Debates of Feb. 16th, 2007

Canada Elections Act

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Winnipeg Centre has given us a precise and poignant response to this bill and the problems therein.

To be clear about this, he made mention of what happened in committee about the birthdate information. The birthdate information in the bill was originally put in to be used for voter verification, notwithstanding that we would also have a number assigned to every voter. Birthdate information would be included for purposes of verification for Elections Canada. It was the Bloc that moved an amendment to have this information shared with political parties. That was supported by the Liberals.

To be clear on this, at the time, the Conservatives in committee voted against that amendment. Then, when I brought this forward at report stage to have that amendment taken out, they fell silent, so this so-called champion of privacy and libertarian ideals is gone from the Conservative Party and has been replaced with big brother.

I just wanted to be clear about this. The Conservatives did not support the big brother amendment of the Bloc that was supported by our friends in the Liberal Party; I guess they can raise money now because they have been cut off from their corporate welfare so they have to figure out how to actually widen their donor base. So now they will do what they have always done and rely on something else instead of going out and rolling up their sleeves and getting to work. They will rely on the database provided by the Bloc.

However, now the Conservatives are supporting that, so we have a government-sanctioned identity theft kit out there, and for what? It is for the political parties. Every time I ask why the political parties need this, they never answer the question, not the Conservatives, not the Liberals and definitely not the Bloc, but they do mention that they would like to get the birthday cards out soon, I understand.

That was to set the record straight. The Conservatives, in committee, were against sharing birthdate information. Now they are in favour of it. I think that is important to note.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Ottawa Centre raises another very valuable point. Again I thank him for the dedication he has shown in trying to bring an element of reason to this debate.

There is one other thing that we should be addressing today in terms of election law: the rules that allow people to launder money through their children's bank accounts in order to circumvent the donation limits of the Elections Act. That would be time well spent if we could have some of that cleaned up before we go into the next election campaign, because it made most Canadians feel a little bit ill when they saw eleven year olds donating $5,400 each to a leadership race in the last Liberal leadership campaign.

However, when we tried to change that law in Bill C-2, the Conservatives, the Liberals and the Bloc voted against the NDP's efforts to try to make it illegal to shake down kids for their lunch money to run an election campaign. I thought that was appalling. I thought that this would have been an opportunity, because once the Elections Act is opened, every clause can be reviewed, but we have seen fit to allow another election to go by where the donation limits can be circumvented by laundering money through our children, grandmother, neighbour and God knows who.

I think these loans are criminal, but legal, which may be a contradiction. They are certainly criminal to anyone with the sensibilities of most Canadians. As for this idea that we can launder money by funnelling it through our children's bank accounts to circumvent the rules, it should be illegal.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it has been interesting to listen to the debate on Bill C-31 today. This is a bill that we have described as insufficient. It has not dealt with the real issue of what the failure of electoral system is. It does not deal with electoral reform. We soon will bring that forward for the House. One of my colleagues has a motion on which we will be voting and it will get to the heart of the problem in our system, which is the fact that we do not have a fair voting system.

Alas, though, we do have Bill C-31 in front of us. I think it is important to go back to the origin of the bill, which was a committee report that was cherry-picked by the government. The government decided it would use the opportunity to respond to a committee report by putting forward an agenda that it thought would make it look good in the eyes of the public. We have seen this piecemeal approach to democratic reform from the government before. Those members take a morsel here and a morsel there and try to make it sound like dinner, but it is not. It is just crumbs.

The government has done this before. Recently we heard that the government was going to deal with Senate reform by way of having elections in the provinces. The Prime Minister would bless it and it somehow would be real reform. That is piecemeal. It is pretending to be doing something.

Mr. Broadbent, my predecessor, had an ethics package that included the idea of fixed election dates. The government put that idea forward. No arguments there, but the government has not dealt with the other piece of Mr. Broadbent's ethics package, the fundamental changes he proposed to make our system fairer so that a citizen's vote would actually mean something.

Here we have Bill C-31. I guess the government thought that with this bill it would look credible because it was going to solve the problem of the opportunity for voter fraud. It is very important to state that: the opportunity for voter fraud. Because, as my colleague from Winnipeg Centre quite rightly pointed out, “there is no there there”, as the quote goes, when we talk about voter fraud. It is the opportunity. If we could deal with that, then I guess we could be dealing with many other issues. Climate change is not the opportunity but is what in front of us and the government has finally come on board and recognized it, a little late perhaps, but there it is.

This idea that we are dealing with the opportunity for voter fraud is what the government is responding to with Bill C-31. The government quickly put a bill together and made it look as if it was going to solve the voter fraud problem that was so ubiquitous. Then it would be seen as credible, as cleaning up the system.

I dare say the Conservatives did not do their homework. When the Chief Electoral Officer responded to the whole idea of voter fraud, he was very clear. He said there was rampant integrity in the system and in citizens. He said there was no problem. We heard evidence that there have been four cases over three years.

The government has decided that it knows best. I call this bill the big brother bill. Why? Because it says that the government is going to tell citizens what is best for them. It claims to know better than ordinary citizens. It claims to know better than the witnesses who came forward. The witnesses said the bill would not be good for citizens, but the bill says that is okay because the government knows better.

Witnesses told us that the bill would not increase voter participation. It would put barriers in front of people. As has been mentioned by my colleagues, it is probably a recipe for further disenchantment with the voter system. It will mean that fewer people will actually participate in voting. If that was the intent of the bill and the government, they have succeeded, because that in fact is what will happen.

We have identified clauses 18 and 21 of the bill as major concerns. I put amendments forward. These clauses are really going to disenfranchise people and open up the privacy of everyday citizens to people who will be able to exploit it.

I considered that if this were an opportunity for the government to address the problem of voter fraud, instead opposing the bill, I would bring forward ideas and amendments in committee. As has already been mentioned, one of the concerns is the voter card. Why are these voter cards left in hallways in apartment buildings. Anyone can pick them up and use them for whatever purpose, including voter fraud?

A simple piece of technology called an envelope can be employed. In fact, I brought this idea forward in committee. I suggested this to the Chief Electoral Officer who said that it was a good idea, that it was something his department was looking at. Yet when it was put forward as an amendment, the government said that it was out of the scope of the bill.

The government has failed to accept a simple solution, a common sense idea of putting voter cards in envelopes addressed to the voter. If the voter has moved, it will be returned to sender. It happens all the time with other pieces of mail. Why not do this with something as important as a voter card? Hopefully the government will find a way to bring that idea forward.

Everyone in this place knows the problems with the centralized voters list. We know why we went to that list, which was to save money.

The most important aspect of our democracy is the right to vote, to participate. It seems passing strange that we would not see the wisdom of investing and supporting universal enumeration, that we would not go door to door, as was mentioned by my colleague, the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre. We could employ people, for instance seniors or people at the Legion and others, who had the time and could use some extra income to go door to door. They know their neighbourhoods.

People who are members of civic and community associations could help out. As a kid, I recall the knock on the door. An enumerator would confirm who was on the voters list and ensure that the names were written down. These lists were more accurate than the centralized voters lists we now have on computer. That idea was put forward, but, alas, the government again said that it knew better, big brother, that it would not invest in it. Instead, it would do targeted enumeration.

The problem with targeted enumeration is that it is hit and miss, more often miss than hit. What we end up with is a scattered approach across the country. Voters lists in some areas are accurate and up to date, such as bedroom communities where there is a low turnover rate.

What happens in the areas where there is high turnover? There is massive turnover in my riding of Ottawa Centre. It is always a problem. A very simple solution to that would be to go door to door. That idea has not been embraced by the government. When it was proposed as an amendment to the bill, it was not accepted.

If members were to ask people in Tim Hortons or on Main Street what makes sense to them, to continue with a centralized computerized voters list that does not work or have door to door enumeration that would clean up the list, they would probably say that it would make sense to go door to door, employ people who need extra income and have an accurate voters list. It is the most important tool we have to allow people to vote. Their names are on the voters list.

If we were to go through the history of our country, people would be shouting from their graves and asking what we were doing. They fought for the right to vote and we are undermining that.

Those are two ideas. The first is to put the voter's card in an envelope, address it to the voter and if the person has moved on, the card is be returned to sender, prompting a cleanup of the list. The second is door to door enumeration. It makes sense and is a worthy investment.

Look at the money that is spent in government, yet it will not consider investing in enumeration. My constituents shake their heads and ask me what we are doing in this place, if we cannot even come up with something as fundamental as funding for enumeration. The voter's list is the bedrock, the foundation of our democracy. That suggestion has been rejected by the government.

The one that troubles me the most, and I have spoke about it in this place many times, is the idea that Canadians' privacy will be at risk because of the bill. As I mentioned before, the have the following in the bill. We have a requirement for photo ID to be presented when people vote. If they do not have photo ID, they are to present two pieces of ID that have been sanctioned by the government. If they are unable to produce that, someone has to vouch for them and that person has to be on the voter's list. That is the sequencing.

Each voter now, according to this bill, will be given an identification number, I guess analogous to an ID number such as a SIN. That is fine, we did not argue with that. In fact, we did not argue with having photo ID or the other two pieces of ID. We argued about what happened when people did not have that.

However, the piece that puzzles me to this day is the fact that the government saw fit to add birthdate information on the voter's list. I fought that in committee. I did not think it was necessary because we would have photo ID and a voter identifier. Because of this terrible problem of opportunity for voter fraud, which as we have already mentioned that there have been four cases in three elections, we will now have the birthdate information of Canadians on the voter's lists. This is absurd.

Not only will Elections Canada have information, every political party will have this.

[An hon. member]

The Rhino Party?

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

We are hearing variations of who will have this information. I can get to that in a minute. Maybe there is something we do not know about the government's entrepreneurial ideas. Why will they have this information? Because the Bloc Québécois put forward an amendment that would allow birthdate information to be shared with all political parties.

The Liberals supported it in committee. The Conservatives at the time were pretty level-headed about it and they voted against the amendment. However, the amendment went forward and was brought forward to the House.

The sad thing is, and to this day I cannot figure it out, the people who we would normally associate with civil liberties and the idea of wanting to ensure that the privacy of one's identity would be safe, the Conservative Party, decided it would support the Bloc amendment as did the Liberals supported the amendment. Something does not pass the smell test. Now we have the Conservative Party and the Liberals supporting the Bloc amendment to have birthdate information given to all political parties.

Let us go over some of the political parties with which this will be shared. It will be shared with all parties represented here, the Green Party, the Marijuana Party, the Rhinoceros Party, the Communist Party, the Marxist-Leninist Party, the Christian Heritage Party, the whole gamut. I cannot fathom why the government would want all these people, including the New Democratic Party, to have the birthdate information of Canadians. It puzzles me.

My friend from Winnipeg Centre has an analogy that would be fitting.We have government-sanctioned identity theft kits here. What we are saying is, “Here you go”.

[An hon. member]

I thought they were tough on crime.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Yes, they are tough on crime, but they are going to hand over the facilities for crime. They are going to give them the kit for their use.

We have just seen some incredible breaches of privacy with credit cards and bank cards. Concerns have been raised about privacy of information being one of the key issues.

As my friend from Winnipeg Centre said, one committee is trying to figure out how to protect citizens' privacy and then the House presents a bill that will hand over a person's identity to whomever.

Every single political party now will have that information and will be able to use it for whatever purpose. I have heard members on the other side say that no, people will not use it for nefarious reasons. How would they know that? All of us know that electoral lists are used by political parties and the information gets out to many people. Lists are handed over to people so they can canvass. That information is shared with many different groups.

The key thing is that today, members in the House are saying, not only through the amendment, but through the sanctioning of this bill, that they support the undermining of the privacy of Canadians' personal information. That is what is being done here.

I brought forward amendments to take out the Bloc amendment that would allow the sharing of birthdate information with all political parties. No one, including the Conservatives, voted with my party. They thought it was fine for the birthdate to stay.

Let us be clear about what we are doing with the bill. We are taking away the opportunity for some people to vote. We are handing over the private information of Canadians to Elections Canada and to political parties.

Why are we doing this? It was mentioned at the beginning of this debate that this was apparently a problem because of the opportunity for voter fraud. It was not based on evidence of thousands of cases of voter fraud, but only the potential that there could be voter fraud.

I think that when most Canadians find out that barriers have been put in the way of their access to their franchise they will be very upset. They will want to know why members did not stand up and speak against this provision. They will find out that the government, the Liberals and the Bloc got together and said it was fine, that there was no problem and that they were looking out for the better interests of Canadians.

Canadians will ask why their birthdate information is included. In my constituency this is an issue for many seniors. Seniors do not appreciate having their birthdate information broadcast to all the employees of Elections Canada, let alone all the political parties.

Many people I know, particularly seniors, are very proud of who they are, but they are also very private people. They will not appreciate that their birthdate information will be known by organizers and people in the back rooms. They will be targeted by fundraisers. Organizations salivate over this type of information.

That is what probably happened in the Conservative Party. Originally in committee the Conservatives were against this amendment. I think what happened is that this went to headquarters and a light bulb went on and the organizers were salivating about the potential for targeting their message to voters.

There is also the wider potential for fundraising. We know that members of the Liberal Party have been cut off from their sugar daddy. They do not have access to funds like they used to. They are flailing around. It was a no-brainer for them. The Liberals said that they would support the Bloc amendment because they would now have an opportunity to raise funds from people and niche their message based on people's age.

That is what all of this is about. This is about political parties deciding that they can use this information for their own purposes. When I asked the Conservatives, the Liberals and the Bloc as to why political parties needed the birthdate information of electors, they dodged the question. They have not answered the question. They refer to the need for verification. There is verification. An identity number is assigned to each voter. There is the presentation of photo ID. This is similar to the old Soviet Union where people had to present their papers as they travelled around.

[An hon. member]

Next we will have retina scans.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Yes, we will have retina scans, but we should not suggest that because they will probably adopt it. We must decide whether or not the privacy and liberties of Canadians are important.

As we have this creeping big brother kind of approach coming into people's lives, we need to stop and take a look at why we are doing this and what the purpose is.

The last comment I will make is that Canadians--

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

Order, please. Questions and comments, the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Ottawa Centre for the commitment he has shown in taking this struggle on and in the face of formidable adversity and even hostility on that committee.

I am surprised at the reaction this seems to have stirred in some people. It is probably because the member has implied that they are a bunch of fascists. I noticed from the tone that we could almost hear the jackboots slapping together as they approached.

I thought this kind of big brother intrusion into one's privacy was the kind of thing the Conservatives actually bristled about. I thought their reputation was to get government out of our lives, that less government was better and less intrusion into our privacy. Not wanting to share our information used to be, I thought, one of the hallmarks of the Conservative ideology. However, now that they have the grasp of power, it seems that trampling all over an individual's rights to privacy and so on is no longer offensive to their sensibilities.

I would like my colleague's views on how he came to the opinion that this will probably result in a charter challenge under section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

As well, he made reference to the socio-economic implications in considerations of this. I would be interested to know if he agrees with me on this point. It seems that the big players in politics today have assessed that since the bottom 20% socio-economic quintile do not vote, we should not waste any attention on them. The top 20 percentile all vote but we know how they will vote. Everything else seems to be geared toward that middleman, that 60% which is at play. That is the prize.

Therefore, measures like this completely disregard the bottom 20 percentile who do not vote anyway and, therefore, who needs them, why waste our energy on them and when they vote they probably do not vote Conservative.

Does the member think there was a selfish consideration of, “To hell with the bottom 20% because they probably will not vote anyway and, if they do, they will not vote for us at any rate so who cares if they are marginalized and disenfranchised one step further”?

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre is onto something here.

First, I will speak to the charter challenge. This was not something we made up and theorized about. This was brought forward while the bill was in committee. People said that if this becomes a barrier to people voting, then, as my colleague from Winnipeg Centre said, it will be challenged because access to the right to vote is absolutely fundamental in the charter.

People who work on behalf of the rights of those who are disenfranchised, civil libertarians, have said that this will be something that will need to be challenged. When we put barriers to exercise franchise, then it is the responsibility of any citizen who can to challenge this. Notwithstanding the gutting of the court challenges program, people will do it in any event.

It is a real challenge in terms of where this is going. We will end up spending millions of dollars in court for something that need not happen. As I mentioned, an envelope would have sufficed, as well as universal enumeration.

On the socio-economic question that my colleague from Winnipeg Centre asked, I think of Stanley Knowles who used to represent a riding in Winnipeg and what he would think of this bill. Stanley Knowles was a champion of the disenfranchised. He prided himself on ensuring that those who did not have a voice were heard. I think Mr. Knowles would see this bill as an attempt to thwart the voice of the disenfranchised.

How can we see it any other way when we are taking away the ability of those who are the most vulnerable to vote? That is very clear in this bill. The bill puts up more barriers to people who do not have access to the kind of identification that we would have in our wallets because of the advantage that we have, which primarily has to do with socio-economics.

I think my colleague from Winnipeg Centre is on to something here. Why? Is this done with intent? Is this done to take out certain people from the democracy that we all cherish so much? I would hate to see that happen and hopefully one day people will see the error of their ways and change it.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, while listening to the debate today I have become even more concerned than I was before about the whole issue of private information on voter lists being circulated willy-nilly to all kinds of people across the political spectrum.

The opportunity for this information to fall into the hands of people who are involved in organized crime strikes me as a serious concern. We know that identity theft is a growing crime. We know that computer theft and stealing out of people's bank accounts through their debit cards is an increasing concern by police departments across the country.

I want to ask my friend from Ottawa Centre, who has done so much work on this bill, whether those concerns were raised at the committee and, if they were, what the reaction was of the government, the Liberal Party and the Bloc.

We have a government that says it wants to crack down on crime but it seems that with this bill it is actually putting out a new avenue for people who are involved in identity theft to use in order to profit from identity theft and organized crime.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I did not have a chance during my speech to quote John Perry Barlow who said, “Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping Tom to install your window blinds”.

That is true. Relying on the government to protect our privacy is like a peeping Tom installing our window blinds. We have government sanctioned window blinds.

I would say to the member that it was brought up in committee to deaf ears. I have actually written to the Privacy Commissioner and hopefully we will be hearing from her soon on that very issue.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I know the hon. member for Ottawa Centre is well aware that one of my issues is the representation of women in the House. I would argue that there was a missed opportunity on this piece of legislation to deal with the underrepresentation. I wonder if the member could specifically speak to that.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as was mentioned earlier by my colleague from Winnipeg Centre, we had the opportunity here to deal with real democratic reform and that was an opportunity missed.

I should add that on the concern about women participating, if we look at those who are most vulnerable and falling into poverty, sadly, it is disproportionately represented by women. What we have here are not only concerns about socio-economic, we can do a gender analysis and we see that we are putting up barriers for women.

One can only imagine what all those women who fought for the vote are thinking. If those statues here on the Hill could come to life, one can only imagine what they would have to say about this bill. They would be very angry. They would be asking us what we are doing. They would tell us to look at the bill and then they would say “shame on us”.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to again speak to the bill because I, along with my caucus, truly feel that this bill is bad for Canada, bad for the electoral system and is not what we need right now.

We have heard many arguments in reference to that this afternoon. I truly hope Canadians are listening.

Before I came into the House I met with some businessmen from Alberta. I told them that I had to come back into the House to speak to this bill. They asked me why I was doing that in the House of Commons and for what purpose. I told them that I did not have an answer. However, as I sit and think about the clauses in the bill, I can find some answers.

More and more, those parties want to turn politics into a retail business and, by having birthdates, it can be done. Using modern computer systems, we can target voters and give them selected information that will appeal to their age group, the kind of people one fully expects to see in there. By that token, we can be less than honest with voters about our intentions when we govern by selecting the kinds of policies that we present to them.

There is anonymity in the voting system and among the voters. Politicians need to tell them everything. When politicians get elected, they know they have not told the voters what they should know. This is a glorious opportunity for political parties to be selective with the voters in the information given. That is not part of the political system in which I want to participate. I want people to have full information about political parties, not some kind of Sears public relations platform that parties produce for different age groups.

This is probably where the voter age information is going and where it will be used by clever minds in political parties that do not have the integrity of the voter in mind first.

We have heard the numbers for voter fraud: 4 cases among 24 million voters. Let us talk about the candidate fraud that we have seen. How many candidates have misrepresented themselves when they said they were Liberals or Conservatives during the past three elections and then changed their mind? Out of the 308 ridings, we are talking about a far larger percentage than the voter fraud we have in this country. Canadians are tired of that.

What did we in the House do? Did we do something to stop the practice of candidate fraud? No. Two of the political parties turned down our bill to deal with candidates who do not stick to what they say after they are elected. Candidate fraud is, by far, the larger number in our electoral process.

What do we have here? We have a bill that tries to determine voters' identities. In many cases, a photo ID will be required. What percentage of Canadians have a driver's licence? Was that evidence presented to us? No evidence was given on the percentage of Canadians who have identification available to them at a moment's notice.

We do not understand the impact of this legislation on Canadians. We do not understand it and yet those three political parties are supporting it. This is shoddy work in the House of Commons. If one does not understand what is going to happen from the work one is doing, then one is not doing one's work properly. Since the evidence about the availability of identification to Canadians was not raised in committee, then we have not done our work. This bill should be sent back and re-examined in light of that kind of evidence.

We have a flawed bill. We have a bill that was amended with a clause that even Conservatives found unacceptable when they first heard it. Their gut sense told them it was wrong. They changed their minds for purely political reasons.

Now we have a bill in front of us that the three parties are willing to support and yet they are not even here to hear the arguments because they do not want to hear the arguments. That is a shame. That speaks to the problems we have in our system. I am not going to go--

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

The member is being called to order. He has sufficient experience to know that we do not mention the presence or the absence of other members in the House. I would expect that other members would pay this member the same courtesy.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize. In my enthusiasm, I am afraid I overstepped my bounds.

I will conclude by saying that I hope Canadians understand that this debate is important and that this debate sets the tone for how we conduct ourselves in this country.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

Resuming debate. Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.