Procedure and House Affairs committee  Good morning and thank you, Chair. Thank you for this opportunity to speak to the committee. As I was preparing for this statement, my son reminded me that a group of owls is called a parliament, so let me say what a hoot it is to be here this morning. My name is Aleksander

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There was a bit of editing that went on after the fact, but what I am simply here to say is that, compared to the cybersecurity risks of online voting for general elections, online voting for legislative or parliamentary divisions doesn't pose the same sort of basket of threats.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  When we said that, we were speaking as members of the public looking inside at what is ultimately a mostly opaque infrastructure—the intelligence community, the CSE. We don't really know exactly what they do, but we do know that they're there and we do know that they have a manda

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I never say something is secure until I have an opportunity to examine it. I don't really know what Parliament does, but my expectation is that as a Five Eyes member, we would have top world-class cybersecurity. I've spoken to the CSE before. They are very capable, but again, as

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you. I'll try to tackle this question. There is strength in simplicity, especially when we're talking about cybersecurity and technology. One of the reasons Dr. Goodman and I have gravitated more towards video voting as an approach is that it does have a certain simplic

Procedure and House Affairs committee  If I could borrow a line from the chair, whom I have been watching during these committee proceedings, I suppose that would be for the members to decide for themselves. I can tell you that in the Ontario municipal election we saw this sort of hybrid model in many Ontario cities.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I will approach this question from my experience in general elections. Predictability is right at the core of the democratic principles that you might have for an election, and the predictability would feed into the notion of fairness and that everyone has an opportunity to vote.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I believe that was in the title of the article, so yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Under the right conditions and with careful design, yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Proxy voting in a general election has a lot of problems. I know that they allowed it in Toronto and there were instances of abuse. I don't think that would be as easy to abuse in a legislative context where the voting would sort of be in many cases along party lines—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Well, I—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm not implying that an MP is a function of a party. I'm a cybersecurity expert. I am aware of the notion of a whipped vote, which in that case would imply that there would be a sort of an understanding ahead of time on how members would vote, but setting that aside, in proxy vo

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Who's the question addressed to?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We're distinguishing between a vote that might be input via a web-based interface using a browser, in which you sign in on a laptop or a computer, versus an application that might be on a smartphone. The network connection and security and so forth are managed slightly differentl

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, absolutely, and I certainly remember that time with those close votes. The issue that you're raising about bandwidth and dropping is actually a bit of a concern, especially if there is a threat actor who has the capability of cause the member's vote to drop at a specific ti