Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to address Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act.
I would like to commend my colleague from Ottawa Centre for the wonderful job he has done in dealing with the bill and for pointing out some of the concerns that the New Democratic Party has with respect to the bill.
Canadians are becoming increasingly concerned about their own privacy. They are concerned that their names may now end up on a no fly list or banks may refuse to remit money to them because of their country of origin. They are also concerned about cyber criminals hacking into their credit card and debit card information.
Identity theft is an increasing concern. Organized crime is involved in identity theft. Police services across the country are warning us about identity theft. They are urging us to take great precautions around our own privacy information so that we do not become victims of identity theft.
Ordinary Canadians also feel a sense of vulnerability because of a lack of protection by the government of their private information. It is really shocking that the House of Commons is now being presented with a bill that would make the privacy of average citizens even more vulnerable to theft.
The intent of the bill is to crack down on potential voter fraud, a goal that all Canadians can support. The New Democratic Party wants to ensure there are no opportunities for voter fraud. While this is an admirable goal, the bill misses the point. It really puts forward a set of problematic remedies.
Voters will be shocked to learn that in the next federal election their dates of birth will be printed on the voters list. Why is that? Presumably the best interpretation is that returning officers will be able to use this information to verify if the voters are indeed who they say they are. The bill would require all voters to provide government issued photo identification in addition to a special identifier that would be given to each voter. We really question the necessity of birth date information being on the voters list.
If that provision is not bad enough, the Bloc put forward an amendment at committee which was passed with the support of the Liberals. The amendment would allow birth date information to be shared with all political parties. Why would that be? Political parties do not need to know the birth dates of their neighbours. My colleague the member for Ottawa Centre opposed this amendment at committee for obvious privacy reasons.
When political parties are dealing with voters lists, that information is shared with scrutineers who work for each political party. There would be no protection against the information getting into public hands and perhaps even into the hands of criminals involved in identity theft.
The real reason for political parties to have this information has nothing to do with voter verification. The Liberals who supported the Bloc amendment and the Conservatives who are now supporting it at third reading simply want as much information as they can possibly get so they can target demographic groups during election campaigns. I am convinced they will also use this information for fundraising purposes. This is the kind of information that people in direct sales or marketing would be delighted to get their hands on.
It is appalling that those three political parties would be pushing for political parties to have that kind of personal data on people. If they really cared about potential voter fraud, they would not devise a system that is in effect an identity theft kit for would-be criminals, now sponsored by the government putting out that information.
If they were really serious about amending the Canada Elections Act to help prevent voter fraud, instead of exposing people's private information they would have taken into account the measures that my colleague from Ottawa Centre has put forward. Those measures include making sure that all voter cards are sent in envelopes addressed to the voters. In that way, if the person no longer resides at the address, the card would be returned to Elections Canada and not left at the address for someone else to pick up and use in some kind of fraudulent manner.
They would also have universal enumeration, the way we used to do it in Canada, so that an accurate voters list would be in place and not open to fraud. They would allow people who are not on the voters list to swear a statutory declaration on election day at the polling station so that the polling station employees could verify the identify of the voter. This has been done in the past and it has worked well. I do not understand why it has been taken out of Bill C-31.
The people who are most vulnerable to lose their opportunity to vote, to be disenfranchised, are the most vulnerable people in our society. They are women who may be in a shelter for battered women who do not have a fixed address to register at, or they may be homeless people who are also residing in a shelter, or people who have moved. It will be the disabled, the people who are ill who will lose their opportunity to vote. That is a very serious thing.
This may result in the bill going to the courts because of these issues and also because of the privacy issues.
I am sure that all Canadians will be distraught when they find out about the changes that are put forward in this bill and how they will actually impact vulnerable people on voting day, and also the issue of privacy.
I urge the government to consider changes to this bill that will make it a bill that all Canadians can support and so that Canadians do not have to worry about the privacy issues.
