Bill C-65

Electoral Participation Act

An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act

This enactment amends the Canada Elections Act to, among other things,
(a) provide for two additional days of advance polling;
(b) authorize returning officers to constitute polling divisions that consist of a single institution, or part of an institution, where seniors or persons with a disability reside and provide for the procedures for voting at polling stations in those polling divisions;
(c) update the process for voting by special ballot;
(d) provide for the establishment of offices for voting by special ballot at post-secondary educational institutions;
(e) provide for new requirements relating to political parties’ policies for the protection of personal information;
(f) establish new prohibitions and modify existing prohibitions, including in relation to foreign influence in the electoral process, the provision of false or misleading information respecting elections and the acceptance or use of certain contributions; and
(g) expand the scope of certain provisions relating to the administration and enforcement of that Act, including by granting the Commissioner of Canada Elections certain powers in respect of any conspiracy or attempt to commit, or being an accessory after the fact or counselling in relation to, a contravention of that Act.
The enactment also provides that the Chief Electoral Officer must make a report on the measures that need to be taken to implement a three-day polling period, a report on the measures that need to be taken to enable electors to vote at any place in their polling station, a report on the feasibility of enabling electors to vote at any polling station in their electoral district and a report proposing a process for the determination of whether a political party has as one of its fundamental purposes the promotion of hatred against an identifiable group of persons.

[Connor Bildfell, Lawyer, McCarthy Tétrault LLP, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It is a privilege to appear before this committee. Thank you for inviting me.

My name is Connor Bildfell. I'm a lawyer at McCarthy Tétrault in Vancouver, and my practice includes both privacy and constitutional litigation. I appear before you today in my personal capacity. My remarks today will focus on two aspects of Bill C-65. The first concerns privacy, and the second concerns election integrity.

Starting with privacy, this bill proposes a national, uniform and exclusive privacy regime applicable to federal political parties. There are, of course, good reasons to have a uniform regime. For example, having a uniform regime ensures that voters across the country benefit from the same set of privacy rules. Equally, requiring federal political parties to comply with a series of privacy laws that vary from province to province could create compliance challenges, especially in today’s digital environment where personal information flows freely across borders.

Make no mistake—this bill engages complex legal issues, and questions remain about how those issues will play out. For example, in the province where I practise, both the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for B.C. and the B.C. Supreme Court have ruled that federal political parties must comply not only with the Canada Elections Act’s privacy requirements but also with provincial privacy requirements. Those rulings are now on appeal before the B.C. Court of Appeal, and the constitutional applicability of provincial privacy laws to federal political parties remains very much in question.

Moreover, as you heard from Dr. Bannerman last week, some Canadians have raised concerns that the proposed federal regime is not as rigorous as existing provincial privacy laws and the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. Some have raised concerns that the regime is not subject to oversight by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. The committee’s study of this bill offers an opportunity to consider these legal issues and engage with these concerns.

To turn to the second topic, Bill C-65 also includes election integrity measures, including provisions that target false or misleading statements about certain matters relating to elections. Most Canadians can agree on at least two things: First, freedom of expression is good; second, misinformation is bad. The challenge for policy-makers like you is to create clear and targeted laws that effectively combat misinformation without chilling legitimate political speech, which enjoys the highest level of protection under Canadian constitutional law. Striking this balance is not always easy.

While Bill C-65 proposes a number of measures designed to strike this balance, some of the existing statutory provisions that Bill C-65 does not address raise concerns. For example, paragraph 91(1)(b) of the existing Canada Elections Act prohibits, among other things, false statements about a candidate’s “education, professional qualifications or membership in a group or association of a candidate”. It also prohibits the same kinds of false statements about public figures associated with a political party.

The issue is this: Are these prohibitions sufficiently clear and targeted to avoid chilling legitimate political speech, or are they so vague that some individuals may self-censor to avoid potentially falling afoul of these prohibitions and facing serious penalties?

To illustrate, if someone states that a candidate is a socialist or a member of the alt-right, do they risk prosecution? If a candidate states that they worked as an insurance broker, but they never received their accreditation, do they risk prosecution? What about satire, parody or hyperbole? Are those off limits? Who falls within the class of public figures associated with a political party—for example, spouses of party leaders, former politicians or someone like Mark Carney?

These questions should be taken seriously because protecting legitimate political speech and election integrity are both important objectives that underpin the Canada Elections Act.

The committee's study of this bill offers an opportunity to consider these legal issues and engage with these questions. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to our discussion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you, Ms. Barron.

Colleagues, that brings us to the end of the first panel, so I'm going to briefly suspend for about five minutes to allow for us to turn over.

Thank you very much to our witnesses for being here today and contributing to our study on Bill C-65.

We are suspended.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Mr. Conacher, do you have any comments on this? I'm sure that Democracy Watch would certainly be supportive. Could you say whether or not you're supportive of the steps that are taken in Bill C-65 on crypto-assets, and then comment on whether you think the penalties are stiff enough to deter foreign actors?

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

Thanks to all the witnesses for being here today.

Professor Loewen, I wanted to direct a couple of questions to you. I'm particularly interested in Bill C-65's focus on limiting cryptocurrency and other forms of untraceable contributions to third parties.

Do you think that this is a good step forward that will enhance public trust in our election process?

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Through you, I'd like to thank the witnesses for coming today.

My first question is for the Canadian Labour Congress, and I want to make sure I'm understanding this correctly.

You mentioned that one of the areas of concern for you is the major overreach for election advertising services and partisan activities, and that it would impact communications with your members. From my understanding—and I'd like to get your opinion on this—Bill C-65 does not actually make any changes to existing rules with respect to partisan communications, so they're not prohibited under the act. It is regulated but not prohibited. I just want to make sure that I'm understanding your point because, from what I understand, they are not included in this. We're not making changes to that.

[Duff Conacher, Co-founder, Democracy Watch]

Thank you very much for the invitation from the committee to testify on this very important bill, Bill C-65, and the overall issue of election reform.

I am going to make my statements today in English.

My French still needs quite a bit of work.

I welcome your questions.

I'm going to quickly summarize what I think you can change in the bill. Unfortunately, the bill was not referred to the committee after first reading, as past bills have been, so you're constrained to making amendments within the framework of the bill. I'll set out things that I think fit within that framework, and then I'm going to also summarize what else needs to be changed. There are many other things that this bill does not address that Democracy Watch has called for in its many appearances before the committee since 1997—that is, over the past 27 years.

First of all, with regard to what is in the bill, I won't refer to section numbers. Democracy Watch will be filing a written submission with details, so I'll quickly summarize some of the key areas.

First, do not increase the registration threshold for third parties to $1,500, as the bill proposes. As Professor Loewen noted, the cost of informing voters has decreased, not increased, significantly. If you increase the registration threshold, you're just allowing for secret third party activity. With less than $1,500, you could reach every voter in a riding—tens of thousands of voters—and voters have a right to know the third parties who are doing that. The registration threshold should be decreased to something like $200.

The bill changes third party spending rules. One of the most important things the bill does not address is that, still, even if it were enacted as proposed, one individual or a business could spend $1.6 million to influence an election. That's one voter. Allowing one voter to spend as much as a citizens group that has tens of thousands of supporters is not democratic. It's also unethical. It allows that voter to have greater influence and do huge favours for a party. Bill C-65 does not close that loophole.

I disagree with the Canadian Labour Congress's position that groups should be able to flow money to other third party groups. That has been used to hide who is actually spending and trying to influence an election through the use of front groups across the political spectrum. It's good that the bill closes that loophole.

The bill should also be amended to require third parties to register for nomination and party leadership contests and disclose their donors and spending. We're here on election day in the U.S., and lots of people think the rules in Canada are better than the rules in the U.S., but for PACs—third parties, or political action committees as they're known in the U.S.—our rules are much worse. A third party individual—again, one voter, business or interest group—can spend an unlimited amount of money, in secret, to support or oppose a nomination contestant or a party leadership contestant. It's one of the biggest loopholes that allows for foreign interference, and it can and should be closed with amendments to this bill.

The bill changes voting rights. You should amend the bill to prohibit voting by foreigners and anyone under the age of 18 in nomination contests or party leadership contests, in the same way that only citizens who are 18 and over are allowed to vote in elections and by-elections currently.

The bill prohibits various further types of disinformation. The problem is that there are huge loopholes that allow candidates and party leaders to mislead voters and huge loopholes that allow voters, interest groups and lobbyists to mislead other voters about candidates and party leaders. You should simply change the provisions—we'll set out in detail, in our written submission, how to do this—to prohibit all false claims. There is no right to mislead voters. It's not part of the freedom of expression right, and it causes enormous harm and needs to be prohibited.

The bill mandates Elections Canada to do reports, and you should add three reports to the list: one on the cost to inform voters, because every spending limit or donation limit has been set arbitrarily, and we need a study of how much it costs to actually inform voters; a second one on how much it costs to operate a party in between elections and during an election, and then all the limits could be changed to fit with what those actual realities are; and the third would be on electoral reform.

Finally, on larger questions, our system allows for legalized bribery and allows for foreign interference that is secret, undemocratic and unethical. Many more changes are needed to the election law and other laws to stop secret, unethical lobbying and all sorts of other secret, unethical and undemocratic influence in our elections and all our political processes.

I hope that after the Hogue commission inquiry reports you will return with another bill to close all of those loopholes, as well as to strengthen enforcement and penalties.

Thank you, again.

[Siobhán Vipond, Executive Vice-President, Canadian Labour Congress]

Thank you, Chair, and good morning to the committee members.

We, the CLC, represent three million workers in virtually all sectors, industries, occupations and regions of Canada. We have two major concerns about Bill C-65. Both concerns relate to third party participation in elections.

We and many of our affiliate unions actively engage in federal elections. The Elections Act requires that we register as third parties and follow all regulations for third party communications and activities during elections. We understand the crucial objective of regulating communications between third parties and the general public to ensure electoral fairness and informed debate. However, the current act includes a major overreach that restricts our ability to communicate with our own members during elections.

The act includes three categories of regulated activities for third parties—election advertising, partisan activities and election surveys. There's an inconsistency between these categories with respect to communications between a third party and its members. The first category of election advertising contains an explicit exemption for unions to communicate with their members and not have to register as a third party, but the other two categories—partisan activities and election surveys—do not include an exemption. Elections Canada has interpreted this to to mean that a wide range of communications and activities with our members, such as phone calls, emails, texts, websites, mailings, organic social media content, rallies, surveys and door-to-door canvassing, are regulated third party activities.

We believe these restrictions on our ability to communicate with our members are a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It's a violation of the charter's freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association.

At the core of a union's mandate and function is the ability to communicate freely and effectively with its members. This is essential to representing and protecting their interests, not only at the bargaining table but also about and during elections. Communicating with our members about elections is essential for unions representing federal workers within the federal jurisdiction. After all, the federal government is their employer, and a change in government can have profound consequences to the terms and conditions of employment. More broadly, the decisions made by federally elected officials about labour laws, employment standards, health care, pensions, skills training, child care and education have a direct impact on the working conditions and quality of life of our members.

We believe that all communications during an election between a union and its members should be exempt from all third party regulations. Unfortunately, C-65 does not address this concern. We urge the committee to amend the bill to ensure that the act contains an explicit exemption from the definition of partisan activity and election surveys for trade union communications and activities with our members.

Our second concern relates to the section that will prohibit unions from making contributions to third parties in the future. Clauses 54 and 59 of the bill add new provisions to the act that will restrict a third party to use only contributions from Canadian individuals for regulated expenses. In addition, subclauses 52(3) and 57(3) of the bill repeal provisions of the act and will eliminate unions and all other current lawful classes of contributors to third parties. We oppose this unwarranted prohibition against domestic unions from contributing to third parties.

The act already has strong constraints on foreign union involvement in elections and needs no supplementation by an absolute ban on the ability for domestic unions to contribute to third parties. Section 349.02 already states, “No third party shall use funds for a partisan activity for advertising, for election advertising or for an election survey if the source of the funds is a foreign entity”, and subsection 282.4(1) already prohibits “a trade union that does not hold bargaining rights for employees in Canada” from unduly influencing an elector. In addition, the act already prohibits a trade union from contributing to candidates and political parties, and it already prohibits third parties from acting in collusion with a candidate or political party.

The current act already has ample and effective constraints on both foreign and domestic unions from improperly influencing an election. Therefore, the changes proposed in Bill C-65 are completely unwarranted. We urge the committee to delete clauses 52, 54, 57 and 59 from the bill.

Once again, thank you for this opportunity. We look forward to your questions and comments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Welcome to meeting number 131 of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

This is a friendly reminder to witnesses who may not be used to appearing. You have a headset and, if it is not in use, for the protection and well-being of our interpreters, we ask that you place it face down on the stickers in front of you. Obviously, if it's in use, there's no problem.

Colleagues, this is our second meeting on the study of Bill C-65, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act. We will have two different panels today. From 11 to 12, we have with us Peter Loewen, professor, department of political science, University of Toronto, who is joining us virtually. From the Canadian Labour Congress, we have Siobhán Vipond, executive vice-president, and Mike Luff, national coordinator, government relations. Joining us virtually from Democracy Watch is Duff Conacher.

Thank you very much, witnesses, for being here with us today. Mr. Loewen will have five minutes. The CLC will collectively have five minutes, and Mr. Conacher will have five minutes. With that, I'm going to ask Mr. Loewen to start us off.

The floor will be yours for five minutes.

Witnesses, if you have your cellphones and you're able to do your best to keep track of your time, that would be appreciated. If not, I'll cut you off about 30 seconds before to give you forewarning and then ask you to wrap up. With that, we're going to begin.

Mr. Loewen, the floor is yours for five minutes, sir.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we learned last week at the House and procedural affairs committee that the NDP was given special secret briefings by the Prime Minister's Office and the Privy Council Office, which have said, in fact for months now, that Bill C-65 was an important part of the changes to the Election Act. The reason it was important was that, to the member's point, there are dozens of NDP and Liberal MPs who stand to lose the election next year, whenever it may be called, or if it is called right now, and they are refusing to do that.

Bill C-65 is a pension protection bill to secure the votes of the NDP for longer. I am very confident, as I was in 2019 and 2021, that I have the pulse of what the good people of Stormont, Dundas and South Glengarry think. I am looking forward to being on the ballot and asking for their support again. I am ready to do so right now in a carbon tax election. What I am not looking for, and what Canadians are sick of, are the insider deals between Liberal and NDP MPs, protecting their pensions. It is exactly why after nine years they are not worth the cost or the corruption.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First of all, thank you to all the witnesses for being here today. There was a lot of valuable information provided.

My question is for Mr. Campbell, but before I ask it, I want to point out what's happening here today and what we saw with the previous panel. What we saw was the Conservative Party continuing to spread misinformation and division intended to inflame anger, further disenfranchising Canadians from elections. This is what we're seeing over and over again.

Conservatives know they benefit from the electoral system remaining the way it is. The Conservatives benefit from the lack of representation that we see in the House of Commons, where there are barriers to full participation, and from keeping the systems the same. We know there are corporate elites who have a lot at stake, and through the Conservatives they are trying to maintain the electoral system the way it is instead of seeing improvements to our electoral systems, seeing improvements to our democracy and seeing a House of Commons that's representative of our communities.

The Conservatives are going to do all they can to disenfranchise Canadians and inflame anger so that Canadians do not show up at the polls and do not see themselves through those who are elected in the House of Commons.

I want to highlight that this is exactly what we're seeing today. I hope the Conservatives will take a moment to reflect on their duty to represent their constituents, not the corporate elites.

With that, I want to ask my question of Mr. Campbell.

Mr. Campbell, I put forward a motion recently, M-86, calling for a national citizens' assembly on electoral reform. We saw, yet again, all but two Conservatives voting against this. This very much ties into Bill C-65, which we are talking about today.

Can you highlight for us what you feel is missing from this bill to see, as you stated, elections that are fair and proportional, and for which Canadians are engaged in the electoral system?

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Through you, I'd like to thank the witnesses for being with us today.

I want to address the previous comments.

I want to let the witnesses know that, regarding the whole question of whether or not the date of the election was moved to benefit Liberal and NDP MPs' pensions, there are actually 32 Conservatives who would benefit and only a total of 28 Liberal and NDP members. I just wanted to clarify that and put it on the record.

My first question is for Dr. Garnett.

One of your statements was about participation. I know you're working at Royal Military College. One of the areas I want to talk about and get your feedback on is this: What would the impact of Bill C-65 be on students at RMC? We're talking about students, but we're also talking about military. You may have been one of my son's professors when he was at RMC, so I have some interest in this. I'm curious.

Have you heard about any impact on students coming from across Canada to study at RMC during their degree program? What would the impact on them be, and what would the impact be on serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces who are deployed?

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

There is an article in Bill C‑65 that will allow voters to vote for a political party, and not for a candidate in the election, if the candidate is not known.

What do you think of this option? It's a little contrary to everything we've experienced so far, when we send a representative to Ottawa, not a party.

[Dr. Holly Ann Garnett, Associate Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual]

Thank you for this opportunity to speak.

I'm an associate professor of political science and a class of 1965 professor in leadership at the Royal Military College of Canada. I also co-direct the Electoral Integrity Project, which is an international research network that focuses on the quality of elections throughout the electoral cycle.

In this work, I've had the opportunity to study the academic research and perspectives of electoral officials around the world on issues relating to the voting process. This includes what we often call in the academic literature “convenience voting measures”—methods of voting outside of the regular polling place on election day. The idea behind these measures is that they reduce some of the time and cognitive costs of voting for the general population. However, the reality is that convenience voting measures are sometimes less convenient than voting at a polling place on election day. Voting by special ballot here in Canada allows you to vote from the comfort of your own home, but it requires an additional point of interaction with Elections Canada to get a special ballot within a specific time frame, more effort to fill it out by figuring out your candidates to write in, getting the envelopes correct to ensure privacy, and getting it in the post on time.

Across the board, we don't see increases in voter turnout when more convenience measures are used. There's a lot of American research on this, showing that, in some cases, there's no increase in turnout when these measures are applied. Some show no effect at all. Other research has considered who uses these mechanisms and has found that those who take advantage of convenience measures are in population groups that tend to vote already: older, more educated and higher-income voters. My own research in the Canadian context shows the same.

Bill C-65 is designed to increase the actual convenience of these types of voting measures among population groups that are already the most vulnerable to being deterred from voting due to administrative procedures. My colleague Toby James and I would reframe these innovations. They're not “convenience voting measures” but rather “inclusive voting practices”.

We can consider a few examples.

Under the new provisions in this bill, an adult with social anxiety who would not normally go to an unfamiliar polling station could benefit from signing up for a special ballot before a fixed-date election and receiving it when the election rolls around. They could avoid confusion by writing in the party name, rather than the candidate. If they run out of time or change their mind about their preferred voting method, they could reach out to a returning officer to amend their voting method or attend a regular polling station to drop off their ballot.

Consider, for example, a post-secondary student voting for the first time, one who must use a special ballot to vote in their home riding while away at school. Under the new provisions, they would be given additional support through an on-campus voting office to guide them through their first voting experience using that more complicated special voting procedure.

In another example, an individual has recently moved into a care home. They no longer drive and do not readily have identification with their new address on it. Under the new provisions, they could take advantage of a poll at their residence and not need to show identification regarding residence by virtue of the fact that they live at their polling station.

In each of these cases, these individuals could vote without the additional measures proposed in this bill. There are legal ways to sort out these situations, but their circumstances could easily lead them to being dissuaded from even trying. Without additional support, the end effect could be the same as if they weren't able to vote—what we call their “effective disenfranchisement”. Beyond this, research suggests that a voter's experience of elections is impacted by how accessible they find the process. For potential voters who may find the voting process extra burdensome, inclusive voting procedures like these can enhance their sense of inclusion and their ability to meaningfully participate in civic life.

For all voters, the use of convenience measures can lead to a more positive experience of elections, something that has been empirically demonstrated in the American context. This is due to the additional convenience and to a less stressed workforce greeting them at the polls. Having more opportunities available to electors spreads out the burden on administrators, who are already short-staffed on election day. Positive experiences influence future behaviour and opinions about elections in an era in which trust in elections cannot be taken for granted.

For this reason, the inclusive voting procedures proposed in this bill—which may not increase turnout across the board for people like us, who have a stable address and identification readily in our wallets—will have a positive impact on some of the population groups most likely to already feel left out of the voting process. That reason alone makes those provisions worthwhile amendments to the Canada Elections Act.

Thank you.

[Dr. Sara Bannerman, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Communication Policy and Governance, McMaster University, As an Individual]

Thank you inviting me.

Today I want to discuss the privacy measures in Bill C-65 and my relevant research.

Bill C-65 purports to provide a complete personal information regime for political parties, but it's far from complete. It fails to subject political parties to the 10 privacy principles that are understood as core to privacy regimes. It's designed to undermine existing privacy law that applies to political parties. In its current form, it's a privacy-busting bill, a bill that would undermine existing privacy rights for Canadians.

Bill C-65 has many missing pieces. It doesn't meet a number of fundamental privacy principles. It doesn't meet principle 2, that the purposes of collection should be identified. Instead, it requires only illustrative purposes.

It doesn't meet principle 3, that knowledge and consent should be given. Instead, it gives near blanket permission to collect and use any type of personal information. Most Canadians that my team surveyed felt that sensitive information like ethnicity, religion and social media information should never be collected and retained by political parties, or only with an individual's explicit consent. Bill C-65 would allow any entity, which could be data brokers, tech companies, people search or foreign entities, working with a party to collect and use any breadth of personal information while they're working for the party.

It doesn't address principle 4 on limiting collection. There are no limits on the types of personal information that parties and entities can collect. My team's work suggests placing the most sensitive types out of bounds.

It doesn't address principle 5 on limiting use. While it incorporates two new limits, it doesn't prevent giving personal information to third parties like social media companies or others; using personal information to profile electors; making statistical inferences about personality types, interests, opinions, religion, sexual orientation or anything else; nor any uses involving AI.

It doesn't address principle 6 on ensuring accuracy, nor adequately principle 7 on safeguarding personal information. Instead, it allows tech companies or any other entity working with political parties potentially total unbridled access and use, with little or no meaningful protection or oversight.

It doesn't address principle 9, giving a right of individual access for electors to know what information parties hold about them, nor principle 10, the right to make a complaint or challenge a party's compliance with these principles.

Bill C-65 aims, according to Kevin Lamoureux's speech, to “engage more people and increase the confidence” of Canadians in elections. My team's work surveying Canadians raises the concern that failing to subject political parties to the 10 basic privacy principles may threaten both of those objectives.

We found that, first, respondents were not aware of parties' data collection and the range of data they may collect, particularly on political views, ethnicity, income, religion or online activities and IDs.

Our second finding relates to engagement. We found that awareness of parties' collection may reduce electors' willingness to interact with political parties online.

Our third conclusion relates to confidence. We found that increased awareness of datafied campaigning goes hand in hand with growing concern as opposed to confidence about collection.

Finally, very few respondents saw data collection as important to the democratic process. If collection is important to democracy, our respondents were not convinced of that.

Bill C-65 seeks to undermine the applicability of a complete privacy law, B.C.'s PIPA, that currently applies to political parties. It seeks to undermine a leading B.C. privacy case that recognizes privacy rights for Canadians in relation to political parties. It seeks to displace those rights.

Bill C-65 would undermine privacy, engagement and confidence. It would facilitate parties' exploitation of electors' data without limits, transparency or consent.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

—but, also as a lawyer, I'm very cognizant of how words are statutorily interpreted.

In this case, “ordinarily” is not mandatory. I think we can all agree with that conclusion. “Ordinary” is in the sense that it's customary, but it is not etched in stone that on each and every occasion a private member's bill must commence by way of committee study with the sponsor.

To give but one example, there are precedents where private member's bill sponsors didn't appear at committee. There was a Bloc private member's bill recently, where the sponsor, the Bloc member, did not appear, but witnesses in place of that sponsor did.

Over the last couple of weeks, a study of Bill C-65 and the Canada Elections Act was discussed at PROC, and no minister appeared, only officials. I guess that little example highlights why “ordinarily” is used as opposed to “mandatory” and “must”.

I wanted to emphasize that, Madam Chair, because I think we all agree on the importance of Bill C-270, the content and what it means to this nation, as a G7 nation taking a stand against child pornography and its proliferation and access.

Then, when I read the tweets, as I often do in my spare time—whatever spare time I do have—one such tweet caught my eye, and that was from Liberal member James Maloney. Quite clearly, it started off appropriately about the importance of the study of this bill, but then it denigrated into partisanship, and it even suggested, as my colleague Ms. Ferrari pointed out, that the leader was somehow gagging Mr. Viersen from attending.

Then he circled back to the age-old issue, the divisive issue, the wedge issue. “In case of emergency, break glass.” Clearly, we have a raging fire at the Liberal Party of Canada right now in terms of its standing in Canada and the position of its leader, who is not loved at all by the public. In fact, almost 70% of Canadians polled from coast to coast to coast want him gone and are prepared to pack his suitcase to see him out of politics entirely.

When you have a situation in which you're down 20-plus points in the polls and you have been so for the better part of a year and a half, and no matter what sort of policy you're introducing as a government, no matter what sort of fall economic statement you produce, no matter what spring budget you produce, which ordinarily is a great bump up for any government in terms of its economic outlook for the nation.... Generally, historically, you always saw a bump in support with the release of those economic statements telegraphing to Canadians that there is hope on the horizon, but when you're dealing with the Liberal government under Justin Trudeau, and you've experienced literally for the last nine years a living hell from coast to coast to coast, there has been no bump.

What have we seen in the House of Commons for the last two or three weeks? We've had the foreign interference issue that has raised its head, with, somehow, every member from the Prime Minister to the ministers to the back bench all claiming, “What is the leader of the Conservative Party hiding? He doesn't want to get his clearance.”

Do you know what? Canadians aren't interested in that. Canadians are interested in feeding their families. Canadians are interested in paying their bills. Canadians are interested in actually being able to afford a mortgage, pay the rent and put gas in their vehicle, which are being crippled by the inflationary factors that this government has created and have made life miserable.

Over two million people lined up at our food banks across the nation. I've toured my food bank numerous times. People who proudly gave and donated over the years now find themselves, because of the disastrous fiscal policies of Justin Trudeau, actually the recipients of food banks. That's not unique to my riding of Brantford—Brant. It's probably happening to every member of the Liberal bench, as well as every member in Parliament. It is a fact of life under Justin Trudeau.

It's no small wonder that they want to change the page, distract, divide and talk about anything but the miserable hell that this government is putting Canadians through. We had foreign interference. Now we have the right to choose.

When I see Mr. Maloney, whom I have known for some time and have great respect for, use that tried, old, tired approach to somehow distract Canadians.... It's not working.

Unfortunately, we see this happening now in committee. They don't want Arnold Viersen to proudly talk about why he sponsored this bill and why he's so passionate about victims' rights and child pornography. No. they want to get on their soapbox and talk about a woman's right to choose—every one of those members.

I find it appalling. I find it disgusting and hypocritical when they say, “Oh no, we care about victims' rights—