Scott Reid

[Canada Elections Act, February 16th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, that was a wide ranging speech and a number of issues I would like to ask questions about. However, I will focus on one thing which is the final note that the hon. member was addressing and that is the subject of the consultation that was supposed to take place as a result of the 43rd report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. It was to have set up a consultation process across the country on a number of issues including electoral reform, but not exclusively electoral reform, and a number of issues relating to the operation of the House of Commons and Canadian democracy including the roles of MPs of parties.

It did include the issue of participation by women and aboriginal people. That was a particularly important component. In fact, sitting on that committee I insisted that participation rates of aboriginals and youth be included because they are two groups that participate both in voting terms and representational terms in smaller numbers than their percentage of the population warrant.

That being said, I think she might have some historical facts wrong. I want to make sure that she and everyone understands this. She is quite right that in June the committee on which I sat reported unanimously on this and called for the report to take place. The then minister did indeed announce in September that nothing had happened, the deadline that had been applied by the committee had passed and the committee could not go forward.

However, what she did not mention is that earlier this year a citizens' consultation process set up in the same manner that had been advocated by Ed Broadbent before the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs was set up to deal with these very same issues. That process is now under way.

The consultation process is travelling across the country and is due to report back to the House by the end of May. So all of that being said, it gives some context. It points out that there is goodwill from the new government with respect to this report in which a number of us, including myself in this government, had concurred in.

I want to draw the member's attention to a problem that exists with Motion No. 262. It refers to the setting up of a consultation process when in fact one already exists and therefore, in a sense, the motion which I know was put forward in goodwill last year is now out of step and this is a bit of a problem. I am not sure how we could approve that motion without effectively causing two parallel citizen consultation processes.

Given the fact that New Democrats have been complaining about the cost of the consultation process, I do not know how to square that circle, having two of them in parallel not costing more and not contradicting each other and so on. I invite her to comment as to whether or not Motion No. 262 has not been superceded by events that have taken place since that time as a result of the goodwill of the current government with regard to the citizen consultation process.

[Canada Elections Act, January 31st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want to deal with the item the member mentioned in this intervention and in previous interventions when he stood in questions and comments and suggested that there was no electoral fraud in Canada. The Chief Electoral Officer presented himself to the committee and that was not what he said.

Initially he said, “We will prosecute and we are prosecuting electoral fraud vigorously”. I asked him to tell us how much had actually been done and to send the committee the information. Having been the Chief Electoral Officer for five elections, I asked him how many prosecutions there had been. His answer was that there had been less than one prosecution per election.

I do not think the member is actually suggesting that less than one case of actual fraud occurs in the entire country over the course of more than one election. A more plausible scenario is that basically the way the law is written it is impossible to prosecute electoral fraud. The problem is that it is impossible to hunt down the multiple voting that occurs because there is no record left behind. This is an attempt to deal with that problem.

I want to give an idea of how bad the problem is. In the riding of Trinity—Spadina in the last election we were told that thousands of people turned up on election day who did not have any record of their existence on the voters rolls but were allowed to vote because the choice came down to either allowing them to vote en masse or basically freezing out large numbers.

One man, James DiFiori, said that he voted three times, once for the Liberals, once for the Conservatives and once for the New Democrats. He is the only person being prosecuted by the Chief Electoral Officer after the last election because he was the only one for whom they had any hard evidence whatsoever.

This is an attempt to deal with the fact that there is no evidence by creating a paper trail, by creating ways to allow people to vote legally and preventing others from voting multiple times or illegally when they are not eligible. I wonder if there is a response from the member to this particular problem.

[Canada Elections Act, January 31st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the complaints that the member for Vancouver East has been raising tend to revolve around the issue of homeless people and their ability to participate and the danger that they will be left off the voters list and will not be able to cast their ballots. They are valid things to be concerned about. I think it is not valid to say, as she is saying, that these things have not been taken into account in the bill, in the work the committee did on the bill, in the questions we asked the Chief Electoral Officer, in the responses he gave us, and in the way we incorporated his responses in the amendments to the bill.

I will point this out again and ask her why she thinks this does not work. The law is now amended. I invite the member to look at subclause 16(1) of the bill, which states that an elector or any other elector living at the residence of that particular person, for example, at a homeless shelter, can vouch for the person and get him or her on the voters roll. Not only that, but they can be vouched for at the poll. They cannot vouch for many people, but it does not mean that many people cannot vouch for other people on that list.

The member says that people have to go to the homeless shelter during the day. That is a good point, but we have a number of ways of dealing with it. They could be enumerated when they are back at the shelter by adjusting the enumerator's hours. Enumerators frequently work in the evening for this reason anyway, so it would be easy to accomplish this goal. It could be dealt with by other means. There is a wide variety of ways this could be dealt with.

What I cannot understand is why she thinks that with this provision--and this provision was put in specifically after the Chief Electoral Officer was asked how to deal with this kind of problem--this seriously fails to achieve the goals that she is outlining.

[Canada Elections Act, January 31st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, my question is on the very same line of thought that the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra was developing.

The member and I were both in the committee when a provision was put into the proposed text of the bill. It was an attempt to deal with the construction of the voters list and the way in which people get left off the voters list. The provision recognized that homeless people actually do have a roof over their heads at certain times when they are at a homeless shelter and that people at homeless shelters are capable of vouching for other individuals. I specifically asked the Chief Electoral Officer for information that would allow us to go and put this provision into the bill.

I want to read this for the member for Vancouver Quadra and ask him if he thinks this deals with the kind of issue he was talking about.

It says that the following people can vouch for a person to get him or her onto the list:

--the elector, or another elector who lives at the same residence as the elector, at their residence and in the presence of the revising agents completes the prescribed registration form and takes the prescribed oath.

Does the member believe that this largely deals with the problem of homeless people not getting on the list that the member for Vancouver East was raising?

[Canada Elections Act, January 31st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to point out some of the changes made in committee that I think substantially address the concerns of the hon. member from the New Democratic Party. I will be frank in saying that I am a bit surprised these concerns are being raised by the NDP, given the considerable measures that the committee went to in its work to ensure that the franchise would be as open as possible to all Canadians, and indeed, more open than it currently is in many respects.

The member mentioned a number of disadvantaged groups. He mentioned the homeless specifically. I want to point out some of the things that were done in committee to ensure that a number of groups that might be disenfranchised, specifically the homeless, are taken care of.

One of the problems for people who move residences frequently, and the homeless obviously would fit that category, is that voters lists tend to fall out of date. We asked as an administrative measure, not a legislative one, and we had an assurance from the Chief Electoral Officer for it, that the Chief Electoral Officer carry out more aggressive enumeration in areas where there is a high turnover of populations, especially in certain areas. In response to a question from me, he said he will carry out enumeration in areas where there are high levels of homelessness. That should do a substantial amount.

We also made sure that pieces of ID are added to the list of ID that can be used for voting. For example, special provisions were made for aboriginal identification, for student cards and for bus passes to ensure that these groups are not excluded from the franchise.

[Senate Tenure Legislation, January 31st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, for eight months, the Liberal majority in the Senate has been blocking Bill S-4, the bill to establish eight year fixed terms for senators.

We had all hoped this obstructionism would end. Now there is a new Liberal leader who claims that he supports fixed terms for senators. Instead, the new Leader of the Opposition has taken office and Liberal obstructionism has become even worse.

Yesterday, the Liberal Senate caucus voted to adjourn early in order to prevent debate beginning on Bill S-4 and, just within the past hour, they again adjourned debate rather than allowing debate to begin on the bill.

Will the Minister for Democratic Reform explain to Canadians the importance of Bill S-4?

[International Day of Commemoration, January 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, resolution A/60/7 of the General Assembly of the United Nations designates January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, as the annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of victims of the Holocaust.

The goal of this commemoration is to prevent future genocides by reminding the world of the horrors visited upon the Jews and others by the Nazis over 60 years ago. The following passages from resolution A/60/7 seem therefore to be of particularly importance.

First, the UN “urged member states to develop educational programmes to inculcate future generations with the lessons of the Holocaust” in order to prevent future acts of genocide.

Second, the UN rejects any denial of the Holocaust as a historical event.

Third, the UN condemns without reserve all manifestations of religious intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief.

I am confident that these goals are shared by every member of the House of Commons.

[Foreign Affairs, December 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, like many Canadians, I am alarmed by the Iranian government's decision to hold a conference questioning the historical accuracy of the Holocaust.

Can the Minister of Foreign Affairs tell the House how the government will respond to this decision and, in particular, if the government will publicly condemn this outrageous exercise?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, December 4th, 2006]

In each of the fiscal years 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005, did any government department, agency, or Crown corporation enter into a professional services contract with a vendor whose name matches a name on the current public list of members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery published at http://www.gallery-tribune.ca, and, if so, for each contract of each vendor: (a) to which department, agency, or Crown corporation were the services to be provided; (b) what type of service was to be provided; (c) what was the start date and final end date of the contract; and (d) what was the total amount of payments made to the vendor?

[The Québécois, November 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the member gave an interesting and intelligent speech. If we were to go to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, and type in a request for something that has more than one meaning, it would take us to what is called the disambiguation page. We would then signify whether we wanted to look up the member for Lanark--Frontenac--Lennox and Addington or Scott Reid the former public relations person for the former prime minister, and so on.

The member has done an excellent job of disambiguating between the multiple meanings of the word “nation” as they are used internationally and in the Canadian context.

This is a great service because she is doing what this motion is attempting to do, which is to disambiguate the different meanings that the separatists have deliberately attempted to conflate in order to cause situations in which Canadians of goodwill become reluctant to recognize the sociological facts of nationhood out of fear, on the one hand, that they will be giving recognition of an incipient national statehood to Quebec, but on the other hand, may cause Canadians to give their approval to that incipient statehood out of fear of causing another unity crisis over that misunderstanding.

The member is doing an excellent job of explaining why it is that one can support the notion of Québécois nationhood without giving any special status, aid and comfort to the overall separatist goal. I thank her for doing that.