Debates of Feb. 24th, 2014

Opposition Motion—Instruction to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs Regarding Bill C-23

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by thanking my excellent colleague from Hull—Aylmer for her speech. I was lucky to work with her for so long as members of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. I know that she understands these issues and that she is really concerned about the proposed reform.

I would like to ask her a question about the committee travel she mentioned in her speech. Two years ago, I participated in a diplomatic mission to Ukraine with the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. It was extremely interesting.

Our goal was to hold public hearings and produce a report on the state of democracy in that country. We travelled to many regions of Ukraine and heard witnesses from all walks of life. I think that undertaking those consultations was an excellent initiative that gave us a better understanding of what was going on over there.

We have before us now a bill to reform the Canada Elections Act. We think it would be a good idea to do the same kind of consultation because we understand the importance of consulting people from all walks of life before making changes to our democratic system. However, I am having a hard time understanding why the government would carry out consultations in other countries but not even bother to do so in our own.

Can she comment on that?

[Nycole Turmel, NDP, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for raising that point, which is really what it all comes down to for the NDP.

We want to enable everyone to see the differences among the regions and the provinces and to express their opinion. Democracy is all about giving people opportunities to express themselves. They may not be able to come to Ottawa to do that, so we have to go to them. Ukraine is a great example of that.

I would like the party currently in power—that is right, currently—to explain why it is so strongly opposed to that kind of consultation. Its stance is preventing the committee members from doing a thorough job.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Minister of State (Democratic Reform)]

Mr. Speaker, I will begin my remarks by addressing the issue of vouching. It is a subject opposition members have raised, and I would like to point them to some key facts.

Canadians can use 39 different forms of identification to prove who they are and where they live. If they fail to bring any of those, the law allows someone to vouch for them. Due to massive irregularities in the use of vouching, the fair elections act would end the practice. To highlight these irregularities, I pointed to a compliance review commissioned by Elections Canada as evidence of the problem. It included audits from four ridings in which irregularities in vouching averaged 25% of cases. Some have questioned this fact and its importance. The fact comes from page 15 of the Elections Canada compliance review I mentioned. The author was Harry Neufeld, the former Chief Electoral Officer for the Province of British Columbia.

Some correctly point out that the national rate of irregularities is actually 42%. The difference arises from the fact that the 25% number is an average of just four ridings, and the 42% number is a nationwide figure. At worst, I have understated the problem. Either way, both numbers are correct and both are shockingly high.

Are they important? Some argue that they are just minor paperwork glitches that have no importance with respect to the integrity of the vote. Yet that is not what the author of the report found. Mr. Neufeld defined irregularities as “serious errors”. Those are his words. They are not small details but are serious errors.

This is how he officially defined it:

An “irregularity” is a failure by an election officer to administer safeguards demonstrating that a voter is entitled to receive a ballot.

Some have correctly pointed out that this failure does not automatically mean that the voter is not eligible to vote. By that logic, we would not require any form of identification rules whatsoever. Instead, we would put the onus on the elections official to prove that a person is not eligible. Someone could walk in and assert his or her identity or address, and unless officials could prove beyond a doubt otherwise, the person would cast a ballot. In that instance, there would be literally thousands of fraudulent votes, and there would be no way to stop it, because one cannot prove a negative, nor should we expect elections officials to try.

ID requirements exists for a reason. Failure to properly identify voters, as so often happens with vouching, allows people to vote when they are not eligible or to vote more than once.

It should not be a guessing game, yet that is what vouching has become in nearly half of the cases where it is used. The facts contained in Elections Canada's own compliance report state:

Serious errors, of a type the courts consider “irregularities” that can contribute to an election being overturned, were found to occur in 12 percent of all Election...cases involving voter registration, and 42 percent of cases involving...vouching.

The latter point is particularly devastating. Judges do not overturn election results for nothing, yet the report states that vouching irregularities, which occurred 50,735 times in the last election, are serious enough for a judge to consider doing so. That number of 50,735 irregularities related to vouching comes from page 69 of the aforementioned report.

That is not all. While vouching is theoretically intended to extend the right to vote, it may ultimately rob people of that very same right. When courts invalidate votes because of serious irregularities, there is a chance that legitimate ballots can be invalidated along with them. In other words, a contaminated process can deprive even honest votes from being counted at all.

Why not simply administer vouching more competently instead of ending it altogether, as some ask? The answer to the question of quality assurance seems to be addressed as well in the Neufeld report. Let me quote:

During two of these elections, quality assurance programs involving Onsite Conformity Advisors...were applied. However, vouching irregularities still averaged 21 percent during the OCA monitored elections. This indicates that overly complex procedures cannot be remedied simply by improved quality assurance.

To translate, in the four ridings audited, there were irregularities in 25% of the cases where vouching was used. One in four vouched votes had an irregularity. The compliance review then asked if the number of irregularities would be reduced if there was extra supervision to enforce compliance. Sadly, it only reduced them from 25% to 21%. Therefore, even with extra efforts to impose better compliance, one in five cases where vouching was used involved an irregularity.

It is also important to note the key principle here. Yes, we must allow every eligible voter to cast a ballot. That is why the fair elections act proposes another day of advance voting and would require Elections Canada to advertise ID requirements so that people would know what to bring.

Let us consider another way someone's vote can be taken away, and that is through the fraudulent vote of someone else. If an honest voter casts a ballot for candidate A, and a fraudulent voter casts a ballot for candidate B, the fraudulent vote mathematically cancels out the weight of the honest vote. As such, fraudulent voting is a form of disenfranchisement and is one Canadians expect us to combat.

These are serious problems. Our identity laws must be serious as well.

Let me turn my attention to the issue of fundraising. The opposition has raised concerns about the decision to exclude in the fair elections act the cost of fundraising calls and letters to previous donors from the overall spending limit. This criticism, to start with, is at best hypocritical. Both the Liberals and the NDP exempted fundraising calls from spending limits in their own leadership races. They had no problem with the principle of exempting these costs in their own internal party practices. Why do they not believe that those same principles should apply in a general election?

I should also note that fundraising expenses are already partly exempted from the spending limit under subsection 407(2) of the existing Canada Elections Act, so it is not a foreign or exotic concept that there would be some exemptions. The reason is that there is a difference between campaigning, which is to seek out votes, and raising money for campaigning.

People do not put mileage on their cars while they are standing there putting gas in. They put mileage on their cars when the wheels start turning. That is the fundamental difference between the two, and that is the reason both the NDP and the Liberals have made the decision that fundraising costs should not be included under spending caps within their own leadership races. We are rendering consistent with their practices the law of the land.

The number of donors to a party is very small, so calls directed to them could not substantially help get out the vote, not to mention that donors are the most motivated to vote and the least in need of a reminder call. A suggestion that people could use a fundraising call as an indirect effort to finance their entire “get out the vote” operations is completely impractical and devoid of basic knowledge of how campaigns actually work and the demonstrable, documented facts about how many donors are actually out there in the universe.

Furthermore, the fair elections act includes a provision that deals with the purpose of the call. The purpose must be fundraising. It cannot be something else. If the purpose were actually to get out the vote, the call would not be exempted from the spending cap. Concerns about a call being used for something other than its intended purpose are therefore not valid.

The fair elections act also includes compliance measures that would make it hard to skirt these rules. Under the voter contact registry, which the fair elections act would create, unsolicited phone calls to individuals to raise funds for a registered party or candidate would be captured as voter contact calling services. That means that they would have to be specifically reported on a candidate's expense return. Furthermore, the script would have to be kept for an entire year. Therefore, if anyone were to allege that a purported fundraising call was actually designed to do voter turnout, then the investigator could look at the script to ascertain what the purpose of the call actually was.

These would all be new compliance requirements that did not exist prior to the fair elections act.

Furthermore, it would require an external compliance audit that each party would be subjected to. Parties would have to hire an external auditor who would look at all the expenses and claims of the party to ascertain if they had been properly reported, and if they had not been, the commissioner, as the watchdog of elections law, would be able to undertake a law enforcement investigation.

All election period spending by registered parties is eligible for a 50% rebate from taxpayers. If fundraising calls are not exempt from election spending, taxpayers will be stuck paying half the cost of fundraising calls and letters. We judge that inappropriate. Parties across the way might believe that taxpayers should be forced to pay for half their fundraising costs. We in the Conservative Party disagree.

According to proposed sections 348.16 and 348.19 of the Canada Elections Act that we propose in clause 77, political parties would be required to keep a copy of scripts and recordings used to make unsolicited voter contact calls for up to one year. As I stated earlier, this could become an investigative tool for the commissioner or the watchdog of elections.

The fair elections act would require tough new requirements for audits of party expenses. There would also be firm limits on what parties could spend during a campaign. They should not have to use up those limits to raise the money in the first place.

I return to the issue of the purpose test. Under proposed subsection 376(3), there is something called a purpose test for the exclusion of what would constitute an election expense. Calls would have to be made for the purpose of soliciting monetary contributions from past supporters. The more a party relied on these calls to obtain other forms of support from past supporters, the higher the risk that they would be investigated and potentially prosecuted for having failed to submit a complete election expense return. As required by proposed subsection 376(3), the calls would have to be made for the purpose of soliciting monetary contributions in order for their costs to be excluded from the mandatory reporting as an election expense. This would thoroughly deal with the false allegations of the opposition on the subject of fundraising costs.

Allow me to move to the subject of section 18 of the existing act. Our change in the fair elections act to section 18 would require Elections Canada to focus its advertising budget on the basics of voting: where, when, and what ID to bring; and what special tools are available to help disabled Canadians cast their ballots. We know that there have been serious deficiencies in Elections Canada's communication of this basic information in the past, because its own data shows as much. According to Elections Canada's own surveys, 50% of youth were not even aware that they could vote before election day. They were not aware that they could vote in an advance ballot, by mail, or by going to a local Elections Canada office.

Thus a student who is occupied with studies or work on election day might not know they could have voted earlier and, as a result of that logistical obstacle, they miss the chance to cast their ballot altogether. Some 73% of aboriginal youth are unaware of this information.

I think it is an appalling failure that Elections Canada has not informed youth of these voting opportunities, especially considering that the agency says it has dedicated an inordinate amount of its budget to informing Canadians. If that is really the purpose, then it is not currently being fulfilled. The fair elections act would ensure that it would be, by focusing the advertising budget of Elections Canada on the basics of voting, the information that people require to cast their ballots.

The act would not prevent the CEO from speaking publicly. He is not only allowed to speak publicly under the law but is required to do so under sections 534, 535, and others, and that would not change in the fair elections act.

I should add that all of the data that Elections Canada provides on the reasons people decided not to vote in the last election point in the direction that the fair elections act is headed. Let me quote from an Elections Canada report on the May 2, 2011 election: “In 2011, 60% of non-voters cited everyday life issues as the reason for not voting.” While voter turnout increased in 2011 when compared to 2008, there is more work to be done to increase participation in Canada's democracy.

What were these everyday life issues? The report indicates that 17% of people were travelling, 13% had a busy work or school schedule, 10% were just too busy, and 7% lacked information. Those are some examples of the composition of the overall 60% who said that everyday life issues prevented their voting.

Let us break this down. First, we have a solution for travellers. One, they could vote by mail and two, they could vote in advance. However, as I stated earlier, half of young people are not even aware of that. Why does Elections Canada not inform them? The fair elections act would make sure it does.

If a person is too busy, again they can vote in the advance ballot like two million other Canadians did, and the fair elections act would give them an extra day on which to cast their early ballot.

People lack information, which is the case for 7% of non-voters. That is exactly why the fair elections act would require the agency to give people the basic information on voting, where, when and what ID to bring.

The fair elections act looks at the data that Elections Canada provided on the reasons people are not voting and provides direct, tangible solutions that would help people cast their ballot. That is exactly what the law should do; it should respond to data, and respond it would.

I should also point out that the current promotional campaigns of Elections Canada have failed. When they started, the turnout was 75%. Now, roughly five elections later, it is 61%, and the drop has been most precipitous among the people whom the Elections Canada campaigns claim to help.

Are we to suggest that Elections Canada's ads have actually turned people off voting? Of course not. We are suggesting, though, that it has failed to give people the basic information they require to vote. That is not my personal conclusion; that is the result of looking at the data Elections Canada has put on its own website, and we are responding to that data.

I look forward to debating that bill as we move forward. We have had an excellent debate so far, and I look forward to hearing the suggestions of members of the opposition, the government side, and members of civil society as the bill enters rigorous study at committee.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the minister for his comments today. However, to be honest, I would have liked to hear him talk a bit more about the motion before us, since what the NDP wants is for Canadians to be consulted about the major changes to the Canada Elections Act.

Since this bill was introduced, the minister has spoken a lot about voter turnout among youth. He stresses that he wants to increase this as much as possible. The best way to figure out how to increase voter turnout among youth is to ask them why they did not vote, what prevented them from voting, and so on. He cited statistics about the fact that, for example, most young people did not know that they could vote in advance. If, on election day, that young person, that student, shows up and cannot vote because the vouching system no longer exists, the reality is that this person who has the right to vote, who is a Canadian citizen with the right to vote, will not be able to vote.

It is very important to be able to consult Canadians, to ask them what the real problems are. These young people will be able to tell us exactly what will help improve voter turnout. I think that is the only way to get an idea of how to improve the Canada Elections Act.

I would like the minister to comment on that.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Elections Canada accepts 39 forms of identification, including student cards. That is just one example; Elections Canada accepts many other documents. However, we are changing the legislation to compel Elections Canada to inform the public of the types of identification required. Young people should have this information before the election so that they can go and vote with the proper identification in hand.

The fair elections act will make that happen.

I should also point out that we need to help disabled Canadians cast their ballots. The fair elections act would require that the agency inform disabled Canadians of the special tools available to help them cast their ballots. For example, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind has stated:

Voting is a democratic right for all Canadians. We are happy to have the opportunity to work hand in hand with Government representatives to increase accessibility and awareness of elections amongst the blind and partially sighted community. We need to empower all Canadians to participate in the democratic process and make choices about their leadership....

We could not agree more.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, later on I will talk about the issue of the addresses on particular IDs. First, however, I note that many municipalities across this country have engaged the idea of online voting, some with a great success. A good place for us to explore the idea of online voting is Elections Canada. However, my understanding is that it would be more difficult under this legislation for Elections Canada to embark on a study or a pilot project to find out more about online voting and best practices, and so on, using examples not only from this country but also from others around the world.

Would the minister agree that Elections Canada would be a good place to do these pilot projects? And would this bill not disallow it from doing that?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, no and no.

On the first point, no I do not think Elections Canada should be allowed to test a pilot project on online voting. Quite frankly, it does not have a legal mandate to do so, and there are very serious security questions about the integrity of online voting, which we should not allow to happen without a debate in Parliament first. Right now, the law would require that such a pilot project be approved by two committees of the House of Commons. The fair elections act would require both Houses themselves to approve any such pilot project.

Here I would note that Elections Canada made 165,000 serious errors or irregularities in the last election. That is with a traditional old-fashioned ballot system. Imagine if those kinds of mistakes were transmitted to an online voting system. Imagine the mayhem that could unfold on election day if there were serious technical problems related to online voting.

There might be a case in the future to consider it. However, right now it is at best unproven, and at worst very dangerous, and the agency should have to prove its case to Parliament before trying.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Minister of State (Western Economic Diversification)]

Mr. Speaker, I again point out that the substance of the motion before the House today deals with committee business. For folks who are watching today who may not be familiar with the parliamentary process, once a bill is sent to committee, it is examined there, along with testimony by witnesses from civil society, and folks from departments, et cetera, who come to testify before members of Parliament who look at the substance of the bill.

Could my colleague comment specifically on whether or not parliamentary committee in Ottawa would have the ability to hear testimony from witnesses just like we do with any other bill? Frankly, I am not sure why we are spending a day debating the substance of committee work in the House of Commons. I am hoping that the member could perhaps speak to the ability of the committee to get this work done, and perhaps question why we are not just getting on with the business of reviewing the bill within committee, where it is right now.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the committee should do its work on the bill, and that is what we are proposing. Let us get to work. Let us bring in all the best experts in the field and have them testify. They can come from right across the country. Committees have budgets to bring witnesses here. We can put together a long list of them for an exhaustive consultation on the bill, so that everyone in the country with something to say on it can feed their input into the extensive system we have. Why do we not get to work on it? Let us get busy.

I have already been to committee to testify. Jean-Pierre Kingsley, the former CEO of Elections Canada, has said that the fair elections act is already an A minus. Let us work together at committee to make it an A plus.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I find the comments made by the Minister of State for Democratic Reform rather strange.

We know very well that the Conservatives have a majority on the committee, so if they do not want to hear from certain witnesses, we will not hear from them. If the minister thinks his bill is so good, why will he not take it across Canada to hear directly from Canadians and hear what they have to say? I think he needs to hear what people think, especially people whose right to vote is being taken away, particularly students.

Earlier, I heard some people shouting about the use of student cards to vote. I think those people have not been in school for many years. Indeed, since a student card does not show the person's address, it alone cannot be used to vote. Some people cannot afford to get the necessary identification, because there are some fees involved. Low income Canadians cannot necessarily get a birth certificate, for instance. I think they deserve to be heard by the minister and they should not be ignored because of the internal procedures governing committees.

I would really like to know why the minister will not support our motion.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I can just name a few: a driver's licence; health card; passport; certificate of citizenship; birth certificate; Indian status card; social insurance number; old age security card; student ID card; provincial or territorial identification card; liquor identification card; medical health care clinic card; credit or debit card; employee card; public transportation card; library card; Canadian Forces ID card; Veterans Affairs Canada health card; Canadian Blood Services card; Canadian National Institute for the Blind ID card; a firearms possession and acquisition licence; a fishing, trapping or hunting licence; an outdoors or wildlife card; a hospital bracelet worn by residents of long-term care facilities; a parolee identification card; a television service bill, or a utility bill, including for public utilities commissions, like hydro, gas, and water; bank cards; vehicle ownership cards; correspondence from a school, college, or university; a statement of government benefits like employment insurance or social insurance; an attestation of residence issued by a first nations authority; a government cheque or cheque stub; a pension plan statement of benefits; a residential lease, mortgage statement, income or property assessment, property insurance; or a letter from a public curator.

I could go on and on. There are 39 different forms of ID that people could use. Ideally I will not have to list them all because the fair elections act would require Elections Canada to inform every Canadian of what ID they need to bring.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, here is the issue.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

How about a death certificate?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague from Mississauga—Streetsville joked about having a death certificate. I do not think that is very nice of him to say. He should probably reconsider what he says in the House. That is not very nice really. I heard you the first time—

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

Order. The member has been here long enough to know that he has to direct his comments to the Chair and not to other members of the House.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

My apologies, Mr. Speaker. I should apologize if my speech interrupted his heckling.

Sometimes debate just degrades itself. I am sure the member did not mean to say that a death certificate could be involved here. It may seem kind of funny, but let us be serious.

I want to stick to the cards issue for just a moment. I have my health card right here; normally I would table it, but considering I will probably need it, I am just going to keep it with me for the moment. However, there is no address on it, and I think a lot of these identification pieces do not have an address.

A lot of people around the country still use their voter ID card, especially people who are older or who are in rural areas. They think that will suffice, but it does not. What I am getting at is that sometimes people continue their voting patterns from one election to the next. Despite the best efforts by Elections Canada to communicate information about the ID out there, sometimes people do not receive that information. Some are people who are in areas that do not get high-speed Internet or who do not have access to high-speed Internet. It is not only cost prohibitive but is just prohibitive in general.

I will talk about vouching for a moment. I think we have seen the fraud that has taken place, and I agree that there are problems with vouching. Every democracy has a problem with its voting system when it comes to this sort of thing, and vouching is one of those areas where people could take advantage. However, the problem is that vouching has been thrown out completely. That is not the solution here. What we need to do is look at vouching itself and make sure that the people who are vouching are the right people to do so. Officials within Elections Canada could be given a greater role.

There are people who just do not have the required ID. People may not have a job, or they may be in a circumstance in a rural area where maybe there was only seasonal work. They may be retired. They may be illiterate. The government can talk about 39 pieces of ID or 300 pieces of ID, but when even the most basic identification does not contain addresses, it is a problem. That is why vouching should exist for these people, and for students and first nations. It is unfortunate that the government has done this.

Let me go to the core of what we are arguing here, which was put forward by the NDP in talking about the discussion to take place with the country. If we have this discussion, we could see a perfect illustration of just how bad an idea it is to throw out vouching completely.

There are places where this happened in by-elections, such as Etobicoke Centre. We could hear from people there. We could also hear from first nations people who say that if this happens, if vouching is thrown out, many people will be disenfranchised right away. That is it. That is all. There is no recourse.

That is a whole generation of people who will not be voting. Chances are that if they do not vote early on, they are more likely not to vote in the future. As we know, as a smart person once said, bad governments get elected by good people who do not vote. Maybe that is the case we have here.

[Gordon O'Connor]

No, that was Chrétien's.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Again, Mr. Speaker, I apologize. I know sometimes my speech interrupts heckling, so I will just proceed. I would like to talk about how getting out across this country is a good idea, but the best idea was lost.

The government keeps talking about taking this to committee, having a full discussion and talking about everything, putting it all on the table, talking to experts and the people affected, and if we need to change it, we will change it.

However, that is a disingenuous argument, because that is not how the system works. That is not the spirit of what we do here. I am talking about process now, and I know a lot of people complain that I talk too much about process, but it is very important.

During debate—which was cut short by the government, incidentally—we talked about the pros and cons of this bill. I was the first person in this party to speak. Actually, there were only three speakers to start with before time allocation was put on it, and I was the third speaker. I said at the time that I was not going to say definitively that I was supporting it or was against it until I had listened to the debate.

There are a lot of things that I do not like in this bill, but I will still debate it and hold out for any misgivings that I have to be dispelled by the minister or anybody else here. I will give the minister credit for being here during the debate. That is not often done by every minister, so I congratulate him for that.

Here is the issue. It is disingenuous to say that we can change this bill once it gets into committee. That is because we had a vote at second reading, and the whole idea of voting at second reading is to tell Parliament that we accept this bill in principle. If we take the bill and vote yes at second reading, we have genuinely said yes to it and we are now going to fix the edges of it to make it fit into the law of our country.

We might learn that a few words need to be changed. This is one area. Maybe the elections commissioner could have a few more tools or maybe we could change in a certain direction, but the whole point is that we cannot make fundamental and major changes to the bill, because it has already passed second reading. Parliament has said yes in principle.

Members might say that it does not matter and that the committee is its own destiny. They might say that the committee can change the bill, and that is fine. They might say that the majority can agree to change it, and that is fine. However, it cannot be done like that, because it is your call, Mr. Speaker. If somebody makes an amendment and even if every member on the committee decides to accept it and make the change, you can rule that they are not allowed to do that, and we have no say.

It has been done before. I have seen it. That is the problem.

How do we get around it? I am glad someone asked. What we can do is send it to committee before second reading. Then the bill can be changed in a very substantial way.

The government has already done that. It did that with its first environmental bill. It put it to the committee before second reading. Obviously the government believes there are circumstances that will dictate that this can be done. However, this time it is not the case.

What are we left with? Yes, we do want to take this across the country and get the advice of others. We want to see and illustrate what this legislation will mean. I just talked to the member about online voting; there is a good example.

We can say that online voting is open to abuse, and to a great extent I agree. It is not an easy thing to do. People can vote multiple times. As I have always said, the thing is that with technology nowadays, it is so easy to circumvent it. If members put a digital lock on certain cultural material on their laptops, iPads, or tablets, I will give my 19-year-old son 48 hours to get around it.

The point is that although many things could go wrong with online voting, that does not mean that we ignore it. There are municipalities across the country that are fully engaged in this approach. Right now, the way it works is that if Canadians feel that everybody is voting online, from cities across the country to Canadian Idol, there must be a way that democracy can be exercised to the point where online voting has become a secure method.

The option of doing that needs to be explored. Maybe we could conduct a pilot project, and the perfect people to do that would be the people who know the process of voting. If we want to engage people who are experts in the world of technology, especially the security of technology, the organization to do that would be Elections Canada. We might think, according to this new bill, that both Houses would have to vote to do that. There is nothing wrong with that either, but what I would like to do is give Elections Canada some of the tools by which it could do that.

Let us face it: some form of online voting is coming. Whether we like it or not, it is coming, so we have to look at ways to engage the technology that we are presented with.

What I find ironic, though, is that the government will stop at no lengths to open up government to online services. In other words, “You want to apply for EI? Go online.”

If the government is so paranoid about the security of online services, why does it keep pushing for us to apply online for EI, cards, firearms acquisition, or whatever? It is all out there. We can do it all online. The Conservatives get to practise government in a cheaper way. They have to cut somewhere, so this is how they do it.

However, the fundamental concept is that if it is so secure for the Government of Canada to engage citizens in everything else, why can it not look at online voting? Instead there is just an outright dismissal of the idea.

I would say to the government that allowing these people and the election commissioner to have that ability is a fundamental way of empowering Elections Canada to do its job.

When I was in Mongolia, one of the things they talked about was Elections Canada. They like the fact that we have this institution called Elections Canada that is separate from the government and that acts in its own way to ensure the integrity of our exercise of democracy.

In Europe they say the same thing. They like Elections Canada and they like what we are doing, but they are not as eager to say now that it is as good as it was, and the fundamental reason is within this bill.

The government has taken the elections commissioner, the person who gets to the bottom of any fraud that is taking place, from Elections Canada and put him into the public prosecutions office. Now, on the surface, the independence of that particular commissioner sounds like a good thing as, if I may push the analogy even further, the minister wants to have this person be the ultimate referee in a hockey game, so making that person independent makes him more of a referee.

What he does not tell us is that he put him on the ice as a referee but he took his whistle away from him. It is hard to go around yelling people at who are doing wrong. They will not hear him unless he has a whistle.

The fundamental tool of applying to a judge to get information is not only what we believe is the right tool to have, but the Chief Electoral Officer and the elections commissioner both want it.

Mr. Speaker, you are doing your job right now. You know a heck of a lot more than I do about what gives you the best tools available to do your job. That is why you sit in that chair.

If the elections commissioner and the Chief Electoral Officer say that applying to a judge is the tool they want to compel people to provide witness testimony, that is the tool they want. They cannot even ask. They feel that it gives the commissioner too much power, that they do not really need that power, and that it is too excessive.

Well, that is for a judge to decide. That is why they do not have that power outright. They apply to the judge to get it. That is the whole point of doing what we are doing.

The government says that this person will be outright independent, but it would just be moving that person to another building. That is it. That is all.

As I have said before, and I will say it again, that does not make that person neutral; it is making that person neutered, without the right tools.

Pardon the expression; most members cringed. However, that is exactly what is happening here.

I would say to the government in this particular case that these things will find their way into committee as testimony, but the problem is that we have already voted yes in principle, and a lot of fundamental changes cannot be done. I hope that an amendment that is forthcoming to allow the commissioner to do this would be accepted by the government, and beyond that I hope we get to a third reading where we find ourselves with a bill answering all the questions we want.

However, if the government does not want to take this bill out into the public realm, that is not a good sign.

When there is debate in the House, it is from different people, whether it is ministers, members of the official opposition, members of the third party, or independent members. Even the backbench of the government should be challenging some of the stuff that is in this legislation.

There were three speakers, one from the government, one from the NDP, and then a Liberal, and that was it. That was all we got, and then there was time allocation. There was some debate after that, but it is certainly disingenuous when the Conservatives say, “We can invite whoever you want. We can allow anyone to discuss this. However, after a member from each party speaks, that is it, and then we are going to move on very quickly, unless, of course, you feel that going to the public with this type of bill, to allow the discussion to take place, is going to result in what you do not want to hear”.

[An hon. member]

Hardly.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I did not put that right. Let me put it in Conservative speak. “We do not want to hear” means it is a circus show, a gong show. In other words, “Give us what we want to hear; otherwise it becomes an exercise that is not helpful to democracy”, which does the complete opposite. It actually hurts democracy; let us be honest.

As far as a resolution is concerned, the intent of it is right, but I am kind of worried about the date of May 1. I think maybe they might want to change that to make sure it goes beyond May 1. I understand the intent of it, but I think going beyond May 1 would allow more people to speak. It states in the bill the regions that members want to go to, and it pretty much covers everybody in geography and everybody in society. I will read from it. It talks about the regions: Atlantic Canada, which my esteemed colleague from Avalon and I are proudly from, Quebec, Ontario, northern Ontario, the Prairies, British Columbia, and of course, the north. That pretty much covers everything.

In rural and urban areas, absolutely, we would get to the nub of the issue about rural vote vouching, which really helps people there. It talks about first nations as well, which is very important on the vouching issue; anti-poverty groups; groups representing persons with disabilities, which has come up quite a bit. The minister goes to great lengths to point out what the government is doing for people with disabilities, and I do not doubt his intention and good-willed nature, but what is going to happen is that the government's intent to do something good would be subjected to a policy that would fail in its execution. That is with regard to vouching, of course.

The right to vote freely and fairly is fundamental to the integrity of Canada's electoral system. We all believe in that, we all want to vote for that, and we push for that, but remember that we are a model for the international community. If we are model for the international community—nations all over the world at any stage of democracy, especially the young democracies—why do we not want to hear from the public about how we can make this legislation better and not worse? I do not know if anybody in the House has noticed—some people have, but not everybody—according to the emails and unsolicited input I get, a lot of people have problems with this bill in a very fundamental and substantial way that will move us away from being the international model that we worked so hard to build.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the member a question, because he has sat in on some of the procedure and House affairs committee meetings. Of course, as a member, I have been there as well.

I can say that Conservative government members on the committee are prepared to get down to work and look at this legislation. We have committed to a significant period of time in which we can have meetings and hear from witnesses from all across Canada. There are all kinds of opportunities for those people to be brought in to Ottawa or be heard through video conferencing and other methods; so we can hear from people.

As the minister has very eloquently said today in the House, he is looking to take former commissioner Jean-Pierre Kingsley's comment that the bill has an A minus and turn it into an A plus. We are obviously suggesting that we are prepared to get down to work. We want to hear suggestions and try to work to make this great bill even better, if that is possible.

However, as we know, the NDP members on the committee are intent on having their members of Parliament travel across the country. They seem to be holding their breath like little children for the opportunity to have their members travel across the country when we would like to just get down to work.

It seems as though the member and the Liberal Party are in solidarity with the NDP on this point of wanting to have members of Parliament travel across the country. I would like to ask the member why that is. Why does he not want to get down to work, hear from people about this legislation, and get down to business, as we on the Conservative government side want to do?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, it is a list that is chosen by the Conservatives, voted by them, to bring in the people they want to hear. Does the member for Wild Rose wish to control the machinations by which democracy is exercised? There is no doubt in my mind that the amount of input the member has received has been substantial.

I understand where the member is coming from. He has the intent to do the work that is required: to hear about the bill and all the technical matters involved. However, the problem is that there is a fundamental lag in the amount of information that is available out there that was not sought before this began. We always hear about the people who were never contacted but who have a strong opinion and a great deal of knowledge about this. Therefore, when the Conservatives say that they have heard within the confines of the committee all the people they want to hear from, I mean, that is part of the disingenuous message.

If the member for Wild Rose really and truly felt that he is doing the hard work, then a vast majority of Canadians would say that he is not working hard enough. I am not casting aspersions on the member's personality. I have known him for a while, and he is a hard worker. However, this is to engage the public on something that is substantial and so important. I mean, it is our democracy.

The member talked about teleconferencing and calling in these people. However, these are the people the Conservatives want: only the people who already would give them good marks. He says he wants to bring in Mr. Kingsley who gave them an A minus, but he will not invite the people who gave them an F.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor for his intervention. I tend to agree with all that I have heard from him.

I have been in this place for eight years and, particularly since the Conservatives have had a majority, I have watched them control committees in a way that is very close to being offensive at times.

I find it ironic that the trade committee, discussing the European free trade agreement, is going coast to coast to coast to examine it, but not on a fundamental issue like the rights of Canadians to function within their democracy, to use their franchise to vote and to deal with the situation where nearly 100,000 would be dispossessed from their franchise. This strikes me as very ironic. I would like to hear the member's comments on that.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, whom I have known for quite some time, for bringing that forward.

A while ago, the Conservatives talked about putting a piece of legislation—the first environment bill—to committee before second reading. I wish they had done that. Nevertheless, it was not done, but I would look at that as a way to do it.

It seems that, when we come up with ideas like our not liking vouching, every time vouching is brought up we focus on the lowest common denominator; so we always focus on what went wrong with the system. We never discuss what went right with the system and the fundamental reason why vouching existed in the first place.

I agree with the minister in regard to getting the fraudsters out of the system, but to do that is to look at the vouching system itself because in many cases it is being taken advantage of. However, I would say we do not need to throw the system out in order to fix it. By doing that, we are making a broad, general judgment that it does not work because there are fraudsters in the system. Would the government throw out employment insurance and other social programs because cheats exist in the system?

There are a lot of people in this country. We need to look at fixing the fundamental core of the system to allow it to be of benefit. That is why we would go across the country. The minister has been in the House during the debate; good for him. However, now he needs to be out there, where it counts, to find out that when the rubber hits the road, this is what would happen. He must stop being dictated to only by the people who cheat the system and look at the people who benefit from it as well.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Mr. Speaker, one aspect of vouching is the ability of our returning officers and clerks who are trained by Elections Canada. We may have to do more training, which I believe is being addressed. Where this would hurt is in the hundreds of thousands of rural polls. There are small rural polls with less than 200 voters. The clerks who come from these areas know their neighbours. They know the people down the street. Quite often in a rural poll two people may be out walking, see that the poll is open, want to go in and vote, but have forgotten their ID. They go into the polling station and there is a clerk who is their neighbour. They live next door to this person. Why are the government and the Conservatives trying to take away the power of a returning officer or clerk at the table to say, “I know who you are. Your name is on the voters' list. You are my neighbour”, if they happened to be out and it was convenient for them to come and vote? We are trying to make voting more accessible and more convenient. Not allowing the clerks and the people at the table to use their judgment to say that, because they are neighbours or live in the community, they know them, would make voter turnout plummet.