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.

[Stéphane Perrault]

I'll try to be brief. In a direct way, the answer is no, they cannot do that.

The difficulty, as I indicated when I testified on Bill C-76, is that although we have prohibitions, it's difficult to trace the source of funds for third parties. Third parties use funds that come from organizations that may come from other organizations, and so forth.

There is not a disclosure of the original sources going back to individual donors being Canadian citizens or permanent residents, as there is for parties and candidates. Doing that raises difficult issues from a charter point of view.

This is something that I'm looking into. I will be making recommendations to Parliament sometime in April. I intend to address and propose some avenues—

[Philippe Méla]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Yes, Mr. Nater, I remember well what happened at C-76 last time. Yes, indeed, the parent act.... In this case there was no amendment to the bill that was adopted that would warrant this amendment to be moved, or to make it admissible. The content of the amendment in itself goes beyond the scope of the bill by adding “polling station”. It's not linked to the part of the bill on the enhanced health and safety of conducting elections. That was the reason.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

I'm sorry, Madam Chair. Could I just get some clarity, and perhaps it could come from Monsieur Méla?

I think you and I might have been the only two who were on PROC when we reviewed C-76, and we had a similar issue when it related to the parent act rule. I'm drawing a blank on the specifics, but it was something that we challenged within the committee. It was dealt with by the clerk, and then it went to the House. The Speaker at the time, Speaker Regan, ruled that in that case it was acceptable to make an amendment, even though it offended the parent act rule.

If I had my little folder of past rulings I could look into it. It's at my home in Mitchell.

Perhaps it's something that the legislative counsel could address off the top of his head. If not, then I'm not going to push the issue, obviously. I'm not going to challenge the ruling. I was just hoping for some clarity on that. I thought there was some flexibility that was noted in Speaker Regan's ruling on that.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

We have obviously taken note of and read carefully the court's decision. We accept the court's decision. You will note that we did not seek to appeal the court's decision, because we accept those findings.

I don't disagree with your characterization that it may have been an unfortunate circumstance. I've been a minister for five years. We receive advice from different government departments, including the Department of Justice, obviously, on highly technical legal matters. We're accountable for those decisions; it's not the public servants who offer the advice or whom we encourage to appear before committees to speak freely about their work and answer technical questions from colleague parliamentarians. We expect that to be a healthy, normal and good part of the parliamentary process, but we certainly accept responsibility for that legislative change, as you said, in Bill C-76. We thought Bill C-76 had a lot of positive improvements in terms of the Canada Elections Act, but we're happy to work with other parties to add the word “knowingly” into that particular section, which the court struck down. We accept the court's decision and we would welcome advice from colleagues as to the best way to remedy that in a legislative process.

We don't think that dragging it before the courts is the best way, but I'm not insensitive to your comment, Mr. Nater. Obviously I don't disagree with the substance of your conclusion. I regret that this was the way that this particular clause was treated by the courts, but I fully accept the decision of the justice.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for joining us this morning, or this afternoon, depending on time zones. It's always nice to have our ministerial counterparts before committee.

I want to start by going back a bit into the past, to Bill C-76.

When this bill was introduced in the House of Commons in the previous Parliament, there was an unfortunate decision to amend subsection 91(1), despite objections from the Conservative Party and the motion that I myself brought forward, which would have corrected it. Unfortunately, it went ahead and was ruled unconstitutional.

My concern is that Justice Davies was quite scathing in her criticism of your own department at PCO. She wrote in her decision, “More importantly, the advice given to the Standing Committee by Mr. Morin”—a senior adviser at PCO—“that the inclusion of the word 'knowingly' in subsection 91(1) was unnecessary, redundant and confusing was, for several reasons, incorrect and potentially misleading.”

She goes on to write, in paragraph 58, “To the extent Mr. Morin testified about the import of removing 'knowingly' from subsection 91(1), his comments were inaccurate and cannot be taken as reflecting Parliament's true intention.”

Minister, this was a senior adviser to your own department, the Privy Council Office. I'd like to know what measures you have taken to ensure accountability exists within your department and that unconstitutional advice to this committee will not happen again.

Budget Implementation Act, 2021, No. 1

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have an opportunity to speak to the budget bill, because I have a lot of concern about the budget.

I will start with the amount of debt the government has added. The Prime Minister has added more debt to Canada than did all the prime ministers, together, since the beginning of Confederation. We are now at a debt of $1.3 trillion and the government has asked to raise the ceiling of that to $1.8 trillion.

People may wonder why that matters to me. The amount of debt that has been added to each Canadian is about $30,000. Let us think about this. That means for people who are watching, they will have to pay the government $250 a month every month for the next 10 years to pay off just what the government has spent so far. As we continue to spend, those numbers will go up. Let us think about in terms of a family. Partners and their children, everyone, will be paying $250 a month for 10 years. That is a lot of money.

There does not seem to be a plan. I asked the finance minister last night and she was unable to articulate a plan that would resolve this in the longer term. Nobody certainly expects an immediate adjustment, because we are trying to exit the pandemic, but where is the plan to exit the pandemic and restore the economy?

If we look at some of the substance in the budget, we will see that the Liberals have extended many of the programs that were put into place to help people during the pandemic, and that is great. The Conservatives always supported that. However, a lot of the programs had flaws and people were falling through the cracks. Those things were identified early on, even in April and May of last year. Therefore, I do not understand why the government has extended programs without fixing the things. Many people had start-up businesses. This was a clear area where folks who had unfortunately started up just prior to the pandemic or a few months in advance of the pandemic did not have the revenue to show for the previous year. If the government really wants to help people, why are these little holes in the programs not fixed?

It is the same situation for a lot of the women entrepreneurs. We have heard how disproportionately affected women were in the pandemic. We have seen the maternity leave issue. Women who were going to take maternity leave in the future but then had to stay home from work because of COVID were unable to get their maternity leave. The Liberals have not sorted that out in a whole year. The government knows about these issues and it needs to fix them. I do not understand why they were not fixed for the budget.

The member for Kingston and the Islands talked about the accusations that the Liberals were vote-buying and electioneering with this budget. It is hard not to think that is the case when we see money for everybody. Certainly, the Liberals will continue to give money away until they run out of the taxpayer money, and we are just about there.

I have looked at some of the promises in the budget. In particular, I want to talk about child care because that was flagged as a huge need. We have certainly heard that at the status of women committee which I chair. However, it is contingent on the provinces paying half. What if the provinces do not have the ability to pay? With the pandemic and the expenses they face, that may be the case. I asked the finance minister last night what the plan was if provinces could not afford to pay and she was not able to articulate a plan. It is very concerning when the person who is supposed to be in charge of the financial plan cannot say what it is.

We need to ensure that there is something to address the child care need because women have left the workforce and many of them will not return because they are unable to get child care.

In terms of some of the other things, this was put forward as being a growth budget. Again, last night when we looked at the estimates, I asked the finance minister about the plans for growth in the oil and gas sector and if she could point to measures that would achieve that. There was really nothing in the budget for that. It is the same for the natural resources sector. That is about 17% of our GDP. Again, there was really a blank space where there should have been some kind of a plan to grow that sector. This sector could really bring in revenue that would then pay for a lot of the social programs we are wanting.

I asked the same question about agriculture and where in the budget were the plans to spur growth in the agriculture sector. Again, there was no answer.

Therefore, this is not a growth budget. The only thing growing in this budget is the debt, and that is not what we need.

We really need to start to create jobs and get people back to work: the million jobs that were lost in the pandemic and those that will continue to be lost. We need to find help for the sectors that are struggling, and the tourism sector is well recognized as one that is struggling.

The government picked its favourite, Air Canada, and did something there, but nothing for WestJet, nothing for Air Transat and nothing for the other carriers. At the same time, the $1 billion for fairs and festivals is woefully inadequate for one of the hardest-hit sectors, which employs many people in the country. The plan needs to be realistic, and we need to appreciate that it could be a two-year recovery for the people in that sector.

At the same time, high-speed Internet is known to be a need across the country. In fact, it is essential to do business today. There is $1 billion in this budget for high-speed Internet, but I would point out that in the last few years $1.5 billion has been spent and that is a drop in the bucket compared to what is needed. This is something that the government is saying it wants to accelerate.

Again, in terms of the priorities of the spending, there are some things that I think we need to stop spending on and other things that we need to divert to and accelerate, like high-speed Internet.

I was happy to see long-term care being addressed, and certainly that is important. In the area of seniors, the increases to OAS that we have long been calling for are appreciated, for those over 75 years of age. We have seen that during this pandemic the government did two carbon tax increases, and the cost of everything is going up: food, groceries, etc. Seniors are on a fixed income in many cases and are very hard pressed. While the government is busy spending, why only the 75-plus? What about the people between 65 and 75? I should point out to the Liberals that those people do vote, so that could be a consideration for them.

The other thing I see here is a top-up for low-wage earners. To me, that looks like a basic guaranteed income that just was not called a basic guaranteed income.

Of course, in this long budget bill, the omnibus budget bill that the government always promised it would never do, the government has decided to sneak in something about the Elections Act, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the budget. What happened was that, in the last Parliament, Bill C-76, a bill to change the Elections Act, tried to introduce measures to make it an offence to say false things about a candidate or a public figure, but the court struck that down as being a violation of people's freedom of speech.

Instead of challenging the court's decision or respecting the court's decision, the government has decided to take the sneaky approach and stick it in a 720-page budget bill, and put the provision in there that this would take effect on any election that occurs within six months of the coming into force of this budget. Well, that certainly sounds like the Liberals are intending to have an election in the next six months, does it not? This is just more evidence that the Liberals are desperate to have an election and that they do not keep their promises, because this is an omnibus budget bill.

At the end of the day, when we look at the measures in the budget, what did we get for it? I have just a few questions that remain.

First of all, I do not see the plan to exit the pandemic. We thought maybe the vaccines would be it, even though that has been badly bungled. Now we are saying, “Well, you know what, even if you get the vaccine you might still be able to transmit COVID and might still be able to get it, so you are not going to get your freedoms back there.” I really do not have a lot of confidence that the government is going to give back Canadians' freedoms, and if it does, that it would restore the economy. Because there is no growth plan in this budget and there are no adequate sector supports defined, there may be nothing left to reopen to, if the government does not address this. The government has to come up with a plan to address the unsustainable debt. We cannot continue to operate in this way.

Finally, the government needs to stop the war on freedom of speech of Canadians in this country.

Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2020

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to be here today and to contribute to this debate on Bill C-11. I have been here for four years. It is hard to believe, as I just had my anniversary on April 3, that I have been serving the good people of Calgary Midnapore for four years, which I am so fortunate to do. At this point in my political career, if I do not believe that the messengers themselves are sincere, I have a hard time believing the message. It is really hard for me to think about and understand a policy if I do not have a lot of good faith in the individual or entity from which it is coming.

There stems one of the two struggles that I have with this bill: I do not genuinely believe in the sincerity of the current government to protect Canadians. I have seen this from many perspectives, both past and present. My second concern is a sort of generalization, but it still remains that I see the government doing things in a half-hearted effort. This is along the same lines as my first point about insincerity.

When I refer to my past experience with this, I am drawing upon my time as the shadow minister for democratic institutions. Bill C-11 is relevant to that because, during my time as shadow minister, the Digital Charter was announced. If not legislation, this was certainly an important policy announcement that was supposed to carry a lot of weight. At the time, we were debating Bill C-76, which would have major implications for future elections. The digital conversation, along with foreign interference and foreign influence, had a lot to contribute to the discussion around Bill C-76.

When the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry made his announcement at that time, along with the minister of democratic institutions, it felt very flat. It felt as though it was one of those commercials for children on a Saturday morning or, since the current government likes to insult Conservative institutions so much, perhaps a video from PragerU. It really did not come across with a lot of sincerity or a lot of teeth. It just seemed to do what the government likes to do, which is a lot of virtue signalling.

This bill also reminds me of the tribunal composition. It always concerns me a little when the government creates a body that has any type of implication in the direction of Canadians' lives or industry. I am thinking of the Leaders' Debates Commission, which I believe significantly impacted the debates framework in the last election. I recall the question from the member of Parliament for Provencher to the previous speaker. If we look back now, the debates commission included one of the Kielburger brothers. It is very interesting that we find this here today.

One thing I am concerned about within the framework of the Bill C-11 legislation is that the current government members always find a way to take care of their friends. We have seen this with SNC-Lavalin, which we are still dealing with the implications of here today as we go through the pandemic; with Mr. Baylis, the former member of Parliament; and, as has been alluded to before, the WE Charity scandal, which the previous speaker indicated. Unfortunately, this legislation is being sent to ethics rather than industry in an effort to delay that. Even in the context of Bill C-11 and what this is supposed to do, I worry about government members taking care of their friends.

I mentioned that the second part of my concern was that the current government does everything half-heartedly. I believe that includes this legislation, without question.

We look at the possibility of information being shared with other parties. The bill would allow an organization to transfer an individual's personal information to a service provider without their knowledge or consent. Regarding the right to have the collecting party delete collected information on request, it somewhat deals with that, but when I have tried to unsubscribe, in some situations it has definitely been unsuccessful.

We also see in the bill the right to opt out of the sale of personal information where an organization may transfer an individual's personal information to a service provider, again, without their consent or knowledge. This is a theme that I am seeing in terms of the government addressing things half-heartedly and Bill C-11 definitely falls within this.

Also, we have seen this half-hearted response with the pandemic from the very beginning in terms of the government's eliminating the warning system prior to the pandemic's arrival; the return of personal protective equipment, which showed such a lack of foresight for the necessity of its use not months later; and the slow closing of borders that we saw at the very beginning, and in my position as shadow minister for transport I have seen incredible, draconian measures that were inserted at a result of poor response earlier on. It is the same with any situation when the longer we allow something to fester, the greater the response it requires later on. Unfortunately, Canadians are paying the price of the inaction. There is also the rapid testing and of course vaccines, which is a complete failure of the government and of the Prime Minister .

I want to say to any Canadian who is listening to this speech, if they are upset because their business is closed, their children are at home and not at school, they have not seen their family in 18 months, there is a third wave, it is the fault of the Prime Minister for so poorly preparing for the later stages of this pandemic. This is another half-hearted response that I have referred to.

We have also seen this unfortunately within the defence committee. The government was willing to turn its back on women all across the country in not believing the stories and yet it is willing to investigate the unfortunate situation of the member for Pontiac, who is an incredible individual might I say. My husband and I had the good fortune of travelling to Israel with him and I will stand in solidarity with him.

In kindergarten, I was painting a picture and when I was done, I had taken off my smock and was standing there in my slip when my good friend, Kim Crocker, who I later had the pleasure of serving with in student council with in high school said to me, “You're standing there in your slip” as all the fine women of Calgary Midnapore did wear at that time. My point is the Liberals have turned their backs on women at the defence committee as well.

If there is something good to be said about this piece of legislation, in my capacity as shadow minister for transport, many right-to-repair organizations and the small repair shops across rural and suburban Canada have said that Canadians have the right to own their data.

Colleagues within the Conservative Party will argue that this is a property right and a human right. As we advance in the digital age, I believe more and more that this is a human right, that our history of data will one day be almost synonymous with our DNA.

I will leave it there. I do not believe in the government's sincerity of protecting Canadians. I believe that so much that the Liberals do is a half-hearted effort. For both of these reasons, I stand here today in regard to Bill C-11 with a lot of questions about the legislation, but the belief that I am not certain whether this legislation goes far enough.

[Kevin Chan]

Mr. Waugh, again, I want to characterize it the way it has been, which is that exiting the news market was the only response to a proposal that didn't respect the realities of how the Internet works.

I would say that in Canada, we've seen examples of this. For example, if we look at Bill C-76,, which was the Elections Modernization Act from the previous Parliament, we were very early supporters of that, and we supported it throughout its legislative process. We were the first to comply and build very robust systems to ensure that we did our part to ensure a free and fair election.

As you may recall, there were other platforms that had a different posture, including some that exited the market for political ads. I would hope for your understanding in this regard, in the sense that companies obviously are going to have to look internally to see whether or not they can meet the requirements set by authorities. Usually, when laws are fact based, we're able to do that, as we did with Bill C-76.

When a law disregards the basic premise of the Internet and how it works, it obviously makes it very challenging, so in the end, we exited the market.

It is also the case that the revised and amended law in Australia further clarifies...to state that exiting the news market is a legitimate outcome for the process if a company deems it to be too high a regulatory burden.

Canada Elections Act

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, this is a really critical issue. The committee should be taking this up as one of its priorities for the legislation.

People in the House will know that I am not a wallflower when it comes to criticizing the government. However, if we look back to Bill C-76, it was a very combative way to change the Elections Act. The approach so far seems to be different, and that is important. It creates the space for the committee to do good work on this and other issues to get some changes on which we can all agree, and then proceed on that basis.

I remain optimistic in respect to this legislation that we should be able to find a path forward and get good rules in place to protect both public health and democracy in the case that we do have an election. The best option is to not have an election right now. It is not a good time.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Madam Speaker, the President of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada will remember that in Guelph we had robocalls a few elections back where Conservatives were calling people in my community saying that election locations had changed. They also went on campus to try to take one of the polling boxes from our campus.

Having consistent polling election locations for the pre-votes and the day of the vote would be important, as are the changes made in Bill C-76 to modernize the Canada Elections Act and have the Elections Canada commissioner be able to communicate to Canadians the best way to vote in their communities, the locations of polling stations, and having some means to promote the vote.

Could the president comment, first of all, on how we can maintain consistency of polling locations, if that is possible, and also how Elections Canada can communicate those to our communities?

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

In terms of the accessibility of polling locations, do you find there's been an improvement from the Fair Elections Act versus the new elections legislation in Bill C-76?

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Thank you, Madame Chair.

Mr. LeClair, I'm actually on the Métis Nation website and have come across an article from 2015 regarding the Fair Elections Act that the former government had brought in place. In that article, it says:

The Conservative federal government's Fair Elections Act disallows Canadians from using the voter information cards they receive in the mail as proof of identity at polling stations. It also ended the practice of “vouching” in which voters with acceptable ID could attest to identity and addresses of those who lacked it.

I'm wondering if you can comment on the new legislation that came through in Bill C-76 to increase the accessibility of polling locations and to ensure that culturally appropriate electoral services were available. Can you speak to the changes made between that 2015 piece of legislation and the 2019 version and how they have affected the turnout among Métis people?

[Stéphane Perrault]

Bill C-76 has not changed that, but it's a very good point. If you vote in person, there's no latitude in the act. I can prescribe the documents, but you have to provide the documents to vote. That's in-person voting. If you vote by mail, the law gives me the authority to establish the means of identification that I deem to be sufficient. I do have on the vote-by-mail system a greater flexibility.

We don't necessarily want a system where one way of voting has a certain degree of integrity and the other one has it to a lesser degree.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Okay.

You've spoken a couple of times now on the identification requirements for those who are doing their mail-in ballots. Is that not discretionary? I mean, what are the identification requirements? Bill C-76 came through, and I believe some of that made those identification requirements discretionary.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Chair, in December 2018 the Liberals passed Bill C-76. This included provisions to prevent foreign interference in Canadian society.

Does the government believe that Joyce Murray's actions have violated this portion of the act?