That is correct.
Evidence of meeting #14 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was ballots.
A video is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #14 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was ballots.
A video is available from Parliament.
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
That is correct.
Conservative
Tako Van Popta Conservative Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC
Good. Thank you.
Looking at your report—this is just for my understanding—on page 21, in table 4, you note that the number of electors living outside of Canada voting by mail is 101,000 plus. Let's call it 102,000. Of those, only 57,000 returned a ballot, which is 56.5%. That is a very low percentage compared to the other forms of voting.
Just to be clear, the 102,000 ballots issued were not ballots that were recently requested; they were sent out automatically to anybody who was on your voters list.
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
The majority of those were recently requested during the writ period. There were 48,000 electors on the register at the issuing of the writ—
Danielle Duquette Special Voting Rules Administrator, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
There were 43,000.
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
There were 43,000, and they were sent a kit right at the writ-drop. The remainder were people who registered during the writ period.
Of course, depending on the time, they may have received the kit in a timely way, but in some cases, it was after election day. These late registrations explain that in non-fixed-date elections, we have lower return rates.
Conservative
Tako Van Popta Conservative Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC
I'm just surprised by those numbers. There were 48,000 are on your electors list—
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
There were 43,000. I was corrected.
Conservative
Tako Van Popta Conservative Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC
There were 43,000, sorry.
How many Canadians live abroad? I understand there might be three million.
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
It's a good question. I've seen estimates of between two million and four million. I've read different estimates.
Conservative
Tako Van Popta Conservative Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC
That's a very low percentage of Canadians—
Conservative
Tako Van Popta Conservative Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC
—living abroad who are interested enough to get on the voters list. Is that your understanding?
November 25th, 2025 / 11:25 a.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
It is a very low percentage. No matter whether its two million or four million, it remains low.
Conservative
Tako Van Popta Conservative Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC
Do you see that as a problem, or is it just the natural way of things that people who live abroad might not be very interested in what's going on in Canada?
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
That is my perspective. Those who are interested have the right to exercise their right to vote, but they're not compelled to. I'm not entirely surprised by the fact that there are so few.
Conservative
Tako Van Popta Conservative Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC
I wasn't going to ask this question. My colleague Ms. Normandin already asked about electronic voting.
Do you think those numbers would improve if we had electronic voting?
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
It raises an interesting question. It would make it easier. Whether they would want to vote is another matter. It also raises the question of whether Parliament would want to make voting easier for Canadians abroad than it is for Canadians living in Canada.
Conservative
Tako Van Popta Conservative Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC
Yes. That's a very good point.
Now I'm going to get to what I was really going to ask, which is about the security of the ballots once they've been received and mailed back to Ottawa's centre. The last time you were here, I asked you a question about the ballots in Port Coquitlam that went missing.
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
That's correct.
Conservative
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
There is.
Conservative
Tako Van Popta Conservative Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC
What happens with ballots once they arrive at the central place in Ottawa? How secure is it? Is it camera-monitored? Who's in charge?
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
This is a good question for Madame Duquette. I'll let her speak to it, rather than correct me.
Special Voting Rules Administrator, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
Thank you.
Of course the location is very secure. There's restricted access, and the ballots or the outer envelopes are always under lock and key.
Also, before we start the count, a verification process happens with the outer envelopes where we do some integrity checks. First of all, we check if the outer envelope has been signed by the elector. If there's a bar code on it, is the bar code associated to the application we got or the record we have on file for the elector? Is it the same ED? Can we match the ED for the purposes of voting? Once those checks are done, the ballots are sorted by ED and then sent to the count.
It's a very secure location. Access is restricted to people who deal with the outer envelopes.
Conservative
Tako Van Popta Conservative Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC
That's fair enough.
To what extent do you check ID to make sure the person on your voters list is actually the person casting the ballot, filling it in or doing check marks or whatever they do?