Mr. Speaker, none of the amendments that we are responding to today in dealing with this message from the Senate are related to the issue that has been raised by my friend from Parkdale--High Park. Her concerns were thoroughly canvassed at second reading, at committee, at report stage and third reading.
We have gone there and now we are dealing with some other amendments, none of which relate to the issues she has raised. However, I am happy to address the issue of ensuring the integrity of our electoral process, which is the underlying purpose of Bill C-31.
Society has changed a lot. There used to be a time, and we can still see evidence in some of our old election rules, when people grew up and lived in the same neighbourhood all their lives. They knew all their neighbours, so the ability to commit any kind of electoral fraud was very difficult. People in the neighbourhood would know if someone showed up and said they were so and so. They would know that the individual was someone else. That was the way it was in the olden days. Nowadays, with the mobility of population as high as it is and people not knowing their neighbours as much, the opportunity to succeed in committing that kind of electoral fraud is much higher.
All of the political parties shared a concern about that. At least three out of the four political parties felt strongly enough about that concern to support this bill and its major provisions through the key stages here in the House of Commons.
It is a question of ensuring that we have an electoral process in place that people can trust, so that we do not have these problems and end up trying to resolve them after we have a hung Parliament that has been decided by two constituencies where there has been clear electoral fraud and our entire political system grinds to a halt. This bill is to keep that from ever happening, to protect the electoral integrity that we have, to ensure that electoral fraud does not occur, and to put in place reasonable and balanced measures.
Asking for people's identification is not outrageous. Every election dozens of voters tell me they are shocked that nobody asked for their identification when they went to vote. They said anybody could have said they were them and they would have been able to vote. More and more people are beginning to figure that out.
If we do not bring this provision into place, it will not be long before we see that kind of electoral fraud and the harm that could do to our democratic parliamentary system would be very dangerous.