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.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

As New Democrats, we agree with reversing the vouching requirements that were done away with under the previous “Unfair Elections Act”, and with the education component that was talked about earlier. There are some things in there that we want to see succeed. They were sitting for 18 months untouched by the government. There was no sense of urgency. Now they're rolled in, but now it's been rolled in as an omnibus bill, with other things that we do have legitimate questions on, like freedom of speech.

Let me ask you one about data, because that's an important thing that Elections Canada deals with. You give the parties a lot of data, the personal information of Canadians.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Thank you very much.

Just finally, in the last session of Parliament, when we were going through the “Fair” Elections Act, one of the things that was talked about was.... There was a huge argument as to what the role of Elections Canada is when it comes to engaging the public. On one side of the argument, your only role is to say to people when and where to vote for all 338 ridings. On the other side, we were saying it was public engagement to encourage the exercise of democracy for young people, for indigenous people, for rural areas.

What do you see in this role of yours as to the way Elections Canada can best engage with the public?

Elections Modernization Act

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Don Valley East.

I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-76, the Elections Modernization Act. I have had the privilege of being a member of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs since I first came to this place. One of the most interesting studies we have conducted so far was the one pertaining to the recommendations of the chief electoral officer.

In the previous Parliament, I was the parliamentary assistant to the critic for democratic reform, namely, the current member for Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame. I was a member of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs during its study of Bill C-23, Fair Elections Act. Under the circumstances, it was an odd name, given that the Conservatives worked harder than any other party to destroy the integrity of our elections.

Under Stephen Harper's leadership, the Conservatives won three consecutive election campaigns, specifically in 2006, 2008, and 2011. The Conservatives were found guilty of electoral fraud in the 2006, 2008, and 2011 elections. Clearly, the Conservative Party of Canada has never won an election without cheating, so when the Conservatives introduced a bill on electoral integrity, they knew exactly where the gaps were.

After letting their parliamentary secretary to the prime minister be led out in handcuffs for bypassing election laws, after pleading guilty to the illegal in and out scandal, and after sacrificing a young 22-year-old scapegoat for election crimes committed by the Conservative Party to try to steal several ridings, as part of the robocall scandal, one of the first targets of the Conservative Party was the elections commissioner. They made sure that he would never have the tools he needed to conduct a real investigation.

Bill C-76 changes all that. The elections commissioner will return to the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer, who is an officer of Parliament, instead of reporting to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, where there is no officer of Parliament. Once enacted, the act will give the commissioner the power to require testimony or a written return, a power that was eliminated by the Conservatives. Why did Stephen Harper's Conservatives not want the elections commissioner to have that kind of authority, especially since he was responsible for the integrity of our elections?

Integrity is clearly not what the Conservatives were looking for, and given their reaction to this bill, their position has obviously not changed. In the debate on this bill, we keep hearing that the Conservatives have concerns about the creation of a pre-election list of young people, which could be given to political parties. They know that this list is meant for the Chief Electoral Officer and that these names will not be provided to political parties before the individuals turn 18. However, the Conservatives do not want a tool that would help inform young future voters and help them prepare to become citizens and informed voters in our democracy.

The Conservatives are afraid that young people will not vote Conservative. Instead of modernizing their old-school values, or reassessing their attitude towards women, immigrants, minorities, indigenous peoples, the environment, and science, the Conservatives would rather do everything they can to make sure that the younger generation does not have the tools it needs to participate in the democratic process. They refuse to evolve to where society is now.

During the 2011 election campaign, advance polling stations were set up on university campuses. In Guelph, the Conservatives opposed a polling station at the student centre and a young campaign volunteer, who was also a ministerial assistant on Parliament Hill was accused of attempting to steal the ballot box. Those accusations were never proven, but the incident shows how afraid the Conservatives are that young people will get involved.

The Conservatives think that giving young people the opportunity to get involved in elections, as Bill-76 proposes, is an existential threat. For the first time, millennials will outnumber baby boomers.

The Conservatives are not adapting to the new reality. They prefer to shout out “it is not a right” here in the House when we are talking about women making their own decisions about their bodies. That is shameful. Millennials, those of my generation, have had enough of this paternalistic attitude. We find that the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle and his Conservatives have the same attitude.

Again in the 2011 federal election and again in the riding of Guelph, robocalls were made. These calls were bilingual and claimed to be on behalf of Elections Canada. The calls told thousands of voters that the location of their polling station had changed. The goal was to keep people from voting. The federal elections commissioner and his investigators did not have the authority to compel witnesses to testify, so the commissioner had to make agreements with those involved in this subterfuge. As a result, a young man who is unilingual and has no particular technical skills was put in jail for electoral fraud. He was the scapegoat that I mentioned earlier.

Because the investigators lacked authority, the legal process resulted in a completely ridiculous outcome. First of all, they overlooked the campaign's political adviser, who had all the necessary political and technical access and who had created software called “Move My Vote” to determine what to dispute in the 2013 electoral redistribution. This is not to mention the fact that the assistant campaign organizer worked at the store where the burner phone was sold, or the fact that the Conservative Party lawyer was present when the witness statements were taken, rather than the lawyer of the accused or the witness. That is the kind of situation the Fair Elections Act was designed to ensure by undermining the integrity of the investigation process.

However, that was not the only problem the Conservatives wanted to create or even exacerbate. One of Elections Canada's main tasks is to educate voters across Canada on the electoral system and their role in it, and those information campaigns should be entirely impartial to ensure fair elections. The Conservatives, however, had no interest in conducting public information campaigns in schools or newspapers. Voter participation is not in the Conservatives' partisan interest. They did everything they could to undermine it. In the end, voter participation was high, but that was because Canadians were fed up with the lack of integrity.

Because of that, the Conservatives used their integrity bill to change the law and take away Elections Canada's educational role. Going forward, its only role would be to say where, when, and how to vote. That is it. Things were even worse than we thought. On top of taking power away from the Chief Electoral Officer, the Conservatives wanted to muzzle him, just like they muzzled scientists to keep facts from interfering with their agenda.

In addition to dealing with the elections commissioner's workplace and power structure, Bill C-76 will resolve this ridiculous situation created by a government that had no interest at all in protecting democracy. To the Conservatives, electoral integrity meant staying in power.

Going forward, the Chief Electoral Officer will have the right to speak and to perform his rightful educational role. That is why the Conservatives are so afraid of this bill passing and will do everything they can to block it. Much like women's rights, the integrity of our elections is not something the Conservatives care about. Shame on them.

Speaking of shame, let me remind the House that the Conservatives use the Fair Elections Act to take away voters' right to use their voter information card as a piece of ID. That had an immediate and significant impact. An estimated 170,000 people lost the right to vote in 2015 because of that anti-democratic change.

The vast majority of approved pieces of ID are used to confirm a voter's home address and to confirm whether this person has the right to vote and is voting in the correct riding. The voter information card does both of those things. When voters receive their card, it means that they are obviously on the voter's list. This also means that the address is correct, or else they would not have received their card. However, this card is never enough on its own, and it must be used with another piece of ID. Anyone can vote with a health card, for example. Without this card, someone who does not pay the household bills and who does not have a credit card or driver's license has nothing else to confirm his or her address. Once again, this was the objective of Stephen Harper's Conservatives.

If people were not going to vote Conservative, why let them vote at all? That would not help the integrity of a Conservative victory. No one wants that, so the Conservatives prevented Canadian voters from using the best piece of ID available to a large number of them. Integrity, my foot. These people do not have much integrity at all.

I am particularly proud of Bill C-76, since it will allow mail from the Chief Electoral Officer to be used as a valid piece of ID to vote. This makes sense.

The process we embarked on was long and complex. The Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs worked hard to study each recommendation made by the former chief electoral officer. Of the 130 specific changes in Bill C-76, 109 stem directly from the recommendations in the Chief Electoral Officer's report on the 42nd general election. Furthermore, the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs studied most of the recommendations. The others were mostly technical changes requested by the Chief Electoral Officer.

I am proud to support this bill and to support a government whose vision extends beyond the next election to secure the long-term success of our country and our democracy.

Election Modernization Act

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this time, I will use every minute and second available to me, since Bill C-76 is a very important bill for anyone who believes in democracy.

When it comes right down to it, MPs of all stripes are just advocates who decided to take their political commitment to the limit and help develop our society to the best of their ability and in keeping with their values.

Every member of the House knows how lucky he or she is to live and participate in a democracy. However, our democratic system, like many others, is far from perfect. We would hope that each and everyone of us would be able to help perfect it and that any bill that would make major changes to our entire electoral system, in whole or in part, would have not only the broadest possible consensus, but complete unanimity.

A bill that affects the very foundation of our democracy should not be a partisan bill. Still, we do have to admit that things have changed a bit ever since the Conservatives introduced Bill C-23, the Fair Elections Act, in the previous Parliament. In our search for a better democratic system, the aim should always be to strive for a consensus. However, we seem to be seeing more and more partisan games, which I believe have no place in a bill like this.

I obviously feel privileged to rise to speak on a bill as fundamental as Bill C-76. However, I unfortunately feel like I am acting in an old movie because the government seems to be assuming it does not need a consensus. The government is using our old parliamentary system to its advantage since that system allows the political party that holds a majority in the House to bulldoze, and I do not think that is too strong a term, its agenda through, rather than striving to reach a consensus.

Even as we debate this topic, something very important is happening in Quebec City. Just months—weeks, actually—before the Quebec provincial election, four parties held a joint press conference to say that, regardless of the outcome of the next election, they all agree that the existing electoral system should no longer be used in our society.

Québec solidaire, Coalition Avenir Québec, the Parti Québécois, and the Green Party of Quebec joined forces to say that the coming provincial election should be the last to use this voting system. That is why I feel like I am in an old movie, unfortunately. Many parties have sung that tune, especially the Liberal Party during the last campaign. The party said loud and clear that that would be the last election with that voting system, which worked fine back in the day.

When this Parliament was created, it was a two-party system. In a society with two parties, one of them will, by definition, get at least 50% plus one of the votes. What could be more democratic than that? Since then, things have changed a lot in Canada and Quebec, as they have in all the other provinces and territories.

A plurality of political opinions and approaches emerged, which all demand representation in the House of Commons. We think that, no matter which party is in government, even if it was the NDP, it is completely inappropriate for a government that wins 39% of the popular vote to get 100% of the power in the House. This is what happened with this government, and it was the same with the previous government. There is a massive dichotomy that needs to be addressed.

The government has backtracked on this specific issue, which was a very important issue for the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party during the last election. It is clear that the Liberals have backtracked on their election promise, probably because now that they are in power, they want to continue to enjoy full control over this country's democratic institutions.

Now Bill C-76 is being rammed through at the very last minute. I would say it is being done at the eleventh hour, when the acting Chief Electoral Officer does not even know whether he will be able to implement all the different measures this bill contains in time for the next election, because the Liberals dragged their feet so long. First they dawdled with the study on what our new voting system should be. Then they ignored an overwhelming consensus in favour of a mixed proportional system, while trying to convince Canadians that there was no consensus or that the consensus was for something else. That is a funny way to put it, but it shows how desperate they were to dodge the issue.

Not content to have delayed this process, the Liberals also delayed the next process, which was aimed at correcting some of the stalled measures that were stuck behind those they had rejected. However, here we are at the eleventh hour, and they cannot even guarantee that all of the measures we have been discussing this morning and over the past few days will be implemented by the next election.

It is therefore fairly safe to say this has been a total failure, even though, as I will elaborate, Bill C-76 does contain a few measures that are worth studying and implementing.

We are talking about a 230-page bill that will have to be rushed through because, as I was saying, the Liberals have been behind on all counts from the very beginning.

Worse still, this very rushed bill will likely pass thanks to the majority this government holds. This means that the broad consensus that has been the tradition in this House could once again be ignored in favour of the bulldozing effect of a government majority.

After two press releases in quick succession proposing two different names, this week we learned of the appointment of a potential new chief electoral officer. The person responsible for implementing the measures in Bill C-76 has not yet been officially appointed. It is safe to say that problems are piling up.

Let us explore some of the things in this bill that deserve a closer look, such as the issue of financing. As people generally expect more transparency in the lead-up to an election, this bill proposes a number of measures in that regard. However, while promising greater transparency, the bill also raises spending limits at the same time. This means that election campaigns will become much more about money than ideas.

I think that there is a very broad consensus in Canada and Quebec regarding the U.S. election system, because no one wants to see money take precedence over ideas. For years now, money seems to have become increasingly more important. Canadians are well aware that there is a cost to living in a democracy. No one expects elections to be free. I will get back to public financing a bit later, since this aspect is largely missing from the bill. This was an opportunity to restore the balance that was lost under the previous Conservative government led by Mr. Harper, which completely eliminated the per-vote subsidy. I am not saying that this made for a proportional government, but at least the public financing was representative of the public vote and gave additional meaning to casting a vote.

What is more, increasing election spending limits is also problematic and feeds into the trend of making money more important than ideas. In an election campaign, I would like to see people debate ideas equitably rather than see parties inundate people with ads because the rules are not the same for everyone. Conversely, one could argue that the rules are equal for everyone since everyone has the same spending limit, but when that spending limit is at a height that not every party can achieve, then clearly there is an imbalance.

I would also like to address another problem that is widely panned and does not seem to have been resolved by Bill C-76: personal information protection. That is an issue that everyone in Canada and Quebec is concerned about now and not just when it comes to elections, but also in daily life. Every move that is made on the web leaves a footprint and we cannot begin to imagine how much personal information we leave there.

Perhaps members have already had the experience of downloading an app on their cell phone or other device and reading the terms of service. I do not know whether this has ever happened to you, Madam Speaker, but I have tried a few times to read the terms of service, but I have rarely succeed in getting all the way to the end. The times I did manage to finish, I must admit that it was a challenge. However, just because I read the terms, does not mean that I understood them, but people always end up agreeing to the terms because they need the app in their daily lives. Once we accept the terms, we no longer know exactly how much personal information will be shared or how that information will be managed. Bill C-76 does nothing to address that issue.

I would like to quote what a few witnesses had to say about this. Teresa Scassa, the Canada research chair in information law and policy at the University of Ottawa described the solution proposed in Bill C-76 as “an almost contemptuous and entirely cosmetic quick fix designed to deflect attention from the very serious privacy issues raised by the use of personal information by political parties”.

Lori Turnbull, director of Dalhousie University's School of Public Administration and co-author of a document about the modernization of public funding published by the Public Policy Forum said, “It’s a step in the right direction, but it looks as if they were pressed for time and some big problems have been left on the table.”

I have used this image many times: when you take a step forward, you are not actually moving forward, you are just moving your centre of gravity. In order to move forward, you have to take at least two steps. Bill C-76 is only one step.

Funnily enough, Canada does have a privacy act. It is quite a progressive act, and it is often studied by many other countries seeking to perfect their own privacy acts and learn how a united front is needed to protect personal data in our new computer-oriented society.

However, political parties are exempt from Canada's privacy act. For example, a private company that wants to solicit customers by email has to seek their consent to store their email addresses for future correspondence. Political parties are not required to ask for consent. They can even sell the personal data they gather, which to me is an utterly absurd situation that Bill C-76, as drafted, does not address.

Where are the rules for increasing the number of women to a significant level? That is another issue that Bill C-76 does not resolve. In terms of women's representation in the House, we are light years away from parity, except in the NDP. Why? At the very beginning of an election campaign, the very instant the writ drops, the NDP have rules in place that require candidate nominations to be gender balanced from the get-go. If there is no parity at the starting line, how can we hope to miraculously reach parity by the finish line? We ought to thank the NDP for its efforts and make sure more women get into the House.

By voting down the bill introduced by my colleague from Burnaby South, the government missed a great opportunity to make additional strides in that regard. Bill C-76 again misses the opportunity to introduce specific measures to achieve gender parity, or at least something close to parity between 40% and 60%, by the next election. We should not have to wait decades for this. If current trends in the number of women in the House of Commons remain at the same level, it will likely take 40 or 50 years to achieve parity, and even that is not guaranteed. This is an absolutely crucial issue that has been completely overlooked in this legislation.

The bill does contain some important positive aspects, which is why, at the end of the day, I will be voting to support it at second reading, even though I may sound like I completely oppose it. I think it is important to send it to committee so that we may get some answers to relevant questions and see how we can make the most of a bill that has been reduced to the basics and does not really reform our electoral system. That is the role of all opposition members, in other words, not to simply oppose legislation but also improve it.

We do welcome the time limit for an election campaign. Having election campaigns in this era of faster travel and digital media means they can be shorter than back in the day when candidates had to travel across Canada by train, which of course took longer.

Offering a 90% refund for child care expenses is a good measure. We support that.

In closing, democracy does not belong to just the Liberals or any one party in the House. It belongs to all parties in the House of Commons.

I hope the next changes made to our electoral system are based on a consensus.

[Nathan Cullen]

So the government is participating, and just dropped 2,000 pages on the claimants, arguing for Bill C-23, Harper's bill. It's more than confusing to Canadians, who said they want truly fair elections. A government that promised to do that is fighting in court to maintain the status quo that was brought in by the former prime minister.

I have a question about Russian diplomats. The Foreign Affairs minister, also a couple of weeks ago, said they have expelled six Russian diplomats who are:

intelligence officers or individuals who have used their diplomatic status to undermine Canada's security or interfere in our democracy.

Are you aware of any Russian interference in the 2015 election?

[Nathan Cullen]

So it was both the changes that were promised in Bill C-33, which was meant to undo some of the changes made in Bill C-23, the so-called Fair Elections Act—some said “unfair elections act”—plus any changes that this committee proposed after having studied the last election with Elections Canada about how to make the next election secure. Your recommendation to the Government of Canada, to Parliament, was to pass all of those changes through Parliament and the Senate by the end of this month.

Access to Information on Prime Minister's Trip to India

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising on a question of privilege regarding misleading information that has been presented to the House by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Public Safety.

During question period on February 26, 2018, I asked the government a number of questions regarding a briefing provided to the media by the Prime Minister's security adviser, Daniel Jean. The briefing attempted to explain how a convicted terrorist ended up at an event with the Prime Minister during his trip to India. The reason Mr. Jean gave was that the Government of India conspired and manipulated events in order to ensure the attendance of Jaspal Atwal at the reception. My first question to the government was simply, “What proof does the Prime Minister have that the Government of India did this?”

As you know Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Public Safety did not provide any evidence to this claim, nor did he refute it. Instead he said:

I can say that the invitation that was issued to this particular individual, Mr. Atwal, should never have been issued. Indeed, as soon as it was discovered, it was rescinded by the Government of Canada.

This statement supports the statement made by the Minister of Foreign Affairs when she told the Indian foreign affairs minister that Jaspal Atwal's invitation to the event was an honest mistake. If we follow the evolution of the responses from the Minister of Public Safety on that day, the answers begin to also support the theory of Daniel Jean, a theory that blames rogue elements in the Indian government.

The Minister of Public Safety said on February 26:

...Canada has very strong, very proficient national security and police agencies. They are well trained in what they need to do to protect and advance the Canadian national interest, and they have done their jobs in relation to the trip to India. They have done that job exceedingly well to make sure the best interests of Canadians are served and protected.

On February 27, 2018, the Leader of the Opposition asked the Prime Minister the same question, and the Prime Minister, in his one answer to the Leader of the Opposition's question, combined both the notion espoused by his Minister of Foreign Affairs that the invitation was a mistake, and Daniel Jean's theory laying blame on factions in the Indian government.

The Prime Minister said:

Mr. Speaker, as we have already said, this invitation should never have been sent. As soon as we realized that it had, the invitation was withdrawn.

Canada's national security and law enforcement agencies are non-partisan, highly competent, and very effective. We have faith in them to protect Canada and Canadians. They continue to work very hard to serve and protect the interests of Canadians.

Later in question period, on February 27, the Prime Minister introduced to the House a new character to this saga. He said:

Mr. Speaker, as I have said many times, this individual never should have been invited. As soon as we found out that he was, that invitation was rescinded. The member responsible for the invitation has taken full responsibility, and I will be following up with that member later this afternoon.

The member he was referring to was the member for Surrey Centre.

When pressed as to the conspiracy theory, the Minister of Public Safety out and out dismissed it as false when he said, in response to my question on February 27:

...the hon. member, both today and yesterday, has provided her interpretation of events. In fact, her insinuations and her accusations are false.

At the same time, that same minister and the Prime Minister continued to support the public servant who claimed, and has never retracted or explained to any member of Parliament, or clarified his comments, that the Indian government was behind the events that led to Mr. Atwal's attendance at the reception. This contradiction continued all last week, and it continues to this day, despite more evidence that the conspiracy theory may be bogus.

Mr. Atwal, at a press conference last week, confirmed that he asked the member for Surrey Centre for an invitation to the Prime Minister's event. We in the opposition have given the government ample opportunity to clarify this matter, and it refuses to do so.

This contempt for the House is not unlike a matter that was raised in 2002. In 2002, another Liberal government refused to clarify the record, forcing the opposition to raise the matter as a question of privilege. It would seem that once again the opposition needs to take this extraordinary step and seek the authority of the House to cut through the contradictions and falsehoods to finally get to the truth.

In addition, the official opposition has dedicated its opposition day tomorrow to call on the Prime Minister to instruct Daniel Jean to appear before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, to give the same courtesy to members of Parliament that he gave to the media about his government's theory regarding the Indian government's involvement in this matter.

It is my sincere hope that the Prime Minister will see fit to not show further contempt for this House and allow his official to at least treat members of Parliament the same as members of the press gallery.

In your ruling of yesterday, Mr. Speaker, while on an unrelated matter, you touched on the issue of respect that members of Parliament are expected to receive from the government and its officials in these situations. You said, Mr. Speaker:

...as Speaker, I understand the member for Abbotsford's frustration and the sense of disrespect that he feels in not having had priority access to a briefing on such a complex piece of legislation. In fact, the Chair not only finds this matter to be unfortunate, but also entirely avoidable.... There is no question that the work of members of Parliament is made more difficult without expeditious access to legislative information. Given this reality, there is a rightful expectation that those responsible for the information should do their utmost to ensure members’ access to it. Not respecting this expectation does a disservice to all. It is particularly disconcerting when the government gives priority to the media over the members of Parliament.

On February 1, 2002, the Speaker ruled in a matter in regard to the former minister of national defence. The former hon. member for Portage—Lisgar alleged that the minister of national defence deliberately misled the House as to when he knew what prisoners taken by Canadian JTF2 troops had been handed over to the Americans. In support of that allegation, he cited the minister's responses in question period on two successive days. The Speaker considered the matter and found that there was a prima facie question of privilege. He said:

The authorities are consistent about the need for clarity in our proceedings and about the need to ensure the integrity of the information provided by the government to the House.

The authorities to which Speaker Milliken was referring included the following from House of Commons Procedure and Practice, second edition, which states on page 115:

Misleading a Minister or a Member has...been considered a form of obstruction and thus a prima facie breach of privilege.

The Speaker, in 2002, accepted the minister's assertion that he had no intention to mislead the House and made the following statement. He said, “Nevertheless this remains a very difficult situation”. The Speaker went on to say:

On the basis of the arguments presented by hon. members and in view of the gravity of the matter, I have concluded that the situation before us where the House is left with two versions of events is one that merits further consideration by an appropriate committee, if only to clear the air. I therefore invite the hon. member for Portage—Lisgar [ironically] to move his motion.

On February 25, 2015, the House leader of the official opposition raised a question of privilege regarding statements made in the House by the former member for Mississauga—Streetsville. The hon. member for Mississauga—Streetsville had deliberately misled the House during debate on Bill C-23, the Fair Elections Act, when he stated that he had witnessed evidence of voter fraud first-hand. On February 24 and February 25, the member for Mississauga—Streetsville admitted that, contrary to his original claim, he had not actually witnessed what he originally claimed to have witnessed. The Speaker found that by taking something the member knew not to be true and presenting it as eye-witness evidence, something so egregious constituted contempt.

I believe we are faced with the same scenario today, except government members refuse to admit it, as the previous Liberal government refused to do. On March 3, 2015, the Speaker delivered his ruling, citing what Speaker Milliken was faced with in February 2002 when the then-minister of national defence provided contradictory information to the House. The Speaker went on to conclude:

In keeping with that precedent, I am prepared to accord the same courtesy to the member for Mississauga—Streetsville.

At the same time, the fact remains that the House continues to be seized of completely contradictory statements. This is a difficult position in which to leave members, who must be able to depend on the integrity of the information with which they are provided to perform their parliamentary duties.

Accordingly, in keeping with the precedent cited earlier in which Speaker Milliken indicated that the matter merited “...further consideration by an appropriate committee, if only to clear the air”, I am prepared in this case for the same reason to allow the matter to be put to the House.

The House has been presented with several conflicting answers to one very simple question about the appearance of Jaspal Atwal at the event in India. This is a grave situation that has not had a satisfactory resolution.

Parliamentarians have a right to obtain accurate and non-conflicting information, even clarification, when asking questions of the government. If the media got this information, members of Parliament should have this clarification. In this instance, this has not occurred.

Therefore, Mr. Speaker, if you find this to be a prima facie question of privilege, I am prepared to move the appropriate motion.

Canada Elections Act

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this is timely, because the heckling we are hearing between the Liberals and Conservatives only serves to reinforce the point I wanted to make.

In the previous Parliament, the Conservative government only generated more cynicism and changed our elections legislation, making it harder for Canadians to vote.

Now the Liberal government is fuelling cynicism with superficial changes that ultimately will do nothing to correct a serious perception problem that the Liberals themselves created. Everyone who has been watching today's debates heard the Liberals say that the leader of the official opposition was just as bad and that he did the same thing. The Conservatives, for their part, said that what they did was less serious because at least when their ministers attended fundraisers, they met people whose areas of business were not directly related to the department.

I have been an MP for almost seven years now, and I am starting to get pretty sick of giving speeches about all the issues that breed cynicism. Others have talked about this today. As my colleague from British Columbia mentioned this morning, when we go door to door and talk to people, that is what is on people's minds. They say they are not interested, they do not want to donate money to political parties, and they do not want to take out memberships. Worse still, some say they do not even want to vote because of the cynical mood fuelled by stories in the news and legislative half-measures. We will support the changes anyway because one step in the right direction is better than nothing, but everyone needs to understand where this is coming from.

Bill C-50 is a first step. Unfortunately, although I have a lot of respect for the minister, it will probably be the only step. The Liberal government is unlikely to leave behind anything else that qualifies as a legacy of democratic reform.

I have to wonder if it is mere coincidence that this bill was introduced right after the Prime Minister broke his lofty electoral reform promise, right after the dismal failure on that front. This is a big problem for our political system as a whole, not just party financing.

We recognize that some of the changes have made things more difficult. My Bloc Québécois colleague and others spoke earlier about the per-subsidy vote, which is money allocated for each vote received by a party or a candidate.

The member for Beaches—East York spoke about similar issues. He even went so far as to speak about making changes to tax credits for donations. I am raising all these issues to point out that it is possible to be open-minded in this type of debate and to find ways to improve political financing.

We can study all the important changes made in Quebec following revelations about the corruption that occurred over several years, as well as all the changes in political financing and the lowering of contribution limits.

These are all legitimate ideas and we could have a healthy debate about how to provide the financing needed, for better or for worse, to run an election campaign. It takes money to print brochures, inform voters about our positions and important issues, obtain telecommunications equipment for campaign offices, communicate with voters, hear their concerns, and share our positions. We recognize that this is the reality, whether we like it or not.

In that sense, it is very important to find a way to work together in a non-partisan manner to fix this system or at least create a system that instills confidence in Canadians. There are many reasons why that is currently not the case. Sometimes it is because of changes that have nothing to do with political donations as such, but have more to do with the electoral system itself and how it works. I am talking about Bill C-23 from the last Parliament, which had to do with electoral reform, or deform, as people jokingly used to refer to it. That is the type of thing that fuels cynicism and makes all of this that much more challenging.

However, we also have to consider the optics of a minister receiving the maximum donation allowed by law to attend an event with people who have a direct stake in his or her portfolio. What we need to understand is that ministers and regular MPs wield a very different level of power. I agree with the Conservatives on that. I would add that we keep reminding the Liberal government of that fact with each new conflict of interest scandal. Everyone knows that party leaders aspire to be Prime Minister one day and that members of the official opposition or another opposition party could easily end up in cabinet with decision-making power within two or three years. Nonetheless, ministers have the power to make extremely important decisions, hire people, award contracts, spend money, and so on. As such, their ear is much more valuable to have than that of a regular MP.

This does not mean that all members of the House are not prepared to follow the conflict of interest rules—political financing rules, specifically. However, when the government denies that things are different when it comes to ministers and claims in the House that everyone should be on a level playing field, it is insulting the intelligence of those who want to participate in this debate and make real change, so that we can have a political financing system that allows us, among other things, to run political campaigns. People want to see candidates on the ground, which costs money, whether we like it or not, but people also want to have confidence in the financing system.

This morning, the member for Beaches—East York talked about how things work south of the border, and he is right. In other countries, such as the United States, money plays such a dominant role in politics that it has become a problem. For example, my campaign spending cap for my riding would buy about one ad for a U.S. Senate hopeful. We have to acknowledge that our system does have merit. Seeing how bad things are elsewhere makes us feel better about how we do things here, but that does not mean we can rest on our laurels.

Whenever a journalist digs up another scandal, we can pretty much count on the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and the Minister of Democratic Institutions to say that our system is a good one, spending is in check, and there are strict caps on how much an individual can donate. That is not enough, though. We cannot compare ourselves to the worst of the bunch, places like the United States, where a Supreme Court ruling made the who and how much of election spending a free-for-all. Corporations, unions, anybody can spend as much as they want. Even so, alarming situations that are bad for democracies elsewhere are no excuse for us to be content with the status quo here.

In closing, as I said earlier, there are too many situations in the House that remind me of the cynicism I have seen among too many voters as I have gone door to door as an MP for almost seven years now, and I know that my colleagues have seen the same thing. If we really want to make Canadians less cynical and put an end to political financing scandals, we need to engage in a real debate. The government needs to do more than introduce a bill that is merely a smokescreen designed to hide its broken promises on electoral reform and to try to make people forget about the scandals it has been caught up in. Let us stop pointing fingers and arguing over which political party was worse than the other when in office. Let us seriously consider this reform and the measures that we could change or even those that we could bring back, in the case of public financing.

There are all kinds of interesting questions. Of course, the NDP's main goal when it comes to bringing in true electoral reform is the implementation of a mixed member proportional system. There are also many other issues that need to be seriously considered. That is not at all what we are seeing from this government, and it is not what we saw from the previous government, either.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Madam Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise on Bill C-364 to discuss election financing law.

To start with, I will not be supporting this bill. That is not because I do not believe in a stronger role for public financing; I do believe that. It is because the alternative is a stronger role for private financing.

The key question I want to address in our democracy is a complete re-evaluation of political fundraising itself. Is fundraising necessary, and if so, what should it look like? Conventional wisdom is that it is. However, I want us to ask the question honestly and objectively.

Political parties need funds to operate and campaign. That is a given. However, what is a fair way to achieve that funding?

First, parties and riding associations should not have to fundraise in competition with each other. The fundraising should come from the riding, with a share sent to the party in order for it to remain a part of the party, with the specific details left up to each party or riding association to figure out. A party is not a party, after all, without ridings and representatives. The parties themselves are only meant to exist as a vehicle for like-minded members to work together, not as a means for members to become like-minded. That is a discussion for another day.

I disagree with the current fundraising model of 100% private funds, coupled with non-refundable tax credits and expense reimbursements that do not give equal ability to all members of society to participate, which is a fundamental tenet of any democracy. Those who have money can participate and get tax credits. Those who do not have money to participate are not eligible for the tax incentive to do so. Therefore, having less means that each dollar costs less fortunate individuals more in absolute terms, and prohibitively more in relative terms. Once again, those who need are at a disadvantage compared to those who do not, and politicians, with their insatiable need for funds, must necessarily gravitate toward those who have.

Many donors donate because they believe in the cause. However, I think it is naive to believe that all donors do. I am sure most of us have received an angry email or phone call at some point from someone who has given money to either our riding or our party saying, “I am a donor and I am angry.” Personally, I do not take well to this kind of message. I want people to donate because they believe in what we are doing and want us to continue, not in order to tell us what we need to do. If they are angry, I want to know that, not because they are donors but because they are citizens. I want that fact detached from the comment, and I want people who did not donate to express themselves with equal fervour. I am here to represent and work for all of my people to the best of my ability, not just those who supported me or may do so in the future.

I also disagree with the concept of annual per-vote funding, the primary objective of Bill C-364, for the simple reason that how people voted in 2015 may not reflect where they want their financial support to go. At that, it may not be the same in 2016, 2017, 2018, or 2019. If people vote for a Liberal candidate to block a Conservative candidate when they actually support the Green Party, why should the money go to the Liberals and not the Green Party in that circumstance? It does not make sense. If we do have per-vote funding, we should also have a preferential ballot so that the money we assign goes to our first pick, even if we have specified additional choices in order to prevent the unfavourable results that can sometimes come from not voting strategically.

On the other hand, I also do not believe that just because one has registered a political party it is automatically entitled to some funding or an equal level of funding as all the others. It must be tied to that party's actual support in some way. Giving the Rhinoceros Party $18 million simply because it is registered may not necessarily serve the interests of democracy, and providing per-party financing may motivate some people to register political parties for the purpose of simply collecting the money without any actual interest in the electoral process. I think these risks are fairly self-evident.

While I know I am very much in the minority on this, my preferred model for addressing all these concerns is to put a question on the tax returns of Canadians that would go something like this, with the numbers being completely arbitrary for the sake of demonstration here today.

With respect to let us say tax return line number 500, an answer to this section is required for my tax return to be accepted as complete. Therefore, the questions might be, “Question 1, I am entitled to direct $25 to a party registered in my riding or to be held in escrow for an independent candidate to be returned or forfeited if the candidate I name does not register to run in the next election: a) Yes, I would like to exercise this right, or b) No, I do not wish to contribute to any political party or independent candidate at this time.” If we check off no, then we are finished and have met our obligations under this section of the return. If we answer yes, that we do wish to direct $25 to a political party, we have three more questions to answer.

The first question would be, “The party or independent candidate I wish to support in my riding is”, then there would be a blank space or drop-down menu with data provided by Elections Canada for electronic filers. The second question would be, “I would like this money to: a) come from general revenues, or b) be added to my own tax assessment.” The final question would be, “I would like the origin of this contribution to be: a) disclosed to the party or independent candidate receiving it, or b) kept anonymous and confidential.”

Splitting up the questions like this allows those who believe it must be their own funds that contribute to political parties to put their money where their mouth is. However, more importantly, it means that someone who does not have two cents, and someone who is a millionaire, have the same weight in the fundraising process.

Everybody has the option but not the requirement to do so anonymously, so the data cannot be automatically used by political parties. Allowing people to say no to donating at all, and not knowing who, should help force all parties to retain a more positive message. Divisive dog-whistle fundraising will not work on an anonymous tax-assessment-based fundraising model. Being negative would serve to discourage people from contributing to political parties overall, with them answering no to the question of whether to give before seeing the options of who to give to.

The pie can be pretty big if Canadians all have a positive view of political parties, rather than the negative views promulgated today by some elements of our political system to sew division and make people hate, rather than to want to work together.

While the Canada Revenue Agency will no doubt be less than excited to get involved in this manner, and there must be careful and specific controls to protect the privacy of the responses to this question, in my view it is the fairest possible way to ensure that political financing is put on an equal basis by all citizens for those they support here and now, at all times, in all parts of the country.

There are no doubt other models and solutions that could be looked at, but I firmly believe that the question must be asked, and I thank the member for Terrebonne for bringing public financing reform forward for us to discuss.

This legislation also reduces the fundraising limits significantly in conjunction with the reintroduction of per-vote funding. The amount of the donation cap is largely irrelevant if there is still an inequity between donors who have means and donors who do not, and so the cap at $500 or $1,500 is largely immaterial to me. Someone who makes enough to pay taxes giving $400 is still out of pocket only $100, while someone who does not make enough to pay taxes giving $400 is out of pocket the full amount, not to mention possibly out of a home or a few meals. Therefore, I find the particular change proposed in the bill to be fairly meaningless. It would not solve any existing problem.

Finally, the member for Terrebonne's bill has an absolute rather than relative coming into force provision. Given that the bill is only at second reading here in the House and has yet to get through the Commons committee, report stage, third reading and referral to the Senate, second reading at the Senate, Senate committee, Senate report stage, Senate third reading, and royal assent, it is not realistic to suggest that the bill could be in force 24 days from now.

Over the past two years, we have made strides forward on these matters. I do not believe my views on fundraising reflect those of very many of my colleagues on any side of the House, but we are seeing changes both here and in several provinces.

Conservative Bill C-23, the so-called Fair Elections Act, reformed fundraising in a whole lot of ways that were detrimental to democratic society, including removing fundraising costs from capped expenses in an election campaign, and upping the donation limit by 25%, and then indexing it by $25 per year instead of by an an inflation-based formula.

I do not wish to re-litigate that particular bill. As the assistant at the time to the Liberal critic for democratic reform, I had more than enough sleepless nights trying to grok every word of that act once, and it certainly contributed to my motivation to seek a seat in this place so that this kind of abuse of democracy could not happen again.

Our own government's Bill C-50 brought in strict reporting requirements for fundraising events involving the key power brokers of government, and those working hard to replace them, which I think is genuinely important.

The thing about fundraising, and public financing of political parties, of course, is that there is no such thing as a perfect answer, only a balance of imperfect solutions. What I am sure of, though, is that Bill C-364 does not address the fundamental inequalities within our existing fundraising and public financing structure for our political system.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

We all received a copy of the minister's letter, and I think that's where you've got us right now, focusing on this letter. The problems arise, not so much from what it says, but from what it doesn't say. Again, here we are, running out of time to do our work effectively and the reason we don't have enough time is the government. I can make the case chronologically how this opposition has bent over backwards to try to be accommodating, on my part mostly because I want to see a lot of changes in the election laws, especially fixing some of the serious damage that was done by Bill C-23.

This government does not make it easy to continue to have that kind of approach because I feel a bit like we've been had. The government got what it wanted, for the most part, not the opposition, and the reason? We're out of time. Why are we out of time? Because we spent six weeks doing the filibuster we just referenced. I want to remind everybody that filibuster was caused by a letter from the House leader indicating draconian changes to the Standing Orders, followed by a motion from a member of this committee that then put a timeline on it and gave a 100% clear indication that it was the government's desire to let as much debate happen as is necessary, but only to allow them to get to the point where they could vote and ram it through. If the proof is in the pudding, what happened at the end of six weeks? The government withdrew the letter, and they withdrew the motion, and we were exactly where we were six weeks before, except we lost six weeks. That's the government's fault.

At the very least, when it looked as if we weren't going to get a chance to finish the Chief Electoral Officer's report in time to give it to the minister prior to the legislation she's developing now, what we asked for was an indication that the government was committing to at least an intention of a second round, a second bill, that would then give us a chance to do the follow-up work. If you'll recall, Chair, we have spent almost all our time in the last few weeks since we got out of the filibuster talking about only the issues the minister asked us to talk about, which we accommodated.

At the last meeting we asked for some indication to let us know that we should continue our work, and that the unfinished items could.... We haven't even gotten to the items that this committee thought were some good ideas; we put those over in another work pile as we put together our work plan. All we wanted was some commitment that this work was going to lead somewhere and do something progressive and positive. Instead, we get a letter that basically, if it says anything, says that—my words—if you don't get your work done in the report, you can send me a personal letter, so I can consider the things you want.

I don't need this letter to do that and I don't need PROC to do that. I could have done that a long time ago. What does that give me? Nothing. I spoke to you last night. I asked if there was any chance of getting hold of the minister because I didn't want to give this damn speech again. I'm getting as tired giving it as you folks are of hearing it, but damn it, it's still where we are.

Apparently I asked you last night, can you get to her to get us a different message, something that would prevent us from being exactly where we are right now? Crickets. Nothing. All we get is this.

I have to tell you, Chair, I am getting very frustrated and—this is public— I was the one who threw my lot in and trusted the government, even when my good friend Mr. Richards was warning me to be careful. He was concerned that we were going to get sandbagged here. I took the government at their word, and I thought they were serious about wanting to hear what this committee had to say, and that it would help advise and inform the minister as she developed legislation to introduce. I'm beginning to think more and more, worst-case scenario, that Mr. Richards was right, that we've been sandbagged here.

You can take your modest little victory in what you think this got you, but you're going to pay for it going forward, because we still have two and a half years to go.

Like Mr. Reid, I've been on this committee a very long time. Not as long as he, but a very long time, and I can tell you when this committee is working well we get some really good stuff done, and when we go in the ditch it is serious. The problem is that the House can't afford to have this committee tied up because basically we're the steering committee of the House. So it's not too long before the House is asking us to consider something that they've either given us directly or has come from a referral out of the Speaker's chair.

I don't have an action at the end, or a motion, Mr. Chair. I'm speaking much more in sorrow than in anger, but I do not like where we are. I do not think the government has been respectful of the opposition. I think they've been respectful enough to get what they want, and when it was time for the opposition to maybe get their day it was “too bad, so sad”. You can get away with that and you can get yourself out of this, fair enough, but be on notice. If this is the way you're going to treat us, you're going to have a very different opposition and you're going to have a very different autumn experience here than you have had to date.

Thank you.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

I want to thank Mr. Reid for his ever-thoughtful comments.

In my opinion, it would be in our best interest to take up the suggestion that we pursue some of this. The issue of not adjourning and forcing...the government of the day, whoever controls the majority, having the ability to unilaterally declare a 24-7 filibuster, when it's....

There are two different kinds of filibusters. There is the filibuster where you have the floor at a meeting and you talk until the end of the meeting. Then the meeting adjourns, and you go off and do your business. When we come back again as a committee, the first order of business is to pick up where we left off. The other kind of filibuster is the one the government forced this time by refusing to adjourn, effectively setting in motion a 24-7 filibuster that the opposition wasn't calling for.

I would just point out that this has happened before. I experienced it at the hands of his government, which did exactly the same thing to me, on Bill C-23, as this government did to him. It created as much confusion then as it did this time.

I think it may be in our best interest to take up Mr. Reid's suggestion that we pursue that a bit, because we know it's going to come up again and we are going to have the same turmoil and the same question of its legitimacy. We could get ahead of it by removing the passion of the moment and looking at it dispassionately.

There is an argument—and I'll just leave it there, not that I'm supporting it per se—that, given the fact that the opposition does have the ability to seize control of a committee through a filibuster, maybe a countervailing measure that the government can call its bluff by virtue of being able to trigger that is not such a bad thing. I think what's in question is whether it is done unilaterally through a declaration of the chair or, as Mr. Reid has outlined, whether it requires a vote. Should we eliminate it entirely? Do we deem it to be not cricket and say, “You know what? From now on, that's not the way we're going to let things go”?

Anyway, I just wanted to thank him for his remarks. We all learn. I suspect he is the dean of the committee, by a long shot, and I learn so much from him as a political historian.

I would end by echoing his comments about the chair. There were a few times when I was ready to come flying out of my chair, too, but for the most part, Chair, it's obvious you bent over backwards as much as possible in our situation, where you're both partisan and non-partisan at the same time. You're our Schrödinger's cat: you both are and aren't at the same time. I just want to echo how much your personal character helped us get through a very difficult time.

I would just end by, again, urging that, even though we have a massive amount of work, at some point we find the time to unpackage some of the issues Mr. Reid has raised, because it's in our best interest to do so.

Thank you, Chair.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes, and here's the thing. We still have the study of the protective services that we started quite some time ago, not long after we were constituted as a committee. We started to get a little bit of traction and then it kind of fell by the wayside as other things got layered on top. This is an opportunity to deal with some of those same issues, so putting all my cards on the table, people know some of the issues that I care about, and I'm not sure that an hour is going to cover it this time.

On the other one, I don't know about you people, but I have no agenda on the Chief Electoral Officer other than I wouldn't mind getting some deadlines from him. There is more information I would seek from him than normally under estimates, given the work we're doing on that study that's now been pushed back. I'm very concerned. I've been very up front with Mr. Chan and others about the fact that we are united—at least I am—with the government in wanting to make serious changes to the election laws.

A lot of that is contained in the Chief Electoral Officer's report. A lot of it is withdrawing the ugliness, in my opinion, from Bill C-23. That work has to be done. It would break my heart if we got to the end of this Parliament, with a majority government and at least one of the two opposition parties seriously wanting to make reforms in those areas—progressive, positive reforms—and we hadn't ripped out that ugly stuff that was stuffed down our throats in the last Parliament.

All of that is to say that I, for one, might spend a little more time than I might otherwise at estimates, but I'm not seeking to have the tail wag the dog here. I'm just saying that, from my perspective, there may be a little more time needed, given the current situation on both those files.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I appreciate that, Chair.

I enjoyed the exchange, but I do hope that it makes it a little easier for the member to understand where we're coming from, the process that led us to this point, and then the overreaction on the part of the government when they refused to adjourn. I hadn't seen that since Bill C-23 with Harper, when we thought I was going to do a two-hour filibuster, adjourn, and then come back the next day. They said, “No, you're not leaving.” Suddenly, not only was I in a filibuster, but I was in a filibuster that I wasn't even prepared for. It's a real sneak attack by a majority government that has all the marbles anyway to conduct themselves in that fashion, but then, for the government to do exactly that, in only the second time I've ever seen it, whoa.

I want to end in terms of responding to Ruby by saying that it is possible, in a different.... I'm not guaranteeing anything. I'm just saying that I think it is plausible, even possible, that had there been a different approach, we may still have the same disagreements, but we wouldn't be here at five minutes to eleven on a Wednesday night, spinning our wheels, which is really where we are. It's quite possible, because a different approach got a different result on at least two other occasions, and it wasn't like we didn't do work: we got two good reports. Both of them, I think, were only the first steps. There's more work to be done.

Again, you can take in context what previous parliaments said about this very issue, which was that they couldn't get everything through that they wanted to either, but for everything that they did put in, everyone agreed to it. They said, “It made Parliament work better and we urge you to follow that same sort of model.” It's not black and white, but when you add it all up, I don't think it's too difficult to understand how the opposition benches found ourselves where we are now. I would remind the honourable member, in my last comment on this before I return to my prepared remarks, that we could still do it.

The letter that I've spent maybe a couple of hours on is another attempt by the opposition to offer the government an exit strategy from their own mess. The only reason we're bothering is that we care about these things. If it had been a piece of legislation where you were going in a direction that we didn't agree with, whether you ran on it or not, we would just leave you there twisting.

That would be your problem, not ours. We'd say that we don't agree with you ideologically and we're not about to change, and it would be cut, dried, done, and over, but here we are, making a suggestion, and it's not a suggestion loaded in favour of the opposition. It's the process that Mr. Chrétien followed when he wanted to change the rules.

I won't go into the details, Chair—that wouldn't be right—but Mr. Richards and I have had numerous off-line private discussions with Mr. Simms. I think it's fair to say that for the most part we were the ones making recommendations and Mr. Simms was considering them. We would have a little back-and-forth and, at an appropriate time, he would say, “Okay, I hear what's being said.” Then he would have to go and talk to the folks who he would have to talk to, just like Mr. Richards and I would have to do before we could conclude a final, absolute agreement.

It's hard to make us out as the ones who are being the most difficult. I'm not saying that I'm not being difficult. I am being difficult.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

But the average Canadian goes to work at 8:30 in the morning. We go to work at 10. Why can't we go to work at 8:30?

The average Canadian works in January. We, too, could do that. The average Canadian works in September, and we could do that as well.

That time gets apportioned out, so that's one part of the argument. I'm glad I'm given this opportunity to talk about those elements because that's been spun, I think, in the wrong direction. Again, this is a discussion paper that we wanted to start with. We may very well end up with a report in the same spirit of the McGrath report in 1985. We just have to get to that point where we start on this report.

At this point I don't even want to talk about the past. Let's juxtapose it.... I just said I won't, but I guess I will.

On Bill C-23, Mr. Christopherson and others compared it with what we're doing here—not at all. Bill C-23 was tabled legislation, and that's it. This is not a motion that's been tabled. It's not even a study that we're predetermining as to what.... These are not recommendations written in stone.

I'll give you a good example. Scott Reid brought up the point about omnibus legislation, and one of the things we suggested was that maybe the Speaker can split omnibus bills. He may have a valid point. How does that happen? How do we get to that point? We can't get there until we have that discussion.

There are a few other details that are out there that are not entirely correct. We suggested the idea of a Prime Minister's question period; we didn't say it would be once a week. We said it would be a Prime Minister's question period. Why can't we have the Prime Minister accountable to the House for the entire period?

You see, this is the problem. We've been having a debate for the past 12 hours that I think has been a good one. Now I get a chance to rebut some of the stuff because, as I said, the Friday issue to me is about a half day. Canadians work Fridays, but they don't do half days. I don't know many Canadians who can go home at 1:30 or 2 o'clock in the afternoon. I suggest to Mr. Richards, stick around, do a full Friday, because Friday has to change. You either take that time, or you put it somewhere else. It's like one of those workers who opts for a 12-hour shift with more days off as opposed to a worker with an eight-hour shift who works more days. That option is available to many employees across this country—and rightly so. It's not an exercise in getting Friday off, as has been mischaracterized.

In the spirit of goodwill, a lot of times we've said, “I don't know what you do in your riding, but I work”, and people insinuate that they don't work when they're home. We all do. For goodness' sake, there isn't an MP out there who goes home and just sits at home and doesn't bother going out into their constituency. We all have offices. Let's not get into that game, but let's call it like it is.

This is the discussion paper that starts or is the genesis of a conversation that may well turn into the report that Mr. Christopherson characterized that was done in 1985, but we have to get there.

I'll leave it at that. I want to thank Mr. Richards, and Mr. Genuis, too, for suggesting this, and my colleagues for giving me this time. Thank you.

I won't stay late.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

You already know that's not going to happen, so you have to get over it. Listen, I'm still living down the Rae government. You carry what you have to carry too.

That's the difference. It feels as if we're in that time of “I have to think about every political angle, and I have to think out every move the government makes”. You're on the defensive. You have to look at where you can take your shots. That makes Canadians nuts. They like the adversarial system because it does work for us and it's our parliamentary system, but they like it in the Canadian way.

Mr. Chrétien offered up what would seem to be a very Canadian way to deal with this issue. Let's take the deputy speaker, make him or her the chair of the committee, and take the three House leaders and make the government House leader and the official opposition House leader vice-chairs, and they only will pass on the things that they agree on. That was good enough for Mr. Chrétien, and he did pretty well. Three, four.... ? Did he get four? He got three. He could have had four if it weren't for that vicious stuff, but we won't go there. We all have our baggage.

That's what Mr. Chrétien did. I don't know if he ever uttered the words “sunny ways”. He might have, but it's not part of his legacy, especially for that guy in the park.

But Mr. Chrétien's way of doing things is not good enough: the government wants more control than a three-time majority prime minister and former government Liberal believed that he was entitled to by way of controlling the House by the throat. If necessary, that option was always available to Mr. Chrétien, as we know. It was the Shawinigan handshake, yes, from the little guy from Shawinigan. We were once here on a tour when I was on city council, and Terry Cooke and I told the driver, “No matter what, even if everybody else goes back to the hotel, you have to take us to drive by to see where Chrétien lives.” The little guy from Shawinigan was that successful. When you're first starting out and someone like that is in power, you pay attention to it.

I think it says a lot that Mr. Chrétien thought that was a fair process to deal with this, yet Mr. Respect and Sunny Ways feels that's not good enough, that the government should retain the right to ram through the changes. Mr. Chrétien did not see it that way. You have to acknowledge that we have at least a good case, even if you don't want to admit it's the winning case. I feel sad and disappointed that I'm even talking that way in terms of winning and losing, especially when we're talking about the rules. There shouldn't be any losers on the rules; there just shouldn't be. It's that deep sense of commitment to Parliament and a desire to do a lot of this stuff.

I make no bones about it. A lot of the changes the government wants to make in the election laws, I favour. For a lot of the stuff it wants to remove from Bill C-23, I can't get that out of there fast enough. I make no bones about it. I don't want to see this Parliament go by with that stuff not taken out. We have a majority government with, at the very least, a third party—if not the opposition—that is very supportive of doing real modernization and paying real respect to the Chief Electoral Officer's report. Do you realize that when they brought in Bill C-23, they didn't even consult with the Chief Electoral Officer? That's how bad it was.

I want to get off this dime. It's wrecking all my other stuff. I'm missing the public accounts committee.