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Libby on voter fairness

May 28, 2009 Speeches in Parliament

In December 2008, I wrote to Elections Canada’s Chief Electoral Officer to convey my concerns about the many problems voters faced in the last federal election because of changes made to the Elections Act under Bill C-31. The new laws require photo I.D. and restrict the use of vouching for people who aren’t on the voters list. Hundreds of people in East Van had problems because of these changes.

I raised these issues again with the Chief Electoral Officer at the Parliamentary Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. Below is an excerpt from my questions at the Committee.

Parliamentary Committee on Procedure and House Affairs
May 26, 2009

Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to the witnesses and their CEO for coming today.

I want to follow up on an issue I've raised many times before, and that has to do with voter identification. I know you got a number of submissions from MPs. We certainly sent one from Vancouver East. This goes back to Bill C-31. I don't want to lay it at your feet, because you didn't suggest it. But you have to live with it.

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Libby on Afghan MP Malalai Joya

May 22, 2009
rabble.ca
Harper’s hypocrisy: Two years of silence on Malalai Joya from ConservativesOn May 21, 2007, Malalai Joya – the young MP dubbed “the bravest woman in Afghanistan” by the BBC – was unjustly suspended from the Afghan National Assembly. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in Afghanistan on that day and, two years later, has still yet to make any statement about Joya’s mistreatment. “Canada’s participation in this war in Afghanistan has been justified with rhetoric about women’s rights, yet Harper and the Conservatives remained silent when Malalai Joya was ousted from her elected position and again did nothing meaningful when Karzai signed the anti-women provision which sanctioned rape in marriage,” said Parvin Ashrafi, a women’s rights activist with the Iranian Centre for Peace, Freedom and Social Justice and a member of Friends of Malalai Joya -- Canada.
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Libby on government tactics to avoid election

May 21, 2009
The Daily Gleaner
Tories use scheduling tactics to avoid electionOTTAWA - The Conservatives are poised to kill off any chance of a spring election by using the parliamentary calendar to delay a possible non-confidence motion from the Liberals. The Tories have told some of their rivals that they will push back the Liberals' so-called opposition day - their easiest opportunity to table a non-confidence motion - to June 17. Such a move would leave opposition parties with two options: trigger a rare midsummer election with a national vote July 27 at the earliest, or keep the government alive until later this year.
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Libby Speaking on Voter Engagement

April 17, 2009
The Globe and Mail
MPs' Commons voting records now onlineOTTAWA — Want to know how your MP has been voting in the House of Commons? Finding out has just become a whole lot easier. The House of Commons website has launched a feature that allows visitors to see how MPs voted. Friday's change brings Canadian transparency one step closer to the system in the United States — where Congress regularly posts voting results within an hour, and has detailed records going back 20 years.
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Libby calls for transparency in Parliament

February 25, 2009
The Ottawa Citizen
MP's voting records to be available on-lineAfter more than 250 years of parliamentary democracy, Canadians will soon have easy access to a fundamental piece of information about their electoral system: the voting records of the MPs they send to Ottawa. The House of Commons is developing a system to put every MP's voting record on a website, shedding light for the first time on information that has long been buried within Commons records.
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Tories blitz airwaves to promote their cause: Propaganda war fuelled by fear, panic and desperation, counters NDP House leader

December 4, 2008
The Province
Tories blitz airwaves to promote their causeTo save his job and his government, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is expected to suspend Parliament this week while his party blitzes the country with a public-relations campaign aimed at discrediting the notion of a Liberal-led coalition government propped up by the separatist Bloc Québécois.
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Conservative Scandals

April 18, 2008 Question Period

Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP): - Mr. Speaker, Canadians are fed up and appalled at the litany of scandals plaguing the Conservative government. None of them have been resolved. The Quebec advisor is under investigation, the Canadian ambassador to the U.S. is under investigation, the chief of staff to the Prime Minister is under investigation, the Conservative election campaign is under investigation, complete with search warrants. When is the government going to release the results of the five ongoing investigations into Conservative misdeeds? When is it going to release those results?

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