Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to participate in the debate this afternoon. I have listened to the debate throughout and was intrigued by the comments of the government House leader indicating that they were relatively minor amendments. The member for Regina—Qu'Appelle has dealt with the suggestion of 12 candidates in order for a party to be considered official.
I was more intrigued by the commitment of the House leader that he would be open to much more significant changes to the Canada Elections Act following Jean-Pierre Kingsley's report to the appropriate parliamentary committee having an opportunity to discuss his findings regarding the recent election.
All members of the House of Commons would want to pay close attention to that report and to what Mr. Kingsley, the chief electoral officer, and Elections Canada find as a result of the November 2000 election.
I should like to associate myself with some of the remarks made by the member for Edmonton North. It was a difficult election campaign with the permanent voters list that has now come into play.
While the member for Edmonton North referred to brand new subdivisions that were springing up overnight and to the difficulty of keeping up in her riding, the situation experienced in the riding of Palliser was quite a bit different. We found that low income people and people who moved a lot, probably because they are low income people and students, were being discriminated against as a result of the national registration of voters.
We used to have an enumeration prior to each election campaign. That system worked very well over many years, but it was changed. The last enumeration took place on the eve of the 1997 election and then in the November 2000 election we were into an update.
It was argued at the time that it would be much more effective to use computers, et cetera, so that people could be tracked. We are finding that a lot of the information is not available or not able to be placed into an updated voters list because of our privacy laws. This is why Mr. Kingsley's comments will be so important when they are made. I will give the House an example.
As I was door knocking in my riding I noticed Elections Canada flyers on certain doorsteps advising that one or more of the residents in the household had reached the age of 18 and was therefore eligible to cast a ballot if he or she would fill out a form.
It seems passing strange to me that those names are not placed automatically on the ballot, but apparently our privacy laws prohibit that. If the privacy laws are that strict, and there are good arguments not to change them, we really need to consider seriously going back to a system of enumeration.
As my colleague pointed out, one million people were left off the voters list in the last election. We had one of the lowest turnouts in history. In my riding of Palliser the vote was just over 62%. I make the point again that it was primarily low income people and people who tend to move around a lot.
One can get on the voters list. It is easier to get on the voters list on election day than it used to be, but one still requires identification or must be sworn in by a friend. A lot of times genuine low income people do not have an abundance of personal ID. It is difficult for them to find someone to go with them, hold their hand at the polling booth and say this is Jane Smith or whomever. I think we must look at the whole area, and I am pleased the government House leader has made a commitment on that.
At the same time I want to be critical of Mr. Kingsley for suggesting the answer to low voter turnout was compulsory voting. A lot of our problems have to do with the transition to the permanent voters list from the enumerated list. We need to tidy that up and make it more effective. If we cannot tidy it up we should revert to the enumeration system.
The member for Edmonton North also noted the situation in Saskatchewan, which has not had a political tax credit at the provincial level, and the need to remedy it. I suspect she knows a bill has already been passed but not yet proclaimed in that legislature. I have been given assurances the problem will be remedied in Saskatchewan's new session of parliament which probably begins in a month or so. Then there will be political tax credits in all 10 provinces. We have had a federal tax credit in Canada since the mid-1970s. We look forward to that progressive change in Saskatchewan's legislation.
Another item which deserves to be raised and to which my colleague alluded was the question of third party advertising. I too very much support strict limits on third party advertising during election campaigns. The political parties that participate in campaigns have very rigid spending limits that must be followed. It would be patently unfair for people with deep pockets to be able to subvert or buy their way into the media to effect changes that the political parties do not have the budget to do.
We recognize, and I think the government recognizes, through the legislation it has endeavoured to bring in over the last number of years, that third parties should be able to advertise during election campaigns. However they should spend only a finite amount of money on advertising, less than what political parties are able to spend, because an election campaign is a contest between all the parties, big and small, and not the folks with the big bank accounts.
We align ourselves in the New Democratic Party very much with finite limits on third party advertising, unlike the lead spokesperson in the debate for the Canadian Alliance Party.
To conclude, I would encourage colleagues who are interested to look at a document entitled The National Register of Electors , which raises questions about the new approach to voter registration in Canada. It would take only about 10 or 15 minutes to read through the booklet. It was written before the results were tallied, so it says in effect that the November 27 election serves as the litmus test for the national registration of voters.
It wonders whether the move to a permanent voters list from the enumeration system was done as a cost saving venture. I hope that when Mr. Kingsley and the parliamentary committee studying the legislation looks at this fundamental change to the act, tough questions like that will be asked by the parliamentarians who serve on the committee.
I see my time is drawing to a close. I will conclude by saying that we in my party are supportive of the minor technical amendments in the bill. Far more importantly, however, we are interested in the fundamental changes that the government House leader alluded to when he led off the debate this afternoon.