Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Oct. 2nd, 2025

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

Okay, so that's important to note.

There were seven electors in my riding.... It wouldn't have made a difference, and your report does highlight that. You say that the outcome would not have affected any of the 74 impacted districts, mine being one of them. It's true that there were seven ballots cast by people living in my riding, and happily, I won by more than seven votes. Even if they had all gone the other way, I still would have won.

I want to tell those people that their votes actually did count, because that's what I tell everybody when I'm knocking on doors. They say, “Mr. Van Popta, you're going to win anyway, so it doesn't matter if I vote.” I say, “It matters a lot—

[Stéphane Perrault]

It matters.

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

—because every vote counts.”

[Stéphane Perrault]

Mr. Chair, I apologize for interrupting.

It matters. I wholeheartedly agree, and to all extents possible, we want to make sure that every valid vote is reflected and is counted.

Now, if we find out some error after validation, it cannot be included in the official results. In the case of Coquitlam, a large percentage—and I can't remember exactly—of the affected ridings had done their validation when the issue arose, so that was not a possibility.

It was nevertheless important to be very transparent about the situation, because some of those ridings were fairly close—not so close that it would have made a difference, but perhaps sufficiently so in the case of a recount. It was critical that the candidates in those ridings be made aware of the number of votes that potentially would have affected their election, and should they have wished to do so, they could have raised this in the context of a recount.

After validation, if we find this situation, we need to be very quick to be transparent to make sure that these rights can be properly exercised.

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

What happens if this is discovered after validation? I just need to be clear on that and if the outcome would have been different. Would it have been a recount? Would you have invalidated the prior validation?

[Stéphane Perrault]

That's a good question. This is not something that we have encountered before.

I would be very reluctant, but I won't rule it out, to undo a validation. I think that could be seen as circumventing the remedy in the act for a recount. My preference would be to make the information available to the court in a recount so that the judge may take into account those votes and leave the court process to determine that.

There are several guardrails and remedies in our system, and that's a good thing. Obviously, we don't like to see a contested election, so the recount or the validations are the two opportunities to make sure that the right candidate has been elected.

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

I'd like to give you a hypothetical case.

I'm looking at the 74 ridings. They're written out in your report alphabetically. I looked up Terrebonne when Ms. Normandin was asking you some questions, and it is not listed there. Nobody in Coquitlam voted in the Terrebonne election, but if there had been, what difference would it have made to a declaration in that Quebec riding?

[Stéphane Perrault]

Had that been the case, my hope is that the information being available would have been taken into account by the judge in the recount, before going to a contested election.

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

What are you going to do to make sure this never happens again—and what actually did happen? A ballot box got lost. How can that possibly happen?

[Stéphane Perrault]

In the case of Coquitlam, we had a situation of confusion about the process. We had a team there that worked provincially and was confused with the different rules. Provincially in B.C., the special ballots are sent to the headquarters after the election for the count. Federally, that's not the case.

This is something that ought to have been understood. It's very clear in our material, but we have begun to look at all the controls that can be implemented to make sure that these kinds of errors are picked up immediately and corrected before validation.

I have indicated publicly, Mr. Chair, that we will be introducing changes to our processes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Thank you so much. You were 30 seconds over, but it was an excellent question. I used my prerogative and I wanted to hear the answer. Thank you.

Mr. Maloney, go ahead for five minutes, please.

[James Maloney, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for coming today. Thank you for all the work you do. You guys have a tough job. There's no doubt about that.

I have a couple of questions.

I want to go back to this so-called longest ballot issue. I think we can all agree that it's outrageous. If we're being frank with each other about this thing, if it had a purpose, I'm not sure anybody understands what it is anymore. In my personal opinion, we need to find a way to stop it.

This is not a partisan issue; it's an issue that impacts all the parties in different ways at different times. It was an issue in Battle River—Crowfoot. It was an issue in Mr. Poilievre's previous riding, the one he lost—the name escapes me at the moment—but it was also an issue in previous by-elections that were won by the Liberals, so it affects us all equally.

In Battle River—Crowfoot, one of the candidates, I believe, was from my riding. I don't know that she has ever been there. I am not even sure she could find it on a map, frankly, so we need to stop this. My question is, what steps can be taken to do that?

For example, to register as a candidate, you have to submit your papers and you have to go through some sort of interview process, but you don't have to do it in person. I know of circumstances where the person who was responsible for doing interviews spoke to somebody on Zoom or Teams. The person wasn't in the city. The person wasn't in the province. I am not even sure they were in the country; they were on a boat.

I understand this helped particularly during COVID in certain circumstances, but is there any thought being given to requiring in-person attendance for people when they are going through this process and conducting the interview when they submit their papers?

[Stéphane Perrault]

I would be reluctant to require an in-person presence.

We have very large electoral districts in Canada. They are probably some of the largest in the world, if not the largest. Nunavut, to take an example, is almost two million square miles, and communications across the riding are very limited. That creates a range of challenges for candidates and elected MPs. In large districts, requiring someone's presence at the office of the returning officer, even where we have satellite offices, may present challenges for some of the candidates.

That's not something that I have considered, just to be clear.

[James Maloney, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Okay. I understand that geography is a significant hurdle in Canada, but there has to be some way to curtail the abuse from that perspective. I don't know—ask them to name three streets in the riding or to name two restaurants. There has to be something to prevent this absurd situation.

That takes me to my next point, which is about the signatures. There's been some discussion about this today.

You are required to get 100 signatures. I'm not sure that preventing somebody from signing two candidates' forms is necessary. That might be a bit too strict, but there has to be a way to curtail it. I don't think the signatures are required to be submitted in the original form. It can be done electronically, if I'm not mistaken. Could you confirm that?

The second question is this: What processes are used or what steps are taken to validate the signatures? Does anybody do any follow-up, knock on the door and say, “Hi, Mr. Maloney. Your name appears on this form. Was it you who signed it, or was it some member of your family?”, etc.?

[Stéphane Perrault]

On the first question, signature documents can be scanned and uploaded electronically and submitted through our portal.

With respect to the second question, the answer is no. We don't go, for example, door to door. Our returning officers are not experts at comparing signatures.

Very often, nomination papers are filed at the last hour, if not the last minute. The returning officer has 48 hours to confirm and usually likes to inform the candidate if there's a problem with one of the signatures or if there's a signature missing. Then they have to move very quickly to make sure that these are names of people who are in the electoral districts. That's the verification process that takes place.

Obviously, there may be situations where it's apparent that it's the same signature across the board. If it's so apparent, that would be flagged, but that is not the same thing as truly having a signature verification process for the nominations.

[James Maloney, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

When these are uploaded—

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Mr. Maloney, you did have two seconds left, and I've now used them, so I apologize. The good news is that we will have lots of time to come back and ask more questions.

Madame Normandin, you have two and a half minutes, please.

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

Mr. Perrault, I'm going to ask one or two more questions about special ballots, then I'll move on to something else.

In your opinion, if no one contacts electors to advise them that a return envelope is incorrectly labelled, for example, isn't there a danger their ballot won't be counted?

[Stéphane Perrault]

It can jeopardize the ballot's return.

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

To avoid contacting people to advise them of the error, can people simply say they're confident the ballots will ultimately be returned? For example, they'll be sent to the post office, and the post office will correct the postal code so they're returned by 9 p.m. on voting day. Is that guaranteed?

[Stéphane Perrault]

To be honest, it's not guaranteed even when the envelope is properly labelled. Sometimes, ballots aren't returned, and it's not a labelling error. Special ballots are essential to the process, because they allow us to reach electors who, otherwise, would be deprived of their right to vote. We note that the difficulties raised must not serve as a reason to eliminate special ballots, but rather help us reflect on how to improve the process. Clearly, the easiest and most reliable way to vote is to go to the polling station, either during the advance polls or on election day, since the process is simpler and there are fewer intermediaries. Voting by mail requires intermediaries, so errors may occur and ballots may go astray.

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

My next questions concern the polling stations that weren't able to open in Nunavik. I don't have much time left, so I'll get straight to the point.

According to the report you tabled, the conclusions will be made public once the review ends. Is the review almost over?

[Stéphane Perrault]

The review is over. We're drafting the report now. We want the report to be published not only in English and French but also in Inuktitut. It's important to me that the people who speak that language in the community are able to read the report. As I mentioned earlier, I expect it will be ready by November.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Thank you so much.

Mr. Jackson, you have the floor.

[Grant Jackson, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thank you, Chair.

It's very nice to meet both of you.

It's my pleasure and privilege to be here as a new member of Parliament under the 45th general election. Thank you for making sure that went smoothly. My local returning officer, Joni Swidnicki, is a wonderful person. She did a great job in Brandon—Souris.

I wasn't originally going to start here, but I am curious about the pencil issue. Would it be beneficial to just go back to Elections Canada's providing pens at voting booths in order to deal with this misinformation issue that's out there? Is that something you would consider going forward, going back to pens?