Mr. Speaker, I do not think anyone really opposes the concept of reducing the election period from 47 days to 36 days in principle, although I have some specific examples of problems this can create which I will get into a little later.
With regard to the Group No. 3 motions, I refer first to Motion No. 5 proposed by the government which would make it possible for the chief electoral officer to extend the voting hours from the current 11 hours to 12 hours. We consider that this extension is costly and unnecessary and really does not achieve any particular purpose. We would suggest that the 11 hours currently laid aside for Canadians to vote is adequate. Therefore this motion is not required and we will oppose it.
With regard to the staggered voting hours across the country, as a parochial British Columbian representative, I contend that the change in the voting hours to close the polls on the west coast or in British Columbia at 7 p.m. does not do justice to the British Columbian voters and those in the Yukon. A lot of people, because of their occupations and their location away from their voting stations on voting day, tend to exercise their vote at the end of the day. Therefore the rescinding of that last hour from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. would impact dynamically on the vote.
In my own constituency it is quite common for 87 per cent or more of the voters to come out to vote. I suspect that if this particular motion is carried we will see a lower turn out. I do not think this is what was intended by the electorate.
Alternatives were proposed that would allow for the voting to be substantially the same as it is now but that would provide for the avoidance of the perception on the west coast, or in the west for that matter, that the decisions were already taken and the government was chosen and formed before it came to voting at that time. No one to my knowledge has been able to assess the impact on the western voters of knowledge of what the eastern vote has been.
Whether people would say that the government has been formed and they are going to vote against that government or that the government has been formed and they want to vote for that government so that there is government representation out there, I do not know. However, I suspect that it does have an impact and that this should be avoided.
My own personal preference would be to have the voting hours remain exactly as they are now but to delay the count of the vote and have the count occur simultaneously. This might mean starting the count of the vote the following day. Understandably this might not sit well with the election committees, campaign workers and
so on because they get all hyped up on the day of the vote and they want to know what happened.
I submit that the purpose of an election is to select a government. It is a very important purpose which should be an overriding concern in the election process. Therefore I think it makes eminent good sense for the ballots to be taken on one day but to be counted simultaneously across the country the following day.
As I mentioned earlier, the reduction of the electoral period from 47 to 36 days with its commensurate saving of money and of the campaigning that people perhaps tire of during the actual election campaign are pretty good. There is a lot of substantiation for that. However we do feel that it would impact negatively on byelections.
For instance it is within the power of the government to make a byelection happen by virtue of promoting a member of Parliament from this House to the other place. The government would thereby have an advantage in that it would know when and in which area that is going to happen. This would leave the opposition parties and the independents scrambling to try to make up for lost time. That might not be possible.
I also think that the reduction to a 36-day election period impacts rather negatively on geographically large ridings. Obviously there is a lot more territory to cover. The residents are dispersed and for an individual candidate to get around to visit those areas takes more time than in a congested urban area.
As an example, there are 14 large northern ridings which would be so affected. They include Skeena, B.C., Prince George-Peace River, B.C., Peace River, Alberta, Athabasca, Alberta, Churchill River, Saskatchewan, Churchill, Saskatchewan, Kenora-Rainy River, Ontario, Timmins-James Bay, Ontario, Abitibi, Quebec, Manicouagan, Quebec, Labrador, Newfoundland; Yukon, Western Arctic and Nunavut. All would be dramatically affected by the reduction of the campaign time from 47 to 36 days.
Perhaps there is some way to overcome this. However, it is important that this be remembered and taken into consideration when the election act is being changed.
It is vitally important that we also remember that the government has rather pushed this thing through. If I was a suspicious individual I might think there was subterfuge here, a dateline it wanted to meet in order to call an election. But that may not be the case.
One thing which was not considered and which should have been considered in the bill is the idea of a fixed election day. The Prime Minister in the Canadian Parliament has a tremendous amount of power in that it is his choice when Canadians go to the polls to select a new government. He can choose a propitious time for the polls, choose a time when people are distracted elsewhere. It gives him tremendous power.
I think that for the good of the country we should consider and perhaps institute a fixed election date. Of course, Reform would advocate that these election dates be every four years, on a specified date so that there is no doubt in anyone's mind when the next election is going to be.
I personally found it a little questionable in committee when the matter of allowing inmates to vote was raised. Granted, that is not a direct concern in this bill, but it was certainly discussed. It is unacceptable to me that an individual who has broken the law, been convicted and incarcerated that they should still have all the rights in elections as a normal, law-abiding citizen. I would think that anyone who is incarcerated after being convicted should forgo the privilege and the honour of being able to vote until he or she has completed that sentence and thereby paid his or her debt to society.
We think it should be mandatory that in the case of a byelection that the Prime Minister's ability to control the agenda should be constrained. We suggest that when byelections are called they should take place within six months of a seat being vacated, rather than the current time which is pretty well open to the Prime Minister. This obviously leaves some constituencies without representation in the House while the seat is vacant. That is neither right nor appropriate in the democracy in which we live.
Another point which is worthy of consideration is that of requiring people to prove their identity, either when they register to vote or when they actually cast their ballot. The permanent list with which the bill is mainly concerned is made up of things like drivers' licences, birth certificates and so on. It seems to me that it would not be inappropriate for an individual to be required to prove to the registrar or to the voting official when he or she goes to vote, exactly who he or she is and that he or she has the right to cast a ballot to elect the next Government of Canada.
The truth is that in the present day electronic world in which we live there is no way that election results from the east will not get to the west, if they have been counted, before the polls in the west close. With E-mail and the Internet there is no question that this information will be transmitted, either via the United States or other countries. Therefore, no matter how carefully we control the vote, if the ballots are counted the results are going to be known very shortly thereafter.
In conclusion, I would say that Reform is not diametrically opposed to the concept of a 36-day election campaign as opposed to 47, but we do question the wisdom of running a separate enumeration, which is very expensive, outside the normal voting process. We would advocate that the next election campaign be the normal 47-day period and that the enumeration list compiled for the next election comprise the basis for the permanent list with
which this bill deals. We find the idea of having an enumeration in April unnecessary and expensive. It would be better to put it off to the normal election call.