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.