Paul Dewar

[Constitution Act, 2007 (Senate tenure), November 16th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have a comment before a very direct question for the House leader. Our party believes in term limits for the Senate and we like the number to be zero. I hope that the minister might engage with us on that number. We also believe that we should consult Canadians. After all, this has been the problem with the government on democratic reform: it consults friends and everyone in the backroom, but not Canadians.

My question for my friend is this: if the government is looking at genuine change in the Senate, why do we not get this over with and have a referendum? We should ask Canadians whether they want the Senate at all. This would save us all a lot of time. It would put this bill to sleep. It is about time that Canadians really were consulted on the Senate. We should not be just tinkering. We should be asking whether they want the Senate or not. Why does the government not do that and get on with it?

[National Peacekeepers’ Day Act, November 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I, too, stand with great honour to support this initiative, this bill, and I thank the mover for following this initiative.

From time to time in this place we have initiatives on which everyone can agree, and I think we all welcome those opportunities. This day to honour peacekeepers is one initiative I fully support and I believe everyone in the House supports. It is one that is in step with what we all came here to do, which is to certainly represent our constituents, but to also represent what makes our country distinctive, what we can be proud of as Canadians.

Canadians, from time to time, are noted for being modest, which is a good thing, but there are times when we need to celebrate our history, our institutions and what makes us so different and unique.

It was the former prime minister, Lester B. Pearson, who came up with the idea, and if he were still living he would certainly say that he had a lot of help with the idea, but he clearly was the person who was able to capture the imagination at the right time to come up with a different way of solving conflict.

Hon. members will know their history. In 1956, when there was a problem in terms of how to deal with the Suez conflict and how to have a proper troop withdrawal at the time the French, British and Israeli troops were extricating themselves from Suez, the brilliant idea of peacekeepers came forward.

At the time, we were suffering from a lack of imagination about how to deal with conflicts. It was the post-World War II era. There were, quite frankly, conflicts similar to what is going on in the world now. We did not have the capacity, the ideas and the institutions to deal with conflicts in a creative way. It was in 1956 that the idea of what is really the first modern peacekeeping initiative took place. Lester B. Pearson was given the Nobel Peace Prize after that.

I honestly hope we figure out a way that this day, notwithstanding that it is in August, can be brought in to our school curriculums across the country.

I might add that if members have a chance, they should travel down Highway 7. Not far from Tweed is the Pearson Peace Park and the Pearson Peace Award is given out every year. Those are extremely important ideas and touchstones for our country. The Pearson Peacekeeping Centre is an important well from which to draw, particularly now.

It is important to note that many veterans are working in support of this. In fact, the Canadian Peacekeeping Veterans Association will be more than delighted to see this initiative. It happens to have its own mission statement: “To be a strong and leading advocate for all veterans, to create and nurture a forum of comradeship for veterans and to govern the CPVA democratically and effectively on behalf of all its members”.

It does that because it wants to ensure that the idea of peacekeeping is not seen as something just thrown into the history books, that it is something that stays with us, that the important historical concept not only is referenced, but is something we employ.

I have to say that presently we are at a crossroads where we do need to invigorate our commitment to peacekeeping. We see that now and we know that Canada has, in terms of peacekeeping commitments, fallen behind. However, I will not get into a long discourse about that.

I think the idea of honouring peacekeepers might invigorate the debate about Canada's role in the world. There is no question that peacekeeping has changed. Things change and evolve, but the idea of having blue helmets resolving conflicts throughout the world and dealing with human security is an important one.

I want to reference an initiative that actually falls in line with honouring peacekeepers. It was something that was presented to the previous government but it still has merit. It is the idea of the United Nations emergency peace service, a proposal that is in keeping with our tradition of peacekeeping. The proposal is straightforward. It states that when we see a humanitarian crisis, such as a genocide or massive human rights abuses, we should have a United Nations emergency peace service, a rapid response to: first, take action to prevent war and dire threats to human security and rights; second, to offer secure emergency services to meet critical human needs; third, to maintain or reinstate law, order, penal and judicial processes with high professionalism and fairness; and fourth, to initiate peace building processes with focused incentives to restore hope for local people, their society and economy so they may have a promising future.

The UN emergency peace service proposal would be designed to provide a rapid response to these needs. It would possess five unique strengths. It would be permanent and based at UN designated sites, including mobile field headquarters, and be able to act immediately to cope with an emergency. The proposal goes on to talk about all the other things the service could do.

The proposal of having a United Nations emergency peace service is to take the concept that is a Canadian one of peacekeeping, and see it evolve. It needs to be resourced and to be given a little more permanence and structure but it is something that would honour the history and veterans of our peacekeepers.

It is an idea that has been discussed. I know that Dr. Peter Langille, who is presently with an organization called Global Common Security, which happens to be here in Ontario, has promoted the idea. He has worked with other stakeholders.

It would be interesting to take this opportunity for a peacekeeping day to have a conference on the idea of a United Nations emergency peace service to see if we can engage not only our government but other stakeholders in the possibility of doing that.

It is a terrific idea and I hope it is one that we can use to leverage more support for the idea of peacekeeping so that it does not become a footnote in our history books but it becomes a very robust and important institution that we have for our present day.

[Canada Elections Act, November 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, Cassandra comments aside, please, I would like to point out to the member that I do not think this is ideological at all. This is about getting the job done and making sure we do our homework.

That is why I underlined the point that at committee we heard from people who said that there would be a problem with civic addresses for people in rural areas. In fact, if we look at the blues, at committee it was very clear that this would be a problem and we were warned.

I am not sure what his party was doing at committee and why the Liberals decided to support this bill and, along with the Bloc, amend the bill so that our privacy would be up for sale with the birthdate information. That is not ideological, or maybe it is ideological. It is about what I thought was a liberal value. I mention John Stuart Mill. Perhaps the member might want a reference on the protection of privacy and look at why we would have birthdate information on the voters list and with political parties. That is what his party voted for; let us be clear.

I did not want to get into an ideological discourse here. Simply put, of course we will try and clean it up. My point was how did we get here? We got here because it was an ill-conceived bill. When my party brought forward amendments that were based on witness testimony, we were not listened to.

I was simply pointing out that this time members should talk to their constituents about this. We should make sure that we have proper witnesses in front of the committee. We should make sure, for goodness' sake, that we listen to them this time.

[Canada Elections Act, November 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, here we go again trying to deal with the problems of Bill C-31. I know that might not be the kind of comment that the government wants to hear but it has to look reality in the face. The only reason this bill is in front of us is because of what I said Bill C-31 was from the beginning, which is a solution looking for a problem.

We have found a couple of bills to date. We have Bill C-18, which is what we are debating today, and we have Bill C-6. I suppose we will have a couple more bills before it is all over.

If we go through the bill, one clause states that when swearing an oath to prove someone's identity, the person who vouches for another individual does not necessarily need a civic address on his or her ID if the information on the voters list matches up with the information on the ID.

The committee heard from groups of advocates, people representing the homeless, people representing aboriginal people and people representing students. The people representing the aboriginal people were very clear on this issue of civic address and all members of the committee heard it. They said that we would have problems identifying voters because some people do not have a civic address. I invite all members of the House, including members who may have been on the committee, to look at the blues and read the witnesses' comments where they invited us to look at this concern.

What they were saying is that if we were to go ahead and do this, we would be disenfranchising people, and did we disenfranchise people. We disenfranchised not a couple of hundred or a couple of thousand, but probably millions of people. Why? It is because the House, in its infinite wisdom, passed a bill that was not sufficient. It was not sufficient because the committee, I would submit, did not do its homework.

I asked the committee for more time to hear from witnesses beyond the list that we had in front of us and I was told, in the instance of the privacy commissioner, no because it had already heard from her. I had to take it upon myself to write to her and obtain a response about the whole issue of privacy and birthdate information. She readily supplied me with an opinion of the bill contrary to what members of the committee had believed, which was that there were concerns about privacy in the bill.

I would submit that we have in front of us a bill that is trying to mop up the mess that was created by a bill from the government. I would like members, perhaps during questions and comments or to seek me out afterward, to provide me with an explanation or an instance where Parliament has passed a bill and, within months of it coming into force, has had to come up with further bills to deal with the problems in the initial bill. We are now up to two bills, and counting, based on the flaws and problems in Bill C-31.

I know members of the government will say that I did not raise these problems in committee and that I did not have the wisdom of knowing that these things would come up. I would suggest that I did not foresee all of the problems but I certainly saw the problem, which was the way Bill C-31 was crafted.

The crafting of the bill was taken from a committee report. What seems to be the Conservative Party playbook is that committees are used to put forward one's agenda. A fairly lengthy report was written by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, there was a government response and within a week a bill was in front of us called Bill C-31.

Bill C-31 was introduced because there was a concern about potential voter fraud, and I triple underline “potential”. When this was put in front of parliamentarians, they said that it had to be dealt with right away and cleaned up. In fact, that is what the committee did by way of hearing from a limited, in my opinion, number of witnesses.

It heard from witnesses like the Chief Electoral Officer who was asked if voter fraud was a major problem. They all heard quite clearly that it was not and that there had been approximately four cases of potential voter fraud in the last three elections.

We spent a large amount of time on it and we are spending more now trying to deal with this outrageous problem of voter fraud, but I have to give the government credit because it was clear in saying that it was potential voter fraud.

I have to submit that the concerns of my constituents are around cleaning up politics, ethics in politics, and integrity in the system. There is much more concern about candidate fraud, when candidates say they are with one party one day but wake up the next and lo and behold they are not a Liberal candidate anymore but rather a Conservative cabinet minister. Constituents are more concerned about how to deal with that kind of lack of integrity, where people can run for a party, cross the floor, and virtually within minutes it seems jump into government or into cabinet.

How about going from the backroom of the Conservative Party into the Senate and then vaulting into cabinet? Those are the concerns that my constituents have around the integrity of our electoral system. They are not concerned about potential voter fraud other than not to make matters worse.

Excluding my party, what Parliament has done is pass a bill that disenfranchised so many people. In committee we talk about this often and say we should always be vigilant for the unintended consequences of legislation. We all know this. We heard from people who were advocates of the homeless and from aboriginal people.

We are talking about people who are living in rural areas. We identified that what we have now in front of us is a concern about actual addresses. We heard from people who were representing students. The surprising fact is that when we were at committee they told us quite clearly this would be a problem.

What did we do? We did not consider it to be that big a problem and that it would all be fine because we knew better. Well, we did not know better and here we are with a bill to prove it. It is Bill C-18.

What we did not do is consult. I have said it before, that our job is to consult and after we have consulted, consult some more until we are absolutely sure we have done our homework. That is not the case in the instance of Bill C-31. We in fact had worse than that. It was not unintended consequences but some intended consequences with birth date information. It bears repeating that in Bill C-31 there were unintended consequences.

We did not hear this from witnesses and everyday people at all, this need to have birth dates on the voters list as an oversight requirement. However, what was really strange and quite disturbing was that we had intended consequences at committee. Not only would the bill have one's birth date information on the voters list but it would be shared with political parties.

In this instance it was not unintended consequences but very intentional. Our friends from the Bloc brought forward a motion at committee supported by the Liberals. The government joined me in opposing the amendment but lo and behold by the time it got to the House for third reading, it lost its courage to fight for the privacy of Canadians and it collapsed.

As my friend from Winnipeg Centre said the other day, the government folded like a cheap suit. It just said, oh well, for the interest of getting the bill through it needed to ensure that it let the amendment go through. My goodness, we had the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, in a letter that I gave to the committee, ask:

Is the problem of voter fraud so serious and sufficiently widespread to require the use of additional personal information? If it is a serious problem, is it necessary to provide polling clerks with the date of birth or can the same objective be achieved using less detailed information?

She was clear in saying that we should not, but again we had the government and the opposition parties saying that it was okay, that they would let date of birth information go through and share it with political parties.

This kind of information is analogous to giving people, who would like to use this information for fraud purposes, a little kit. I was calling it a government sponsored identity theft kit. That is what we are giving people.

Members know that there have been recent reports about concerns regarding credit card theft and people who are able to access bank accounts. What do they need? They need a date of birth and an address, and a lot of harm can be done. We were going to give this not only to poll clerks where, with all due respect to them, that information might get lost, but also to political parties.

I know the Liberal Party wanted it because it needed to do a little more in terms of fundraising. The Bloc said that is how it does it and that it had done it before in Quebec. I have no idea what the government was going to do with it. I guess one day it will tell me or it will be written in one of its member's memoirs.

In the meantime, what we have is a privacy problem within this bill. Then we have a problem with leaving hundreds of thousands of people off the voters lists, and now we have Bill C-18 in front of us. I submit that not only did the government not get the job done and did not do its homework on this bill but that we also opened it up to having the unintended consequence of invading people's privacy.

We really have to question why, at a time when all politicians and all parties are saying we want more people to vote and we want to get young people interested in politics, we put up these barriers.

I have to give the example of Ontario, where Ontario has made some changes to the requirements to vote. It did not do a very good job at all in telling people that when they go to the voting stations now they have to provide some ID. Voters have to tell the poll clerks their names, their postal codes, et cetera. Having taken part in the most recent provincial election, I know of a senior in my riding who, when I knocked on her door to ask her if she was going to vote, said “I tried to vote but they would not let me”.

That is exactly what is going to happen in the next federal election and I am not sure that this bill is going to solve that problem. The reason she said that is because she did not have the required ID and she had no one to vouch for her.

I can guarantee members that that will be the situation for hundreds and thousands, if not more, Canadians if we do not change the law. The law needs to be changed for people who do not have the requisite identification, in this case a senior who had lived in this particular domicile for more than a decade and did not have the requisite ID. We are going to see people disenfranchised like never before.

In fact, what we will see unless we change the law, with something like a statutory declaration, is people who are disenfranchised in the rural areas, in the north, in the urban areas, as well as homeless and transient people.

What we need to do is take a good look at this bill and at what the poison pills are in this bill. We saw the poison pills in Bill C-31. Are there any in here? I would submit there are a couple and I would just ask the government to do a very simple thing and look at enumeration. Why in heaven's name is it not going to engage in universal enumeration at every election for the universal suffrage of all of our citizens that we so obviously respect?

The other thing is not only to have universal enumeration and spend money there, but to make sure we train people properly. Those are nuts and bolts things, common sense things that we put forward at committee. The statutory declaration was another thing.

Finally, regarding the voting cards that everyone is so concerned about, and I am one of them, that are ubiquitous in some of these lobbies, put them in envelopes for goodness' sakes, address them to the voters, and if the voters are not present at those domiciles, they would be returned.

Presently, these cards are left around and open to potential voter fraud, I agree, but for goodness' sake, use this terrific new technology called an envelope, address it to the elector, and if the person does not live there anymore, it will be returned to sender, in this case to Elections Canada.

That is yet another way we can improve the system. It is another suggestion the NDP had. We should clean up the voters list, make sure we have actual human beings going door to door to clean it up, put the voters cards in envelopes, and ensure that there is a safety gap with the statutory declaration.

I must say that some of the critiques about statutory declarations are ridiculous. It suggests to me that there is mistrust among some members of everyday people, of citizens of Canada. As I said, there should be more scrutiny of people who cross the floor than citizens who are trying to engage in their franchise.

We will have to go to committee and try to fix yet another government bill, a mess that was made with the mélange of the three parties to ensure that Canadians will not be left out.

Members should read the blues of the committee. We were told by the Chief Electoral Officer that the way Bill C-31 was written and the way this bill is written now, goodness knows the way this bill was put through without us trying to fix it, people will show up at polling stations and will be sent away. They will not return.

That is what will happen at five minutes to eight or five minutes to nine, just before the poll closes, if people have to go get more ID because they do not have sufficient ID or they have to find another person to vouch for them. I can guarantee that people who have been voting all their lives, particularly people like the senior referenced in the Ontario election who had voted all her life, will just plain give up, and that is pathetic. It says that we have not done our job here.

I am not willing to do that, to allow our government to provide legislation that will disenfranchise. My party will not and I will not. We will make sure this bill, from our perspective, will make sure that Canadians, every day people, will not be disenfranchised. Then we will have some semblance of common sense in our electoral system.

I sincerely hope that the government will engage us this time in some of the ideas I have put forward, three straightforward ideas, and that it will take a look at it with honesty and sincerity, and say that maybe this is not a bad idea.

When we are talking about our democracy, the foundation and the franchise, people fought for it, as we just celebrated on Remembrance Day. To just let it fray away, to watch it be torn apart because of either ill-conceived notions or worse, as I said before, conceived notions, is not something we in this party will stand by and see happen.

I will just wrap up with a couple of comments about what can be done to ensure, through witnesses at committee, that we not have the fiasco and the mess we had with Bill C-31 yet again.

I would ask that parliamentarians go to their ridings. I have done this already. I have talked to people about the proposition of not only Bill C-31, but further to Bill C-31, Bill C-6 and Bill C-18. I am not sure as many people were engaged with Bill C-31. There has been a wake-up call, clearly, because of the mess of Bill C-31, and the fact that we have disenfranchised in a blink hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Canadians.

However, hon. members should talk to everyday people in their constituencies and ask them what would happen tomorrow if they had to follow the requirements of the present legislation before us. Would they be able to vote? Would they have a problem finding someone to vouch for them? Would they have the requisite ID? Hon. members should go to a seniors residence, go to a homeless shelter, talk to some students, and then find out from them if there are problems, because that is the business of consultation.

That is what I did last week vis-à-vis Bill C-6, and I heard a lot of concerns. I would plead, almost beg, with members of Parliament to talk to their constituents on this bill because we did not consult enough last time. Let that not happen again.

Let us engage our citizens on this. It is their right. We are making up the rules here for them. We made a mess of it with Bill C-31. We need not do that again. Hon. members should talk to their constituents and then bring witnesses forward to committee through their respective representatives on committee, so we can hear from everyday people about how this would affect them. That did not happen last time.

The people who did come forward warned us that there would be problems, but sadly, members did not listen to them. Our party did. That is why we voted against Bill C-31.

We now have two bills which are trying to clean up Bill C-31. I am not sure if this is a record. I will have to look it up. We need to clean this up.

[Canada Elections Act, November 15th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I was not going to rise, but I have to after that explanation.

I was at the committee when Bill C-31 was discussed. We heard testimony from people from first nations. We heard from students and advocates for the homeless. They were very clear that there needed to be a process in place that would allow the people they advocated for to vote and that if Bill C-31 went ahead the way it did, they would not be able to.

What did we do? We ignored them. We did not listen to them, because apparently we knew better. Well apparently we did not. Apparently they knew better because here we are trying to clean up the mess that we were told would happen.

Therefore, was the hon. member aware that at committee we heard from witnesses, from everyday Canadians, from the homeless, from first nations and from students. They said to us that if we did this, we would disenfranchise them. They asked us not to do it. Why in heaven's name did his party support that bill at the time?

[Canada Elections Act, November 14th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, anything that could improve a flawed bill, going back to Bill C-31 and this band-aid that we have, would be welcome. Any idea that could further consultations and recommendations for improvement would be welcome.

I would simply point out that we go to our respective caucuses to talk about processes like this. I will certainly not stand here and tell the member exactly how we will go forward on that. However, it is an idea and it is not a bad idea. I will leave it to our respective parties to look at that idea and to moving it forward.

[Canada Elections Act, November 14th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, when I talk to people who are concerned about democratic reform, the first issue that comes to mind is not this issue. This is an issue that has been injected into the body politic. The issue that people are worried about is accountability, which is what the government dined out on for quite a long time.

I am wondering why the government is putting people from the backroom into the Senate and then into cabinet. That is what is on people's minds.

[Canada Elections Act, November 14th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to clarify. I believe this is a solution looking for a problem. When we look at Bill C-31 and go back in time to see how many instances there were of concerns around voter fraud, what was the evidence? It was minuscule. Would my friend be able to say to his constituents with a straight face that we came up with this great law, Bill C-31, because we had this horrible, huge problem we had to deal with?

We should look at all the other problems we have before us. As I have said many times, why do we not deal with enumeration? We should make sure that we have universal enumeration, clean up the voters list, get envelopes for those voter cards that the member's colleague was so concerned about, and do some common sense things.

When I talk to people, they ask why for goodness' sake are we debating these kinds of bills and not cleaning up the voters list and not ensuring that we have a proper registry. That is what they want to see.

I have to say on the issue of target, I am not saying that is what we are doing. I am saying that is how people feel, after consulting them. We need to do more of that. I say consult and consult, and after we have done that, consult a bit more, because this is too--

[Canada Elections Act, November 14th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I have been clear about the whole bill. I am sad to say that the Liberal Party supported Bill C-31 at the beginning and I did not quite understand that, but it is never too late to show one's opposition.

If we look at how we got here, it was a solution looking for a problem from the very beginning. If we are making laws, they should be evidence based. As I said, there were more problems with candidate fraud than voter fraud. Instead of bringing in a law like this one, we should have had a law on floor crossing and people switching parties. That is more important to everyday people than this bill is, which has turned into a Frankenstein that the government is trying to put to rest and is having problems with it.

On the issue itself, I think that this is the government's latest attempt, and it has other bills coming forward on rural voting gone amok.

With regard to the charter, I mentioned that in my comments. If we looked at section 15, we might have some problems with the charter. I am hoping the government did its homework on that this time, but I guess it will be our job to hold the government to account, and quite frankly, that is what people pay us to do. That is what I will be doing.

[Canada Elections Act, November 14th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, normally I rise and say it is an honour and pleasure to speak to a bill. Sad to say, it is not in this case and I will explain briefly why that is and then get into the essence of the bill.

The reason that I have problems with this bill is because of the politics behind the bill. What we see here is a bill, whether or not it is the intent of the government or for that matter members of the Bloc, that targets a specific group, that is certainly how it feels to a lot of people.

We have heard that from people most recently at the procedure and House affairs committee. I know that the government has referenced the committee hearings as having heard from members of the Muslim community. The fact that we are focusing on this issue, notwithstanding the government's premise that this is to deal with integrity in voting, is to deal with how people feel because they feel as if they are being targeted and I can understand why.

It is important to understand how we got here. The House should recall that this is really a band-aid for a problem that existed with Bill C-31 which is now legislation. At the time, our party voted against it. We tried to fix the bill at committee. Sadly it did not get the support of other parties.

However, let us go over the tenets of Bill C-31. The tenets of Bill C-31 came out of a committee report which I think was part of the Conservative Party playbook. It was to take a committee report, cherry-pick it, and bring forward legislation, swiftly I might add and not very well written, so that the Conservatives can get their agenda put forward using the committee as cover.

I invite anyone to read the debate on Bill C-31 at procedure and House affairs committee. This was a wide-ranging report by the committee, cherry-picked with a response for the government very quickly, and a bill following within a week or two to repair a problem. The best way to put this is that this was a solution looking for a problem and that is what has happened with Bill C-31.

I mentioned many times when speaking on Bill C-31 that there was a problem with privacy. We had the problem with birthdates being put on the voters lists which would be in the hands of DROs across the land. Think of 308 ridings with hundreds of polling stations with the birthdate information of voters. However, to make matters worse, we had an amendment at committee by the Bloc and the Liberals to have that information shared with all political parties, if one can imagine that.

This was at a time when I was asking for the committee to hear from the Privacy Commissioner because I thought this was obviously an issue of privacy that we should hear from her on this. At the committee stage, I voted against this strongly. There was support at the time by the government, but when it went to the House Conservatives lost their courage, supported the other parties, and the amendment to have birthdate information included in the bill was voted and supported by all parties except for ours.

It is interesting to note that during the debates on Bill C-31 I said many times we needed to hear from more witnesses. I asked that the Privacy Commissioner come before committee. I believed it was incredibly important that we hear from the Privacy Commissioner on the issue of birthdate information being shared. The premise of course was that Elections Canada would have the date and year of birth of everyday people, and that somehow this would be a measure to ensure that the voter who was presenting himself or herself was in fact that person.

The problem with that premise was the verification number in the bill for citizens to provide photo ID. If they do not have photo ID, they need other ID that is acceptable. If they do not have that, they have to swear an oath, et cetera. This says that the government, through the bill, does not trust Canadians. We have to ask ourselves, what is the premise of the bill?

If we believe the government, the premise of the bill was the possibility of voter fraud, and I underline possibility. I asked the Chief Electoral Officer at committee whether there was rampant voter fraud. There were four cases in the last three elections that might have potentially been voter fraud and these cases were being looked into.

I said at that time, and I want to submit here, that there were more problems with candidate fraud than voter fraud. Candidate fraud is when a candidate presents himself in an election as being with the Liberal Party and then after that election, transforms himself into a Conservative. We have seen floor crossings. We have seen candidate fraud. This is of more concern to my constituents than so-called voter fraud.

What we have here is a false premise. The government got itself into this muck based on a bill that we did not need. We had the problems around privacy with respect to birth date information. We heard testimony at committee from those who advocated for the homeless, for first nations and aboriginal people and for students. They asked us not to let the bill go through without amending it so the people they represented would not be disenfranchised.

Unfortunately, the government and some of the opposition did not support amendments that would have allowed people to have a statutory declaration swearing who they were and then be able to vote. I believe that would have been the sensible way to go. It would have been good public policy, but that did not happen.

The bill went through and now we have the problem with birth date information. It was dealt with somewhat at the other place. We now have the potential problem of people not presenting themselves in a way the government believes is proper comportment.

We of course have a problem with voters' lists. My friend from the Bloc said that voter registration cards were ubiquitous and all over the place. A proposal was made at committee, which would have employed the incredible new technology called an envelope. A voter card would be put in an addressed envelope and sent to the voter. If it was not taken by the household to which it was addressed, it would be returned to sender. I believe this is done now in Ontario. This should have been done first before we started tinkering with people's privacy and the likes of Bill C-31.

We see a huge concern with respect to folks in rural Canada and the voters' list. We proposed universal enumeration for universal suffrage. People would go door to door to ensure the accuracy of the voters' list. We all have encountered problems with centralized voters' lists. It requires an overhaul. It requires having men and women doing door to door enumeration so we can have a more accurate voters' list.

The envelopes and the enumeration should have been done first before we got into the likes of Bill C-31. I am sure members sitting around the cabinet table are asking themselves why in heaven's name they got involved in this. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time because they felt they could crack down on voter fraud. It is like cracking down on some other issues that the government likes to talk about, but in the end perhaps creates more problems.

On the bill itself, I think we have to look to the most recent committee testimony when we met in September. I was there. I have listened carefully to the Bloc talk about Morocco. The member was actually referencing my comments. I had just returned from Morocco and witnessed the elections there.

For the record, I want to clear up what he is interpreting happened in Morocco. He was quite right that the Moroccans do not have a problem. He should also know that laws such as this are not required. It is simple common sense. When women present themselves, they are able to vote. In a respectful manner they are asked to visually identify and then they are given ballots. I witnessed that. I believe it is something from which we can learn. He was wrong to interpret this and say that there was a law in place and that there was legislative oversight.

We do have to be careful that when we deal with legislation, it does not have unintended consequences. I have already outlined some of the unintended consequences, or hopefully they are unintended, that Bill C-31 presents. However, what we have to look at is does this legislation target a specific group and do we believe it is charter proof?

What I mean by that, and it was already mentioned by a member from the Liberal Party, is this. The first question we need to ask is, does this comply with the charter? This is incredibly important. I said this at committee regarding Bill C-31. I believe it will be struck down for reasons that I have mentioned about the homeless, aboriginal people and students being able to vote. I think it is being challenged as we speak. Presently the way this legislation is written, I believe there could be a charter challenge. We first need to ask if the bill will be charter proof.

We have agreed that electors under the Canada Elections Act should require voters to be identified. However, we will not give a blank cheque to the government to pass laws such as this that seemingly, maybe for unintended reasons, will target a group and will be challenged under the charter. That is very important.

I also need to underline the role of the Chief Electoral Officer. I was at the committee when the Chief Electoral Officer made his argument. He said that the way the legislation was written at the time he could not do what he was being asked to do, notwithstanding the motion. I was there and we all supported it that motion.

At that time, I said we could support the motion, but, and I said very this very clearly, it had absolutely no efficacy. It meant absolutely nothing. However, I said that if it made people feel like they were actually achieving something, good for them. It was clear at the end of the day that the Chief Electoral Officer would interpret the legislation the way he did, and that a committee would not tell an officer of Parliament how to direct himself. He had done his homework, but we had not done ours, and that is the problem with Bill C-31. The bill we have in front of us is an attempt to clean that up.

I underline the fact that the Chief Electoral Officer was doing his job. We need to do our job better. That means we have to be much more diligent, especially when we are changing the Canada Elections Act. In fact, it is the same for any legislation.

If we think about it, the foundation of our democracy is allowing people their franchise. What seems to be happening is we seem to be going backwards. As opposed to opening up ways for people to vote, we seem to be putting up barriers. As I said, maybe they are unintended, but the end result seems that we are putting up more barriers rather than opening up pathways.

At committee, the Chief Electoral Officer said:

I also wish to remind you that last Monday, I asked election officials to invite anyone whose face is concealed to uncover it in a manner that is respectful of their beliefs. If they decline to do so, voters must take an oath as to their qualification as an elector in order to be eligible to vote. However, I have not amended the Act to require them to uncover their face. Again, the choice continues to be up to the individual.

It was very clear how the Chief Electoral Officer interpreted the legislation.

We have in front of us now legislation that essentially tries to make up for the fact that we created a problem. We did not create a solution. As I said before, it is a solution looking for a problem.

If we look at the bill and how it is outlined right now, it requires a lot of oversight, but the most substantive thing it requires is actual consultation. In my questions to the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities I asked what kind of consultation had happened since we were in front of the procedure and House affairs committee in September and to the writing of legislation. He assured me there was a lot of consultation.

Last week I spent time consulting with Canadians who are affected and concerned by the bill. They are deeply concerned about the direction and the perception they have of the bill separating and targeting people.

I will share my question to the Chief Electoral Officer at committee when we met in September on this issue. The meeting was to be about election financing and it turned into a meeting about this issue.

When I asked Mr. Mayrand if he knew of any cases of voter fraud when women wore veils, he answered none, zero in the history of our country. I also asked members of the Muslim community at committee if they had any issues about complying with what Mr. Mayrand had already indicated, and that was when people presented themselves, they would be asked to give visual identification. None of them said that there was a problem.

I consulted people from the community last week. I asked them if there had been a problem of having to present themselves and give visual identification. Again, there was no problem.

Therefore, we have to ask ourselves what is the problem. I go back to this. It is a solution looking for a problem. Bill C-31 was. This bill seems, maybe unintended, to be going down a path that is going to divide people and perhaps be a charter challenge. There might be a problem constitutionally.

We need to do what was not done before, and that is for the government, and for that matter Parliament, to do their homework and consult with Canadians before we write bills like this and while we are in the midst of debating bills.

The bill was rushed through quickly. That is how I began my comments and I will end them on this note. We must take the time to write legislation well and consult often. When we believe we have consulted enough, we should consult more.

Canadians want to not only be seen to be heard, but to actually be heard. Parliament dropped the ball on Bill C-31. We believed it was a bad bill. That is why we voted against it and tried to change it, sadly without the support of other parties.

In this case, we need to ensure the ball is not dropped again by consulting widely. We need to ensure that voices are heard. Let us stop dividing people on an issue like the representation of people when they come to vote. Let us absolutely listen to the voices of the people who will be affected by this.