Mr. Speaker, it is great to stand and speak to the fair elections act. As the chair of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, I have gone what seems many months not being able to say too much about what I was, I will not say forced, but forced to sit and listen to, but it certainly was a long study. I was proud to commit the time to try to move forward and work together with the members of the committee on this piece of legislation.
I would like to start with the fact that the members of the committee worked very hard together and worked fairly well together. Sure, we had our rough points, but we worked pretty hard.
If you will indulge me, Mr. Speaker, the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent contributed well and even had to celebrate her birthday at a night meeting of the committee, so we thank her for that sacrifice, also the member for Toronto—Danforth and the member for Hamilton Centre whose voice rings in my ears even when I am away from this place. There was the member for Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, the member for Wild Rose, and the member for Etobicoke Centre. A great fill-in member, the member for Oxford was there a lot. The member for Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington and the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands spent a great deal of time with us at committee to look at this legislation and move it forward.
We know it was long hours and I am told it was around 31 hours of study at committee. As the chair, one must pay attention and the hours seemed much longer than 31. Some 72 witnesses appeared at committee. On top of that, there were many more briefs from people who were unable to attend or who sent us briefs with their opinions. We had witnesses by teleconference from Australia, more than one from the United States, and from across Canada by teleconference and in person at the committee.
Every witness who was asked for by every party in the House to attend was asked to come. Those who could, did. Those who could not, sent briefs or at least shared with us their information. We wanted to make sure that we gave every opportunity to each person who asked could those good people attend.
From the beginning the committee set a date for the completion of its study by motion to the committee, so it was not a surprise to anyone at committee when we were going to end. The pile of work heading toward that date sometimes seemed like it would not move, but it did. The reason for the date for the conclusion is that the Chief Electoral Officer had told us ahead of time the election legislation coming forward needed to be in his hands by a certain date so that by the election 2015 in October, he would be able to run an election on that piece of legislation. We set the date.
All members knew of this deadline. Some chose to use their time for other purposes, some for much longer debate than perhaps was needed, but all in all, we shared good information with each other. As a committee, I am very thankful we were able to work together and at the end of the day, take a pretty great piece of legislation and make it even better with some amendments that we were able to move forward.
Let me discuss some of those. Canadians have spoken. The information we are hearing from them, certainly on the voter identification side, is that they are reasonably pleased with where we are headed. I can say now what I heard in my riding while in coffee shops, at church suppers and yes, I do attend the odd one. People would come to my constituency and ask questions about the fair elections act. There are a number of people who watch this on TV and say they know I am the guy from the fair elections act.
Yes, I know; I have a cult following out there now, but even in my own constituency office, I was able to share with them where we are headed.
My constituents would say, “What about this voter ID thing?” I would say, “Well, I know you as a good Canadian citizen. What part of it is bothering you?” They said they had heard that some people would not get to vote. I asked them if they believed that people in Canada, in a modern democracy, should be able to go to the polls and not have to prove who they are. Every person I spoke to in my riding, bar none, asked what I meant when I said that people could vote without proving who they were. What did I mean when I said that no identification was needed?
I told them that was the difference.That was what we were discussing at committee. What we were trying to deal with was whether it is okay for people to come in and have someone else say who they are, or whether they should have to pull out something and say, “This is who I am and this is where I live”.
We have made an amendment to the bill to help with this last part about saying where they live. We did that because we think that if someone can say, “Hi, this is who I am”, then someone else at the same poll who has identification could help them with the part about where they live.
Many people in the riding during that time talked about how there are 18 months until the next election. If someone knew right now that they did not have the identification that they needed, could they not go and get it? We even heard this from some of the testimony at committee.
There are some great community groups out there. I think it was the London Homeless Coalition member who told us at committee that the organization had a whole group that does nothing but help people get ID, because people do not need ID just for this. It is really important to them and they really want to make sure that people can vote, but the organization worries about people needing identification for some other basic things in life, so it has a group that helps people find identification.
Voters and constituents in the riding suggested that with enough notice of what the requirement might be, people should be able to go out and get ID in order to vote. Both of the parties across from me require ID to vote in specific party functions in their parties. Members of both opposition parties must show ID if they want to pick a leader, and the great citizens of Elgin—Middlesex—London at least agreed with me at the time that it would probably be a good idea to have to show ID to vote.
While we were at this committee, many people were following us, whether it was on CPAC or in other ways. A high school group in my riding was following closely on CPAC, and after one of the meetings, I had a meeting with them by Skype. I love to get out and speak to all the high school groups that I can about what the job of a member of Parliament is like.
This high school spent a great deal of time following this committee, and because of the length of the meetings, I could not always be in my riding, so I met with them on Skype one day. Online, we went round the room, and I asked if there was anybody there who could not vote tomorrow. They all said no, that ID was or could be available to them if they wanted to go out and get it, and that they could certainly get it by the October 2015 deadline.
Again, we can make a great piece of legislation even better by amending it to include taking an oath. If a person goes to vote and can prove who they are but not their address by showing ID, and they are at a polling station with someone else who has ID displaying who they are and where they live, both of them can sign an oath attesting to the address of the person who does not have the ID with an address on it.
As one of my constituents who I believe was a farmer said to me, “I can get all the ID I need to go vote, yet other people could go into a voting station without all that ID. Why don't they just do the same work I did to get it?”
I also wanted to share that there have been a number of elections over the years I have been on this committee, and after every election the Chief Electoral Officer sends a report to our committee for us to review. I have now been through three of them, perhaps four, and three times the Chief Electoral Officer sent us a group of recommendations to look at. Many of the recommendations over the years from the Chief Electoral Officer for additions or changes to the Elections Act are in fact in the fair elections act. I wanted to make sure we shared that also.
While I am talking about the Chief Electoral Officer and his powers, his ability to run elections, we should compliment Elections Canada on what it does. In my riding, there are over 200 polls. There are 308 ridings across this country, so Elections Canada runs an event that has many points of interest and many places someone can go. Hopefully it gets all the people to the right place at the right time, which is part of why I think the great suggestion is that Elections Canada spend the majority or all of its time telling people when and where and what time to go vote.
Many of the surveys that we heard during this study and have heard at procedure and House affairs when looking at previous Chief Electoral Officers' reports tell us why people do not vote. The question is always asked after every election, after the votes are cast and we are all here. Elections Canada does a pretty good job of doing surveys itself or of hiring other people to do surveys to find out whether an individual voted, and if not, why not. In every case the leading answer was, “I was really busy. I did not find the time”. In this piece of legislation we have created another whole day of pre-election dates that we can now vote on.
Many citizens say in those same surveys that they did not know they could go to the election office and vote at any time during an election. They say they did not know there was a special ballot or that there were different election days. They thought that they had to show up on election day but did not really know where it was. That is why they did not vote, so telling people where and when and what ID to bring is pretty important.
I was searching through the paper on the weekend, trying to decide what else I might do. I was in the movie section, and there were some great ads for movies. The ads told me what time the movie started and what theatre they were at. Based on that, I could make my decision about what I might do that evening. There was no place in the ad that told me why I should go to see that movie. It might have listed who the stars were, and that might help me make up my mind. However, I think it is our job as the 308 men and women in this House to really provide the why to voters. It is our job to tell people why they should come out and vote for Joe. or why they should come out and exercise a ballot at any time.
It is not clear that it is the job of anyone other than the political people in this country to do the why. If Elections Canada does a great job of telling people the where, the when, the ID to bring, the different methods, the visit to the returning office, or the using of the special ballot for voting offshore, that would be one job absolutely taken care of. They can leave it up to us to talk about the why.
As I said, I spent some time in this job talking at schools. I love going to schools and talking to students about my job as a member of Parliament, which, by the way, is the best job one could ever have, and we certainly share that.
I mentioned in my statement about even using Skype to talk to high school classes. We have asked the Chief Electoral Officer to keep that in place as another way of making a great bill better. There was an amendment to ask Elections Canada to please keep things like the student vote in place. I have been active, and I know many of my colleagues from both sides of the aisle have been very active, in student votes in past elections. We get high school students talking about how elections work, what they look like, what it takes to be a candidate, and then they actually hold an election at the high school level. We get them very interested in being voters from that point on.
I am glad with the changes allowing the Chief Electoral Officer to use a program called “Student Vote”. Getting it back into the schools is a fantastic change in this piece of legislation.
One of the other things we talked a lot about and heard about at committee was something we heard about more before the legislation came forward and maybe less afterward. It was using the CRTC as a way of watching and regulating voter contact. I think I can safely say that in the last election—and I will try to underestimate it—I made about 200,000 phone calls in my constituency. We had two town hall meetings calling every house in the riding, and then there were a number of others, whether it was to get out the vote or to tell people about advance poll day. We called just about everyone there too. A great number of phone calls were made in the riding. Did I ever hear from anyone from CRTC? No, because if there are rules and we follow them, this is not a problem.
If the phone call comes in and it is “Hi, I'm Joe Preston. I'm your Conservative candidate, and I—”