Mr. Speaker, the member was a great minister in the democratic reform portfolio. He also presided over crown corporations. He has a very distinguished record, and I thank him for the question and the kind words.
On the issue of voter identification, here is the fundamental difference between what the fair elections act proposes today and what existed in the last election. In the last election, people could go in with no ID whatsoever and cast a ballot by having someone vouch for who they were. That form of identity vouching is gone. Every single person who votes will have to present a piece of identification showing who they are before they vote. If that ID does not have an address on it, they can co-sign an oath with another elector as to their address. However, there is a big difference. From now on, the list of oath takers will be put before the eyes of Elections Canada right after the election to find out if there are duplicates so that we can catch people who voted more than once. There will be a $50,000 fine for taking a false oath. Potentially, jail time could come along with that. There would be an external auditor to make sure that Elections Canada actually follows these legal requirements.
Because we will have required people to show ID proving who are before taking that oath, unlike under the status quo, if they have lied or cheated, we will be able to track them down. Under the previous model of vouching, where people could go in without any ID whatsoever and have someone vouch for who they were, if the system showed that they had voted more than once or had cheated in some way, we might not ever be able to track them down, because their identity had not been established. In other words, they could simply lie about who they were. There was no picture of them. There was no record of their existence. They literally vanished into thin air as though they never existed, but their vote was counted. That vote would have cancelled out the legitimate vote of an honest voter. That is another way of disenfranchising someone.
We are eliminating that practice and that possibility by requiring every single person to show their ID, by checking the list of oath takers for duplicates to catch people who vote more than once, and by having an external auditor oversee all of it so that we can ensure that Elections Canada actually follows its own rules.