Mr. Speaker, we are talking about how to encourage people to participate in voting. Yet, we just had a bill that was brought forward and voted on by the House where we insisted that people now have to have photo identification to vote.
It was a big issue for me in my region because I have many very isolated communities, first nation communities, with no road access and many people with no proper identification who would like to participate and vote. We have extremely low levels of voting there.
I was in Toronto last week and met with senior citizens. They were asking me about whether they were going to be able to vote because they do not have drivers' licences and they have the old fashioned health card. I assured them that they were still going to be able to vote.
We have questions in terms of even the Elections Canada list. We used to go door to door. We used to ensure that all our citizens were accounted for before the vote. That was how we went out and made sure that people voted as opposed to catching them coming out of church on Sundays.
I would like to hear from my hon. colleague on this because he has been in politics longer than I have. Are there perhaps other ways, or have we actually thrown those out along the way, throwing out the baby with the bath water for example, where we have actually made it harder for people to vote?