Mr. Speaker, I will respond to the speech from the member for Malpeque. Most of what he said is well worth taking on board. However, in the first hour of debate, we heard a fair bit, including from the side of the governing party, about a concern that the mechanism being selected in Bill C-424 for an additional way to contest elections through the Chief Electoral Officer would involve the Chief Electoral Officer in almost a politicization of his role, that there would not be sufficient neutrality with that mechanism.
The concerns being presented from the governing side were real, in the sense that within the structure of the Canada Elections Act there is a reason to be concerned about whether this is the appropriate mechanism. At the same time, it is important that we actually hear in committee whether the mechanism of using the Chief Electoral Officer to trigger a contestation could actually work. As the sponsor for the bill did note, there are at least three jurisdictions in Canada, those being Ontario, B.C. and Nunavut, that give the power to the equivalent of the Chief Electoral Officer to contest elections. Somehow or other in those jurisdictions, the problem of political neutrality was not seen as a barrier. That said, we do not appear to have a lot of experience with this mechanism to draw upon. There are no controversies, but also no strong indications that if this were ever to be invoked in those jurisdictions there might not be problems.
On behalf of the New Democratic Party, most of our members would be keen to support this bill going to committee, but we are not at all committed at this early stage to this being the right mechanism.
Some suggestions have been raised that maybe the best mechanism is to piggyback on a mechanism that already exists in the Canada Elections Act, which is a referral from the Chief Electoral Officer, in certain instances, to the Commissioner of Canada Elections. That is in the context of various listed offences where the Chief Electoral Officer refers a matter to the Commissioner of Canada Elections to conduct an inquiry, and from that point forward it is up to the Commissioner of Canada Elections to determine whether to go further. There is a linkage there that would suggest that maybe one way of mitigating the concern about politicization is to give the Chief Electoral Officer a role but basically hand over the heavy lifting to the Commissioner of Canada Elections.
The problem is that while this provides something to be built upon, it is not an off-the-shelf mechanism. As it exists now in the Canada Elections Act, under section 510, the Chief Electoral Officer, when he or she refers to the Commissioner of Canada Elections, it is only with respect to offences. The whole idea is to start a possible prosecutions path within the Elections Canada Act. It is not at all about contestation of elections. Something would definitely have to be reworded by way of amendment to the current Bill C-424, if that linkage mechanism were to be chosen instead of the pure mechanism of allowing the Chief Electoral Officer to do the challenging without any role for the commissioner.
There could be another way to go, and that would be that within the current Bill C-424, where the words “the Chief Electoral Officer” have been inserted in proposed subsection 524(1) of the Canada Elections Act, to add “the Chief Electoral Officer” as one actor who could challenge an election. It would simply substitute the words “the Chief Electoral Officer” for “the Commissioner of Canada Elections”, and give that role directly to the commissioner without any role at all for the Chief Electoral Officer.
I am not saying, one way or the other, that having the Commissioner of Canada Elections involved would be preferable to having the Chief Electoral Officer as the trigger for contestation for elections. However, we owe it to the structure of the act itself to look at that possibility.
It turns out that the Canada Elections Act is the only elections act within Canada among all the jurisdictions that has the factor, the Commissioner for Elections Canada, and there is, by virtue of that, a certain logic within our federal act where the Chief Electoral Officer probably does benefit from a greater degree of distance from the enforcement process than exists in any of the other acts within provincial and territorial jurisdiction. If that is the case, it might be that for the federal act, it is more problematic to have the Chief Electoral Officer play this role.
The point is that we could benefit by going to committee to look exactly at what the best mechanism would be. We would be able to learn if there were other mechanisms, for example, in use elsewhere outside of provincial or territorial jurisdictions that might be more suitable or more effective. Indeed, if we learned that, we might well determine that those mechanisms could not be turned to and inserted by way of amendment because they would fall well outside the immediate scope of the bill. However, we would have ended up learning enough, even if we rejected Bill C-424 after the committee stage, to assist the government, perhaps, in determining a mechanism that it could put forth within legislation, legislation I would like to think is under way or close to being tabled by the government. In March of this year the government agreed in the unanimous motion sponsored by the NDP to table elections legislation on certain aspects of the running of elections, yet we have not seen that legislation.
Let us just say that it is very likely that somewhere in the civil service the makings of an election act amendment bill is there and if it takes that much longer, having some committee hearings on Bill C-424 can only help inform government members' consideration of what should go in the government bill.
I would make brief note, without going into detail, that south of the border is a very different model from contesting elections at the moment in our electoral act. We have candidates or electors from the riding in question having the right to challenge an election result. South of the border also there is a list of candidates, electors, et cetera, who have that same kind of right, but all of it is channelled into a very different model whereby there are an independent set of actors, like electoral committee, and then it goes to an election commission and the courts do not get involved until the very end at the review stage.
There might be something to be said for the U.S. model, which again I doubt very much we could bring into the bill by way of amendment, but we might learn that it is a better approach than what has been proposed.
Probably more important in the times we find ourselves, and this is where I would refer back to the speech by the member for Malpeque, we are living in times when we are more and more aware, and let us put it as delicately as we can, of a fair bit of evidence of shenanigans which has come to our attention in the last year or so, especially with respect to the May 2011 federal election. We basically have to consider that we have some evidence now of the costs. This is the first point from the sponsor of the bill that the costs of contesting an election are serious.
The member for Malpeque talked about the specific case of Etobicoke Centre, but I think it is also important that we know that a number of citizens are currently contesting a number of riding results in the 2011 election. I think there might be five ridings or there might be more. Even before the matter had gone to federal court, something like $240,000 had already been spent before getting to court, where it currently is.
Also the second point is that fraud that is common to multiple ridings is something that is much more likely to be caught by a centralized public actor like the Chief Electoral Officer, or the Commissioner of Elections Canada. They are more likely to perceive commonalities occurring across ridings and be able to efficiently compare and marshal the evidence.
Finally, a third factor we have to keep in mind if this ever does go to committee is the Supreme Court case that just came down in Etobicoke Centre where vigilance against disenfranchisement was the leitmotiv, the central point of reasoning in the judgment and how it was that voter suppression actually fitted the problem that the court was more concerned about than the irregularities that were actually before the court in the case at hand.
We have to be aware of everything we have learned about allegations of voter suppression in the last election and understand that the bill before us is meant to achieve a purpose. We would like to see it go to committee, whatever the result thereafter.
