainly be happy to see that.

[Holly Ann Garnett]

This doesn't always show up in large quantitative research, insofar as it may not show up across the board, but yes, we definitely see that a lot of accessible voting measures might be used by the people who are likely to vote anyway. What I'm always concerned about is whether there are certain population groups for which this might be the only option. Even if they don't show up in these larger statistical models, they're still very important voters.

I'll take a look at the study. Hopefully, I can take a look from there and see if there's anything else I can contribute.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC]

Yes, and if you want to give us something in writing, that would be very useful.

[Holly Ann Garnett]

Certainly.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC]

Mr. Chair, do I still have a couple of minutes?

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

You have over two minutes left.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC]

Okay. That's a lot of time.

Professor James, I was very interested in your evidence, particularly concerning proxy voting. Perhaps you could give us more details on how that works and, importantly, whether that method of voting is generally accepted by the voting public in the U.K.

[Toby James]

Yes. Everyone is able to apply for either a postal vote or a proxy vote. This isn't just a measure for overseas voters. It might be that they're away on election day and they've actually provisioned to apply for an emergency proxy vote up until 6 p.m. on the day of the election.

In the early 2000s, the U.K. introduced a range of measures to make voting more convenient and more inclusive. One of those measures was postal voting. Those experiments took a bit of time to get right. There were some concerns about electoral fraud and actually some high-profile cases of electoral fraud relating to postal voting in the early 2000s. Measures were then put in place to close some of those gaps.

As it stands, postal voting and proxy voting are used. Unfortunately, partly because of the way in which the U.K. is very decentralized as to how it runs elections, there is no central number of how many people actually use the proxy votes. One survey suggested that roughly 1% of people thought proxy voting was helpful. I think it is a useful tool for overseas voters, though.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC]

Good.

I also asked the question of whether it was controversial in the U.K. Was it generally accepted, or did people have to get comfortable with the idea?

[Toby James]

I think that initially there was widespread acceptance of both postal voting and proxy voting. These measures came in at around the same time. There was then some concern, after some high-profile cases were taken to court. Having seen those cases adjudicated on and reforms being made, I think proxy voting is not a source of public concern at the moment. I think people widely think that it's a useful way to enable people to vote who might not otherwise be able to do so.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Thank you, Mr. Van Popta.

Mr. Deschênes, you have the floor for six minutes.

I'm sorry. I jumped the gun. It's Mr. Louis for six minutes, please.

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you very much to all the witnesses for being here.

It's an important study. This gets to the heart of our democracy and ensuring that every Canadian citizen, no matter where they live, has the opportunity to exercise their right to vote.

What we're hearing in the study is that far too few Canadians living abroad are participating effectively. I think we had about one in 30 Canadians abroad requesting a ballot. Out of those, only about one in six had their vote counted, so we're looking to address this large gap.

What we're seeing in the study.... I'm glad our witnesses are here. Is this a logistical issue? Is this informational? Is it systemic? What is preventing Canadians from voting when they're abroad? At the same time, we're trying to balance convenience, security and inclusivity.

Maybe I'll start with Professor Laanela. You mentioned the phrase “election assistance abroad through Global Affairs Canada”. Can you elaborate on that and explain how Global Affairs Canada reaches out and how that compares to other countries?

[Therese Pearce Laanela]

Sure.

I really like your framing of the trade-offs between convenience, inclusivity and security. As Professor Garnett was saying, each of these options comes with some kind of trade-offs between them. Your role is to see where these are.

Global Affairs, or I should say Canada through Global Affairs Canada, has been actively involved in elections for maybe 35 years. It's an interesting history that you may not know. Of the Western democracies, it was really Canada, Australia and India that had strong election commissions before anybody else. Western Europe did not have this. Toby and Élise can vouch for that. There were no independent election commissions here, but Canada had that.

In those early days of democratization, Elections Canada was asked to supply its knowledge and expertise and has influenced the rise of independent election commissions all over the world. You can be very proud of that heritage. That, of course, has gone through CIDA before and Global Affairs Canada now. This is assistant to transitioning democracies.

One of the changes or trends we're seeing is that it used to be transitional countries, as in the global south, that were curious about strengthening their electoral systems, and now it is squarely our own democracies in Western Europe and in North America, for example, that are looking to protect and safeguard their own elections.

Canada is part of that journey by, for example, investing in a global package on protecting elections from harm. It's being launched at the United Nations as we speak. Holly has been part of that journey as well. This is a global package to protect elections from disinformation, from the harms of climate change, money, politics and so forth.

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Following up on.... Right before you were saying this, I had typed in whether ballots mailed in both directions can be sent electronically one or both ways, and maybe seconds after I had typed that, you mentioned it.

You can see the advantages speedwise, but what would be the challenges with safety and security?