Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act. This bill flows from a committee report that sought to address certain concerns about the election process. In my opinion, everyone on both sides of the House wants an election process that is as impeccable as possible. However, careful attention must be paid to the negative effects certain sections of this bill may have. My colleagues who were members of the committee attempted to mitigate these effects by proposing certain amendments.
We should also remember that Canada does not have to make any drastic changes. I believe that Canada's Chief Electoral Officer stated that the integrity of our electoral system is intact and that there were, at the very most, only two or three cases of fraud in the last elections.
I would like to talk about certain sections of the legislation that we are discussing. First, some of them could deprive the most vulnerable of their right to vote. Second, they would allow political parties to assume the right to receive personal information, such as the date of birth of Canadians. I will start with this last point.
As I mentioned, the intent behind taking all possible measures to reduce the possibility of fraud is excellent. However, providing all political parties with personal information, such as birth dates, is symptomatic of a big brother state.
What in the world could justify giving political parties this information, aside from allowing MPs to make a birthday call for crass political reasons or to better target voters? This is not about reducing fraud. It is simply about targeting voters to get personal information to improve political parties' messaging. The Conservative Party, for example, is already spending fortunes to find out what would make voters less likely to vote for the Liberal Party rather than focusing on the issues. We are now developing personality attacks in Canada. I think Canadians will be very irritated when they find out that political parties can now have that kind of personal information.
It seems to me that political parties already have enough information, if we judge from the kinds of political ads that are presently being aired. Why make political opportunism more rampant than it is right now in Canada? I ask my colleagues to be attentive to this tool that Liberals and Conservatives are proposing and want to create through this law. The tool will shape the use, as noted scientist Ursula Franklin says. If we do not foresee the impacts of the changes that we are proposing through this law, we will not make a good decision.
Talking about good public policy, I would like to go back to the question of the new requirements for one piece of government issued photo ID showing a name and address, and two pieces of ID authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer showing the name and address of the voter, or the requirement to take an oath, or to be vouched for by another elector.
On the surface, this might seem fairly benign or innocuous, but in reality it seems that this bill could result in thousands of individuals who lack proper identification due to poverty or disability, or who have no stable address, not being able to exercise their right to vote because of the identification requirements of this bill. People who are homeless or temporarily housed often do not have identification that reflects their addresses or their stay in a shelter. During the last election I spoke with some homeless people on the street and that was in fact their case. They could go to a homeless shelter where the staff there could vouch for many of them, but this possibility would be removed for them. It would further disenfranchise those people.
My colleague from Ottawa Centre put forward recommendations at committee that would have addressed these concerns. These included the use of a statutory declaration as an alternate means of identification for an elector to prove his or her identity. I believe we also proposed an amendment to allow for a representative of a recognized agency, such as happens now, to be authorized to vouch for the agency's clientele as authorized by the local returning officer. These amendments were defeated by members of the other parties.
We should talk about one of the real problems that has occurred, and that is with respect to enumeration. I know personally that my daughter-in-law, who lived with me six years ago and has voted since then in a number of elections, still receives her voter slip at my address. There has been a real problem in performing proper enumeration in Canada and this should be corrected. That would be a way of reducing the possibility of fraud. This bill just does not do it.
The bill does require other amendments, for example, the proposed amendments to the PSE Act that are, more or less, buried in the bill. Those amendments could, potentially, have a significant impact on employment patterns in the federal public service where, clearly, the Conservative government is talking about more flexible employment and more flexibility in departmental hiring. We have a concern about what that might mean.
The bill is not good in its present form and I would urge my colleagues to consider some of the amendments that have been proposed by my colleagues.