I see I touched a nerve with my friends on the opposite side. That is understandable. No one wants to be called a left-winger. I understand that, it is true. In all seriousness, we as parliamentarians need to ensure that Elections Canada is allowed to do its work, to report back to this place and to determine the veracity of any complaint made to its organization.
I will admit, and I think any member in the House who has been involved in politics for any length of time will readily admit, that from time to time mistakes happen. Sometimes those can lead to misinformation. That is part of the problem that Elections Canada has. Has there been a deliberate attempt to suppress votes in an organized fashion across Canada? Or has there been a random selection of individuals who have contacted Elections Canada about issues that really were not organized voter suppression?
Let me give another example. I will not name the individual or the party. This happened at a provincial level, in a campaign in 2002. I smile when I tell the story because it is somewhat humorous, but it speaks to the fact that sometimes during campaigns mistakes can happen. A particular candidate of a particular party was planning the “get out the vote” campaign for election day. Part of that was having automated phone calls to the candidate's own supporters encouraging them on voting day to get out and vote. It is a valuable technique that every candidate and every party uses to try to make sure that identified supporters actually get to the polling stations and cast their ballots.
The election day chair and his band of volunteers programmed all their identified supporters into the automated call centre. The call centre was to start phoning at 12 noon on election day and go until 7 p.m. at night, to try to capture all of the supporters and encourage them to get to the polls. They programmed it and went home for the evening. What happened? At exactly 12 midnight the phones starting ringing in all the supporters' households. They had made a mistake and put 12 p.m. rather than 12 a.m. What happened? By 3:30 in the morning, that campaign was inundated. The campaign chair was phoned at home, the election day chairman was phoned at home. They rushed in and found that they had made a mistake. They were harassing their own voters and their own supporters.
I will give another example of an honest mistake. In 2004, the year I was elected, I won by a staggering majority of 122 votes in the riding of Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre. However, the outcome was challenged by my Liberal opponent. When Elections Canada sent out the voting cards, with information telling voters where their polling stations were, it did so based on postal codes. Frequently in rural constituencies and rural ridings, a person who may reside in one riding actually picks up the mail in another riding. Therefore, that individual has a postal code in a neighbouring constituency. That is what happened in my case. Hundreds and hundreds of people from my riding were sent voting cards from Elections Canada telling them to vote in a different location. Therefore, my defeated Liberal opponent rightfully went to the courts and got a court challenge to try and see whether there was a case to be made for a byelection, to overturn the election results.
As it turns out, not one person who was given incorrect information cast their ballots at the wrong station because in rural Saskatchewan, as I am sure it is in rural Canada, everyone is fairly familiar with where the closest polling station is and they normally go there regardless of what someone has told them to do.
However, my point is that Elections Canada made an honest mistake. Should that be considered voter suppression? I would suggest that if the opposition had its way, it would try to characterize that as an organized attempt if it had not been for Elections Canada doing it. It would be an organized event by the Conservative Party to suppress the vote. Sometimes mistakes happen.
I am not suggesting for a moment that the thousands of contacts made to Elections Canada were frivolous, untrue, or, if true, were as a result of a mistake. However, I am saying that there are many things that could have happened in the last campaign that could explain some of the problems that we apparently are seeing outside of Guelph.
I merely ask all members to wait and allow Elections Canada to do the investigative work it is allowed to do, compelled to do and qualified to do. I know we will not see that co-operation from members opposite because this is a partisan environment. However, at the end of the day, I am absolutely convinced that we will find the results that state that there were no organized events by our party, and I honestly hope that those results will show that there was no organized attempt by any other federal party to engage in voter suppression.
Before I conclude, I want to deal with one more aspect of the motion before us today from my hon. friend from Hamilton Centre and that is another misconception being promoted by the opposition. It is saying that in the most recent report tabled in this House from the Chief Electoral Officer, the government overturned, overruled or rejected an option provided by Elections Canada and the Chief Electoral Officer with respect to compliance audits.
The facts are that in his report to the procedure and House affairs committee, the Chief Electoral Officer made two recommendations. Overall he wanted to see compliance and proven compliance by all federal parties with election rules and law. We completely agree. To that end, he forwarded two options. Option one was that Elections Canada itself could engage in compliance audits. It would get all of the financial information from all federally registered political parties and do a compliance audit to see whether all of the rules were adhered to. Option two was that the parties themselves would be required to conduct an independent compliance audit to verify that they had followed all election rules.
We agreed to option two because we believe that it is incumbent upon the federal parties that are seeking election to cover the cost of those independent compliance audits. Quite frankly, it is the cost of doing business. I hear arguments from members opposite saying that is being unfair to the smaller parties. That is simply the cost of doing business. Why should the taxpayers of Canada bear the expense of compliance audits when the parties should be covering those costs?
Finally, while I do have great respect for my friend from Hamilton Centre, I must say that the motion before us today is extremely poorly worded in as much that it says:
...Elections Canada investigation capabilities be strengthened, to include giving the Chief Electoral Officer the power to request all necessary documents from political parties....
The Chief Electoral Officer has the ability now to request documents from political parties. How can we expand his capabilities for a power he already has?
The motion is too broad and too vague but we will not oppose it because we, more than any other party in this place, want to see Elections Canada do its work and report back to the House with the results of its investigation.