Mr. Speaker, I feel privileged to stand today to speak to Bill C-23. I am going to go back in history a little and talk about my background.
I had parents who were good enough to speak at the dining room table about things like elections, so my six brothers and sisters and I learned about elections that way. We learned from them the importance and duty of Canadians to go vote when it was time to vote. Sometimes we talked about the issues, even before we were old enough to know some of them. I had that ability in my past life. Then I became a small business person who had a very busy life. Twenty-four hours a day 7 days a week I worried about a business I had to run. However, I am proud to say I do not remember ever missing an election: municipal, provincial, or federal, because my parents had instilled in me the duty of Canadians to vote.
Long before politics I never thought about the actual running of elections. I never thought about the rules that are there to make sure Canadians vote fairly and accurately. I did not think of them, but I certainly went to polling booths, gave them my name, showed my ID, received a ballot, and made my choice based on the work that the parties or the candidates had done during an election.
Fast forward now through a whole pile of life to 10 years ago when I decided I would become a candidate. I became a little more interested in what was happening with elections: how elections were run, what Elections Canada did, who made sure people got to the polling stations, who generated the lists, and who made the rules as to what days we could or could not vote. I still ran into some of my peers, small business owners and other very busy people, who would have loved to have more time, who wanted to exercise their duty as Canadians to vote, but sometimes the hockey practice or a scout meeting got in the way. We know how that is: life gets busy and that happens.
Move forward now into this Parliament. I have been here almost 10 years. Now, as the chair of the procedure and House affairs committee for a good number of years, five I think, I have been dealing with Elections Canada during that time. I now know more about elections and Elections Canada than I care to know. After each election, the Chief Electoral Officer writes a report and sends it back to Parliament. The procedure and House affairs committee gets to review it and from that comes up with elections legislation. The Chief Electoral Officer is one of the people from whom we get most of our ideas for changes to the legislation. We certainly have had many discussions at committee.
It is a fun committee. I see some of the members here in the House today. We tend to get a lot done, but elections are one of the things we are responsible for. We tend to work on a good, consensus basis without a great deal of argument. We have had many witnesses over those times looking at the Chief Electoral Officer's report and other pieces in our discussions about elections. We have had many briefs come to us from those witnesses. This is where this piece of legislation has come from. It has come from answering those questions.
I am going to say something from a business point of view. First, if I am trying to attract more customers, as a business person I need to first find out why customers are not coming to my business and where else they are going. We have done the same thing with elections. If people are not going out to vote, let us find out why and then we will know where to go to find those people.
As the speaker before me said, why a person votes, why they are making that urgent visit to the voting booth, has to do with the parties. It has to do with the candidates. However, the who, what, when, and where the polling station is, what time it is open, and how many of them there are is set by Elections Canada. Most non-voters told Elections Canada in a survey that practical reasons were what prevented them from voting in 2011. Travelling was cited by 17%, as they were away from home. Work or school scheduling accounted for 13%. Also, being too busy was cited by 10%, and lack of information was mentioned by 7%. That is just to name a few.
Over the past several elections there has been a steady rise in the proportion of electors identifying everyday life issues as the main reason for not voting, and a steady decline for political reasons. That is according to Elections Canada, the “Report on the Evaluations of the 41st General Election of May 2, 2011” by the Chief Electoral Officer, which we have discussed thoroughly at committee.
Better customer service will remove some of these practical issues, some of the reasons like, “I can't make it because it's the middle of hockey practice, it's the middle of my business meeting and I had to stay at work”.
We are offering more voting days. During the 2011 general election, more than two million Canadians cast their ballot on an advance poll day. Two million Canadians took into account the fact they were not going to be able to be there for voting day and went to an advance poll. We are adding an extra advance poll on the seventh day. So the tenth, the ninth, the eighth, and the seventh days before election day will now all be advance poll days, the seventh being a Sunday.
My pastor knows where I should be on Sundays but he also knew that I operated a business seven days a week and that sometimes I was not always able to be there, which also opens up the opportunity that afternoon of my going to an advance poll. That in itself offers something to the percentage of people that I said, from a customer service point of view, were not able to find a day to vote.
Let us go from attracting those customers to the poll to the point of view of my being a business person trying to attract more people to our business. In that case, the other step I would take is to tell them where I was. I would tell them what time my business was open. I would tell them when I was available to give them the service they were looking for. That is all we are asking of the Chief Electoral Officer and Elections Canada, to please tell people where and when they can vote. Please tell Canadians how many days are available to vote and that, by special ballot, it is almost the whole 35 days of an election. There will now be five advance polls days plus a full day of election day voting at each of the other polls.
This is a tough business to run with 308 ridings across this country, soon to be 338, and about 200 polling stations in each of those ridings. Imagine turning that on and off from an Elections Canada point of view. I admire its ability to turn that type of service on and off and the way it is done, but let us use our time to tell the people of Canada when and where they can vote. Let us as politicians, as members of parties or not, give the reasons why people want to go to the polls. It is up to Elections Canada to tell them when and where. It is up to us to get them there and tell them why.
I will recap quickly. It is about customer service. There are many other parts of the bill that I know, when it gets to committee, the committee will be happy to deal with and talk about. We will have a great discussion. We will certainly see lots of lots of witnesses. In summary, I just wanted to talk about the customer service side of an election and the customer service side of Elections Canada.