Bill C-76 (Historical)

Elections Modernization Act

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

This enactment amends the Canada Elections Act to establish spending limits for third parties and political parties during a defined period before the election period of a general election held on a day fixed under that Act. It also establishes measures to increase transparency regarding the participation of third parties in the electoral process. Among other things that it does in this regard, the enactment
(a) adds reporting requirements for third parties engaging in partisan activities, partisan advertising, and election surveys to the reporting requirements for third parties engaging in election advertising;
(b) creates an obligation for third parties to open a separate bank account for expenses related to the matters referred to in paragraph (a); and
(c) creates an obligation for political parties and third parties to identify themselves in partisan advertising during the defined period before the election period.
The enactment also amends the Act to implement measures to reduce barriers to participation and increase accessibility. Among other things that it does in this regard, the enactment
(a) establishes a Register of Future Electors in which Canadian citizens 14 to 17 years of age may consent to be included;
(b) broadens the application of accommodation measures to all persons with a disability, irrespective of its nature;
(c) creates a financial incentive for registered parties and candidates to take steps to accommodate persons with a disability during an election period;
(d) amends some of the rules regarding the treatment of candidates’ expenses, including the rules related to childcare expenses, expenses related to the care of a person with a disability and litigation expenses;
(e) amends the rules regarding the treatment of nomination contestants’ and leadership contestants’ litigation expenses and personal expenses;
(f) allows Canadian Forces electors access to several methods of voting, while also adopting measures to ensure the integrity of the vote;
(g) removes limitations on public education and information activities conducted by the Chief Electoral Officer;
(h) removes two limitations on voting by non-resident electors: the requirement that they have been residing outside Canada for less than five consecutive years and the requirement that they intend to return to Canada to resume residence in the future; and
(i) extends voting hours on advance polling days.
The enactment also amends the Act to modernize voting services, facilitate enforcement and improve various aspects of the administration of elections and of political financing. Among other things that it does in this regard, the enactment
(a) removes the assignment of specific responsibilities set out in the Act to specific election officers by creating a generic category of election officer to whom all those responsibilities may be assigned;
(b) limits election periods to a maximum of 50 days;
(c) removes administrative barriers in order to facilitate the hiring of election officers;
(d) authorizes the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to provide the Chief Electoral Officer with information about permanent residents and foreign nationals for the purpose of updating the Register of Electors;
(e) removes the prohibition on the Chief Electoral Officer authorizing the notice of confirmation of registration (commonly known as a “voter information card”) as identification;
(f) replaces, in the context of voter identification, the option of attestation for residence with an option of vouching for identity and residence;
(g) removes the requirement for electors’ signatures during advance polls, changes procedures for the closing of advance polls and allows for counting ballots from advance polls one hour before the regular polls close;
(h) replaces the right or obligation to take an oath with a right or obligation to make a solemn declaration, and streamlines the various declarations that electors may have the right or obligation to make under specific circumstances;
(i) relocates the Commissioner of Canada Elections to within the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer, and provides that the Commissioner is to be appointed by the Chief Electoral Officer, after consultation with the Director of Public Prosecutions, for a non-renewable term of 10 years;
(j) provides the Commissioner of Canada Elections with the authority to impose administrative monetary penalties for contraventions of provisions of Parts 16, 17 and 18 of the Act and certain other provisions of the Act;
(k) provides the Commissioner of Canada Elections with the authority to lay charges;
(l) provides the Commissioner of Canada Elections with the power to apply for a court order requiring testimony or a written return;
(m) clarifies offences relating to
(i) the publishing of false statements,
(ii) participation by non-Canadians in elections, including inducing electors to vote or refrain from voting, and
(iii) impersonation; and
(n) implements a number of measures to harmonize and streamline political financing monitoring and reporting.
The enactment also amends the Act to provide for certain requirements with regard to the protection of personal information for registered parties, eligible parties and political parties that are applying to become registered parties, including the obligation for the party to adopt a policy for the protection of personal information and to publish it on its Internet site.
The enactment also amends the Parliament of Canada Act to prevent the calling of a by-election when a vacancy in the House of Commons occurs within nine months before the day fixed for a general election under the Canada Elections Act.
It also amends the Public Service Employment Act to clarify that the maximum period of employment of casual workers in the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer — 165 working days in one calendar year — applies to those who are appointed by the Commissioner of Canada Elections.
Finally, the enactment contains transitional provisions, makes consequential amendments to other Acts and repeals the Special Voting Rules.

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

Does Bill C-76 give you the power you need in that context?

[Marc Chénier, General Counsel and Senior Director, Legal Services, Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The commissioner has asked me to send his regrets for being unable to attend today's session. I am pleased be here today in the context of your study of Bill C-76.

This bill contains measures that stem from recommendations that were previously made by both the commissioner and others. Among these extremely positive measures, the System of Administrative Monetary Penalties, eliminating the requirement for prior approval in order to lay a charge and the power to ask for a court order to compel witnesses.

In addition to these changes, there are a number of other elements that are of particular interest to us.

First is the return of the commissioner to within the Office of the CEO. This change would be beneficial because our work is closely tied to elections. We would be able to enhance our ability to fulfil our mandate by maintaining better contact with those responsible for the election machinery.

We are happy to see that the important safeguards in Bill C-23 to protect our office's independence have been kept in this bill, including the statement that our investigations be carried out independently, a fixed term for the commissioner with removal only for cause, and his status as deputy head for human resources.

With respect to the third party regime, the commissioner asked that I report that a review of complaints about third party activities during the last general election has been completed, and that we have not found any evidence of illegal collusion, coordination, or foreign influence. However, the narrow regulation of third parties under the current act has limited our examination. Third parties now carry out opinion polls, conduct canvassing activities, and hold events. To date, provided they are carried out independently from parties and candidates, these activities are unregulated. Thus, the bill makes significant progress toward levelling the playing field for electoral participants.

Our office has a few suggestions for improvements. First, the bill would require a third party to identify itself in a tag line on its advertising messages; however, a third party can be a group that is formed only for one election, and its name alone may be meaningless. This is not consistent with the goal of transparency sought by the act, and also causes enforcement difficulties. Some provinces require third parties to provide a telephone number or address in their tag line, and the committee may wish to consider requiring this of third parties.

Furthermore, we generally support provisions to provide tools allowing us to deal with new challenges to elections. This includes new offences related to cybercrime and misleading communications, as well as clarifying the offence for foreign inducement and for false statements about candidates and party leaders.

On that last point, I note that the clarifications related to these two provisions of the act are not as broad as what had been endorsed by the committee in its 35th report.

In the case of false statements about candidates and leaders, allegations of criminality and about a few personal characteristics would give rise to the offence. In our view, this is not sufficient to protect the integrity of our elections against false claims that can have a devastating impact on a campaign.

While courts have recognized that false allegations concerning moral turpitude are currently covered, this would be lost if the bill is adopted as is. At a time when false news has become a pressing concern, weakening one of the only provisions that protects our democratic process against false allegations may not be advisable.

With respect to undue influence by foreigners, one of the ways of exerting such influence would be to make a false statement about a candidate or leader. Again, this is much more limited than what the committee had endorsed. The commissioner continues to believe that any false information disseminated by a foreigner purposefully to influence a Canadian election should be prohibited.

Finally, I would point out that the commissioner supports the suggested amendments put forward by the acting CEO. In particular, as our office suggested to Elections Canada, a circumvention offence should be added to prohibit attempts to go around the ban on foreign funds being used to finance third-party activities. It is also important that the specific intent element be removed from the cybercrime offence.

Information about the amendments recommended by the commissioner is included in the chart that was distributed to the committee.

In conclusion, there are many useful elements to this bill. The commissioner has asked that I mention that there will nevertheless always be limits to what can be accomplished in some cases. While Canada has agreements with some countries to carry out investigations beyond our borders, there are others with which co-operation will be impossible.

That said, we are working with our government security counterparts to minimize such barriers.

I will be pleased to answer your questions.

Thank you.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I have one final question, Minister, about the issue of foreign interference in elections.

Again, I think the public record will show the answer that was given and the question that was asked.

With respect to Bill C-76, this is the bill the government has put forward that references the issue of foreign interference in elections. I know that this is something you're concerned about and that you've personally been a victim of to some extent.

The law allows a foreign entity to transfer money to a Canadian organization outside of the writ period, and the Canadian organization, as long as that foreign money is mingled with its own money, can then use that money in the process of the election because it has now become part of their organization. Theoretically, the Russian government could give a Canadian organization millions of dollars and, as long as it was mingled with Canadian money outside of an election, that could be used during an election. That's the present reality under Bill C-76.

Given the concerns you've raised, do you think Bill C-76 as presently written has sufficient tools to address the possibility of foreign interference in Canadian elections?

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

“For the most part”; that's a generous term.

I find it inconsistent. I like your enthusiasm and your energy for this stuff. It would be really great if you kind of splashed that around to the folks who were pushing for say, oil and gas or pushing for more fish farms in Canadian waters thereby threatening things that you say—and I believe you when you say you care about them. It seems to me if we want to ban foreign influence, which is something that we're trying to put into Bill C-76, we don't get to try to ban it from one side and raise cases from one side. I think it would offer a lot more credibility to this conversation and the discussion if there were some fair treatment of the obvious cases in which foreign actors have played significant roles with enormous amounts of money. The Fraser Institute's budget is $11 million a year. You're concerned about $1.5 million over a 10-year budget and yet something almost tens times that amount draws less concern from you. A little consistency would be good.

Mr. Chair, how am I for time?

[Vivian Krause]

Hang on a second here. We're here to talk about Bill C-76.

[Anna Di Carlo, National Leader, National Headquarters, Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada]

It's the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada.

Esteemed members, I'm very happy to be here.

I'll start by saying I'm quite familiar with the election law, and I have been since about 1991 when we had the Spicer and the Lortie commissions, the last time that any really serious study of the electoral law was done.

We also have a lot of experience being on the receiving end of the unfair and undemocratic aspects of the law since 1972, when we started participating in elections.

In our opinion, Bill C-76 is a missed opportunity. It missed the opportunity to uphold democratic principles and to contribute to alleviating the perception we have today that party governments don't have the consent of the governed. It did nothing to address how the electoral process and electoral results themselves don't inspire confidence that a mandate that is supported by the majority of Canadians has actually been achieved.

I'd like to highlight just two problems today, because of the brief amount of time we have. One is the right to an informed vote and the need to have equality of all those who stand for election. The other is the matter of privacy.

The unequal treatment of candidates results from the privileges accorded to the so-called major parties, and it violates the right to an informed vote. We're told that we have political equality because of an even playing field that is supposed to be created by the fact that everybody has to meet the same criteria. For example, everybody has to do exactly the same things to become a candidate. Everybody has to respect the spending limits and so on. On top of this, we're told that public funding mitigates the inequalities we have.

All of this is meaningless when privileges are accorded to some, and the rationale is presented that only the so-called major parties are considered to be contenders for government, and that therefore, only they deserve to be heard. Others are dismissed as being fringe or incidental. This is not democratic by any standard. The only ones who see these arguments and don't see that they're undemocratic are those who are passing laws.

Canadians see it for what it is: a violation of fundamental democratic principles that exacerbates the crisis of credibility and legitimacy of both the electoral law and governments.

I'd like to give just one example of how this time around we could have taken the opportunity to address this problem. For over 17 years now, the Chief Electoral Officer has been recommending that the allocation formula in the law be removed from the privileged status now in the formula that's in the law, and instead that allocation be on an equal basis, particularly the free time. I sit on the advisory committee of Elections Canada, and I attend the broadcast meetings, and this very simple recommendation that the free time should both be increased and allocated equally has been rejected repeatedly for 17 years because, as has been said, it needs to be referred to study.

In the next election, we'll face the same situation in which, first of all, the parties in the House will have the majority of time, and within that, the Liberal Party—the ruling party—will have the lion's share of that time, while the smaller political parties get a token, not to mention all the complications with the airing of it.

The second point I'd like to make relates to privacy. We stand with the Privacy Commissioner in believing that political parties should be subject to the law. We see no reason why they shouldn't. I want to highlight the hypocrisy in this, because even if political parties are subject to the privacy law and PIPEDA, the election law itself, in our opinion, violates the right to privacy.

The election law does not recognize the right to informed consent, in our opinion. In 2006, the Conservative Party, when it was in the vanguard of micro-targeting with its constituent information management system, used the power that it had at that time, although all the parties agreed, to introduce unique, permanent identification numbers for electors, and to introduce bingo cards, the practice of Elections Canada workers that replaces the work that was once done by scrutineers to inform the political parties as to who has voted when. They don't tell them how they voted, but with data analytics, we're very close to that situation.

The Conservative Party wanted the ID numbers so as to make data integration and micro-targeting easier. The bingo cards were designed to address the problem of not having enough volunteers, which is a problem that all political parties are facing. In our opinion, again, this violates the principle of informed consent. It is just wrong. Electors should have the right to not have their unique ID numbers handed over to political parties to facilitate uploading their information into elector databases. They should also have the right to opt out of having their names put on the bingo cards, so that parties know whether they've voted or not voted.

Finally, I want to make a different point about these developments. Privacy is one concern, but the significance of this development in campaigning, which involves tracking electors and building profiles about them, is of greater concern to us. In our opinion, it does nothing to raise the level of political discourse in the country. It's not enhancing the involvement of people in the political process. The privacy debate, which is focused on things such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal or Facebook and how it's being used, clouds precisely how micro-targeting is impacting the process and particularly how it relates to political parties fulfilling their purported role of being primary political organizations and being the organizations through which people are involved in debating and discussing the problems facing the society, and in deciding the agenda and policies the society needs.

Our conclusion is that these developments, along with the fact that there hasn't been a serious study of what's going on in the electoral process since 1991-92, requires that we have public deliberations on all the fundamental premises of the electoral process to renew it once again: how mandates are arrived at; how candidates are selected; the use of public funds; and the fact that all people and all members of the polity, regardless of whether or not they belong to a political party, should be treated as equals.

How do we achieve this? Our position is that funding the process should take priority and should replace funding political parties. We think political parties should raise funds from their own members and not be recipients of state funding. So long as state funds are allocated, they have to be allocated on an equal basis. Otherwise, we have a situation where power and privilege are influencing the outcome of elections.

Those are the opening remarks I wanted to make.

[Vivian Krause, Researcher and Writer, As an Individual]

Good evening, everyone. Bonsoir, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.

I will make my presentation in English, but I'll be happy to answer your questions in either language afterwards.

Thank you very much for inviting me to join you this evening to contribute to your work in relation to Bill C-76. My understanding is that you are interested in my input with regard to the issue of undue foreign influence in Canadian elections; therefore, I will do my best to speak to that first.

By way of background, perhaps it would be of interest to the committee for me to introduce myself briefly and to sum up why I believe undue foreign influence in our elections is a serious issue not only for our country but also for the sovereignty of our country.

By way of background, I am a Canadian citizen. I'm a resident of North Vancouver. For the last 10 years I have been following the money and the science behind environmental activism and, more recently, behind elections activism. I have done all my work on my own initiative. I am not funded or directed by anyone, and I've written a series of articles that sum up most of my work published in the Financial Post and elsewhere.

As you may be aware from some of the articles I've written, there is a significant extent to which non-Canadian influence had an impact in the 2015 federal election in our country. I reported this extensively to Elections Canada. I would just sum up for you briefly that there are at least three U.S.-based organizations that have claimed credit for having had a significant influence in the 2015 federal election. Two of these are Corporate Ethics International, based in San Francisco, and the Citizen Engagement Laboratory, based in Oakland, California.

How do we know these American organizations influenced the outcome of the 2015 federal election? Well, we know this because they've told us in writing. I'll cite one example.

In the 2015 annual report of the Online Progressive Engagement Network, which is part of the Citizen Engagement Laboratory, its executive director, referring to the year 2015, wrote:

We ended the year with...a Canadian campaign that moved the needle during the national election, contributing greatly to the ousting of the conservative Harper government.

That's a written statement by the executive director of a non-Canadian organization. How do they do that? Well, the Citizen Engagement Laboratory has a project called the Online Progressive Engagement Network, OPEN for short, and it had a program called strategic incubation. That program helped to create, launch, and back behind the scenes a Canadian-based organization called Leadnow, based in Vancouver.

Leadnow, with the support of OPEN, ran a “get the vote out” campaign in the 2015 and 2011 federal elections. In the 2015 federal election in particular, they ran a campaign that targeted Conservative incumbents in 29 ridings. In some of these ridings, it stands to reason that this group had an impact. For example, in Winnipeg, in the Elmwood—Transcona riding, where Leadnow had full-time staff for more than a year, as far as I'm aware, the incumbent was defeated by only 61 votes.

Bill C-76 aims to close some of the loopholes that have allowed non-Canadian influence in our federal elections. I understand that a lot of work has gone into the preparation of this bill, and as a Canadian I would like to acknowledge and thank everyone who's worked so hard on it so far. I regret to say, though, that unfortunately I think with the way the bill stands today, what happened in the 2015 election would be able to occur and reoccur. I don't see that this bill has been changed in the ways that would be needed to deter and in fact make illegal what happened in 2015 and keep it from happening again.

Specifically, I would refer the committee to proposed section 282.4 under “Undue influence by foreigners”. It's paragraph 282.4(1)(b) in particular that I think needs some work.

I'll leave it at that as my opening comments, Mr. Chairman, and I would be glad to answer any questions that you may have.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

I'm just going to make a point. In the name of brevity, I'll keep it short.

I sit on the Standing Committee on Finance, and we're going through a statutory review of the anti-money laundering act. We've been at it for eight months—maybe even nine months—at this point. I think we have easily reached almost 100 hours. The committee is travelling this week to study the issue.

I think Bill C-76 is a much bigger deal than the statutory review of the anti-money laundering act. The provisions contained within it have a direct impact on our democracy. The anti-money laundering act provisions are important in and of themselves, but they're not fundamental to what happens in 2019, which is a general election. I understand there is a certain amount of urgency to deal with it.

That being said, you want to get it right in the first place. You want to have all the right witnesses, and the right amount of feedback. You want to keep your list open, as has been the practice on two committees that I have been on, the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, as well as the finance committee. Keep the list open, because as you're questioning witnesses they might say that they know this professor who could provide you with this type of information.

This is a big bill. It's 354 pages. I have gone through it myself. It's a lot to read and compare to what the act says right now. These documents aren't easy to read. Bills aren't made in a format that are simple for anyone to pick up.

I think it's more than reasonable to keep it open, so that witnesses can come in when they can. As you're questioning individuals who come before the committee, they provide new names and you have the opportunity to go and find additional information to test what's in the bill, and its validity. Either it is, and you find evidence out there that confirms the direction that the Government of Canada has taken is the correct one, or they say it's faulty, because of an experience in their jurisdiction.

Commissioner Therrien, who was here today, provided a lot of information about the European context, and how political parties comply with privacy rules. He didn't name specifically that in Italy, they do x, y, and z, or in Greece, they do the following.... He could have said that in Greece, I have the contact for so and so, a commissioner who could provide you with that information. You never know what you're going to get until you start to process off.

Again, I'm just dropping in on this meeting to make a contribution. Other committees have dealt with this in other ways. By keeping it open and not restricting themselves to a strict timetable, they've had a better outcome.

It's an observation.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

It's to extend witnesses to Monday if there are any of those who we can re-ask, I guess. If we so choose, we can instruct the clerk to canvass those same witnesses again and let them know that there's another slot available. That gives them four more days and a weekend to prepare and come before committee.

Most of the witnesses, with the exception of maybe the chicken farmers...I'm not sure if they have a good grasp on this type of material about elections.

What my colleague, Filomena, has said it that we've been through a lot of this material with the Chief Electoral Officer's report because 80% of what the Chief Electoral Officer's recommendations were are in Bill C-76. We have thoroughly gone through it. We had the Chief Electoral Officer sit here meeting after meeting with us and also explain to us every time we had any question on any issues.

So we had the foremost expert on elections law here throughout that whole time. I can't even recall how many meetings that was at this point. I would have to go back to take a look. There were 25 meetings. That's over 50 hours there of meetings at that point. There's 50 hours plus the 30 hours of witnesses, now.

I'm just saying that it's not on this legislation but a huge chunk of it really was discussing whether these recommendations were good or not and what they entailed. We have a good understanding, I believe.

Let's put it out there to see if any of those witnesses want to come forward with another time slot. There's at least another six hours of options for them. Then we would have to naturally progress after that. That's the only way I see it. That's what we do as a committee, right?

Once we've had the witnesses, we have to go on to the next stage of the study.

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

Surprisingly, and we'll step off this topic. The evidence isn't that strong in supporting that, which surprises me, especially amongst youth voters.

However, I want to get over to the statement you made about the integrity and the belief in the integrity. You said not just the integrity but “the belief in the integrity of the voting systems”.

I want to talk about privacy for a moment. Under Bill C-76 the status quo is maintained: political parties are not exposed to any significant duties under the privacy laws of Canada, very few.

The data we all collect as political parties is shielded from the privacy commissioner or any independent observer of what we do with the data. There is no obligation to seek consent of voters or to inform them about what kind of data, personal information, we collect on them. Banks are obliged to do that, and private corporations. Do you think political parties should be as well?

[Arthur Hamilton, Lawyer, Conservative Party of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am the legal counsel for the Conservative Party of Canada, and I thank the committee for the opportunity to appear here this afternoon.

There is one particular feature of Bill C-76 that I propose to address, and in fact, it's an omission in the legislation that has now been proposed. Specifically, while the bill seeks to further restrict the spending of registered parties by a newly defined official pre-writ period, it ignores the larger issue of third party financing and the types of third party activities that are not even regulated.

The integrity of federal elections is an issue on which we all agree. Our federal election should be determined by Canadians. If that is agreed, we can also agree that this bill does not go far enough in plugging several holes that permit foreign influence in Canadian federal elections via third party activity. To illustrate my point, I refer to correspondence from Elections Canada prepared in the year 2015. During the 2015 general election, it became clear that several groups, including one referred to as Leadnow, were engaged in several aspects of the election and that they used foreign contributions.

By a letter dated October 1, in response to the concerns the Conservative Party of Canada had raised, the Office of the Commissioner of Elections Canada responded in part:

As provided for in the Act, Leadnow Society cannot use, for election advertising purposes, any foreign contribution that was received by the third party. It can use foreign contributions, however, to finance any of its activities that are not related to elections advertising. For instance, they may use foreign contributions to call electors, hold events, survey the opinions of electors, send e-mails or give media briefings. Such activities, if carried out by a third party independently from any candidate or registered party, are not regulated under the act.

Elections Canada's interpretation of the Canada Elections Act on this point is open to serious challenge, but rather than endless debate on this point, this Parliament can and should act decisively to ensure that foreign contributions cannot influence Canadian federal elections.

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled on the importance of the strict regulation of third parties in its decision in Harper v. Attorney General of Canada, where it cautioned:

For voters to be able to hear all points of view, the information disseminated by third parties, candidates and political parties cannot be unlimited. In the absence of spending limits, it is possible for the affluent or a number of persons or groups pooling their resources and acting in concert to dominate the political discourse....If a few groups are able to flood the electoral discourse with their message, it is possible, indeed likely, that the voices of some will be drowned out...Where those having access to the most resources monopolize the election discourse, their opponents will be deprived of a reasonable opportunity to speak and be heard. This unequal dissemination of points of view undermines the voter’s ability to be adequately informed of all views.

That's from paragraph 72 of the Supreme Court's reported decision.

Later in that same decision, the Supreme Court of Canada recognizes that:

If individuals or groups were permitted to run parallel campaigns augmenting the spending of certain candidates or parties, those candidates or parties would have an unfair advantage over others not similarly supported.

That appears at paragraph 108 of the reported decision.

The interpretation by Elections Canada quoted earlier must be corrected by clear legislative language. Our Supreme Court has been decisive on this point. This Parliament should regulate all third party activities and ban all foreign contributions. When it does so, and only when it does so, we will have secured electoral fairness in this country.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Daniel Therrien]

My suggestion would be that the party privacy policies align with international privacy principles, which are reflected in Canada's federal privacy law, which is PIPEDA. I think the policies of parties should be consistent with PIPEDA principles, which are the same as international principles.

Point two, parties should be legally required to comply with these undertakings, which is not the case under Bill C-76.

Point three, whether or not parties are in compliance should be subject to oversight through a complaint mechanism to an independent third party, likely our office.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Okay.

The Minister of Democratic Institutions has suggested to this committee that we should revisit the issue of parties and privacy rules to recommend a more robust framework.

I understand that you're disappointed it's not within Bill C-76. However, that does not preclude us from being able to revisit the topic in the future and putting together our best framework.

What would you suggest that framework contain, if this committee does do a study on that? You had mentioned following international principles. Is that going far enough, or do you have other suggestions?

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

That's good to hear. It may not be particularly pertinent on Bill C-76, but certainly your message that maybe Elections Canada step up a bit to inform people about the statement of ordinary residence, and so on.... It's not to say that you're not. I'm just thinking you could always use some help.

Thank you.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I have a quick question for you, Mr. Therrien. It may be a longer question than I anticipate, and if so, I apologize.

In going through the legislation, something came to my attention that I thought was somewhat positive. Under Bill C-76, if a party intentionally misled someone in their policy, which is now to be required under this legislation, there would be serious ramifications. I mean, the leader could face serious punishment. There would be a deregistering of the party, as it's laid out here.

Is that a positive step, to you?