Mr. Speaker, the integrity of our elections is something most Canadians take for granted, but as Wendell Phillips said in 1852, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”
Vigilance and a commitment to the integrity of our elections requires us to confront the Liberals' disastrous proposals in Bill C-76, proposals that will bring the integrity of our electoral process into question and weaken our democracy.
To have confidence in the results of an election, Canadians expect three simple things: that voters prove who they are; that voters prove where they live; and that our elections are free of foreign interference. Bill C-76 would weaken all three of these. It would eliminate ID requirements, ID requirements that are already among the most generous in the world. It would allow Canadians living abroad to choose which riding to vote in, whether or not they demonstrate any plausible connection to that riding. It would introduce no meaningful safeguards on foreign interference at a time when more and more foreign actors want to manipulate our politics.
The bill is a clear and present threat to the integrity of Canadian elections. We will fight it every step of the way.