In the unholy rush to jam their Unfair Elections Act through
before the majority of Canadians realise just how bad and
self-serving piece of legislation it is the Harper regieme has asked
the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee to “pre-study”
it. In short order the Conservative-dominated committee has come back
with a number of changes that it would like to see, remember this is
just a “pre-study” not full hearings and that the House of
Commons has yet to finish its initial study of this bill. The House
Affairs Committee studying the bill will conduct one more day of
hearings when MPs return from a two-week break April 28, before going
into a rushed clause-by-clause review ending May 1. “
Clause-by-clause
review will begin Tuesday, April 29 with morning and evening meetings
for three days until it wraps up May 1.” 'Rushed' hardly covers
it, this is legislation that changes the very fundamental way in
which elections are held and funded and should not be rushed or
subject to any limitations of debate or public scrutiny. In May it
will then (presumably) go to the senate for a full (rushed?)
committee study.
There are those who feel that the changes that the senate so
quickly proposed are simply “putting lipstick on the pig” or as
Tim
Harper of the Star puts it:-
“What
Conservatives
senators have really done is give
the government cover to suddenly shift course, drop their bullying
demeanour and pretend to be reasonable and conciliatory then go ahead
and pass a deeply flawed bill with nothing more than cosmetic
tweaks.”
I cannot help but agree with his opinion that “That {this} adds
to the odds that somehow the
proposed
amendments will be given more weight than they
are worth, wrapping this saga up with a nice bow, as the Senate
flexes its muscle and the Harper governments feigns flexibility.”
Indeed whilst the
changes
propose include 'that attestations of name and
address be given by authorities such as homeless shelters, student
and senior’s residences, removing a spending loophole that would
allow parties to exclude money spent on certain fundraising
activities, and permitting Elections Canada to continue with certain
education programs' that hardly touches the edges of what is wrong
with this bill. Are these amendments just a distraction from the
core faults, as Elizabeth May of the Green Party and long advocate
for democratic reform said
she
thinks there’s a willingness from the government to consider
amendments to the bill’s provisions on vouching. She’s worried
that if all the focus is placed there, though, the bill could still
pass without amending other provisions concerning the appointment of
partisan poll workers, the muzzling of Elections Canada, and a
fundraising loophole for party election financing.
“
The list
of things that are wrong with this bill is
a very long list. If the vouching provisions have settled in the
public imagination as what’s wrong with the bill, fixing those
might make people think that the whole process is okay. It won’t be
okay,” she said.
The issue of vouching has indeed received the majority of the
public criticism but is perhaps the one issue where this bill could
be challenged in the courts in that it would possibly disenfranchise
some voters
“Pierre Lortie, who chaired a royal
commission on electoral reform in the early ’90s, told the House
Affairs Committee the bill would violate the Charter of Rights and
Freedoms.”
That however is no guarantee that the bill will be changed in any
meaningful way or that other antidemocratic and self-serving measures
will not remain and be jammed though and become law. As Ms May puts
it in an
interview
to the Hill Times “I think it sets a
new record for a government bill that can’t find a single expert to
support the government bill,” “[Conservatives] keep claiming they
have everyday Canadians who support the bill. I haven’t seen any of
those, either.”
As I said above and Ms May has indicated the vouching thing may
well distract from some of the other terrible proposals in this bill
but never the less she has, as always, clearly outlined this
particular problem in
her
recent article for the Times Colonist.
“
The repetition of the 39 pieces of ID has become part of
the disinformation that could lead to a loss of voter rights in the
next election. A passport won’t work by itself because it does not
include an address. A driver’s licence only works if it includes a
street address and not a post office box, as is the case in many
rural areas. If you have moved and your driver’s licence shows your
previous address, you won’t have adequate ID. The requirement is
for something with a photo ID and your address or just the right
combination of two (or more) other identifiers, even without a photo
ID.
Here’s a hypothetical. Imagine my daughter, currently a
student in Halifax, went to the polling station bringing along six
pieces of ID from the list — just to be on the safe side — her
birth certificate, her student ID, her driver’s licence, her health
card, her passport and her transcript. All are listed as acceptable
on the Elections Canada website.
Could she vote? No. None of these forms of ID will include
her current address. She does pay for utilities in her Halifax
apartment. The utility bill is listed as an acceptable proof of
address, in conjunction with her other ID. So, she runs back to her
apartment, prints out her online utility bill and gets back to the
polling station.
Can she vote now? No. The utility statement must be one
mailed to the customer, not one printed out from online billing.”
As a rural resident whose wife worked on the 'revisions' for
voters in the last elections I can say that rural addressing in
particular is a major problem in this regard. It is improving with
the use of 'fire numbers' in many municipality’s but the
vulgarities of rural addressing DO create some unique problems where
the address on you identification is expected to match that in the
Elections Canada listings!
Wake up Canada, our democracy
has become a shadow of its former self ever-since the Harper Regime
received their false majority, it is now being threatened with a
poison pill that would put it in further jeopardy. Speak
up,
only immense public pressure will stop these Oligarch from destroying
our long internationally admired election oversight system and even
that may not be enough to stop them!
