Hon. Joan Fraser:

Honourable senators, even though we do not have to adopt this report, I feel it is appropriate to provide a brief explanation.

This report is the result of an initiative by the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, Marc Mayrand, who wrote to the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs in July, asking that he be invited to appear before the committee in order to discuss a pilot project. I will read one of the paragraphs from his letter:

Section 18.1 of the Canada Elections Act authorizes the Chief Electoral Officer to conduct studies respecting alternative voting means, including electronic voting, and allows the use of such means in a general election or by-election with the "prior approval of the committees of the Senate and of the House of Commons that normally consider electoral matters."

I must say, Mr. Mayrand's desire to run a pilot project on the use of an "assistive voting device for persons with disabilities" is highly commendable.

Honourable senators, if I stumbled a little bit on that phrase in French, it is no less cumbersome in English. This is a pilot project on the use of assistive voting devices for persons with disabilities. What that means essentially is a device, mechanical and electronic, to assist people who have various disabilities — motor disabilities, visual disabilities, hearing disabilities — to vote in a more autonomous fashion than they can now.

Mr. Mayrand wished our agreement to do a pilot project in the coming by-election in Winnipeg North or, should a general election intervene, in that riding during a general election. We, of course, approved the pilot project.

I quote from the report:

The right of all citizens to participate in the affairs of their government, through voting, is one of the cornerstones of democracy, and the committee is in favour of assisting all Canadians in exercising their franchise as equitably as possible, and with all possible secrecy.

I think every Canadian would agree with and strongly support that principle.

However, having heard Mr. Mayrand and having also welcomed in committee hearing the manufacturers of the device in question, who gave us a demonstration of it, the committee had some concerns for the future. We recommended a couple of small changes before the by-election, things like ensuring that for people with visual disabilities the machine actually read the whole list of candidates on the ballot to them before they be allowed to vote.

For the future, we also asked for a few more things. We asked Mr. Mayrand to report to us on the results of the Winnipeg North by-election or general election within three months. We want to know whether other devices or voting methods comparable to the one he is testing in Winnipeg North exist. If they do, we would like to see an evaluation of them so that we can have a comparison on cost and efficiency.

We want to know how well this device that he will use has performed in jurisdictions that have used it in the past, and the metrics that those others jurisdictions used to evaluate this device, because it has been used in other jurisdictions, notably in municipal elections in New Brunswick and in Ontario, but we were not able to access the statistical evaluation.

We want to know more about costs, about the numbers of individuals with disabilities who have used this device, about the number who used it in Winnipeg North, details of the communications strategy of Elections Canada to reach out to the voters who might benefit from using this device, and whether the pilot project is deemed to be a success.

We want to have any research or statistics that will allow the committee to understand further how strong the need is for this device and how many people are likely to use it.

In an ideal world, honourable senators, we would spend unimaginable amounts of money, if that were necessary, to help one single Canadian cast a vote in privacy and secrecy. In the real world, everyone, including the director of elections, has to juggle with priorities.

So strongly do we support the desire to help Canadians with disabilities that we want to know what we are talking about here in terms of numbers and costs. Costs include not only the costs of buying and using the technology but also the communications plan, training, variable costs as between urban and rural ridings, and the general implications of using this technology over the next five years, a period during which technology itself will evolve, as it always does.

The bottom line is that we have many questions. We strongly support the project in principle. The law will require that before any general introduction of such a device or a comparable device, Parliament will have to approve it, and the matter will come back, therefore, to our committee. In the meantime, we asked Mr. Mayrand to report on the results of this pilot project.

Recent Statements from Liberal Senators