Madam Speaker, we are debating tonight Motion M-122, which says, and I quote:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider amending the Canada Elections Act in order to grant the right to vote to those residing in Canada with landed immigrant status.
I have listened carefully to the speech of the member for Prince George--Peace River, who introduced the motion, in order to understand. At first glance, I asked myself what could motivate him today to introduce a motion which would give landed immigrants the right to vote in the future. I will come back to that issue because one of the arguments formulated has not convinced me.
It is a given—and I believe that everyone has said it, even though it is not the subject of this debate—that we all recognize the importance of the contribution of immigrants to an open and democratic society. Any society which wants to expand and progress should show some openness. This was the case of Quebec and Canada who have successively considerably expanded and which will continue to do so thanks to what immigration has helped us to become. But this is not the issue. I believe there is some kind of consensus in society about that.
However, I have not felt that the right to vote for immigrants was an important demand in Quebec these past few years. I did not feel that many people were asking for that because everyone agrees quite clearly that the right to vote comes as a result of citizenship. Citizenship entails a certain number of privileges and responsibilities, but also a certain number of other things. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms says clearly, under section 3 if I am not mistaken, that every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly.
From the moment someone chooses to become citizen of a country, in this case Canada, from the moment they get their citizenship, they have that privilege.
I was not convinced by the argument according to which people should have the right to vote from the moment they become residents, pay taxes and contribute to our society. That reasoning could actually apply to 16 or 17 year old citizens who work and pay taxes. Based on that argument, those people should also have the right to vote.
I do not think therefore that this is an argument which necessarily leads to the conclusion that, just because an individual has come here and is in the process of integrating with society, he or she is automatically entitled to vote. A period of acclimatization, transition, adaptation to a society is defined as the time between arrival and obtaining Canadian citizenship, before one is able to participate in the choices made by the community to which one has decided to belong in future. This strikes me as fairly reasonable, and is the way things are at present. It seems to me that there is a pretty strong consensus within society on this. This criterion is not being challenged by anyone, and is reasonably well accepted by all.
The other argument I heard at the beginning of the speech was the point made, and rightly so, about the disconcertingly low turnout rate, particularly in the last federal election. Barely 60% of eligible voters exercised their right to vote. This is extremely worrisome.
It leads us to wonder about the nature of what we do, the distance that is developing between politicians and ordinary citizens, and the way issues are being defended. People's degree of involvement depends on the issues, and on how they identify with those issues.
I am more familiar with the situation in Quebec. For example, I know that the participation rate in provincial elections in Quebec is always around 80 or 85%. The reason for that is that people feel close to the issues. They vote and they get involved in the campaigns. We had referendums, including the last one, in 1995, where 97% of Quebecers chose to exercise their right to vote.
So I think that, when important issues that people can identify with are at stake, people do participate.
As for the fact that 39% of people did not vote in the last election, it sends us various signals, but we have to try to decipher them. Saying that we will automatically give landed immigrants the right to vote to solve the problem of low participation rates seems to me like a shortcut. I am not saying that the member suggested that it was the only way. I understand that he said that it could be part of the solution.
I think there are other elements that explain the increasingly low participation rates in federal elections. That argument did not convince me any more than the tax argument.
What we have in place now seems normal to me: when a person is granted citizenship, he or she acquires the right to vote and the right to run for office in a federal election. After listening to the debate so far, I believe that the majority of members still agree on that.
But I certainly do not want to criticize the member for raising this issue. In a democratic society, issues are debated. The member who brought forward this motion has a different point of view. I respect his point of view, but I do not share it. Nevertheless, this motion allowed us to reflect on our democratic practices and to initiate all kinds of interesting debates.
I hope that we will also reflect on other variables of our democratic system. While we are talking about the importance of the right to vote in our society, I have serious concerns about the fact that there often is very little control regarding the way voting is conducted.
In the last election, and in the past—this is nothing new—people have used other people's identities. I would like to see more care taken in federal elections to check the identity of voters who come to cast their ballot. This does not strike me as unreasonable either. It would also be very much in our interest to ensure that a citizen's right to vote, which is extremely precious and powerful as well, is exercised by the right person. Much work remains to be done on this score.
Other aspects of this issue are worth looking at in order to ensure that people identify more with the issues. There are all sorts of debates. Should we have elections with a certain degree of proportionality? This would allow particular groups to be heard, to get their point across, and citizens who identify less with the mainstream to vote for parties which defend more specific causes. This also deserves some thought.
Unfortunately, there is no forum as such to frame this debate, and the government has no desire to open up the debate on this for now. However, people are talking about these issues. I know that very shortly, in Quebec, a parliamentary committee will be studying the future of the democratic system because many people are saying that we need to improve our voting system, and perhaps consider proportional elections, for example, as is done elsewhere in the world.
So there is a whole series of questions that are being raised. Regardless of whether someone is for or against the idea, the debate will take place. But at the federal level, no one is receptive right now to this, or no one is sending this message to the government, telling it that we do need to ask these questions. We need to ask ourselves why so few people go out to vote.
There is the process as such, and then there is what is at stake. This does not seem to be a problem that the government wants to acknowledge right now. This is understandable, they are in office and, therefore, they are benefiting from the current system. Yet this is cause for concern, and the government should be worried about this variable that the member was justified in raising at the beginning of his comments, that of the poor turnout.
In concluding, I would say that, in my opinion, the motion before us today is not going to solve the problem. The issue is much more about what citizenship brings or not. I believe, as many if not all of my colleagues do, that there is a consensus that citizenship and the right to vote go hand in hand. This is the normal and reasonable direction to go in a democratic society. This standard is being applied in Quebec, in Canada and in several other societies.
It has been said that some countries allow permanent residents to vote, depending on the country they come from. This worries me somewhat. How do we define discrimination? If they come from a specific country, they would be allowed to vote when they become permanent residents and, if they are from another country, they would not be allowed to vote. This seems like a troubling discrimination, and I am not sure that it is in keeping with the values held by our society.
There is a consensus about the status quo. I hope that some points of the debate will be discussed further, including the low turnout at federal elections and the weakening of democracy that may result. This is a great concern to me. I think this is a debate that should be pursued.
In closing, I am clearly not in favour of the motion as such, and even if it is not votable, it has still allowed us to address the issue of the principles and values that we want in our democracy.