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”.