Madam Speaker, I am particularly pleased to be able to speak in the debate on the new Canada elections bill. I was the chair of procedure and House affairs last year when we dealt with this matter on a preliminary basis.
It has already been mentioned by some members of the opposition that this is a large bill. The fact of the matter is that this is one of the underpinnings of our democracy. Our legislation and Elections Canada are a model to the world. People come to Ottawa regularly from other countries to examine how we do things.
It has been 30 years since there was a comprehensive review of this important piece of legislation. Over those years, of course, given the changes in technology and in communications across the country, all sorts of smaller changes have been made to it, trying to keep it up to date and so on.
I am particularly pleased at this time that the government has seen fit not just to fix parts of it but to take this very basic piece of legislation and develop what is essentially a new act. The time is right for that given the changes of the last three decades.
The process on how this was done has been mentioned. It was unusual, and I realize that it may be difficult for some opposition members to understand.
The Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, which is the committee responsible in the House for the Canada Elections Act, conducted an elaborate review of this last year. I recommend the report that resulted from that review to all members of the House and to anybody watching this on television. I recommend it not because it provides all the answers or that it provides a sort of complete blueprint from which this new legislation was taken, but because it presents all the views of registered parties, members of parliament, members of the House and others who appeared before the committee.
The report does not say one way or the other how it should be done. It says what particular issue is at stake, what the views are that were presented to us and whether or not the committee had a consensus view. The report, which involved very wide consultation in the House and beyond, provided the basis for the drafters of the legislation, which was very useful to them.
During the committee's consultations, we did not start with a blank space. We had before us the work of our predecessors over the last 30 years in the House of Commons, for example the Lortie commission which the minister mentioned. We considered the recommendations of the Lortie commission, many of which have not been acted upon, with great care and included them in the committee's report.
We also considered the recommendations of the special committee of the House which dealt with electoral matters only a few years ago. We considered those and they are also referenced in the report. The drafters had the Lortie commission, the recommendations of the special committee of the House and the general framework laid out based on the consultations of last year's Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.
Now, continuing the process, the minister wants the bill to go directly to committee for further consultation not only with members of the House but, as usual, by holding public hearings with people across the country. There will be further input. I commend the minister for that. It is very courageous and appropriate to get the bill into committee now so it can be debated by all members of the House.
We have now heard from the minister and a number of members of the opposition parties. There was criticism of course from the opposition parties but it was constructive criticism.
Because it is a very thick document, I would like to point out the sorts of things the bill is trying to deal with. In doing that I underestimate the bill in some ways. It is not a bill that simply fixes bits and pieces of the legislation. It is a bill that rewrites the legislation to fit with the modern era. Nevertheless, I will mention some of the specific points.
Let me give some examples of the way people as voters will benefit from the legislation. Canadian voters temporarily abroad will be able to submit their ballots at embassies and consulates. The legislation has not been revised for 30 years. Thirty years ago it would have been very difficult to administer a system like this. One can well imagine people in remote embassies trying to get a valid vote back into Canada. It could have been quite difficult and could have delayed the process. We now need something easier so that is being done.
The minister made the point about signs in multiple dwelling units. We know we can canvass in buildings which are like small communities in some of our cities. People live in those communities. They walk the corridors, ride the elevators and so on. The legislation, with respect to signage from political parties, has been different inside these dwellings than it was outside. The modern reality is that many of us live in multiple dwellings. It is very appropriate that those of us who do live in those dwellings have the same chance to advertise and show our political affiliation as the people who live in single or small units.
If members think about the changes over the last 30 years, they think about the role of polls. Polls are now part of modern life like so many other things. Maybe in the backs of our minds we would like to turn the clock back to when polls did not exist but they do exist. It is now possible to sample thousands of people in a very short time and very quickly put the results of that sampling in front of people as they are watching TV at night. This is now recognized in the legislation today.
The legislation does not ban polls or anything of that sort. Among other things, it states that during an election campaign when a poll first appears, the first time it is mentioned in the campaign, the methodology, that is the exact way in which the poll was conducted, will have to be given to the public. We will know if is a straw poll and it is somebody selling hamburgers and counting the hamburgers that are red or blue or whatever the methodology may be, or if it truly is a statistically based sampling of people in all regions, people of all ages, people of different income groups and those types of thing. I think it is very appropriate nowadays because the general public is well informed about such things. Now, when a poll first appears in an election, the methodology will be described and it will allow us all to judge the reliability of the results of that polls.
Because we have so much information and it is so easy to get information out, it is very appropriate that the legislation provide us with more complete information on the registered parties, what they stand for and what their organizational basis is, more information on the candidates who run, whether they run for main line parties or some local issue of that sort, and more information on what we in the House now know as third parties.
Third parties are groups that are not registered and have no running candidates in an election, but want to be able to advertise on a particular issue in a certain constituency. Again, it is very appropriate when that occurs. If it is a legitimate activity, we need to know who those people are, where they are coming from and, in this legislation, that there be information about them and spending limits—in this case $3,000 per constituency—on them in the same way as all candidates and all parties have spending limits and have to provide information.
This is a fundamental piece of legislation. The process so far has been very positive and open. It is my sense that when this gets to committee it will create great interest and input from all members. I look forward to the discussions. I urge all members to move forward so that at the end of this process we will have a new, even stronger Canada Elections Act.