Bill C-23 (Historical)

Fair Elections Act

An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and other Acts and to make consequential amendments to certain Acts

This enactment amends the Canada Elections Act (“the Act”) to require the Chief Electoral Officer to issue interpretation notes and guidelines on the application of that Act to registered parties, registered associations, nomination contestants, candidates and leadership contestants. It also requires the Chief Electoral Officer, on request, to issue a written opinion on the application of provisions of the Act to an activity or practice that a registered party, registered association, nomination contestant, candidate or leadership contestant proposes to engage in.
The enactment also modifies the Chief Electoral Officer’s power under section 17 of the Act so that the power may only be exercised to allow electors to exercise their right to vote or to allow votes to be counted. It also limits the Chief Electoral Officer’s power to transmit advertising messages to electors and requires the Chief Electoral Officer to ensure that any information so transmitted is accessible to electors with disabilities.
The enactment further amends the Act to permit the Chief Electoral Officer to seek approval from parliamentary committees to test an alternative voting process (but where such a pilot project is to test a form of electronic voting, the Chief Electoral Officer must first obtain the approval of the Senate and House of Commons). The enactment also eliminates the mandatory retirement of the Chief Electoral Officer at age 65 and replaces it with a 10-year non-renewable term. It provides for the establishment of an Advisory Committee of Political Parties to provide advice to the Chief Electoral Officer on matters relating to elections and political financing. The enactment also amends the Act to provide for the appointment of field liaison officers, based on merit, to provide support to returning officers and provide a link between returning officers and the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer. It also enables the Chief Electoral Officer to temporarily suspend a returning officer during an election period and provides for the appointment of additional election officers at polling stations. Finally, it empowers registered parties and registered associations, in addition to candidates, to provide names of individuals for election officer positions and changes the deadline for providing those names from the 17th day before polling day to the 24th day before polling day.
The enactment also adds to the Act Part 16.1, which deals with voter contact calling services. Among other things, that Part requires that calling service providers and other interested parties file registration notices with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, provide identifying information to the Commission and keep copies of scripts and recordings used to make calls. That Part also requires that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission establish and maintain a registry, to be known as the Voter Contact Registry, in which the documents it receives in relation to voter contact calling services are to be kept.
The enactment also replaces Part 18 of the Act with a new, comprehensive set of rules on political financing that corrects a number of deficiencies in the Act. Notably, the enactment
(a) increases the annual contribution limits for contributions to registered parties, registered associations, candidates and nomination and leadership contestants to $1,500 per year and by $25 per year after the first year;
(b) increases the amount that candidates and leadership contestants may contribute to their own campaigns to $5,000 and $25,000, respectively;
(c) permits registered parties and registered associations to make transfers to candidates before their nomination is confirmed by the returning officer;
(d) requires a registered party’s auditor to complete a compliance audit in relation to its election expenses return indicating that the party has complied with the political financing rules;
(e) requires registered parties, registered associations and candidates to disclose details of expenses for voter contact calling services in their returns;
(f) reforms the rules governing unpaid claims, making it an offence for claims to remain unpaid after three years and strengthening the reporting of unpaid claims;
(g) reforms the reporting requirements of leadership contestants;
(h) permits higher spending limits for registered parties and candidates if an election period is longer than the 37-day minimum;
(i) includes new rules on political loans; and
(j) defines “capital asset” for the purposes of reporting the distribution cost of advertising or promotional material transmitted to the public using a capital asset, so that the expense is reported as the corresponding rental value for the period in which it was used, and for the purpose of the disposal of the campaign surplus.
With respect to voter identification, the enactment amends the Act to require the same voter identification for voting at the office of the returning officer in an elector’s own riding as it requires for voting at ordinary polls. It also prohibits the use of the voter information card as proof of identity, eliminates the ability of an elector to prove their identity through vouching, allows an elector to swear a written oath of their residence provided that their residence is attested to on oath by another elector, and requires an elector whose name was crossed off the electors’ list in error to take a written oath before receiving a ballot.
The enactment also amends the Act to provide an extra day of advance polling on the eighth day before polling day, creating a block of four consecutive advance polling days between the tenth and seventh days before polling day. It requires a separate ballot box for each day of advance polling and details procedures for the opening and closing of ballot boxes during an advance poll. Finally, it gives returning officers the authority to recover ballot boxes on the Chief Electoral Officer’s direction if the integrity of the vote is at risk.
The enactment also amends the Act to, among other things, establish a process to communicate polling station locations to electors, candidates and political parties, to provide that only an elector’s year of birth is to be displayed on the lists of electors used at the polls, instead of the full date of birth, to permit candidates’ representatives to move to any polling station in the electoral district after being sworn in at any polling station in the district and to establish a procedure for judicial recounts.
The enactment further amends the Act to change how the Commissioner of Canada Elections is appointed. It establishes that the Commissioner is to be appointed by the Director of Public Prosecutions for a seven-year term, subject to removal for cause, that the Commissioner is to be housed within the Director’s office but is to conduct investigations independently from the Director, and that the Commissioner is to be a deputy head for the purposes of hiring staff for his or her office and for managing human resources.
The enactment also amends the Act to add the offence of impersonating or causing another person to impersonate a candidate, a candidate’s representative, a representative of a registered party or registered association, the Chief Electoral Officer, a member of the Chief Electoral Officer’s staff, an election officer or a person authorized to act on the Chief Electoral Officer’s or an election officer’s behalf. It also adds the offences of providing false information in the course of an investigation and obstructing a person conducting an investigation. In addition, it creates offences in relation to registration on the lists of electors, registration on polling day, registration at an advance polling station and obligations to keep scripts and recordings used in the provision of voter contact calling services.
The enactment further amends the Act to provide for increases in the amount of penalties. For the more serious offences, it raises the maximum fine from $2,000 to $20,000 on summary conviction and from $5,000 to $50,000 on conviction on indictment. For most strict liability offences, it raises the maximum fine from $1,000 to $2,000. For registered parties, it raises the maximum fine from $25,000 to $50,000 on summary conviction for strict liability political financing offences and from $25,000 to $100,000 on summary conviction for political financing offences that are committed intentionally. For third parties that are groups or corporations that fail to register as third parties, it raises the maximum fine to $50,000 for strict liability offences and to $100,000 for offences that are committed intentionally and for offences applying primarily to broadcasters, it raises the maximum fine from $25,000 to $50,000.
The enactment amends the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act to authorize the Chief Electoral Officer to provide administrative support to electoral boundary commissions. It amends the Telecommunications Act to create new offences relating to voter contact calling services and to allow the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to use the inspection and investigation regime in that Act to administer and enforce part of the voter contact calling services regime in the Canada Elections Act. It amends the Conflict of Interest Act to have that Act apply to the Chief Electoral Officer. It also amends the Director of Public Prosecutions Act to provide that the Director of Public Prosecutions reports on the activities of the Commissioner of Canada Elections.
Finally, the enactment includes transitional provisions that, among other things, provide for the transfer of staff and appropriations from the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions to support the Commissioner of Canada Elections.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I am. Thank you very much, Chair.

Now having the floor, duly and properly, I'd like to exercise my right to introduce a notice of motion.

That the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, upon receiving an order of reference from the House concerning C-23 amendment to the elections act, initiate a study on this legislation which will include the following:

Hearing witnesses from, but not limited to, Elections Canada, Political Parties as defined under the Canada Elections Act, the Minister of State who introduced the bill, representatives of first nations, anti-poverty groups, groups representing persons with disabilities, groups representing youth advocates and students, as well as specific groups which have been active in society on election rules, including Fair Vote Canada, SAMARA, Democracy Watch and the BC Civil Liberties Union;

And that the committee request to travel to all regions of Canada (Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Ontario, Northern Ontario, the Prairies, British Columbia and the North), as well as downtown urban settings (such as the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver) and rural and remote settings, and that the committee request that this travel take place in March and April 2014;

And that the committee shall only proceed to clause-by-clause consideration of this bill after these hearings have been completed, with a goal to commence clause-by-clause consideration for May 1, 2014.

I will duly deposit that with the clerk.

The only thing I would then have is to afford Monsieur Mayrand an opportunity to say anything that he hasn't yet had a chance to say.

Bilingualism in Canada's Legislative Process

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this is the first time that I have risen on a question of privilege, and I am somewhat saddened to have to do so.

I care deeply about official languages. I rise today in the House to follow up on a recent incident by raising a question of privilege that warrants an official response. I believe that the Speaker is best equipped to deal with this matter.

Questions of privilege are of paramount importance to the democratic institution of Parliament, and the Speaker has ruled on these questions many times. I will try to explain what happened last Tuesday. I believe that the delay in raising this question of privilege is reasonable as this incident occurred just recently.

Members and senators were invited to a technical briefing on Bill C-23, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and other Acts and to make consequential amendments to certain Acts, organized by the Minister of State for Democratic Reform, who is also the member for Nepean—Carleton. As we know, debate on this bill began yesterday and will undoubtedly continue today.

I will try to explain what happened last Tuesday and attempt to convince you, Mr. Speaker, that there is a prima facie breach of parliamentary privilege. I am referring to the privilege of receiving, in both official languages, information about bills introduced in the House when they are drafted and debated.

Briefings are crucial. They help members to prepare before debating and voting on a bill as complex as the one in question, which is 242 pages long. It goes without saying that technical briefings are very important for such massive bills that contain so many elements. It is not mandatory that ministers provide these briefings. However, this one was offered, and we noticed many issues with the interpretation during the briefing.

It seems that no one contacted the interpretation service in advance. The interpreter who arrived had not received the documents he needed to do his job. The interpretation was often inadequate, whether it was from English to French or vice versa. The interpretation from English to French was particularly poor. At times, there was little or no interpretation or it was of poor quality.

Many of the issues with the interpretation surfaced when the members were asking questions. Some of my colleagues were there. When members and senators used the microphone in the middle of the room to ask questions, the interpreter could not hear them. Obviously, he was not able to translate the questions.

That said, the Speaker will have to ascertain the facts to determine, based on the information he obtains or he receives from other members, whether there was a prima facie breach of privilege.

I would like to remind everyone of the classic definition of parliamentary privilege. I am sure you know it, Mr. Speaker. However, I will repeat it for the benefit of my colleagues. I am quoting from Erskine May:

Parliamentary privilege is the sum of the peculiar rights enjoyed by each House collectively...and by Members of each House individually, without which they could not discharge their functions.

This is a fundamental principle of our institution, as I mentioned at the start of my speech. The privileges of each individual parliamentarian as well as the collective privileges of the House of Commons must be respected at all times.

Today, the question of privilege is very important because it is entrenched in the Constitution Act, 1867. Section 133 sets out certain legislative guarantees for parliamentarians when it comes to the use of Canada's official languages. These include the right to use either language in legislative debates, the use of both languages in the official records and minutes of Parliament, and the use of English and French in printing and publishing acts.

While departmental briefings are not specifically covered by the Constitution Act, University of Ottawa law professor André Braën notes that the purpose of section 133 is to grant “equal access for anglophones and francophones to the law in their language” and to guarantee “equal participation in the debates and proceedings of Parliament”.

This leads me to conclude that this protection of official languages in the House is fundamental to ensure equality among all members. It means that those who do not understand French or English can be on the same level as other members.

For example, if we give a technical overview of a bill in English to a member who only understands French without providing interpretation, this member is at a disadvantage in the legislative process compared to others who understand English perfectly. He or she is not getting the same quality of information. I think that is a fundamental issue in Canada's legislative process.

Mr. Speaker, I hope you will conclude this is a prima facie violation of privilege. This Latin expression, which means “on the face of it”, is of course commonly used.

To summarize the events, members attended a briefing on Tuesday morning, at 10 a.m. The session included paper documents that, I must admit, were properly translated. Members had been promised a briefing session to help them better understand this legislation before debating it here. However, they barely had 24 hours to review 240 pages. That is not a lot of time. However, as I said earlier, there is no requirement to provide such briefings.

The officials from the Privy Council Office who were present acted in good faith. They tried several times to correct the situation and accommodate the participants in both official languages, but they failed to do so. Even my colleague from Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, who could perhaps elaborate on her own experience, had to leave during the information session because there was simply no interpretation service. Accordingly, she did not have the same rights as other MPs who understand English, like myself, since I understand it pretty well. Although there was no interpretation service, I understood what was being said in English. I can understand it pretty well, but not as well as I would have understood the French.

This has been examined in various cases, including Att. Gen. of Quebec v. Blaikie et al. Chief Justice Deschênes of the Superior Court of Quebec upheld the obligation to use English and French at the same time throughout the legislative process. Any disruption of that practice violates both the letter and the spirit of section 133. This substantiates my comments.

In October 2013, my hon. colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley also raised this question regarding Bill C-4, the budget implementation bill, for which a similar information session was held for the members. Unfortunately, the interpretation services were inadequate. If I remember correctly, there was no interpretation at all. As a result, the meeting was cancelled and held the next day. In that case, the breach of privilege was avoided.

In this particular case, which is very similar, there was a major difference that might prove there was a breach of parliamentary privilege. The meeting continued despite the fact that the interpretation service was having a lot of trouble. As I said earlier, one MP even had to leave because of the poor quality of the service. I am not saying that the people there were not acting in good faith; they tried to make the situation better, but it did not work.

The bill in question deals with electoral reform, and it is very important to Canadians. The least the government could have done was to provide a technical briefing in both official languages to ensure all the members of the House are on a level playing field when they have to debate the issue. That was obviously not done.

I think a situation like that is unacceptable because it prevents parliamentarians from doing their jobs and fully participating in debate. Mr. Speaker, I would like you to make a ruling confirming that this is in fact a breach of the privileges of members of Parliament.

I would be willing to move an appropriate motion if you ask me to do so. Mr. Speaker, I look forward to your decision on the prima facie breach of parliamentary privilege that may have taken place last Tuesday.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair, I appreciate your intervention. I think it helps clarify the point I was making, and that is that, since the only thing left of the two pieces is any changes, the question for us is whether we should take the time of this committee, recognizing we've got other work, to look at a part of a bill that is being overhauled in a major way under Bill C-23 that either will or could capture that issue there. That's why I'm suggesting we should fold it into Bill C-23, but we can have that discussion.

But the issue about Mr. Bezan is over. We've heard from the person who raised the first concern that it's now concluded. I don't know what more there would be for us to do. We have met the Speaker's request, and I'll say again, on the second point, the only thing left for us to determine is whether we, as PROC, want to continue reviewing that legislation in light of this case and make any recommendations, or whether we want to then just say that this matter will be subsumed by Bill C-23, which, coincidentally, is coming to this committee anyway.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

—Mr. Mayrand has now confirmed that indeed the government's contention that the matter's resolved is true. Because it was Mr. Mayrand's letter that started all this, I've asked Monsieur Mayrand if are there any outstanding issues, and I'm advised by him that the matter is resolved. Therefore, as far as I can see, Chair, unless someone can point out to me what unresolved work we have, the instant case in front of us is resolved and we can put “done” on that file.

Then what's left is the question of any potential changes that we might want to make to the legislation as a result of this, and we need to determine whether we're going to do that on our own and continue, and offer a resolve to the Speaker or recognize that these matters are touched on in Bill C-23, and let this be subsumed by that discussion.

To me, what's left to be resolved, Chair, is the issue of any recommendations or changes and when we might look at those. But as to the case that's in front of us, it's old.

Second Reading

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I notice that the member is celebrating the Quebec Winter Carnival and is wearing the appropriate attire today for the occasion. I compliment him on that. It seems as though we often have exchanges in the House of Commons, which I always enjoy.

I find it unfortunate that the member and the New Democratic Party do not seem to see the value in some of the things we are talking about doing here, such as protecting voters from rogue calls with a mandatory public registry; giving more independence to the Commissioner of Canada Elections; cracking down on voter fraud; and simply making the rules for elections clearer, more predictable. and easier to follow. These measures would make the electoral process more efficient, make it harder for people who seek to break the elections rules, and make the electoral process more attractive and feasible for the honest people looking to take part in democracy, whether candidates or voters.

I find it unfortunate that the NDP will not support measures that would make our election laws fairer, simpler, clearer, and more transparent, and that would give better customer service to voters. These all seem to be very laudable goals. The fair elections act would go a long way to achieving all of them, and so it is unfortunate that the NDP is not supporting them.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill C-23, Fair Elections Act, which has been introduced by the Minister of State for Democratic Reform.

In the most recent Speech from the Throne, our government committed to bringing forward changes to Canada's election laws that would clearly uphold the integrity of our voting system.

The fair elections act would make our laws tough, clear, and easy to follow. It would make life harder for election lawbreakers and put the focus back on honest people taking part in democracy.

The bill implements 38 of the Chief Electoral Officer's past recommendations, and it also brings to light concerns raised by Canadians, by various groups and think tanks, Elections Canada, and parliamentarians.

The fair elections act would ensure that everyday citizens are in charge of democracy by putting special interests on the sidelines and rule breakers out of business. The bill also makes it harder to break elections law. It closes loopholes to big money and imposes new penalties on political impostors who make rogue calls. It empowers law enforcement with sharper teeth, a longer reach, and a freer hand.

The fair elections act would give more independence to the Commissioner of Canada Elections, allowing him or her control over their staff and their investigations, empowering him or her to seek tough new penalties for existing electoral offences, and providing more than a dozen new offences to combat big money, rogue calls, and fraudulent voting.

Let me expand a bit on some of those tough penalties and new offences. What the fair elections act proposes is tougher criminal penalties for elections offences, such as setting a maximum fine of $20,000 on summary conviction, or imprisonment for up to one year; and $50,000 on indictment, or imprisonment for up to five years, for the following offences: obstructing an election officer, voting more than once, offering a bribe, making false statements to have a person deleted from the register of electors, or applying for a ballot under a false name.

It is also very important to note that candidates or official agents who are convicted of these offences would be prohibited from being a member of the House of Commons or holding any office in the nomination of the crown or of the Governor in Council for seven years.

It increases the maximum fines for the more serious election offences, such as taking a false oath, or making a false or erroneous declaration to election officials. It increases the maximum fine for all strict liability offences, such as failure to appoint an agent or an auditor. It increases the maximum fine for third parties that are groups or corporations that fail to register as a third party.

It also increases the maximum fines for offences applying primarily to broadcast corporations, such as advertising during a blackout. It increases penalties for political financing offences that do not require intent, and also severely increases those offences, such as failure to provide a quarterly return or a financial transactions return.

It also provides for a number of new offences, which I will highlight. One of them relates to registration on the list of electors. These are things like compelling, inducing, or attempting to compel or induce, any other person to make a false or misleading statement relating to their qualification as an elector. It relates to political financing rules, such as knowingly making indirect loans, or registration on polling day, such as registering when not qualified to vote.

It relates to non-compliance with the proposed voter contact registry, such as failing to keep the scripts and recordings used in the provision of voter contact calling services. I will focus on some of those provisions in a little more detail further on in my speech.

It also proposes new offences relating to voter deception. There are actually no provisions in the current act that would make it an offence to impersonate political agents or elections officials. The bill would amend the Canada Elections Act to add the offence of impersonating or causing another person to impersonate a candidate, a candidate's representative, a representative of a registered party or registered association, the Chief Electoral Officer, a member of the Chief Electoral Officer's staff, an election officer, or a person authorized to act on behalf of the Chief Electoral Officer.

There are some very serious new provisions in the bill in relation to getting tough on those who would look to cheat and defraud our election system.

It also cracks down on voter fraud by prohibiting vouching or voter information cards from being used as acceptable forms of ID. The Neufeld report, which was commissioned by Elections Canada relating to administrative deficiencies at the polls in the most recent 2011 election, indicated that there were irregularities in 25% of the cases where vouching was used.

What the fair elections act would do, as I indicated already, is that it would end vouching and require that Elections Canada communicate what forms of ID would be accepted at polling locations, so that voters would know before they head to the polls what they need to bring.

As I have already said, it would prohibit the use of voter information cards as a form of acceptable identification. However, it would very clearly outline what forms of ID are acceptable. This would allow Canadians to continue to have 39 authorized forms of ID to use when voting. There is a very comprehensive list of ID options that could be brought to the polls. That would be very clearly communicated to voters so they are well aware of what those forms are for identifying themselves in order to exercise their voting rights.

It would also make the rules for elections clearer, more predictable, and easier to follow. Complicated rules can often bring unintentional breaches. Unfortunately, that could intimidate people from taking part in democracy. That is why the fair elections bill would make the rules for elections more clear, more predictable, and easier to follow.

In order to follow the rules, parties must know what they are. That means the fair elections act would seek to ensure that the Chief Electoral Officer provides a 30-day comment period to members of the advisory committee of political parties that would be established under the act before publishing a proposed guideline or interpretation note.

Following a comment period, an additional 30 days would then be provided, in terms of notice for regulated entities, of the new interpretation. After both the comment and the notice period, which is a total of 60 days, the CEO would then formally issue the guideline or the interpretation note. It would also publish a proposed advance ruling or written interpretation of any question related to the Canada Elections Act within 45 days of a request from a registered party, and then provide a 30-day notice period before it is formally issued as well.

The advance ruling would be issued by the CEO and would be binding on him and on the commissioner. This is very important. It would also maintain an online registry, which would be available to the public, of the complete text of final guidelines and interpretation notes that have been issued, as well as of any written opinions containing advance rulings that have been issued. That would allow access by parties and individuals of interpretations and guidelines so they could be applied equally and fairly to all involved.

The fair elections act would also ban the use of loans that have been used in the past to evade donation rules. It would repeal the ban on premature transmission of election results, which would uphold free speech. It would provide better customer service to voters and establish an extra day of polling.

In the case of disagreements over election expenses, it would allow an MP to present the disputed cases in the courts and to have judges quickly rule on it before the CEO seeks the MP's suspension.

It would also protect voters from rogue calls, with a mandatory public registry for mass calling, prison time for impersonating elections officials, and increased penalties.

What I will do now, Mr. Speaker, is devote the remainder of my time to describing these particular measures, beginning with the creation of a registry for voter contact services.

In respect to telemarketing and automated dialing that would take place during an election period, the fair elections act would take the very important step of creating a new registry for voter contact services. The bill would require registration with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the CRTC. Telephone service providers that are engaging in voter contact, or any other person or group engaging in the use of telephone service for voter contact purposes, would be required to register in the voter contact services registry contained at the CRTC. Moreover, any person or group using internal services to make automated calls for voter contact purposes, would also have to register with the CRTC under this legislation.

The bill would require any person or group using a telephone service provider for voter contact purposes, or making automated calls for these purposes, to have their identity verified by providing identification to both the CRTC and to the telephone service provider. Third parties who are groups or corporations would have to register with the CRTC for any calls that they make as well.

In addition, the bill provides that registrations would be made publicly available 30 days after polling day, and that registrations must be available to the CRTC officials within 48 hours of a call being made for voter contact purposes. The bill would also require recordings of messages that are sent by using automated calls and scripts of live messages used by telephone service providers to be kept for one year from the date of the election. The dates of these calls would also have to be maintained in that registry.

In addition to the strict requirements of the new registry, the disclosure requirements for political parties, candidates, and electoral district associations with respect to expenses incurred for voter contact services by telephone would also be strengthened. In particular, the bill provides a new obligation for political entities to specifically identify expenses for voter contact services by telephone, and to include the name of the company and the amount of the costs incurred on their election returns. The proposed amendments would enhance transparency and consistency in reporting such expenses, and would have the further advantage of assisting with enforcement of the Canada Elections Act.

To encourage compliance with the rules, the fair elections act would strengthen the penalties regime by first increasing, by 10 times, the penalties for preventing or attempting to prevent a voter from voting. Penalties for doing so would increase from $2,000 currently, to $20,000 on summary conviction; and from $5,000 currently, to $50,000 on indictment. It would also increase the maximum fines for the more serious election offences, such as taking a false oath or making an erroneous declaration to election officials, again, from $2,000 to $20,000 on summary conviction, and from $5,000 to $50,000 on indictment.

The fair elections act also proposes tough new offences, including a new offence for impersonating election officials or political entities. It would be an offence for a person to falsely represent that they are a candidate, a representative of a candidate, a representative of a party or a riding association, a chief electoral officer, Elections Canada, or any other election officer. The maximum penalty for this offence, if prosecuted on indictment would be $50,000, five years in prison, or both. This is in line with other increased penalties provided for in the bill. It would be considered a corrupt practice if the offence was committed by a candidate or an official agent. A person who is found guilty of a corrupt practice would be prohibited for seven years from being elected or sitting in the House of Commons, or holding any office in the nomination of the crown or the Governor in Council.

In addition, the fair elections act proposes other new offences, including for providing false information to an investigator, or obstructing an investigation, and for non-compliance with the proposed voter contact registry, including for providing false information or failing to provide identification when registering.

I would also note that the fair elections act proposes a further measure to assist elections officials with their important work relating to the potential misuse of automated telephone calls. It will clarify in law that neither Elections Canada nor elections officers make unsolicited calls to voters.

At this point, it would be appropriate for members to recall that on March 29, 2012, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs heard the Chief Electoral Officer, Marc Mayrand, on allegations of misuse and abuse of auto-dialed calls during the 41st general election. During that meeting, the Chief Electoral Officer expressed the view that the enforcement mechanisms provided for by the Canada Elections Act could be improved. That is precisely what the fair elections act would achieve.

I would also like to quickly highlight the fact that the fair elections act would provide for better customer service for voters. Many people in the House and elsewhere have often expressed their concern about our voter turnout levels. One of the things that most non-voters told Elections Canada in its survey was that there were practical reasons preventing them from voting in the last election. For example, 17% said it was due to the fact they were travelling; 13% said it was their work or school schedule; 10% said they were simply too busy; and 7% cited lack of information. That is just to name a few of the reasons. I believe that better customer service would help to remove some of those practical obstacles expressed by voters.

For example, one of the things the fair elections act would do is to provide more voting days by increasing the advance polling days. It would help to reduce congestion at the polls by providing for more elections officers to be appointed, and by appointing liaison officers to facilitate communication between his office and returning officers in the riding. The act would also allow registered parties and electoral district associations, rather than simply candidates, to recommend names for elections officer positions at the polls, and those nominations would be required to be earlier to allow more time for training, which hopefully would allow better customer service and more efficient voting at the polls.

Obviously our government is fully committed to addressing the current shortcomings in the Canada Elections Act that stand in the way of cracking down on the misuse of mass calls. The proposed changes I have mentioned are significant measures that would help clean up such alleged abuses and prevent potential future abuses. The proposed new rules would be enhanced by the additional requirement to outline expenses incurred for voter contact services by telephone, and by strengthened enforcement of the Canada Elections Act through strong penalties for violations of the act, and by tough new offences. Additionally, our government's proposed voter contact registry would be an essential tool to investigate any telephone calls that attempt to obstruct the electoral process, and would comply with the March 2012 House of Commons motion calling for action on this very subject. These important measures represent a clear move forward in strengthening Canada's election system by helping to ensure that elections officials have the necessary tools to both investigate effectively and to punish appropriately any abuses of automated telephone calls in our electoral processes.

The initiatives in this bill would also encourage greater compliance with the rules of the electoral regime, thereby helping to restore any loss of confidence in the integrity of our elections system.

For the reasons I have described today, I believe that the reforms proposed in this legislation would have positive effects for our electoral system, and I call on all members to support the swift passage of the fair elections act.

Bill C-23--Notice of time allocation motion

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to advise the House that an agreement could not be reached under the provisions of Standing Order 78(1) or Standing Order 78(2), with respect to the second reading stage of Bill C-23, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act and other acts and to make consequential amendments to certain acts.

As a result, under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice that a minister of the Crown will propose at the next sitting a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours, for the consideration and disposal of proceedings at the said stage.

Fair Elections Act

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Minister of State (Democratic Reform)]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to answer a question of the member's Liberal colleague from Kingston and the Islands, who asked whether the bill would address the impersonation of a candidate or a candidate's representative. I am happy to report that, in fact, the fair elections act would create a new offence for impersonating a candidate or a candidate's representative. Likewise, it would be an offence to impersonate a registered party or association. Of course, as the member for Kingston and the Islands acknowledged, it would be an offence under the fair elections act to impersonate Elections Canada. That answers the question the member for Kingston and the Islands posed earlier to the NDP critic.

As for the speech that the Liberal critic just presented, he expressed a concern that there might be a barrier of information flow between Elections Canada and the newly independent commissioner, who would be the law enforcement watchdog. I want to assure him that we thought very carefully about that problem and that is why there is nothing in the fair elections act that would prevent Elections Canada from sharing information with the independent commissioner or to prevent the commissioner from sharing information with Elections Canada. There would be no barriers to communication between them, merely a separation of power between them.

My question to the Liberal critic is this. What additional legal assurances would he need inserted in the bill to give him comfort on this point?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, first of all I would like to thank the House and all the members within it for elevating debate over the past hours. As my colleague for Kingston and the Islands has pointed out, there have been some very interesting facts put out there, and it has been a very good debate. We have talked a fair amount about how we would fix the problems we have seen in the news headlines over the past three or four years and how we would address these issues. I want to thank all members, including the Minister of State for Democratic Reform.

I want to start with a summary of what the bill proposes, as it is quite extensive in many respects.

Bill C-23 would protect voters from rogue calls and impersonation. There would be mandatory public registry for mass calling, prison time for impersonating election officials, and increased penalties for deceiving people out of their votes.

The bill would give law enforcement sharper teeth and allow the commissioner to seek tougher penalties for existing offences. The commissioner would have full independence, with control of his or her staff and of investigation, and a fixed term of seven years so that he or she could not be fired without cause.

The bill would also crack down on voter fraud by prohibiting the use of vouching and voter information cards as replacements for acceptable ID. Studies commissioned by Elections Canada demonstrate mass irregularities in the use of vouching and high rates of inaccuracy on voter information cards.

According to legislation, there are 39 forms of identification. However, a question earlier talked about how some identification does not have the required information on it, such as addresses. We have experienced this problem in some rural areas, and many seniors especially do not have the right amount of information. I am hoping that the government would accept an amendment that would allow the practice of some sort of vouching in an official manner to take place. I guess we will have to study that in committee, if indeed the bill manages to get to that stage.

The bill would also make rules easy to follow for all, which was pointed out earlier as being in section 18. The commissioner has had to sign 15 different compliance agreements with those who have breached election laws, some due to honest mistakes. Members of all parties have noticed that the rules can be unclear.

Complicated rules bring unintentional breaches and intimidate everyday people from taking part in democracy. As my hon. colleague pointed out, this relates to youth engagement, those with disabilities, and others.

Of course, in this particular case, there are people who find themselves disenfranchised from the entire system of voting and feel that their vote is not necessary or does not mean much in the long run, but I would say to the government that we need to come up with a plan to bring out the best in our democracy, which is to say that we need to bring up the turnout rate.

It used to be high many years ago. I have to admit that in my own riding, the voter turnout was at a dismal 44%, which was the second-lowest in the country. We managed to finish just ahead of the Fort McMurray area. That is often the case where we have transient workers.

In many respects, I agree with what the minister is saying, because we need to reach out to transient workers who may not be aware that they are able to vote in other ridings. The facilities are there for them to do that. The only problem is that some of these people work in oil fields and that sort of thing. However, they can, even in their own ridings, vote at any time whatsoever. They can go to the returning officer and do that at any point. That, to us, proved to be the most effective way to communicate to people who travel a lot, and not just to the oil fields in western Canada, but those who work in oil and natural gas fields around the world.

The bill would also increase the level of donations from $1,200 to $1,500. I am not really sure if that would go a long way, other than allow some people who can afford it a little more room. I do not see anything wrong with the measures that were currently in place, the $1,200 and the incremental formula that was already there. In the meantime, I must say that with the personal contributions, there are some positive steps in the right direction when it comes to the election and the leadership.

The Commissioner of Canada Elections is the one that has been causing some headaches within our party as to how we are deal with the independence that is being bandied about by the government. I would like to talk about how this works in the sense of the commissioner himself.

Several of the requests that the commissioner made to Elections Canada were basically that he wanted to have the power to go to a judge to get people to comply with the seeking out of information. At the time, we thought that it was a reasonable thing to ask, given what has happened over the past little while, certainly when it comes to some of the byelections that we have witnessed and the general election before that.

However, I am not certain whether the Commissioner of Canada Elections' investigative tools have been increased within this, so I do not know if the effectiveness has increased for that particular person. That concerns us. If we make this person independent, that is one thing, but if we do not give the increased ability to seek out the information he is looking for in order to conduct his investigation, all we are really doing is shuffling the offices. I will get to that part in just a moment.

The commissioner did endorse the recommendation made by the CEO that the Commissioner of Canada Elections be given the power to apply to a judge for an order to compel any person to provide information that is relevant to an investigation, which is what I just spoke of. There was some debate today as to whether he does have those tools or not. Throughout the course of this debate, I hope that more light will be shone on that subject and that it will perhaps come up again in this debate at second reading.

Regarding the lack of flexibility when dealing with the conventions of the Canada Elections Act, the commissioner suggested that more tools are needed to deal with the breaches of the Canada Elections Act that are too severe to be handled through compliance agreements but not serious enough to be dealt with through prosecutions. The commissioner pointed to recommendations contained in the CEO's report on the 40th general election: candidates and political parties that exceed their authorized expense limits should see a dollar-for-dollar reduction in their elections expense reimbursement, and when a candidate or political party fails to file a report by the applicable statutory date, they should forfeit up to 50% of their nomination deposit.

All of this is to say that some of this stuff has been addressed, and we applaud the minister for putting these measures into the bill.

However, let me just go back to one of the key tenets of this, which is the ability of the commissioner to do his or her job. In this case, it is his job. If we look at the chain of command and look at the commissioner himself, by this route, through Elections Canada, he is ultimately answerable to Parliament.

A flag went up for me when I looked at all of the testimony and news stories that dealt with election irregularities and possible and actual violations over the past three or four years. A lot of this work was discovered by auditors. A lot of the violations were discovered by people on the ground within Elections Canada. What they were able to do was advise the commissioner on a continual basis because they were within that sphere. They simply went down the way and told the commissioner what was going on. The commissioner, if given the right tools, would have been able to investigate that further, we believe, in a more effective way. Separating those people and putting them in a different office altogether, in public prosecutions, makes the gap just a little too wide for the information-sharing process that was taking place. That is what I fear.

I know the government will argue that these people had the ability to go to whomever they wished, but being together in that one area certainly would have allowed a freer flow of information that would have allowed the commissioner to do a better job, given that he had the tool that was suggested about compliance.

When it comes to public prosecutions, they are ultimately answerable to cabinet, so certainly we have reservations about that as well. I am sure the minister will address that also. I am hoping he will convince us it is not necessarily the case.

What is causing a great unease among us is the ability of the commissioner to do that investigation. If sharper teeth are required to do an effective job, I am not sure the teeth the Conservatives are seeking would be obtained within this legislation.

A code of conduct for political entities was also suggested some time ago, after the 41st general election. Then there is the idea of extension of the application of privacy protection principles to political parties and new requirements governing telecommunications with electors. If I could go to that point for just a moment, the robocalls, as we affectionately call them around here, have been a topic of discussion for quite some time. They have certainly been a topic of derision for some time as well.

Judge Mosley said in his judgment, seemingly, that it was obvious to him that the origins of some of these robocalls that are called into the question of nefarious activities point to the database that is used exclusively by the Conservative Party, known as the CIMS database. There is no relation.

I want go back to the robocalls situation. We feel some of the measures will be quite effective, and we applaud the minister for them. As an example, the bill says:

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission shall, on the request of the Commissioner, disclose to the Commissioner any document or information that it received under this Division that the Commissioner considers necessary for the purpose of ensuring compliance with and enforcement of this Act, other than this Division.

We agree. We are into an electronic age. Robocalls, as we call them, have proliferated in every aspect of society, not just politics but in commerce and marketing as well. Therefore, the legislation needs to keep up to standard. A lot of this goes a certain way, so we commend the Conservatives for that.

Every person or group that enters into an agreement with a calling service provider under which voter contact calling services are provided shall keep, for one year after the end of the election period,

(a) a copy of each unique script used in live voice calls [...] (b) a recording of each unique message conveyed by an automatic dialing-announcing device [...]

This is great for the investigative tools necessary in order to cut down on this practice. We commend that as well. It is certainly overdue as far as updated legislation is concerned.

I also want to talk about contributions. I touched on this point briefly earlier, the $1,200 to $1,500, but also, subject to proposed subsection 405(4.2), contributions that do not exceed $5,000 in total would permitted to be made by a candidate for a particular election out of their own funds for their own candidacy, and for leadership it would be up to $25,000. Some of this is necessary to be updated.

The bill also says that contributions made under proposed subsection 405(4.2) do not have the effect of limiting the amounts that the candidate or leadership contestant, as the case may be, may contribute under proposed subsection 405(1) to the other candidates.

I would say that updating this legislation is necessary. I do not know why the contribution limit went up to $1,500. I think the current regulations and rules in place certainly do suffice.

I talked about the commissioner and about some of the other instances that took place over the past little while that raise alarm over how we need to fix our system. The in-and-out scandal took place. The Conservative Party admitted to election overspending and submitting inflated election returns and had to pay the maximum fine under the Elections Act. There were fraudulent election robocalls, which I just touched upon.

We know of individuals such as Peter Penashue, formerly of this House, who also over-contributed. Whether he was actually asked to leave or quit before all that happened, there was a huge fuss about it altogether. He did not seem to know the rules of the game.

How do we get out there and tell society that we want to explain to people the rules of how to function in elections when we have trouble bringing that information to our own candidates? It is somewhat ironic, but nonetheless that is water under the bridge, as some people say.

As for increased fines for Elections Act violations, Liberals are supportive of raising the fines for violations of the Elections Act. My hon. colleague from Beauséjour put forward legislation in the House that did just that and was voted on, Bill C-424, so we agree with that as well.

One of the other things we are in agreement with is the additional advance polling day. I live in a rural riding, as I mentioned, and a lot of people commute back and forth. I commute within my own riding to vote, which is two or three hours away, and the extra day is certainly advantageous. Of course, there is the premature transmission of election results, which is also necessary given the fact that everybody has the Internet, if I could use a colloquial expression.

In summary, there is a lot of unease about this bill, despite some of the elements of it that Liberals fully support. For us, the unease is created from things such as what is happening at Elections Canada, with the commissioner in particular; and other measures within this bill certainly cause unease to the point where accepting this bill in principle would be difficult for us to do.

I hope that over the course of the next little while the debate will be elevated to the point where, if this bill passes, is accepted in principle, and goes on to committee, the government would be accepting of some of the amendments we have discussed here today. Until we reach that point, I am thankful for this time.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-23, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and other Acts and to make consequential amendments to certain Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Minister of State (Democratic Reform)]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for his very good speech. I look forward to working with him in committee on studying the measures contained in the fair elections act.

The national youth survey indicates that close to half of Canadians aged 18 to 34 knew of no other way to vote than to go to the polling station on election day. That means that half of all young people are unaware of the voting methods that are available before election day, when many of them are working or at school.

Why does the hon. member not support the measure we are proposing, which would require Elections Canada to provide more information on voting methods to all Canadians?

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

That is a very good point. I think the former chief electoral officer is, unfortunately, an extraordinarily easy grader.

All of Canada knows that the imperative behind this bill eventually appearing and the central challenge was to rein in the kinds of election fraud discovered in 2011. There were the fraudulent election calls and other kinds of fraud that we know occurred in 2006 with what we called the in-and-out affair.

Instead, the Conservatives, through the minister, launched a kind of Alice-in-Wonderland detour by turning this exercise into some kind of indirect and sometimes rather pointed flogging of the institution that has been trying to rein in electoral fraud, against considerable Conservative Party resistance and manipulation. That includes Elections Canada and the Chief Electoral Officer, with his associate, the Commissioner for Elections Canada.

This whole exercise started with the unanimous vote in March 2012, and now that trajectory has either been submerged, or to some extent hijacked, in order for the Conservative Party, through the government, to start to portray itself as a victim of a non-partisan agency. The metaphor of “not wearing a team jersey” was carefully chosen and has been repeated by the minister. We all know what is intended by that. We all know the tarnishing of the institution that was intended by that, for Elections Canada and in particular the Chief Electoral Officer. Marc Mayrand and Elections Canada are being portrayed as non-neutral players on some team versus being the neutral referees that we all know they are. This inversion then drives the so-called logic behind so much of what is in Bill C-23.

On top of that, there is a second, rather topsy-turvy move in Bill C-23. After years of examples of fraud and constant brushes between the law and the Conservative Party—-when I say the law, I mean Elections Canada as the embodiment of seeking to enforce the law—what we get from the minister and the government in the bill is a focus on ordinary Canadians as somehow the main concern when it comes to fraud. The government has removed two means of voter identification.

The first is the voter's ID card, which can be presented along with another piece of identity, which has been developed on a kind of rolling pilot project basis by Elections Canada to enfranchise more Canadian voters. The second one is the practice of vouching, for which there were 100,000 Canadians in the last election. Effectively, the government wants to lure, or to some extent sucker, the press and Canadians into thinking this is somehow about fairness and preventing fraud.

This has to be called what it is: voter suppression. These tactics have been building over the past decade, since around 2006, when changes to the law made it harder and harder to prove one has the right to vote in our country. Colleagues of mine will provide overviews of this trajectory and also examples of real-world impacts and who would be disproportionately excluded by these changes. Voter suppression is the result, but I personally will need to be assured that this is not also, frankly, the intention, an intention informed by the deliberate strategies patented south of the border by the Republican Party.

A third feature of this upside-down world is how the government engages in the kind of night equals day, war equals peace, doublespeak by claiming that it gets big money out of elections with Bill C-23, when there are cumulatively a number of measures that keep big money in play in ways that are likely to benefit one party most. I will leave it to everyone's imagination to know which party I am referring to.

Fourth, Orwell would be smiling now—maybe smiling with a grimace, but smiling—if he were listening to the minister talking about adding “enforcement teeth” to the Canada Elections Act, when the single most important measure requested by both the commissioner and the Chief Electoral Officer, the power to compel testimony in the face of delay and recalcitrant witnesses, was omitted.

Mr. Speaker, let me now turn to more detail on these very general points, all the while noting, and this is important, that my colleagues, in the days and weeks to come, will deeply elaborate on every one of these points. The caucus is extraordinarily engaged with the problems relating to this bill, and a lot of expertise will be brought to bear that I hope the minister will listen to and that will inform the committee stage.

I will first comment on my concern and claim that the result is voter suppression. We have to know of, and put into context, an active effort by Elections Canada, which in the last election used voter identification cards in a number of different contexts to try to increase enfranchisement of people in our society who, as the minister rightly pointed out, tend not to vote in greater numbers than others: aboriginal voters on reserves, youth on campuses, and seniors in residences. The method that is now being abolished, the voter identification cards along with another piece of ID, was used successfully in this experiment with an extraordinary amount of positive feedback.

I will move on to the vouching issue. I think that the minister wants to tap into some intuitive problem Canadians might have with one person vouching for another. However, we live in a society that would not function without certain bonds of trust and a degree of procedural stricture.

What happens with vouching is this. There were 100,000 people vouched for in the last election. A person who is already confirmed as a legitimate voter at the poll in question may vouch for one person. If that vouching is believed by the election-day worker, then that person may vote.

Here is an example. Two parents show up with two teenagers, who in a previous election were aged 16 and 17, but when the last election came, they were missed by the enumeration. That is a process that almost does not exist any more. They show up at the poll and do not have the right kind of ID, or may well have it but have not brought it with them. Each parent can vouch for one of the teenagers, who are at least age 18 at this point in the story, and both teenagers can vote. It happens a lot with seniors, persons with disabilities, and other groups.

The minister wants us to understand that somehow or other vouching, and some of that evidence came out of the Etobicoke Centre case, suggests that irregularities are kissing cousins to some kind of massive fraud, or that there is a serious danger of it. However, there is no evidence of that. Even the 25% figure of irregularities does not come close to proving that the people who were not sworn in properly or for whom the vouching was not done properly did not have the right to vote. The Supreme Court of Canada emphasized exactly that. It will be important for us to hear from expert witnesses on that at committee stage. Indeed, I would love to see any reports, or other information I do not know about, tabled by this minister as real evidence that there is a problem.

Here is an example of why I think there likely is not a problem. In 2006, before we went to the newest system, which requires more ID than ever before, there was a controversy. One party claimed that because 11,000 people had registered to vote on election day in the riding of Trinity—Spadina, it somehow meant that something was amiss, that there had to have been all kinds of problems, and that surely a bunch of those people could not have been valid voters. Elections Canada took that concern seriously. It hired a whole team in order to track every one of the people who had registered on election day through a couple of different methods at the time. By knocking on doors, it found all but two. It found no evidence that anyone had voted who was not entitled to vote.

If that was the case before we got into this system, I am not exactly sure why we should have any serious concern that the methods being taken away now, the voter identification card with another piece of ID and vouching, are somehow tied to the risk of fraud, let alone fraud itself.

This is why I want the minister to understand that the result is voter suppression, and it needs to be looked at in that light in terms of who will be affected. My colleagues will go into more detail on this aspect.

With regard to big money, I am not sure that big money is going to be taken out of this. The biggest problem we have in the bill, and there are three or four other points on the big-money point, is that there is a new head-scratching provision. It basically says, as the minister said in the House, that any money spent through communications, including most email, mail, electronic communications, and phone calls, to raise money from existing donors who have given as little as $20 in the last five years is not an expense during the election period.

Any party that has an extensive database system, has the capacity to phone ad infinitum, and has a huge donor base would benefit from that measure. They would also be able to invest the money up front to pay for that excludable expense. It would also add, de facto, to the overall spending limit, which already is going up 5%, and thereby would also benefit any party that is raising a lot of money.

Here I have a grave concern. This could turn into an end run around the expenses involved in the whole pulling-the-vote exercise. All that might have to happen, in the current wording of this provision, is that a phone call is made, saying “We hope you are still interested in voting for us; we understand that you have indicated that. Do you have any questions? By the way, we know you are a donor; could you possibly also donate $50 more during this thing?” That whole exercise then gets shoved into another expense universe and does not get counted as an election expense. The potential for abuse of this provision is huge.

Also, $5,000 donations by candidates are now permitted. How is that getting big money out? The $1,200 limit on donations has now been increased to $1,500. That may seem small to many people in the House. To average Canadians, $1,200 is already a lot. Adding $300 is a huge amount. Who can afford to do that when there is no consequential amendment increasing the tax credit? The tax credit stays at the level it was before, so that extra $300 is only for people who can afford it without worrying about any portion of it as a tax credit.

I will not get into the problems in bringing forward the old political financing act bill that creates an impediment on getting loans to start up a campaign for somebody who does not have even $5,000 of their own. They would have to go out and get $1,200 or $1,500 guarantees from other people to back any loan that they now can only get from a bank.

I know a conscientious effort was made by the former minister, and I am assuming by the current minister, to try to make the political loans systems as fair as possible, but this also will potentially have a serious detrimental effect on any candidates who do need to borrow versus those candidates who do not need to because of fundraising or because the party transfers money to them.

No new powers to compel testimony is a huge issue. The Competition Act provides a clear example, and that is all that is being asked for by the Commissioner of Elections Canada and by the Chief Electoral Officer: the ability to compel testimony in this regulatory context with safeguards that also include that one cannot be charged for whatever one's testimony is.

This has been ignored and I fail to understand why, when we have a working example with the Competition Act. What is good for clean competition should be good for clean elections. It is really befuddling to me that the single most important change that would allow better investigation of what happened with the fraudulent election calls scandal in 2011, the single most important change that would allow that to be investigated better against all kinds of obstruction that has occurred on behalf of the Conservative Party and indeed even its lawyers, would be this amendment, this reform.

If it were included, it would apply retroactively, because it would be a procedural provision that had nothing to do with any new crimes. There are already enough crimes listed in the Elections Act and in the Criminal Code to cover this. We do not need a new crime of impersonation or obstruction to cover, as my leader said in the House today, under the existing act. Enhancing procedural powers could reach back in time and reinvigorate the Elections Canada investigations that are looking to be stalled.

Finally, one way or the other, whether it is a certain philosophy or antipathy toward the office, this is an attack on the Chief Electoral Officer. The gutting of the public education and promotion of democracy function, especially for disadvantaged sectors of the population, found in section 18 of the current act, and replacing it with a very workmanlike technical role of signalling how to vote, et cetera, is a serious undercutting of the function of the Chief Electoral Officer.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for her question.

The fair elections act will ensure that Canadians are always in charge of our democracy. It includes several elements.

First, we are making the commissioner responsible for investigating allegations under the Canada Elections Act more independent. The commissioner will be able to investigate without being influenced by other authorities. Second, we are addressing the issue of fraudulent voting. Lastly, we are addressing the issue of fraudulent calls.

These three steps will help strengthen the integrity of our democracy and ensure that Canadians remain in charge of our system.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Minister of State (Democratic Reform)]

moved that Bill C-23, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and other Acts and to make consequential amendments to certain Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday I introduced the fair elections act. It keeps everyday citizens in charge of democracy by pushing special interests out of the game and fraudsters out of business.

The bill would make it harder to break the law and easier to vote. It would close loopholes to big money and would impose new penalties on political impostors who make rogue calls. It would empower law enforcement with sharper teeth, a longer reach, and a freer hand.

The fair elections act would make our laws tough, predictable, and easy to follow. Life would be harder for election lawbreakers and easier for honest citizens taking part in democracy.

Law enforcement begins with the Commissioner of Canada Elections. The fair elections act would give him sharper teeth, a longer reach, and a freer hand. Sharper teeth means allowing the commissioner to seek tougher penalties for existing offences. Longer reach means empowering him with more than a dozen new offences to combat big money, rogue calls, and fraudulent voting. It would let him get to the truth by making it an offence for anyone to deceive or disrupt his investigation. Finally, a freer hand means the commissioner would have full independence, with control of his own staff and his own investigations, and a fixed term of seven years, which means he could not be fired without cause.

Consistent with separating the administration from enforcement, the fair elections act would house the commissioner with the Director of Public Prosecutions. He would maintain his powers and functions but gain status as a deputy head, allowing him to make his own staffing decisions and to direct his own investigations. Although the two would be housed in the same office, the director would have no role in the commissioner's investigations.

To ensure impartiality of the position, those individuals who have previously been a candidate or an employee of a political party, a minister, Elections Canada, or an MP's office would not be eligible to serve as commissioner. The referee should not be wearing a team jersey.

The fair elections act proposes that the current commissioner, Yves Côté, and his staff would remain in their roles, and all existing investigations would continue uninterrupted.

One of the responsibilities of the newly empowered watchdog would be to prevent impostors from making rogue calls. The fair elections act would do this by providing a mandatory public registry for mass calling. It would impose prison time for impersonating elections officials, and it would increase penalties for deceiving people out of their votes.

However, it is just as bad to vote illegally as it is to deny someone else's vote. Each fraudulent vote cancels out an honest one. To avoid this, we currently have identification requirements under the Canada Elections Act. Voters can choose from one of 39 acceptable forms of ID. When they fail to bring any of those, someone can vouch for their identity.

Elections Canada commissioned a study last year that found irregularities in one in four cases where vouching was used. Having irregularities 25% of the time constitutes an unacceptable risk.

I want to spend some special time on this particular issue, because these are the findings of the Neufeld report, which was commissioned by Elections Canada. According to that report, as I said earlier, there was a 25% error rate in the use of vouching. That means that every four times Elections Canada used vouching, there was an irregularity once. I will quote directly from the report:

...the audit showed that errors are made in the majority of cases that require the use of non-regular processes.

Vouching is a non-regular practice. It went on to say:

...inadequate or ineffective training carries significant negative implications for procedural compliance.

That is on page 21. Furthermore, and I quote directly from the report at page 26:

Public trust is at risk if the rate of error is not significantly reduced by the next...election.

Finally:

Without amendments to the Canada Elections Act, procedural compliance cannot be significantly improved in the 42nd general election.

If I can quote one more time:

Identity vouching procedures are unquestionably the most complex “exception” process administered at polling stations. The level of irregularities for vouching averaged 25 per cent.

It goes on. In a review entitled “A Review of Compliance with Election Day Registration and Voting Process Rules”, this audit showed that errors are made in the majority of cases that require non-regular processes. Then it takes a global view of Canada and the practices that happen in the 308 ridings. It says the following, “Averaged across 308 ridings, election officers made over 500 serious administrative errors per electoral district on Election Day”. That is 500 serious administrative errors per riding, and multiply that by the 308 ridings across the country.

To quote from the report again, “Obviously, this is unacceptable. Aside from legal concerns, public trust in proper administration of the electoral process is at serious risk if these error rates are not addressed”. And address them, we will. The fair elections act would put an end to the use of vouching on election day.

Similarly, Elections Canada recently experimented with the use of the voter identification cards as a form of ID. Before these pilot projects, Canadians voted for years without using cards to identify themselves, and for good reason. A report by Elections Canada recently showed that roughly one in six eligible voters does not have a correct address on the national registrar of electors, which is used to produce the voter information card. In other words, one out of six electors may get a card with the wrong address. That allows some to vote in a different riding than they live in, or to potentially vote more than once.

In fact, the Quebec comedy show Infoman did an interesting exposé on this. Two Montrealers received two voter information cards each, so they both went and voted twice each. They called it the “two-for-one special by Elections Canada”. This level of error, one in six, is also too high. As a result, the fair elections act would end the use of the voter information card as an acceptable form of identification.

To protect against fraud and to uphold the integrity of our electoral system, the fair elections act would not only instill these new rules, but it would also require in law that Elections Canada inform Canadians, through the advertising function, of the required forms of identification. In other words, embedded in the law would be a provision by which Elections Canada would be obliged to inform electors of the following:

(b) how an elector may have their name added to a list of electors and may have corrections made to information respecting the elector on the list; (c) how an elector may vote under section 127 and the times, dates and locations for voting; (d) how an elector may establish their identity and residence in order to vote, including the pieces of identification that they may use to that end;

That is the basic information that Elections Canada should advertise, so that when people get to the voting booth they already know what identification they will be required to present. The good news is that there would continue to be roughly 39 different pieces of identification that would be acceptable. That number presents Canadians with plenty of options, as long as Elections Canada educates them of those options.

It is just as important, though, for political parties to follow the rules, as it is for voters. With a 370-page Canada Elections Act, much of the challenge is determining what those rules are. All parties fail at that from time to time, often while trying their best to comply. Since the last election, the commissioner has had to sign 15 different compliance agreements with those who have breached elections law. Some are due to honest mistakes.

Members of all parties have complained that the rules are unclear and complicated. Complicated rules bring unintentional breaches and intimidate honest, law-abiding people from participating in democracy. The fair elections act would make the rules clear, predictable, and easy to follow. Parties would have the right to an advance ruling and interpretations from Elections Canada within 45 days of a request, a service that the Canada Revenue Agency already provides. Elections Canada will also keep a registry of interpretations, and consult and notify parties before changing them.

However, even with clearer rules, members of Parliament and the Chief Electoral Officer will sometimes disagree on an MP's election expense return. When that happens, the Canada Elections Act provides that an MP can no longer sit in the House of Commons until the expense return has been changed to the CEO's satisfaction.

Now, remember, the removal of a member of Parliament from the House of Commons overturns the democratic decision of tens of thousands of electors: Canadian citizens. No one person should have the power to do that without providing due process. To that end, the fair elections bill will allow an MP to present the disputed case in the courts and to have judges rule on it quickly, before the CEO seeks the MP's suspension. Expedited hearings and strict timelines will ensure that these cases do not drag on.

Free speech is the lifeblood of democracy. The government is therefore following through on its commitment to repeal the ban on the premature transmission of election results. According to the Supreme Court, this ban is an infringement on freedom of expression. It is also completely impractical to suggest that merely banning broadcasting of results from eastern Canadian constituencies to the west will prevent that information from travelling westward. We live in a modern era where everyday Canadians have the ability to transmit information via social media and other means, so this provision is unenforceable, even if it were not a violation of our basic principle of free speech.

Voting is to democracy what free speech is to liberty. Unfortunately, Canadians are doing less voting these days. Since Elections Canada began promotional voter participation campaigns, turnout has plummeted, from 75% in 1988, to 61% in 2001. A Library of Parliament analysis shows that between 1984 and 2000, right in the middle of which Elections Canada began mounting its promotional campaigns, voter turnout among youth plummeted by 20 percentage points. Somehow this is not working.

Why is it happening? The truth is that there are many reasons, but some of them are actually very practical. Elections Canada's own report on the last election said that in 2011, 60% of non-voters cited everyday issues as the reason for not voting. These included being too busy and lacking basic information.

The same report showed, “The most important access barrier [to youth voting] was lack of knowledge about the electoral process, including not knowing about different ways to vote..”.

The national youth survey revealed that nearly half of all Canadians aged 18 to 34 were unaware of the three options for voting other than on election day. That means that roughly half of our youth in this country do not know that they can vote at advance polls, by mail, or through special ballot. Students who happen to be busy on election day, studying or working, do not have the knowledge right now that they can vote in other ways. That level of awareness is incredibly low, and it is much lower amongst aboriginal youth, whose turnout we need to see increased. Therefore, we are proposing an increase in the information that voters receive about the options available for them to cast their ballot.

There is more evidence, though, to support the view that that is the kind of information they need. The survey that I just cited indicated that roughly a quarter of young non-voters expressed that not knowing where, when, or how to vote played a role in their decision not to cast the ballot. That is why Elections Canada correctly listed its top priority on youth turnout to be, “increasing awareness about when, where and how to vote, by providing information in formats suitable for youth”.

The job of informing voters is even more important for the disabled. Consultation and data show that Elections Canada does a good job of providing the tools that special needs voters require, such as wheelchair ramps, sign language, and braille services. Where the agency falls short is in making these tools known to those who need them.

To address all of these problems, the fair elections bill will bring better customer service to voters, with an extra advance voting day and more elections officials to relieve congestion at voting stations.

The bill goes further than that. The bill would amend section 18 of the Canada Elections Act to focus all of Elections Canada's promotional campaigns on two purposes: informing people of the basics of voting, where, when, and what ID to bring; and informing disabled people of the extra tools available to help them vote. It would be left to aspiring candidates and parties to give people something for which to vote and to reach Canadians where they are in their communities.

I look to the example set by our former immigration minister, now Minister of Employment and Social Development, who went out to new Canadians who perhaps were not entirely familiar with our democratic process because they came from countries that did not share those processes. He exposed them to democracy, and interested and inspired them in the process. We have seen similar activities that have been done by President Obama, who inspired a whole generation who did not traditionally vote to come out and cast a ballot. All of this shows that political candidates who are aspiring for office are far better at inspiring voters to get out and cast their ballot than our government bureaucracies, which is exactly how we will change the law.

However, that costs money. We live in the second biggest country in the world, with 10 million square kilometres. We are a nation that is twice the size of the entire European Union, and 95% of the countries in the world have a greater population density than we do. That means we have to travel long distances to reach our fellow Canadians. To do that, Canadian political parties and candidates spent $120 million in the last election in total. It sounds like a lot, until one considers that we spend $2.5 billion on cosmetics and fragrances in one year. Our nation spends 20 times more on products like cologne and makeup every year than we spend contesting democratic elections once every four years.

It is fair to say that special interest groups can use big money to drown out the voices of everyday Canadians, but that is why our nation's laws try to block that money. During campaigns, parties should rely on the money of small donors, not powerful special interest groups. Donations, like power, should be dispersed among the many rather than concentrated with the few.

As a result, the fair elections act would ban politicians from using unpaid loans to evade donation limits and maintain the absolute interdiction on corporate and union money. It would also allow a modest increase in the spending and donation limits while imposing tougher audits and penalties for those who exceed those limits. At the same time, the goal of the elections act is to allow small donors to contribute more to democracy through the front door and to block illegal big money from sneaking in the back door.

I would like to take this moment to thank the now Minister for Multiculturalism, who played a seminal role in crafting the proposals that I have brought before this House today. He and his staff have done tremendous work and have served their country well. I am very proud; in fact, I am very privileged, to have inherited that work.

We have before us a fair elections act that would further protect the basic principles that guide our democracy: that power should be dispersed in the hands of the many rather than concentrated in the hands of the few; that Canadians should be in charge of their democracy; that special interest groups should be on the sidelines; and rule-breakers should be out of the game altogether.

This is yet another occasion for us to celebrate the democracy that has brought us to where we are as a country today, to make it better, to further instill it in the foundation of our country, and to move forward into the future of Canadian democracy.

Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to request the unanimous consent of the House to move the following motion: that, notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, immediately after the reading of the order of the day for second reading of Bill C-23, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and other Acts and to make consequential amendments to certain Acts, a motion that the said bill be referred forthwith to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs be deemed moved and be subject to provisions of Standing Order 73(1).