Evidence of meeting #4 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 elections.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Chris Bittle
Thank you so much.
Ms. Idlout has the floor for five minutes, please.
Lori Idlout NDP Nunavut, NU
Qujannamiik, Iksivautaq. Thank you to the committee for including me in this important study.
Mr. Perrault, I've appreciated all of your responses and all of the work that you've done to make sure that my constituents have an opportunity to vote. It's such an important right.
I'm going to be asking you about four or five questions related to different phases of the election. I'll be kind of ping-ponging, just so you know.
My first question to you is regarding the voter information cards.
In your report, you stated that you had to use subsection 17(1) of the Canada Elections Act to allow recognition of individuals who wanted to vote. I'm wondering if you foresee the need to change that section, given this Liberal government's position on Canada Post and the labour dispute, and how that might impact voter information cards from being mailed in a timely manner.
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
As I said earlier, we are exploring various delivery channels for voter information cards. I'm aware that the issue of connectivity in Nunavut can be a challenge in some places. Whether downloading a card would be available to some of your electors is a question that we certainly have to look into.
It is a challenge. In the case of Nunavut, challenges with confirming locations delayed the sending of the VIC. That has nothing to do with Canada Post. Our challenges are, I would say, inherent to the delivery of postal parcels or mail in such a large region, where weather incidents can of course happen and delay the vote.
I think there are a mix of factors, and we can expect those factors to happen again in future elections. That's why there has to be a range of mechanisms to inform electors of the voting locations and the times to vote, rather than just relying exclusively on the voter information card.
NDP
Lori Idlout NDP Nunavut, NU
Thank you so much.
I know that you, more than most, will understand the challenges that I experience as the MP for Nunavut. Nunavut is such a huge territory, with all 25 communities being fly-in communities.
I specifically want to ask about the northernmost community, Grise Fiord. As you'll recall, they did not get to open their polls until about two o'clock. I wonder if you could describe, very quickly, the circumstances that led to the challenges for voters in Grise Fiord in being able to vote on that day.
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
Very quickly, I think very few Canadians appreciate the challenges that you face and that our returning officer faces in Nunavut with the immensity of the territory.
I believe that in Grise Fiord the issue was with the late delivery of the material, due to the weather situation, which must include the list of electors with the struck names. That is something that cannot be delivered many days ahead of polling day; it's something that comes in fairly late in the days leading to polling day. If there's an important delay, it can reduce the number of hours at the vote. I believe that's what happened in Grise Fiord.
Mr. Roussel...?
Deputy Chief Electoral Officer, Electoral Events and Innovation, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
It was, indeed.
NDP
Lori Idlout NDP Nunavut, NU
Okay. Thank you so much.
I wonder what the legislative restraints are for ensuring that those kinds of physical restrictions are avoided so that there are creative ways of ensuring that, for example, we'll know by election day who the candidates will be and how people can ensure that they can practise their right to vote, knowing that weather delays or mechanical delays will always happen, no matter what time of year elections are happening.
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
I wish I had a good answer for you. I don't have a perfect answer.
As I said earlier, I think the delivery of materials, generally speaking, is something that can and must be arranged ahead of time. It requires people from the communities working on the ground, and that is sometimes a challenge. I'll be honest: Recruitment in some parts of Canada, including Nunavut, can be difficult, but having people on the ground and being able to send the material ahead of time are critical.
As I said, the one item that cannot be sent much in advance is the final list of electors, which has the names from the advance polls that have been struck from the list. Until we have live electronic lists—and there are probably limitations to that in Nunavut—I'm not sure what the answer is, but it's certainly something that I will be considering.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Chris Bittle
Thank you so much.
I'm canvassing the committee. It's 12:32. I'm happy to hear thoughts. We've gone through three full rounds. I propose that we go through a fourth and call it a meeting.
NDP
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Chris Bittle
We will sort through that. I will canvass the committee members while we continue with questions.
I believe Mr. Jackson is next.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Chris Bittle
It's up to you. I have Mr. Jackson and then Mr. Van Popta, as the second Conservative in the round. If you'd like to flip that, that's entirely up to you.
Conservative
Grant Jackson Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
Thank you, Chair. I'll try to keep these questions very brief.
According to your report, there were 57,440 ballots cast by electors living outside of Canada and voting by mail. That is a significant increase from the 27,035 cast in the 44th general election.
I'm wondering if you would be willing to submit to the committee a breakdown of the electoral districts in which these ballots were counted.
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
Certainly. That's something I can commit to providing after this discussion.
Conservative
Grant Jackson Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
That's wonderful.
All three measures of quality for the list of electors—coverage, currency and accuracy—were lower for this election than in the previous general election. In fact, I think they were lower than the election before that as well, so accuracy has been trending down in these three categories since 2019.
What are the causes of that? Do you think those trends are acceptable in delivering a fair and secure election? What are you doing to address the downward trend of those indicators?
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
I certainly agree that the quality of the list is critical to the quality of the election, both in terms of making it accessible and to the integrity of the process. That's something that's important.
At the election, we had coverage of 95.2%. That is very slightly lower than in past elections and is very comparable, and we had an accuracy of 92.2%, which again is slightly lower. If you compare that to 2019, which was a fixed-date election, coverage was slightly higher, at just over 96%, because we have the ability in a fixed-date election to do information campaigns ahead of the election and to promote people to register ahead of time and either add themselves or remove themselves if they have moved.
It is not at all surprising that you would see a difference between fixed-date elections and non-fixed-date elections. The numbers that we have here are comparable and are historically on the high end of accuracy and coverage for the national register of electors.
Conservative
Grant Jackson Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
Thank you.
Just to follow up on that, in comparing the numbers from 2021 to this election—both of which were non-fixed-date elections—we see that they're still less this time around than in 2021.
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
Yes. In 2021, we may have carried over a bit of the benefits. The differences between 2021 and 2025 are marginal. They're more significant between fixed dates 2019 and 2025. It's likely, I would speculate, that we carried over some of the benefits of the 2019 election into 2021, whereas we have a longer time period here between the two elections, between 2021 and 2025. There's a bit of a slight degradation of the coverage and accuracy.
Deputy Chief Electoral Officer, Electoral Events and Innovation, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
If I may, the safety net during the election is the revision. Any elector can go to our website, call the office of the returning officer and get the record updated, if needed. We had 1.3 million electors in the last election who did so, which is in line with but a little more than we had in the 44th general election, to your point, but it is way less than the 2.8 million we saw at the inception of the national register of electors 20 years ago.
The long arc of history, if I may say, goes in the right direction with respect to the coverage, currency and accuracy of the national register of electors.
Conservative
Grant Jackson Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
Thank you.
For my final question, your report talks about disinformation, as you mentioned, particularly on social media and elsewhere, and the set-up of a web page in many different languages that talks about interference in elections and what pressure in elections would look like and that type of thing. I'm just wondering how much activity that section of your website got during this election, with voters coming forward and saying, “I think I might have been influenced” or this type of thing.
What does the process look like when you, as Elections Canada, get reports from people who are concerned about activities taking place that are pressuring people during elections? Where do you take that information? What does the process look like to ensure those potential threats to a voter or voters are taken seriously and addressed?
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
Thank you.
Just to be clear, the multimedia campaign in 50 languages is about information, the basic information about the electoral process. It helps to fight disinformation, but it's different from the information on our website, such as, for example, ElectoFacts, which I mentioned earlier and is there specifically to correct misinformation or disinformation.
There are different tools that we have in place to promote correct information. As I said, we have a social media monitoring team. When we see incorrect information, we have pre-approved responses that are prepared and ready to go, and we can use our social media platforms to communicate directly to those voters on those platforms.
When something new arises that is not captured by our pre-existing message, there's an escalation process and a decision is made. In some cases, you have to decide whether an intervention would provide greater attention to someone who's posting than not and measure the risk to the process that the misinformation carries. There's a judgment as to when we intervene and with what kind of information.
We always want to be factual and never provide opinions. We never say, for example, “This is why you can trust elections.” We say, “Here are the safeguards.” We let people make up their minds. There's judgment as to what kind of language we use, but there's a process in place for the team to escalate if they're new and not pre-approved messages.