Pierre-Luc Dusseault

[Democratic Reform, February 4th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, nearly a year ago, we asked the Minister of State for Democratic Reform if he had consulted the Chief Electoral Officer about his unfair elections act.

He said he did, but he did not. Now we have another bill before us that is violating Canadians' right to vote.

Did the minister actually consult Elections Canada this time?

[National Defence, February 3rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives have abandoned not only our veterans, but also our military heritage. Two armouries in Sherbrooke are in a very sorry state. The health and safety of the staff who work there are even at risk. The problem has been known for too long, while the Department of National Defence has been dragging its feet.

Is the government going to do something about this, or is it going to continue putting our soldiers and the staff at those two armouries at risk?

[Citizen Voting Act, February 3rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech.

Does he also have concerns about the coming into force of the bill? Clause 20 of Bill C-50 states that the bill will come into force 60 days after it receives royal assent. Elections Canada will only have 60 days to implement the new provisions and make the changes to the register of electors required by the bill.

Does he think that this is a reasonable amount of time for Elections Canada? Should the government at least give Elections Canada the time it needs to make the necessary changes?

[Citizen Voting Act, February 3rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Davenport for his excellent speech on Bill C-50.

Since this is a matter of consideration on the government's part, it seems to me that there was not much consultation, based on the replies we have heard so far today from the government. The government does not appear to have consulted Elections Canada in drafting Bill C-50.

I would remind the House that many of the measures in this bill will of course affect Elections Canada, because that is the body that oversees the election process and registration applications for the voters list.

Is the member concerned about the government's failure to consult or about the situation that Elections Canada could face if it receives hundreds of thousands of applications? Is he concerned about the courageous voters who do decide to go through the process? Hundreds of thousands of applications in just 35 days of voting does not leave very much time. Is he also worried about Elections Canada's ability to process all those applications in time for the election and the organization's ability to manage such a huge volume of applications in such a short timeframe?

[Citizen Voting Act, February 3rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I also want to thank my colleague for his question, which ties in with what I said at the beginning of my speech.

Instead of making it easier for citizens to exercise their right to vote, as it is done in other countries, the government is making it even harder and cumbersome to vote.

It is completely unacceptable for the government to tie the Chief Electoral Officer's hands and prevent him from making suggestions to make it easier to vote. He cannot make suggestions without the consent of Parliament, even though he is the one with the necessary knowledge on how to get more Canadians to vote.

That is our goal on this side of the House. We want to increase voter participation, not decrease it, as the Conservatives are trying to do.

[Citizen Voting Act, February 3rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, that is the irony of Bill C-50, which the government claims is a response to the court's ruling.

The court ruling indicated that all Canadians should have the right to vote. That right is protected by the charter. All Canadian citizens have a right to vote. The existing legislation bars Canadian citizens living abroad for more than five years from voting. That provision has been struck down.

However, there is a paradox here. The government wants to give all Canadians the right to vote, but it is discouraging them from doing so by making it extremely difficult or even impossible to exercise that right. That is hard to understand.

We had hoped for a much broader and much more satisfactory response in order to make things easier for Canadians who want to exercise their right to vote. Instead, we have before us today a bill that does quite the opposite.

Canadians will have to re-register every time an election is called and they cannot even pre-register. If we had a fixed election date, then at least Elections Canada could be given a timeframe. That would be the minimum. However, that is not the case. The government decided to add a provision to the bill specifying that people cannot register until the day the election is called and they must register for each election.

That means that if a person registers to vote in the 2015 election and another election is called in 2016, that individual will have to register again. The registration is good for only one single election. What is more, people have to register during the election period.

[Citizen Voting Act, February 3rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by saying that I will share my time with my colleague from Chambly—Borduas, who will also talk to us about Bill C-50.

As the deputy critic for democratic and parliamentary reform, I am honoured to speak today and to have the opportunity to work with my esteemed colleague from Toronto—Danforth, supporting him on a number of files. I also thank the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent for all of the work she has done over the past few years as the deputy critic for democratic and parliamentary reform. I also thank her team, Jean-François and Myriam, who work extremely hard. I will have the opportunity to work with them again in the future.

It is an honour for me to rise to speak to Bill C-50, but it is also a disappointment. Instead of making it easier for people to exercise their right to vote in Canada, this bill attempts to make it more difficult. That is the opposite of what we should be doing as a country. The government should be encouraging people to vote and making it easier for them to vote, whether they reside in Canada or are Canadian citizens residing abroad. The bill before us today will make it even more difficult for Canadian citizens residing abroad to exercise their right to vote.

This is out of step with what other countries are doing. Some of my colleagues gave examples of countries where, rather than making it harder to vote, they are making voting easier and more enjoyable, especially for the younger generation, who are voting less and less. Voter turnout for young people aged 18 to 25 has been between 30% and 40% in some elections. That is very low, and it means that over half of young people do not go to the ballot box to exercise their right to vote. Instead of making it harder, the government should be working on making it easier and more appealing for all Canadians to exercise their right to vote.

Bill C-50, introduced by the federal Conservative government, follows the decision handed down recently by the Ontario Superior Court in the Frank et al. case. The bill we are debating here today is supposed to be the government's response to that court ruling. This response is unsatisfactory, to say the least. The bill claims to be a response to that decision, but it is definitely not the response that we were expecting. Anyone who has read the Superior Court ruling would have expected a very different response from the government. The Superior Court ruling struck down paragraph 11(d) of the Canada Elections Act, which deals with the right to vote for Canadian citizens living outside of Canada for less than five years.

We might have expected a response that extended the right to vote to all Canadian citizens living abroad. That is something our party has introduced before. My colleague from Halifax, whom I would like to thank, introduced a bill to extend the right to vote to all Canadian citizens living abroad and to make it easier for them to exercise that right. There are many Canadians—in fact, 2.8 million—who live outside Canada. Unfortunately, not all of them are going to vote. However, if we were being generous, we could say, and I am just picking a number, that an estimated 300,000, 400,000 or 500,000 might vote. It would make a lot of work for Elections Canada, which would have to review all these applications in the 35 days prior to the election.

I will spend a little bit of time talking about these changes because if Bill C-50 does pass in its current form, Canadian citizens living abroad will have to register for every election. When an election is called, they will have to send a form and supporting pieces of identification to Elections Canada. They will be able to vote in the election with a special ballot that they will then have to return to Elections Canada within 35 days, which is the time between the day the election is called and the day of the vote. This extremely short timeframe will make it practically impossible to vote.

In order to vote, the voter will have to prepare in advance and be very familiar with the procedure. When the election is called, the voter will have to immediately fill out forms and pay the requisite fees so that the mail arrives at its destination within the requisite period of time. Depending on where one lives in the world, it can be very difficult to send a document to Canada. These steps will sometimes be expensive for people who want to register to vote in a federal election. This will certainly not encourage them to exercise their right to vote.

If someone has the misfortune of having expired ID or ID that is not considered valid proof for Elections Canada under Bill C-50, then someone else will have to vouch for them. That is another aspect of the bill that makes things even more difficult. A person who was fortunate enough to have the required ID still had to go through a three-part mailing process in a very short time during the election period; but if a person has the misfortune of not having the ID requested by Elections Canada under Bill C-50, then they will have to go through an extra step. This is a complex step, since that person has to find someone to vouch for them who lives in the riding they lived in before leaving Canada. The voucher has to prove that the voter is a citizen of the riding in question and attest to the person's identity, citizenship, and right to vote.

This can take a lot of time if that person lives in a part of the world where postal services are limited, which makes it almost impossible to send the necessary correspondence to register on the voting list. This bill is the government's so-called answer to the Ontario Superior Court decision. However, instead of encouraging people to exercise their right to vote, it makes it almost impossible.

I asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister whether the government had conducted any consultations before drafting this bill. He did not answer me, which I took as a no. It seems that Elections Canada was not consulted before this bill was drafted, even though this bill would have a huge impact on the agency. Indeed, Elections Canada will have to process hundreds of thousands of applications in 35 days so that these people can vote before the election date. That is a significant amount of work.

Furthermore, clause 20 of Bill C-50 states that the bill will come into force 60 days after the day on which it receives royal assent. It will be a huge amount of work for Elections Canada to do to implement such a system and to conform with the new legislation.

The government is imposing a huge burden on Elections Canada. It does not even seem to have consulted the agency before it introduced this bill in the House.

I would be happy to take questions from my colleagues.

[Citizen Voting Act, February 3rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I was rather surprised by the tone of my colleague's speech. She was not able to give a single example of riding shopping, as she called it. I will take that to mean that she has none.

Take, for example, a Canadian citizen working abroad for the Government of Canada or for the armed forces. This worker's family will obviously move with her. Does the member realize that under this existing bill, this woman and her husband would have different rules for voting in the same election? It would be much easier for her, as a member of the Canadian Armed Forces, but her husband or her children over the age of 18 would have to follow a different procedure to vote.

Does the member realize that this bill will create a two-tier system for members of the same family living abroad? Some of them will have to go through such a long and tedious process that they may decide not to vote, while others, in the same family, will have a much easier time voting.

[Citizen Voting Act, February 3rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.

However, I did not hear him mention that the government held consultations on drafting such a bill.

I have a very direct question for him: who was consulted? Was Elections Canada consulted by the minister responsible when the bill was being drafted? What was their response? What information did the government obtain and receive and what other consultations were held to draft this bill? What facts and figures did it obtain? In short, what consultations were held, specifically with Elections Canada?

[Citizen Voting Act, February 3rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech on Bill C-50.

Does the member believe the government's claims that this bill comes in response to the Ontario Superior Court decision in Frank et al. v. The Attorney General of Canada, which specifically addressed paragraph 11(d) of the Canada Elections Act, or is it simply a way for the government to try to change the law on the pretext that it really is a response to the Superior Court decision?