:
I call this meeting to order.
Welcome to meeting number seven of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.
I'd like to start the meeting by providing you with some information following the motion that was adopted in the House on Wednesday, September 23, 2020, on hybrid format sittings.
The committee is now sitting in a hybrid format, meaning that members can participate either in person or by video conference. Witnesses must appear by video conference. All members, regardless of their method of participation, will be counted for the purpose of quorum. The committee's power to sit is, however, limited by the priority use of the House of Commons resources, which is determined by the party whips. All questions must be decided by a recorded vote, unless the committee disposes of them with unanimous consent or on division. Finally, the committee may deliberate in camera, provided that it takes into account the potential risks to confidentiality inherent to such deliberations with remote participants.
Today's proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. As a reminder, I will say that the webcast will always show the person speaking, rather than the entirety of the committee.
To ensure an orderly meeting, I'd like to outline a few rules.
Most of you are familiar with these rules, but they are also for the benefit of the witnesses who appear. I know you might be wondering why I go through this each time, but it's important when we have new witnesses.
Members and witnesses may speak in the official language of their choice. Interpretation services are available for this meeting. You have the choice, at the bottom of your screen, of either “Floor”, “English” or “French”. Please make sure you select the appropriate language at this time.
Before speaking, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike. Even with lots of experience, we all forget to do this sometimes. Please also mute yourself after you're done speaking so that there are no interruptions.
I will remind everyone that all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair. Should members need to request the floor outside of their designated time for questions, they should activate their mike and state that they have a point of order. If a member wishes to intervene on a point of order, they can raise their hand by clicking on it in the “Participants” section. When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly.
Unless there are exceptional circumstances, the use of headsets with a boom mike is mandatory. Should any technical challenges arise, please notify the chair. We'll try to rectify the issue, but we may have to suspend for a few minutes while doing so.
For those participating in person, proceed as you usually would at a committee meeting. In order to get my attention, physically raise your hand, or you can give me a gesture or call out my name. If you have a point of order, wait for an appropriate time. The clerk and I will try to keep a consolidated list of those in the room and those raising their hand virtually.
To start with the formal part of our meeting today, I'd like to welcome Mr. Anton Boegman, the chief electoral officer from Elections British Columbia, and Dr. Michael Boda, the chief electoral officer from Elections Saskatchewan.
Welcome to our committee, and thank you for being here.
You each will have five minutes for opening remarks. Thank you for sending your opening remarks to us. They were circulated this morning to all the committee members, who can follow along if they wish to do so.
We will then proceed with formal questioning rounds. We generally go through two to three rounds of questions among the various parties. I'll let you know beforehand how many minutes you have so that there is no confusion.
Please go ahead, Mr. Boegman.
:
Good morning. Thank you very much for the invitation to address the committee today.
As you know, my name is Anton Boegman. I am B.C.'s chief electoral officer, a position that I have held since 2018. Prior to this appointment, I was Elections BC's deputy chief electoral officer for operations for eight years. I have also served in a senior management capacity at Elections BC since 2004, administering five provincial general elections and four provincial referenda. Two of those referenda were held entirely by mail.
My remarks this morning are in relation to the administration of the 42nd provincial general election in B.C., which is still under way. General voting day was Saturday, October 24. While the campaign period and voting for the election are complete, we are still preparing for the final count of over 600,000 absentee and mail-in ballots, which will begin on November 6. This context will frame my remarks: They will reflect the B.C. electoral legislation and they will reflect the public health situation and rules in place in B.C. preceding and during the campaign period.
My understanding is that this committee intends to study the challenges posed to the normal conduct of federal elections by the COVID-19 pandemic and to identify the measures to be taken to adapt the approach and conduct of a general election to preserve the health and safety of all Canadians. To address this objective, I will provide two broad comments and then speak to the top three challenges that we faced in administering a pandemic election in B.C.
To begin, everything associated with election administration in a pandemic is challenging, from retaining returning officers, finding office space and securing voting places to recruiting and training election officials and implementing voting processes. Each element is more complex and nuanced and requires many unique and targeted mitigation measures. For example, voting places usually include many close-contact interactions, shared spaces and shared materials, all of which create a virus transmission risk. To mitigate this, we had to re-engineer the voting place and voting processes to allow for physical distancing and only one election official per voting station. We placed acrylic barriers on voting tables and provided election officials with personal protective equipment. There was more frequent cleaning. We established sanitation stations at entry and exit points and we allowed voters to bring their own pens or pencils to mark their ballots.
The pandemic also made election planning and preparation significantly more challenging. Developing and implementing a pandemic election model that maintains accessibility and integrity while ensuring safety for voters, election officials and political participants was unheard of pre-COVID. Major elements that were crucial to our success included early and ongoing consultation with public health experts, our ability to vary from legislation in response to an emergency or extraordinary circumstance, and an ongoing access to necessary funding. I don't have time in my opening statement to speak in more detail on this theme, but I would be pleased to do so in response to members' questions.
Within the context of a pandemic election and a rapidly changing environment, three key challenges emerged that I believe are relevant to federal elections: providing safe and accessible voting opportunities to at-risk voters and communities so that they are not administratively disenfranchised; scaling capacity to meet significantly increased demand for voting by mail; and maintaining safety and business continuity at Elections BC headquarters, in district electoral offices and in voting places.
During our planning for a pandemic election, it became apparent that with effective safety plans and protocols in place and more in-person voting opportunities, as well as enhanced access to remote voting options, the vast majority of British Columbians would be able to vote safely. It was equally apparent, however, that at-risk or self-isolating voters, voters in care homes and voters in specific communities, such as first nations communities, would face significantly greater challenges to participating in the election. The use of tailored voting options and focused and ongoing communications, at times involving a much broader set of stakeholders than usual, was necessary to reduce barriers to voting. The tailored voting options included community-organized voting by mail, the hiring and training of community members to administer voting within their community, the use of mobile teams with full protective equipment and the expansion of operator-assisted telephone voting.
Administrative flexibility was also critical to effectively respond to changing circumstances and new outbreaks.
Scaling capacity to support major increases in voting by mail was identified early as a critical issue. We conducted voter surveys through the summer that indicated that 35% of British Columbians would prefer to vote by mail if an election were held during a pandemic. Greater use of this option was also an essential element in our strategy to spread voters across multiple voting options to reduce lineups and congestion at voting places and to allow for effective physical distancing at in-person voting opportunities.
We were able to leverage existing processes, systems and partnerships that had been in place previously for provincial referenda that were conducted entirely by mail. Further, legislation was adapted, vote-by-mail packages were modified to support automated production, and inbound voting request channels were streamlined to support high-volume efficiency. During the campaign period, we received and fulfilled over 720,000 requests for vote-by-mail packages, which was an increase of more than 7,200% over the last provincial election in British Columbia in 2017.
Last, the issue of maintaining safe spaces and business continuity across all work locations was a key challenge, particularly within the tight timelines established in law. We had to mitigate the risks to staff and voter safety and the risk of potentially having to close a district electoral office or voting place because of an outbreak. We worked with the provincial health officer, WorkSafeBC and regional health authorities to develop safe electoral offices and voting place plans and to emphasize their implementation and monitoring. Each office and voting place had a customized safety plan. The effort to address this challenge was significant and should not be underestimated.
I'm very gratified to be able to say that during the campaign period, we passed a number of WorkSafeBC pandemic safety audits and there were no COVID-19 exposure events at voting places, offices, or at our headquarters in Victoria.
Madam Chair, that concludes my opening statement. I'm now happy to respond to any questions that committee members may have. Thank you.
:
Madam Chair, honourable members, thank you for the opportunity to meet with you today.
My name is Michael Boda. I'm the chief electoral officer for the Province of Saskatchewan. I've been back here in Saskatchewan since 2012, but for the last two and a half decades I've worked on election administration around the world in places like the U.S., the U.K. and a lot of developing countries.
Last Monday at 8 p.m., voting closed for Saskatchewan's provincial election, with approximately 434,000 voters having cast their ballots. The initial participation rate looks to be about 52% of eligible voters. In 2016 it was about 54%.
Almost every aspect of administration of our provincial election has been impacted by the global COVID-19 pandemic, except perhaps that turnout, which looks to be very close to our 2016 numbers. I do hope that some of those turnout numbers can be traced back to the significant effort we put into ensuring that voters knew that voting would be no more risky than a trip to the local grocery store.
While there hasn't been much time to assess the conduct of the election—we're actually completing our final count this weekend—I want to describe for you three key steps that I believe have contributed to what has unfolded so far.
Our first step focused very much on our adapting Saskatchewan's election system to lower the risk of spreading the coronavirus. In fact, we pursued many methods to achieve this, but our overarching approach was focused on building capacity in our now three principal areas of voting by reinventing our absentee or vote-by-mail function—in 2016, just 1% of voters participated in this way—and doing everything we could to make both advance and election day voting safer.
Not knowing how many voters would take advantage of each of these opportunities, we had to quickly build capacity for vote-by-mail so that we could allow for applications starting more than two months before the election day for voters who felt that attending a poll could be a health hazard for them.
Early on we also determined that to make things safer, voting-in-person opportunities would need to be spread out in a very different way, meaning that where we might have had five or six polls at a location in 2016, instead we would have just two or three polls. In the end, our number of polling locations grew from just 1,100 in 2016 to nearly 1,900 in 2020.
In a second step, we understood, as an election management body, that not only would we need to ensure that our physical polls met the safety standards of public health officials but also that our voters and workers would have to be convinced that in-person voting would be safe even with elevated levels of COVID-19.
Working closely with our chief medical health officer, we adapted our physical polls in order to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19. Our 2020 polls look very different from those from 2016, with protocols including physical distancing, hand sanitizing, barriers between voters and workers, masks being required for all workers and scrutineers and a strong recommendation that all voters wear a mask.
While I believe we took every reasonable step to make our polls safer, this really wasn't enough. We also had to ensure that voters knew that the polls would be safe. In the weeks leading to the election, we worked very hard to educate stakeholders, voters, scrutineers and election workers so that if perceptions of the risk of COVID-19 changed in the province, stakeholders would remain convinced that visiting the polls in person would be safe.
A third and final step that was essential to the effective conduct of our election related to the importance of relationships between election administrators and our stakeholders. As chief electoral officer, I could not have conducted this election without a strong recognition among voters, government, the legislative assembly, parties, candidates, school boards, first nation communities, personal care facilities and so on that to be successful in 2020, the process would have to unfold very differently from the way it did in 2016. Perhaps most important has been our relationship, my relationship, with the Office of the Chief Medical Health Officer.
As an election administrator, I have always believed that an election is not merely a technical exercise but also that strong relationships with stakeholders are essential to the success of the conduct of an event. Our 2020 election in Saskatchewan only reinforced that for me. Working with all stakeholders, we had to adapt to ensure that the process was safer for everyone participating.
Thank you again for the opportunity to participate.
I also would be pleased to answer any questions, Madam Chair.
:
Thank you to both of our witnesses.
Just so everybody is aware and can plan accordingly, I want to remind you that we will be going until approximately 12:30 p.m. with the formal meeting with witnesses. If there is an appropriate time to break, we might stop sooner because we have to transition into the subcommittee meeting.
The subcommittee meeting is only for the members of the subcommittee, obviously, so the main members can leave the meeting at that point. We will carry on in camera with a different link and a different password to sign in to the subcommittee meeting. Be prepared for that at around 12:30 p.m.
We will start our six-minute round with Mr. Doherty, please.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for joining us today. We appreciate your time, your experience and your expertise.
I have many questions, so I am looking for short answers, most often a yes or no.
I'll start with Mr. Boegman, please.
Can you table with the committee how many safety audits you passed, please?
:
Thank you, and thank you to both our witnesses. I know elections don't end on election day and that you're both very busy, so we appreciate your time here.
On the theme of political parties, do you think it would be useful for there to be some kind of advisory committee consisting of a member or representative from the registered parties, someone from the elections authority and someone from the public health authority, in order to be able to discuss campaigning methods and the public health risks that can arise?
I believe that they have a body like that in British Columbia. We heard from the chief medical officer in British Columbia that it was a useful body. I'd like to get your own respective opinions about that.
Let's start with Mr. Boda and then go to Mr. Boegman.
:
Yes, you're correct. There is established in our legislation an election advisory committee that is represented by two members from each political party that has members in the House or has campaigned in 50% or more of the seats in the province. There is a legislative requirement to formally consult with this committee on certain things—for example, for recommendations for legislative change—but I also use the body as a forum to discuss other aspects of electoral administration and to share best practices.
During the summer prior to our election call, as part of our readiness activities, I facilitated a meeting of this committee with the provincial and deputy provincial health officers, specifically to talk about campaigning. As Dr. Boda mentioned, I don't have a mandate to oversee the campaign activities, but I felt it important to bring together the parties as well as the medical health experts to talk about the issues and the challenges and how typical campaign activities should be modified to meet the public health requirements. The parties then submitted to the medical health officer their safety plans for commentary.
We also took the information that we had discussed and disseminated it on a broader base to all of the smaller political parties in British Columbia so that everyone was up to speed on what the changes were.
To summarize, I found it very effective and very helpful in discussing the issues and making sure that the information was being shared.
In your opening comments, I think you both alluded to working with specific communities such as first nations communities, but I'm also thinking of other populations that might have challenges when it comes to voting, particularly in a pandemic context, such as people living with disabilities, seniors and students, who may not have all the campus voting options that they're used to.
I'm wondering if you can help explain any risks that you saw that may not have come to fruition in terms of certain populations being disenfranchised during a pandemic election. What are some of those risks, and what were some of the best practices that you found could mitigate those risks?
Maybe we'll start with Mr. Boegman this time, and then go to Mr. Boda.
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This will build from my comments during my opening statement, because I did see that as a particular challenge in providing safe and accessible opportunities to at-risk voters and unique communities.
Many of our first nations communities, as an example, were isolating and continue to isolate, so trying to make contact with them to establish the best way to provide voting and to have a range of accessible options that could meet their needs was essential to be able to provide voting.
It was certainly a challenge, additionally because of the nature of the election in British Columbia. It was a snap election. It was not held on a fixed date, and as a result, it was challenging to get the attention of people in some communities in relation to election plans when it wasn't necessarily the first thing on their horizon. We put a lot of effort into how we were going to administer voting for remote communities.
We were also thinking about situations such as deployed military personnel. There was a warship—I believe it was HMCS Winnipeg—that was at sea when the election was called and was not going to be coming into port before voting day. We were able to use operator-assisted telephone voting, which is in place under the special voting rules in British Columbia, to provide an opportunity for the deployed sailors to cast their ballots.
In summary, it takes a lot of communication and planning, and you need to have a flexible tool kit to be able to meet the unique circumstances of communities and be able to adapt if their situation should change.
:
Thank you to our witnesses today.
I'm going to be focusing mostly with Mr. Boda on my province and the election they just held.
As a little bit of context for my questions, the American election going on right now. I'm sure we're all anxious to see the results from down south. I have confidence in our electoral system here in Canada versus some of the problems that might come out of having a decentralized, state-run election. It will be very interesting tonight to see how that unfolds.
I have a couple of technical questions for Michael Boda, as we're all political geeks here. We all get elected, especially the members on the call here.
A ballot usually has a counterfoil. Maybe some of the members don't remember working past elections as scrutineers, not as candidates. We have an issue in Saskatchewan with the counterfoil, which is part of the ballot. The counterfoil is made out of the same material and looks the same. It's used so that we can reference how many ballots are in the ballot box versus how many are voted. You separate the counterfoil, and then you can count them afterwards.
The problem we experienced in Saskatchewan is that the counterfoil was also put in the ballot box, or was encouraged to be. That's where it ended up. Then when they opened the ballot box to count, I have heard numerous stories of issues with that.
Mr. Boda, would you encourage other elections not to put the counterfoil in the ballot box?
:
I guess there are two points I want to make.
One is in response to your first comment about how well prepared we were, based on our previous experience. I would say that without the previous work that we had done, it would have been extremely challenging to provide a similar level of service in terms of being able to fulfill the requests that we received. The work we had done previously was essential to our ability to provide voting by mail on that scale.
I also think that the familiarity of most British Columbians with the vote-by-mail process was directly related to their experience in previous vote-by-mail events. In 2011 a full provincial referendum on a tax issue was held by voting by mail. In 2015 metro Vancouver, 1.6 million voters, had a mail-based plebiscite on another transportation and tax issue. Then we had a province-wide referendum on electoral reform in 2018. Our lessons learned from those events around the design of the voting package, the design of the instructions and how to minimize error through design were critical.
One example is that the voters were required to provide a shared secret on their certification envelope, which was their date of birth. We'd found previously that if you'd just leave that as a blank field, a voter would often put in the date that they signed their certification envelope. They're used to signing a cheque or anything else, so we pre-populated that based on the first two digits of their year of birth. That made it very evident to them that we were looking for the date of birth there, as opposed to having a free-form field.
You had another question. I'm sorry, I've....
:
We in Saskatchewan have not had the experience with voting by mail that British Columbia has had in the past. They have had four events, kind of practising for this event.
Our numbers have gone from 1% of individuals participating to about 12.5%, so there was a significant increase. We had to change our model because we did not feel we would be able to manage or would have the capacity to run the vote-by-mail operation. We had done significant survey research in advance, looking at what was going on in British Columbia, looking at our survey and looking at the Canadian survey as well.
In our instance, actually, the turnout for vote-by-mail was lower than we had anticipated. That was good, because we had to build centralized capacity for voting by mail, so that was very important.
:
Yes, I did spend a lot of time messaging in advance that it was quite likely that some of our older workers who had traditionally worked for us would not be able to work for us because of COVID-19 and the concerns over a health hazard.
As a result, I focused very much on messaging to the public that we needed workers, so that new individuals who hadn't thought about participating and giving back to their democracy would become involved. We did see, anecdotally, a lower age come forward.
One of the things that we did in advance of the outbreak of COVID-19 was change the legislation so that 16- to 18-year-olds could participate as workers. As a result, we initiated what was called the Youth to the Booth program, and we saw a significant increase in the number of 16- to 18-year-olds who participated.
I had asked for school not to be held on election day, and that was the case across the province. As a result, students were able to participate in this way.
:
We also had a youth at the booth program that we piloted first in 2017 and reused for this election. It focused on using high school students and university students as election workers.
We didn't do any specific outreach of the kind Dr. Boda mentioned. In fact, our experience was that once the election was called, there were many expressions of interest coming in via our website to our central human resources department and into district offices, once they were open, from people who wanted to work as election workers or as office staff during the pandemic, so we did not have challenges in terms of numbers.
Anecdotally, as I mentioned, I believe the numbers skewed younger in terms of percentages. The challenge was more in trying to hire and train all those staff, especially considering our processes and the timeline. We were training them in smaller groups because they had to be distanced and our proper safety protocols had to be followed in organizing the training of election workers.
As you know, under normal circumstances, an election management body's job is not necessarily to get the vote out—at least, not in Saskatchewan. It is to reduce barriers for all voters so that they have access to the ballot. That's something we've worked on for many years in the province.
With COVID-19, however, public health became the primary issue. Our slogan was “Voting safely is our priority”. We were very focused on this point.
Then we had concerns about some groups who might not have been able to participate in the same way because we had to focus so much on making sure the polls were safe. We obviously do a lot of work with first nations. We have 72 first nations across our province. We also worked with accessibility groups, students and seniors, and in that context we were doing everything we could to give them access while still maintaining the priorities of the public health authorities. I can tell you that it was challenging.
The first thing I would think about is our first nations. There were a number of lockdowns, and I was working very closely with the chiefs and their councils in order to determine how we would get the ballots to them if we couldn't have a poll on the first nation. A lot of effort went into that. There's no question that it's difficult in a COVID-19 context.
Thank you to both of our witnesses for being here today, and thank you for your service to Canada.
Since I'm a Saskatchewan boy, I'm going to concentrate all my remarks on Mr. Boda.
Specifically, in your opening comments you mentioned that the voter turnout in Saskatchewan in the most recent election was 52%, which compares favourably to the previous election in 2016, when the voter turnout was 54%. Due to the fact that we were voting in the midst of a pandemic, I suppose that 2% decline in voter turnout was actually a good thing.
However, frankly, I'm extremely concerned, and have been for many years, about the steady decline in voter turnout across Canada. Perhaps I have the benefit of the wisdom of my years in that I can remember back to elections 30, 40 or perhaps even 50 years ago, when it was not uncommon to see election turnout, whether provincially or federally, at 70% or higher.
Particularly in light of the unprecedented number of voters apparently turning out for the U.S. election, what steps do you think could be taken to increase voter turnout, generally speaking? I recognize that it's not the primary mandate of your office to be concerned about voter turnout, but certainly you would have a role to play.
What do you think could be and perhaps should be done in the future to try to increase the level of voter turnout in our province?
:
Frankly, as I mentioned in my comments, I've seen that steady decline over the years. I've always thought it would be a tragedy—and I'm choosing my words carefully here—to, in the future, have as low as 30% or 40% of Canadians electing their national government or provincial government. To me that's just unacceptable.
I think we need to have a concentrated push. I agree with your assessment that we need other stakeholders to become involved, but I would also suggest, Dr. Boda, that it should be, in my opinion at least, a primary function of your office to take a lead role in working cohesively with other stakeholders—other political parties, for example, or civil liberty groups—to increase voter turnout.
Could you give me some more specificity about some of the things that you've done in the past or would like to do in the future to make sure all Canadians and all people within each province of this great country of ours are committed to voting and to recognizing that voting is a fundamental right and privilege that we should observe, and that we should get out to the polls every time and any time an election is called? What would you do specifically?
:
What I would suggest is that we be very careful not to place the responsibility on the election management body for increasing the level of turnout. I think academics and thought leaders across the country will tell you that it would be a losing effort.
However, here in Saskatchewan, my goal and my approach has been to bring in those other stakeholders within civil society. I think we do need to get serious about this, given the level of turnout. I would bring them in and formalize the process, but while the election management body is taking leadership, I would not suggest that it be the only actor in the space. Really, political parties are significant actors in this role, but it goes beyond this; it goes to the academy and it goes to other civil society organizations.
Perhaps a formalization of the process with the goal of increasing turnout would be important, but I would repeat that an election management body just doesn't have the capacity to increase that turnout. It can work on its main mandate, and that is to reduce barriers for all voters.
:
Thank you so much, Madam Chair.
As well, thank you to both of you for being here and for your service to our country.
Your testimony today has been very helpful. It will certainly help us during the process of putting together a report.
Mr. Boegman, in your opening statement I believe that you indicated that it was critical to make sure we educate our voters, our scrutineers and our stakeholders to ensure they have confidence and trust in our electoral process. I'm wondering about your education campaign, your advertising campaign. What did it consist of to make sure we could instill that trust within those individuals?
:
I think it was Dr. Boda who had that statement in his opening comments, but I'd be very happy to just speak at a very high level about our processes.
As I mentioned before, it was a snap election in British Columbia. We did not have the usual opportunity to do outreach and education with the various stakeholder groups during the lead-up.
Right after the election was called, I held a joint press conference with our provincial health officer. Obviously, she was speaking to the safety aspects and the public health aspects, but I was speaking about the process. I was speaking about trying to be as transparent as possible, about what options voters would have and about our safety plans, emphasizing strongly that while voting would be similar, it would also be different, but that the differences would be what people had already come to expect when going to a grocery store or picking up a cup of takeout coffee or that sort of thing.
We really focused initially and then, through our advertising campaign and through our media outreach during the campaign period, on safe voting, as well as being very transparent about communication. It was very different in terms of the large numbers voting by mail, so we made sure that we published the requests we had received and the numbers of packages that had been issued across electoral districts throughout the campaign period.
It was the same thing the day before election day. We held another press conference to describe what the process would be going forward through the final count so that voters, media and political participants were very aware about how the process would unfold and about what information would be available, and when, to make sure they understood the process and therefore had trust in the process.
As I mentioned, “Voting safely is our priority” was part of our advertising campaign from the very beginning. We had the advantage of having an election date set in legislation, unlike in B.C. We began that campaign on August, 15 and it was integrated into everything that we advertised.
That was the formal approach. We also had an informal approach, in that each time I was speaking to stakeholders or to the media, I emphasized the fact that the polls were safe. We did this intentionally, because we had to balance the system to make sure that it wouldn't be undermined. For example, if people were not confident in the polls being safe, they might move over to voting by mail and overwhelm the system to the point that it would shut down. We had done a lot of research in the United States, Australia and South Korea in order to determine how we would most effectively move forward with respect to balancing that system and making sure that people knew they would be safe at the polls.
We also had to make sure it was safe at the polls. We did a lot of heavy lifting in that regard to make sure that we were meeting the standards of the chief medical health officer.
Going off of what Ginette was saying, the fact is that Canada is so vast. Across this country, we're seeing a variety of different things.
I'll start off with Mr. Boegman. I'm from a smaller community. In my riding, I have a community called Aylmer. Right now we've seen a huge number of cases in that area. When we're looking at it, a lot of times we'll talk about places like Toronto, but even smaller communities have seen larger numbers. We know that may cause fear for others to go out.
Did you have any plans on how you would deal with small community outbreaks where there may not be two or three larger centres, so that people could vote? If anything unexpected happened in those last couple of weeks and all of a sudden something changed, how you would respond? Did you have quick action plan for those types of things?
:
Thank you for that question.
We did. As I mentioned in my opening comments, having administrative flexibility as an election body was critical to enabling us to effectively respond to changing circumstances and new outbreaks.
We had three models for voting or for serving isolated communities. One was vote-by-mail, which was available, and no excuses. Anyone could use vote-by-mail. We also targeted certain communities where that entire group could all order vote-by-mail packages collectively, rather than individually, through the website or through our 1-800 number, and we would then send them to those communities.
Having the ability to use operator-assisted telephone voting was extremely valuable in those late-breaking situations. A first nations community went into isolation for an outbreak within the last three days of the campaign period. We were going to be sending a team in there with full protective gear, but with those changing circumstances, we were able to pivot. We used operator-assisted telephone voting to provide those voters with an opportunity to cast their ballot.
Having that administrative flexibility is critical, because there's no time in a fixed election campaign to try to put in place something that is not ready to go.
:
I mentioned the ability to adapt being in our legislation, but not the ability to change. I think that was one of our real challenges, unlike in B.C., where they did allow for telephone voting. I could not introduce telephone voting or any other kind, so there has to be a recognition that there are limitations with respect to how far you can go.
We pushed our system by introducing extraordinary voting, and that was beyond voting by mail, which was the primary source of providing options for people who couldn't go to the polls. We went beyond that with extraordinary voting, which involves using messengers and couriers in order to provide ballots to individuals who couldn't get to the poll, but even that had its limitations, sadly, in a COVID-19 context. That's one thing to think about.
The other thing is that I was working under the premise, with the chief medical health officer, that there would be very few communities that would actually shut down and would be in lockdown. With first nations, that was the situation, but in other communities, that wasn't the context. If people could go to their local grocery store, we, as a critical service—election administration—would be able to continue to deliver the polling location as long as we were following the protocols of the chief medical health officer. This didn't involve a big gathering of people, because we had been spreading out the voting significantly over the course of the electoral process, beginning on August 15 and moving all the way to October 26. As a result, we had prepared in advance and had capacity for an increased number of COVID-19 cases. The number was much higher than it had been at the beginning of the writ period, but we were able to manage that process.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to both of our witnesses for being here today.
We certainly have had the luxury of seeing many provinces go through elections that help us to inform our decisions. Your participation today is extremely valued, in that you are making the job from the federal perspective so much easier, given that you're able to share your experiences.
Mr. Boda, I'll start with you. In a CBC article dated October 24, you said, “In 2016, we had about one per cent of voters who took advantage of the vote by mail process.” “One per cent is around 4,000. In this case, as of [Tuesday], over 40,000 ballot applications had been received.”
Were you referring to mail-in ballot applications there?
I would like you to give us an order of magnitude for the wait time for the in-person vote. Could you tell us what the average wait time is, or, within the shortest and longest range, how many minutes it can be for each voter?
I'd also like to know if, in order to better distribute the vote during the election, you have considered doing something similar to the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit procedure, that is inviting people born between January and April to register for one day and people born between May and August to register for another day, for example. Has this formula been considered?
Perhaps Mr. Boegman could answer first.
:
We also planned our election to spread the vote out over all opportunities, including voting by mail, advance voting and voting on election day.
Our legislation calls for six days of advance voting, including a Saturday and Sunday, from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. each day. Using my powers to adapt the legislation, I added an additional day so that we had seven days, running from the Thursday through the Wednesday preceding voting day, when advance voting was available.
We don't have a formal way of tracking wait times, but anecdotally there were no waits during voting day. We achieved our goal of spreading out voters, especially on that day.
Thank you to all of the participants.
We especially thank our witnesses, Mr. Boegman and Dr. Boda. We really appreciate it. I know that your testimony today will help us in formulating a good report. Hopefully, good recommendations will come out of it. Thank you so much for being here.
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Thank you. The meeting is adjourned.