Procedure and House Affairs committee  Good morning. I’d like to begin by thanking the chair and members of the committee for the invitation and the opportunity to speak today and share my research and thoughts. I've spent the past 11 years working in the area of electronic voting, both within Canada and internation

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Obviously, the ability to engage in parliamentary debate is central. It speaks to the scrutiny function that Mr. Morden spoke to about presenting motions. My testimony focused more on the voting aspects, like you said, but that's not to negate the importance of those functions.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I definitely think this is a solution for emergency situations, definitely times of crisis. My point was that we have a crisis now, unfortunately, which presents challenges but also presents opportunities. That's not to say we won't have a crisis in the future. Government too of

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. I would echo what my colleague, Mr. Essex, articulated, which is that there are obviously challenges that cybersecurity experts and the cybersecurity community raise with respect to secret ballots in public elections. Because it is an open public vote, we're able to overcome

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Absolutely. I believe when we wrote the article, we were framing it in the context of perhaps web-based or application voting, where you would go on a website and click. Maybe the intent is signalled a little bit more easily there, but upon reflection, I do think that video votin

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That is an excellent, excellent question. Just really briefly, with respect to procedures, for any remote online voting system that Parliament were to adopt, we would require procedures. With respect to the article, we were really talking about cognitive biases and ensuring tha

Procedure and House Affairs committee  A voice vote? You mean online.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I have some hesitations about the hybrid model based on what I've seen. I think we want to be careful. I definitely see the value in it and I know that other jurisdictions around the world are adopting it. I'd like to watch how that plays out. I think we have to be careful to m

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You could have a system where you could go through the yeas first, then the nays. Everyone who is voting yea would raise their hands and you would go through them and count them; and then you could have the nays and go through and count them. This is really where I think it speak

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you very much, MP Brassard, for allowing me the opportunity to clarify. With respect to the birth of a new child, there's precedent there in other legislatures with proxy voting, and there's a good argument to be made there for extending that to electronic voting. With re

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, with the right security software.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, with outside consultation with experts who have done this before.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Upon reflection, I think video voting would work best, so I would put in verification to double verify parties within the legislature.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. That would be more for application- or web-based voting, but obviously we would need infrastructure to facilitate the video voting.