Mr. Speaker, the member will know that yesterday in northern Canada a major report on women and homelessness was released, it is entitled, “You Just Blink and It Can Happen”. It talked about the very serious situation that faces women who are homeless in Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut.
One of the problems that we know existed with the legislation that was passed in the first session of this Parliament, Bill C-31, was that it did not go out of its way to assist people who were homeless to register and vote in elections.
Since the bill that we are currently debating tries to fix one of the glaring problems created by the previous legislation, which is the disenfranchisement of rural voters, I wonder if the member might comment on how the legislation that we are debating now does anything to ensure that homeless people will be able to vote in federal elections. For instance, it does not allow for statutory declarations. It does not allow for someone to vouch for more than one person at a poll.
For example, if a woman finds herself in a transition shelter, it would not allow the person who operates that shelter to vouch for all the women who happen to be living at that place at the time of a federal election. The person who vouches also has to be someone who is on the voters list in that poll, so it is a very limited possibility for ensuring that those people who are homeless or in some kind of a transition at that moment are able to vote.
I wonder if the member might comment in light of this very disturbing report that came out yesterday on women's homelessness in the north.