moved:
That it be an instruction to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs that, during its consideration of Bill C-23, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and other Acts and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, the Committee shall: (a) hear witnesses from, but not limited to, Elections Canada, political parties as defined under the Canada Elections Act, the Minister of State who introduced the Bill, representatives of First Nations, anti-poverty groups, groups representing persons with disabilities, groups representing youth advocates and students, as well as specific groups which have been active in society on elections rules; (b) have the power to travel to all regions of Canada, (Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Ontario, Northern Ontario, the Prairies, British Columbia and the North), including downtown urban settings, rural and remote settings, and that the Committee request that this travel take place in March and April 2014; and (c) only proceed to clause-by-clause consideration of the Bill after these hearings have been completed, with a goal to commence clause-by-clause consideration on Thursday, May 1, 2014.
Mr. Speaker, I rise as much in sorrow as in anger: sorrow in terms of the state of affairs of our democracy. We have been watching, drip by drip, the democracy that we love and respect, and that is respected around the world, being deteriorated, removed, and changed.
I will be splitting my time with the member for Hull—Aylmer.
The government brought in a bill that proposed massive sweeping changes to the way we conduct elections here in Canada. However, not long after we began discussing it, the government moved a motion to shut down debate. During the course of that debate, the government said, “Well, this is not all that important because it is the House discussion, and we want to get this to the committee to do some real work and get things done”.
We did not buy that necessarily. We wanted a good, strong, thorough opening debate here so that the committee would have a strong foundation to begin its work. However, the Conservatives have a majority and win votes ten times out of ten when they collectively stay together.
Members will appreciate that in a healthy, mature democracy there are two pieces in dealing with legislation. One is the process by which it is analyzed: who gets input, who gets a say, and what the process is for final determination. The other is the substantive part of the bill.
We put a motion on the floor at the committee to say that we would like to have certain witnesses. It is pretty motherhood, quite frankly, in terms of the witnesses we had; there was no shock there, no games, no twist. It was straightforward.
Also, given that there has been no consultation with the opposition parties or the Chief Electoral Officer, we said we would like to make sure the bill had a review that went beyond what would sort of be regular procedures here: we should get this committee out on the road, into the communities and to the people who would be affected by the proposed changes to the election laws, and give them their say.
The government, early on, indicated it might be open to that. There were actually some off-line discussions that lasted about two or three hours. However, in moving forward, as we were setting out how long we had and beginning to lay the foundations of getting negotiations, I was advised on the floor of the House of Commons that the iron curtain had come down from on high and, no; there would not be any public hearings outside the safety and security of the Ottawa bubble.
Our motion is not only reasonable, it also provides a target starting gate for clause-by-clause. Opposition parties do not normally do this. Why? It is because it would box in the timeframe and manoeuvrability.
However, we were trying to instill in the mind of the public, and most importantly in the government, that we really do want to have a negotiated process that involves getting outside the security of the safety bubble in Ottawa. Give people a chance to have their say, give us an adequate number of days and hours to discuss this properly, and then we could reach an agreement. We could then move on and begin to fill in the days we have identified. We could get speakers lined up, do the usual sorts of things, identify the communities we would be going to, and then start talking about who we would see there. All of that should be happening right now.
Those who study the history of this place and our democracy will know that any attempt to change the rules of the election needs to have the buy-in of all those who participate. We just finished the Olympics. Did the host country decide all of the Olympic rules? No; there is equal input from all the participants because it is the rules of the game, and then we enjoy the games.
That is what used to happen in Canada. It blows my mind that I even have to make the statement, and then the government refused to meet with the Chief Electoral Officer. It is ridiculous. We took one of their reports, and it took over two Parliaments for us to go through every clause and talk about it, have give and take, bring in experts, review the idea, and bring back the experts. However, that was a minority government. That was when there was a much stronger sense of the real Canadian democracy that we know.
We have the floor at committee, call it a filibuster. It is not much of a filibuster; it has only gone one meeting. Nonetheless, we have the floor and we are not relinquishing it. We have sent a message: we are not going to allow any committee travel that we have a say in, in terms of fast-tracking it with unanimous consent. The government members can still do things by motion, but they will have to take the time. We are not giving them the unanimous consent, the way we normally would.
It is not because we are being petulant, but because we believe this is important. As the official opposition, it is our job, our responsibility to Canadians, to put up resistance as a matter of course and in particular when we think something wrong is happening.
With what is at stake here, these are some of the concerns we have. I want to get this on the record. We are concerned that this new legislation will block tens of thousands of students, seniors, aboriginal people, and low-income Canadians from exercising their right to vote.
It is bad enough that most of them are being left out of the economy of Canada, now there are folks who want to keep them out of the elections of Canada. Why? One does not have to stretch their imagination to guess why the government would like those folks to stay home.
It will create loopholes that will allow big money back into Canadian politics. We know, and all Canadians know, that the Conservatives have more money than probably all the other political parties put together, but certainly more than all the other political parties. Money, in and of itself, in a democracy does not outright buy an election, but in a tight one only a few seats need to be bought.
Let us remember, we live in a country with a system right now, as proud as we are of our democracy, in which a party can get less than 40% of the vote and it still gets 100% of the power. That is why this system fails Canadians. At the end of the day, we need to move to proportional representation. That is another debate. That debate will become a reality when the NDP forms the government in 2015 and brings in proportional representation. Then we will be back on the cutting edge of modern democracies.
Lastly, we in the official opposition are concerned that the bill, and we think it says so straight out, will ban Elections Canada from teaching kids about our democracy.
We have these concerns. The government will say that they are not legitimate. Fair enough. Let us go ask the Canadian people what they say. It is their elections. It is their Canada. It is their democracy. They are the ones who stand to be disenfranchised. We need to go to those communities and give them an opportunity not to only say why this bill affects their rights but also to show us. We should go to the far north.
Those of us who have international election observation missions know the extreme differences between voting in cities and in rural villages and mountains. It is the same here in Canada. People in the far north have a very different political election experience than those who are in cities. We have concerns about what is going to happen in the cities. Let us get out there.
My last comment is this: we can solve this in 30 minutes. I said that I rise more in sorry than in anger. We want to get off the process and get on to the substance of the bill. I believe within 30 minutes we could sit down and negotiate with the government a process that is a fair compromise. We are not going to get everything we want, but neither should the government. Let us negotiate, compromise, come up with a process that we can all live with, give Canadians their say, and then we can get on with debating the actual details of the bill.
However, until the government stops ramming things through, believing it has the right to deny Canadians their voice, we will continue to fight and use every tool we have to bring democracy to this place, even if the Conservatives do not believe in democracy.