Craig Scott

[Privilege, March 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I do not rise with a light heart to participate in this debate.

The member for Mississauga—Streetsville is a member of the committee on which I sit. I do want to make sure that I am as fair as I can possibly be.

I think it is important that we know a couple of things about the chronology, and that will help explain why the Speaker felt it was important that we actually have this matter go to committee.

The first thing is that the misleading statement was made twice on the same day, in more detail the first time and in general terms the second time.

The second thing is the retraction. I am not going to call it an apology because that is not the way it was phrased. It was a statement that what he had said before was not accurate. That is the way it was framed. It was 19 days later, on February 25.

We have 19 days and something that was said twice. It really does lead us into the territory of needing to know more from our hon. friend from Mississauga—Streetsville, which is why I think it is entirely appropriate that the Speaker believes this should be remitted to committee.

We do need to know because, to be fair to us, the member for Mississauga—Streetsville did not offer any serious explanation as to how it is that he could have made that kind of mistake. It clearly was misleading the House, so the impact is there. However, I think we have a right to know what was behind that, by way of a fuller explanation before the committee.

This is why I do take a different tack from my hon. colleagues across the way when they ask why we do not let water flow under the bridge and not pursue it any further. This is very important.

I do want to say that I was personally misled. I was not actually there for that part of what was said, but it got to me quite early on. I spent a little bit of time sending out emails, asking researchers to start looking for the real world evidence that what had been described in the House could have happened, asking if there had been reports to Elections Canada of this kind of behaviour, or if there was any social science evidence that what my colleague had said was true.

I believed him, in the sense that that was my presumption. It was only that evening when somebody, who was maybe paying more attention than I to exactly what had been said, wrote something as a journalist that let me know there was something wrong. Whatever the motivation was, this could not be right. That is simply because what was said did not make sense.

I am referring to an article by Justin Ling that was written the night of the two statements by my hon. colleague from Mississauga—Streetsville. It is called “Building Poilievre's Electoral Fraud in the Sky”. It is not about—

[Democratic Reform, March 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, that is why experts like Harry Neufeld are speaking up. In his report, he recommended improved recruitment and training for Elections Canada election-day workers, but, according to Mr. Neufeld, Conservatives have actually done the exact opposite in the unfair elections act.

Why is the minister using this bill to make it harder to vote instead of helping Elections Canada to better recruit and train election-day workers?

[Democratic Reform, March 3rd, 2014]

Have no doubt, Mr. Speaker, the government is steamrolling changes that are going to make it harder for Canadians to vote. That is why experts like Harry Neufeld are speaking up. In Mr. Neufeld's report, he recommended improved—

[Democratic Reform, March 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, this weekend, people I spoke with about the unfair elections act expressed deep concerns that Conservative changes could make it less likely that new Canadians will vote. Instead of empowering immigrant communities, the proposed changes in Bill C-23 to remove the ability of Elections Canada to educate risk disenfranchising these Canadians.

Why will the minister not listen to these kinds of concerns and abandon his plan to gut the ability of Elections Canada to educate and engage?

[Canada Post, March 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, Canada Post went ahead and announced its plan to eliminate home delivery without serious consultation. My constituents are furious. I have heard from so many in Toronto—Danforth describing how they will be affected by these changes. Seniors, disabled individuals, and home-based small businesses will be particularly hard hit.

Romeo and Lunesa wrote to me to say the following:

Being both seniors ourselves and starting to have mobility issues, we heavily rely on door-to-door mail delivery. Instead of cutting postal services, expanding its services as proposed by [the] NDP is a more viable and sensible option.

Instead, Canada Post, backed by the Conservatives, refused to consider postal banking's great promise as a revenue stream and, indeed, it seems they are trying to hide an 800-page report that almost certainly discusses how viable postal banking would be.

Canada Post is a cherished public institution. Let us keep it that way.

[Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, February 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my hon. colleague if he could comment on the new intent-to-reside test for citizenship, the whole idea that when people apply to become citizens, the government can assess whether they intend to reside in Canada.

Lorne Waldman is the current president of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers. He is very respected. He is one of my former students. He talks about how arbitrary that will be and how difficult that will be to assess. Then he asks if this will become the basis on which the minister can exercise his power to revoke citizenship if a person happens to leave the country too early for the liking of the minister.

I am wondering about the insecurity that would create for average citizens, not knowing whether they can leave five months from now, six months from now, or 18 months from now without being at risk of having their citizenship revoked, because somehow or other, retroactively, a minister might say that it showed that they did not intend to reside in Canada in the first place.

Does the member have any concerns?

[Democratic Reform, February 24th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians are upset about the unfair elections act, upset about changes that would suppress the vote of youth, first nations, the homeless, and even seniors.

Changes to elections rules should be non-partisan. Instead, Bill C-23 would in effect rig the Canada Elections Act to give the Conservative Party an unfair advantage.

Canadians want to be heard and they must be heard, so when will the Conservatives do the right thing and agree to cross-country hearings with the Canadian people?

[Business of Supply, February 24th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I honestly do believe that the government would benefit from it. There is a trust deficit with respect to this bill. That is one of the things hanging over the head of the government. The fact is that we have been able to show, through substantive critique, that there is a reason not to trust much of what is in this bill. The only way that is going to be set aside is if Canadians have confidence in the process that is producing the legislation.

We are not asking for the entire process to be cross-country. We are asking it to be built into what will also include close study. The two together will benefit the government, the bill, and Canadians.

[Business of Supply, February 24th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the short answer is that I have a very different understanding from the minister of the relationship between causation and correlation.

The minister has spent a lot of time on this, and he is now paring back. Criticism has shown him the error of his way, not on this point, but on the Neufeld report. He was constantly citing irregularities early on, as if they amounted to fraud, or even the serious risk of fraud. Gradually he has begun to nuance because he knows that people have read the report and understand that is not what Neufeld said.

There is the same thing on this score. Causation is not correlation. I asked the minister in our earlier debates why we cannot have the new section 18, as written in Bill C-23, alongside the old section 18. The two sections are not in conflict. The new section is a kind of marching order to Elections Canada to engage in the kind of targeted information-giving that the minister has made the case for being beneficial. However, he has made no case that public education and democratic outreach themselves are not beneficial. That is the difference between causation and correlation.

[Business of Supply, February 24th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl.

I would like to address briefly some comments from my colleague across the way, the member for Oak Ridges—Markham, and ask that he do his best to not take the word of whomever is feeding him this information. On the day that the bill was tabled, I appeared before the media and said that I was reading it. I had not yet read it all. However, I had read enough of it to be extremely worried about where it was heading and whether it was going to structure things in a very unfair way. I asked the media to be on the outlook for the details. It was the next day that I came out against the bill, after many hours of reading it. Therefore, what my colleague has been fed by way of a line is completely inaccurate.

I would like to address the motion rather than the generalities of the bill; we have already had the second reading debate on it. I want to put it in the context of our request for cross-country hearings to be part of the procedures and house affairs committee study. There have been no public consultations in advance. We had a debate with the minister about how much he consulted, at all, in advance, especially with Elections Canada. We believe, in listening to the Chief Electoral Officer, that it did not take place. Certainly there was no consultation beyond a “hi, hello” session with the critics or the other parties. Therefore, it is all the more important now that we consider the public input side for something as fundamental as this piece of legislation.

It is hard to characterize the Canada Elections Act as anything other than one of the most fundamental statutes in our system. It cannot get anymore fundamental without it being a constitutional document. It is all the more crucial because tradition and convention have been flouted in the context of the bill. In the past, it has been very much the case, majority government or not, that all parties, including opposition MPs who may not belong to parties, are to be involved in some kind of inclusive way before a bill hits the House. That is in order that there is some degree of consensus and buy-in on changes that, by definition, should be consensual and non-partisan. That is not what has happened here.

That is all the more reason that the government and the minister need to be woken up to the concerns that those of us who have had a chance to read the bill have been raising, and that day by day, week by week, more and more people are becoming concerned about. That will only be fully apparent to the government if the committee is able to have some hearings outside of the Ottawa bubble.

I would also like to make a final link: If we had a fair voting system, this unfair elections act would never have hit the floor of the House. If we had a system where proportional representation was built in, we would not have a single party running a majority government. It would be rare in our history that a majority would be generated because it is so rare that one party gets 50% of the vote. The circumstances would be very different. The tradition, the convention, that parties should be consulted and work together on the Canada Elections Act would have been forced upon this government, assuming that it was the government, with fewer than 50% of the seats. If we had a proportional representation system, we would have had a more collegial consensus approach as to how the bill was generated. The concerns that we have been articulating and debating—and I must credit the minister for coming out and continuing to offer his point of view—would have occurred in advance. A lot of the problems in the bill would have been cut off at the knees, if the government were serious that it had no intent to do x, y or z.

We just heard from the minister that the whole question of being able to call former donors is not going to be abused because any calls have to be for the purpose of that. I would like to hear the minister then say, here and now, that he would accept an amendment that says “for the sole purpose of calling former donors”, and that any other aspect of that call would itself be illegal and/or part of the campaign expenses. That would have been sorted out in advance, if we had been involved in this at an earlier stage.

The minister himself did not bring this up in his speech, but it has been brought up on several occasions by colleagues across the way that we do not do cross-country hearings for studies of bills. That is supposedly a truth. That is not a truth.

In recent memory, the relevant committee went to the Northwest Territories with respect to Bill C-15, the Northwest Territories devolution bill. Why? Although it is a piece of text that has to be studied as a piece of legislation, the context in which that bill is going to take root was important to that committee. With respect to Bill C-10, a bill on firearms control, the committee travelled to Toronto. These were for studies of bills.

Members on the opposite side of the House say that they only ever travel for policy studies. That does not help either. There is so much fundamental social context involved in the policy decisions made so far in this piece of legislation that it is important to hear from Canadians in their local settings, whether it is aboriginal communities on reserve, people in transitional situations in downtown cities or urban areas, students on campus, or Canadians who might not otherwise have a chance to testify before a parliamentary committee and are not used to tuning in to CPAC. These Canadians might nonetheless come to a committee hearing to listen and learn, whether or not they are testifying.

This legislation is fundamental legislation, and I think the minister realizes how fundamental it is. There are reasons that this legislation needs to be grounded in a broader consensus and with buy-in from Canadians at large. That is quite apart from the fact that other parties were not involved in bringing it forward.

I would also like to draw attention to my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent, who has spoken about the irony of a House committee travelling as far as Ukraine to study democracy there, including having public hearings. Yet, somehow this is being resisted tooth and nail in our own country.

I have been a harsh critic of the bill, ever since I spent a lot of time reading it in one day because we were having a debate on it on the very next day. I am concerned about every one of the replies that the minister has made. I am still concerned that without amendments those replies do not do the job.

Canadians can read what I have to say on my own website, something that I admit is provocatively entitled “The Unfair Elections Act is a Con Game”. They can read about the over two dozen concerns that I have, none of which have been obviated by any of the minister's arguments, despite his best efforts. I am not going to go into those details.

After hearing from many Canadians, my current concern has only been deepened. These Canadians are not just experts in the field of electoral law or electoral processes, but Canadians who have taken the time to read bits and pieces of the legislation and are drawing something new to my attention. If the social knowledge of ordinary Canadians can produce that kind of feedback to me, my guess is that the benefits of cross-country hearings would also produce insight for every member of the procedure and House affairs committee.

I want to end with a quote from Jessica McCormick, national chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students, who is in Ottawa, and who hopefully would be on the list for Ottawa hearings. She gives an example of what the effects of the bill would be, which I think members can extrapolate as to why we would benefit from going around the country, at least as part of hearings. She said:

Canada has amongst the lowest youth voter turnout when compared to peer nations. The effects of Bill C-23 will make it harder for youth to vote by complicating the voter identification process and eliminating public awareness campaigns that encourage youth to vote.

Bill C-23 serves to cement the notion that politicians do not care about the issues that effect youth. It is our firm belief that the Bill will contribute to a decline in voter turnout that the provinces and peer countries are actively attempting to reverse. The decline is clearly a threat to a healthy democracy and must be meaningfully addressed, not encouraged.

It is that kind of input that I would be looking for, not just here on the Hill in parliamentary committee, but also across Canada through cross-country hearings.