Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak here today regarding Bill C-16, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act.
I would first like to comment on the response given by the hon. member for Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord to the hon. member for Victoria.
The member said that when Quebec left and part of Canada was taken away it would not hurt British Columbia or any part of Canada. I disagree. I refer to the great English parliamentarian, John Donne, who said that when just one clod of earth washed away from the shores of England, when one was lost, it affected the entire country. When we lose one person, for whom does the bell toll? It tolls for thee. Losing any part of Canada would have a great effect on all of Canada. It is a subject of great concern and importance to everyone.
Turning to the bill, most of the discussion so far has been on the philosophical aspects of the bill, but I want to talk about three technical aspects of it. The drafters and departmental officials may want to consider some technical points.
I want to talk about proposed subsection 56.2(1). This refers to changing the fixed election date slightly if there is a provincial or municipal election. The government philosophy that it does not want to conflict with other governments' elections is good. It could be a nightmare if two elections were going on at the same time.
Unfortunately, this section is very flawed, because it refers only to municipal and provincial governments. Canada is not made up simply of provincial and municipal governments. There are four orders of government in Canada and the federal government has neglected two of them: the territorial and the first nations governments. It was only a few parliamentary days ago when we had a vote in the House of Commons and only two of us, the member for Nunavut and I, voted against it because it referred to federal and provincial governments but had left out the territorial governments. Here again the territories have been left out.
If we characterize the current government since the election, it has been a government of omission: who has been left out; who has been left behind. Think about the low income people whose taxes were increased, as mentioned previously. Think about people with disabilities and seniors whose income tax increased from 12% to 12.5%. Global warming is having a dramatic effect on the people in the north while many of the climate change programs have been allowed to expire and are not being renewed. The aboriginal people were also left behind when the greatest agreement in the history of this nation, with funding of $5 billion, was abrogated. It was a good faith agreement and those people were left behind. Single mothers have lost the $5 billion day care program which would have given them some relief, some possibility of getting into the workforce and building new lives for themselves.
We are leaving behind geographically almost half the country: the territorial governments and the first nations governments. I want to talk about first nations governments. This is only the tip of the iceberg. Unfortunately, federal departments, agencies and politicians too often do not realize the new reality in Canada, the great land claims and self-government agreements. I am sure every member in the House is in total agreement with the modernization of dealing with these other governments in Canada. Too often we forget that we have made these arrangements.
When we sign deals with first nations, we have created new governments in Canada that in some cases have more power than a province. These governments have to be legally and morally dealt with on a government to government to government basis. We cannot just omit them when we are talking about governments in this country. We have signed deals that mandate consultation. We have signed agreements that are constitutionally protected in some cases that mandate consultation with these governments. Sometimes people do not understand and they think it is only the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, but it is all federal departments and agencies and it is all politicians. We have signed these agreements on behalf of Canada and not on behalf of a single department.
I would certainly be looking for a technical modification to proposed subsection 56.2(1) to include governments that are omitted in the present drafting.
The only other major point I want to make relates to proposed subsection 56.2(4). My colleague from Nipissing—Timiskaming made the same point. As I have said earlier, this is in relation to not having elections at the same time.
If Bill C-16 were to come into effect in its present form, the federal election would occur three days before all the municipal elections in my jurisdiction. Any member who has had the unfortunate situation of having two elections going on at the same time knows what a mess it is. When enumerators go door to door, people say that they have already been enumerated. There are signs of all different colours for different elections. The voters do not know which advance poll is for which election. It is absurd to have two elections going on at the same time. If possible, it should be avoided.
The bill will mandate that two elections go on within three days of each other in 2007. Some technical modifications are needed. I know the government is acting in goodwill. The government does not want to pile up elections. This was part of the government's philosophy in bringing forward the bill. Unfortunately, the technical aspects of the bill do not make that possible now.
The bill allows for small changes in timing, but only three days. It could be the day after or a week after, which in effect would only be three days from the election that I am talking about.
We need more flexibility in that section, perhaps a month, so that the Governor General has enough flexibility and that provincial, municipal, first nations or other government elections do not overlap. As the NDP member from Ottawa said earlier, when there are conflicting situations what happens is that the electorate stops showing up. There is already a big enough problem with that. We do not want to create more problems for the electorate which is already having a problem getting enthused with the process.
Proposed subsection 57(4) talks about changing the election day to the Tuesday if the Monday happens to be a holiday. That does not jibe clearly with proposed subsection 56.2(4) which talks about the alternate dates, because it could be the alternate Tuesday or Monday. Technically we must make sure that those two sections work together and that the results are very clear.
In conclusion, there are two major technical flaws with the bill. One is that the bill only talks about two of the four orders of government where the federal election date would be altered. The other is the bill does not have enough flexibility to change the federal election date slightly by a number of weeks, a month or so, in order not to conflict with a provincial, municipal or first nations election.