Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Oct. 6th, 2011

[Marc Mayrand]

The hiring challenge we have is.... Again, we need to recruit around 230,000 people to work on election day. Under the current regime, we have to wait until after day 17--so that's two weeks before polling day--to recruit. The reason for this is that we need to get names from candidates.

What we've observed over time is that there's a declining number of names being referred by candidates. I think it's less than a third of the names that are coming from a candidate.

What's being proposed here is that rather than waiting until day 17, allow us to start recruiting on day 28. That would allow us to better train officials and also to run a campaign to recruit the number of people we need for the election.

In the recommendation, we would be asking riding associations to provide names, if they have volunteers who would like to work on the election, but not wait until the candidate is officially confirmed, pursuant to the legislation, because that takes another 10 days. And that's lost time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you.

Mr. Lukiwski, you have four minutes.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

I was going to go along the line of questioning that Chris has already taken, and that's the repayment of leadership loans and the like. I don't know if this would be a correct term or not, but it appears to be kind of a loophole if four years later there are still unpaid loans. And every party goes through leadership campaigns. The NDP is engaged in one now.

So I think we need some finality on that. I'm glad to hear you agree with that, and I think we have to deal with that as a committee.

But another issue that's in the media right now that we actually raised—which I would consider to be a loophole—is the issue of what occurred at the last NDP convention, where there were some union contributions but on a sponsorship level. Ostensibly they said it was for advertising, and I know advertising is supposed to be fair market value and all of that. I also understand this issue was discussed at the ethics committee at which you appeared recently. Your response was that it is before the Commissioner of Canada Elections. So I understand all that.

I'm asking you your opinion, sir, whether you think that what occurred at the NDP convention, regardless of what happens with the ruling from the Commissioner of Canada Elections, would be the type of loophole that should be closed? Obviously whether it's ostensibly an advertising payment or a sponsorship, it's a lot of money and it goes to the bottom line of the party that organizes that convention. It helps pay their bills.

I would certainly suggest that looks to me like a contribution. Now, what is your opinion on that?

[Marc Mayrand]

As I indicated earlier this week before the ethics committee, the act doesn't approach the issue in that fashion. It basically says what a contribution is, and it allows for commercial transactions to be carried out by parties. And that's the analysis that's going to be done by the commissioner, whether there was a fair market value transaction in relation to allegations of sponsorship or advertising that occurred during certain conventions.

Again, because the act is relatively clear and it's the facts that can complicate matters, if the committee wants to consider it, the alternative would be to altogether prohibit sponsoring or advertising or any other type of transaction where third parties would be seen as funding various aspects of a convention. How broad should that prohibition be extended? I think it raises important issues for consideration of the committee.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Again, I was looking for an opinion from you on this particular case. Given the fact that the Commissioner of Canada Elections is examining this, and given the fact that he has an extensive backlog of other cases he's looking at, I'm not sure when this would be dealt with. Are you in a position to advise or to make recommendations to the Commissioner of Canada Elections on this particular case and on what may happen in the future?

[Marc Mayrand]

No. There is an arm's-length relationship with the commissioner.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Just in your flat-out opinion, would you like to see a complete prohibition of the types of contribution or sponsorships, based on the fact that we have already eliminated all union and corporate donations for political parties and candidates?

[Marc Mayrand]

I think we would have to think about how we would frame such a prohibition. How would we define advertising; how would we define—

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Besides the definitions or the framework around it, I'm just asking for a straight opinion. Based on the fact that it is now prohibited by law for union or corporate donations to be made, should it not then similarly affect political parties and their conventions?

[Marc Mayrand]

Again, it's going to raise a number of issues. I'm afraid I would have to think through it very carefully, because it doesn't stop—

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

If you could think it through and then get back to this committee—

[Marc Mayrand]

Again, currently the regime doesn't stop a party from entering commercial transactions. And I think we would need to be very clear as to what type of transaction, even commercial ones, we would want to prohibit.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Comartin.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you.

Just to pursue that, it seems to me, Mr. Mayrand, if we go down that road then we're going to get ourselves into having to look at third-party involvement in elections as well and the source of those funds for campaigns that are run not by recognized political parties but by third parties, whether that be from the corporate world, unions, non-profits even, who in fact engage in third-party advertising and promotion during the election period.

So if we follow Mr. Lukiwski's suggestions, do we not also have to open that up?

[Marc Mayrand]

I think we already have a regime for third party. They are limited in terms of what they can spend during an electoral campaign. I believe the ceiling is $150,000 at the national level. I'm not sure, but I think there is a regime. Some technical amendments are being proposed there with regard to the third-party regime, but I'm not sure that, again, the situation raised earlier would--

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

I'm sorry, Mr. Mayrand, and recognizing time, the point I was making is that the government side is claiming that we've completely removed corporate and unions from involvement in the electoral process. In fact, in third-party advertising, promotion, and campaigning, they very much are still involved.

[Marc Mayrand]

My understanding of what was being proposed was to prohibit sponsorship that would constitute or could be seen as constituting a contribution.

I see your point.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

I was responding more politically. I really wasn't expecting you to know this.

It's unfair for us to put you in the middle of this, Mr. Mayrand. It was more rhetorical to Mr. Lukiwski than otherwise.

To come back to what we should be considering here, your recommendation to move donations or contributions that can be made for a leadership campaign from a single event to an annual contribution, are you suggesting there be any limit on the number of years? For instance, somebody keeps applying for extensions and has the same contributor or contributors that keep giving money over, say, a three- or a five-year period. Would you contemplate that as being acceptable, or would you put a limit on the number of years that a person could receive additional donations from the same contributor?

[Marc Mayrand]

My recommendation is based on the regime that exists for Canada. There's no limit as to who can make repeated contributions and there's no limit in terms of time.

I will leave it to the committee to advise whether it would be more appropriate to limit the time period there.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

With regard to the loan situation, you've already highlighted this, and I know there are some comments here in the report, but because we're on TV, could you indicate or make any recommendations with regard to how we deal with that? This is in regard to where you've got not so much a loan from an institution, because I think it's easier how we deal with those, as a loan from an individual or a small corporation who hasn't been repaid and we're way beyond the deadline when it should have been paid. How do we deal with that in terms of it not being deemed a contribution? Should it be deemed a contribution? And if it is deemed a contribution, what type of penalty should there be?

[Marc Mayrand]

You will see in the report that we're making a number of recommendations, first of all, to streamline the process. What we're proposing is to give 18 months to candidates or leadership contestants, any entity, to repay their outstanding loans or debts. After that, they would need to seek authorization from the court to be able to carry that out.

We're asking because this is part of the problem today. All the candidate has to do now is notify us that they will not be able to repay within the time period and give us generally a reason, but we don't have any authority to probe the reason or the explanation. If they tell us they have an outstanding loan or a promissory note, we can't challenge that promissory note. So that's part of the issue.

At the end of the day, you will see in the recommendations that we're favouring transparency over finality. We do propose some suggestions with regard to finality, one of them being to go as far as banning a candidate or leadership contestant to run again until those debts have been repaid. That would be a civil remedy, and it raises all sorts of questions too, but we're offering that for consideration by the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, and thank you, Mr. Comartin.

Mr. Reid, four minutes for you, please.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Sure.

Maybe I'll start with the last suggestion. The simple remedy of banning somebody from seeking office again strikes me as being problematic from the point of view of the charter. Frankly, it also instinctually offends my democratic sensibility. It occurs to me that candidates' primary focus is on getting themselves elected, not on managing their books. One can imagine situations pretty easily in which it's really the official agent's fault, but the candidate gets banned from running. Perhaps we should ban the person from becoming an official agent if they can't handle it. That would actually be less legally problematic. I'm not sure it would actually resolve the problem.

What does strike me as resolving the problem to some degree is to just ban loans. Wouldn't that solve the problem of unpaid loans into the future? Everything else I think of has to be draconian. You have to find some way of punishing people so severely that they won't want to do this in the future. It strikes me that you either download the problem onto somebody else.... Candidate X runs for office and overspends the limit—I know I'm shifting from loans here to people overspending their limit—so we now impose a burden on the campaign, which then gets transferred to the riding association or the party. Meanwhile, candidate X has wandered off. They were really in it for one shot, and their only concern was whether or not they got elected. They really don't care about the institution and essentially don't care whether their failure involves additional costs being imposed on somebody else.

We could change it to make it a personal liability, but that would be something that millionaires could laugh off but that would be a brutal imposition on those who are less well off.

Everything you do tends to come back to the same kind of problem, so why not move to the most obvious one and say that you have to raise the money, that you can't borrow money?

[Marc Mayrand]

That suggestion might raise charter issues itself. I think it still goes to the accessibility of the process for candidates.

The other thing is—and I understand there was legislation in the previous Parliament to at least regulate the use of loans to fund the campaigns—if we went to a total ban, we would see whether people resorted to other alternatives. Would they be going underground? I don't know. We have to be careful whenever we set up regulations.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

That could happen anyway. Realistically, if someone makes up their mind to overspend in one way or another or to seek financing that they don't report, that presumably is something that could occur under the status quo, so I don't think you are necessarily going to get this automatic result.

In terms of a charter challenge on banning the ability to borrow money, I can't see how.... It doesn't have the effect of hurting secondary players or people who are outsiders or who have less access to resources or minorities in any particular way, because those who are already the most well heeled have the most plausible case that they'll be able to repay. They are precisely the ones who would be able to get financing anyway. So I can't see on what basis one would challenge its constitutionality.