Bill C-65 (Historical)

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.

Strong and Free Elections Act

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

Mr. Speaker, as always, it is a privilege to rise on behalf of the good people of Stormont—Dundas—Glengarry in eastern Ontario. I am proud each time I have the opportunity to take the floor to share some perspectives on the issues before us here in the House of Commons.

Today we are dealing with an important piece of legislation, Bill C-25. I want to start with a bit of a backgrounder when it comes to amendments to the Canada Elections Act, my personal passion for it and why it is so important to get this right.

I have had the pleasure of serving in the House for just a little over six years and have been on one parliamentary committee. I am not on a committee right now, but I served on the PROC committee in a few different iterations in time. It has a longer title: the procedure and House affairs committee. It was a real opportunity to learn a lot about the democratic process. If Bill C-25 is successful at second reading, which I believe it will be, it will be referred to that committee for further study. It is where witnesses would come forward and where certain amendments could be made to further improve the legislation.

The PROC committee deals with the Canada Elections Act. I was involved in riding redistribution, which is an important part of our democratic process every 10 years. PROC deals as well with issues of foreign interference, which I will be talking about in my 20 minutes here on the floor today.

PROC also deals with the relationship with the Conflict of Interest Act for members to educate themselves on and abide by, the Ethics Commissioner, the lobbying commissioner, of course the administration of this wonderful place that we call the House of Commons, working with the Speaker and with the Board of Internal Economy to make sure that this place functions on a day-to-day basis so we can do what is most important in our jobs: represent our constituents from 343 ridings all across the country.

Election legislation and getting it right is also a bit of a personal passion of mine. By way of background, again, I have participated in this myself. I will be 39 years old this year, but I have been in elected office for 20 years, which is kind of hard to believe. I started off at the ripe young age of 18 in my first election. I say I was broken in gently into politics. I ran in three municipal elections, so I am very familiar with that process, having been a candidate in 2006, 2010 and 2014, and also with the important work it takes from the clerks of the municipality.

In my case, it was in the Township of North Dundas, which was under the service at the time of the now retired clerk, Jo-Anne McCaslin. I have a real appreciation and respect for the people at the local level. Actually, at the municipal level, believe it or not, there is phone and Internet voting. There are no paper ballots available in the municipality of North Dundas. It has done it through online or telephone voting, which increased participation in municipal elections and was effective in doing that.

I have also had the honour of being a candidate on a ballot three times at the federal level, in 2019, 2021 and 2025. With respect to the legislation before us, being a candidate is important. I valued being nominated as a Conservative candidate in Stormont—Dundas—Glengarry.

Actually, one of the best experiences I had for understanding our Elections Act and the workings of Elections Canada was serving as a campaign manager, which I had the honour of doing six times. I was campaign manager three times provincially for my good friend and former provincial colleague, Jim McDonnell, who is now happily retired in Williamstown, and I had the honour of serving as campaign manager three times for my predecessor, Guy Lauzon, in Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, as it was known at the time.

Serving as a campaign manager gave me a great opportunity to work with the local returning office and the official agent, or chief financial officer, call it what we will, for the campaign process. Being involved in our electoral district association helped me understand the local aspect of politics and working with volunteers to bring a campaign together.

It is absolutely essential we get the legislation right. It is a bill about the Canada Elections Act, a piece of legislation that is now nearly 26 years old. It does need some modernization to keep up with the times. As we talk about ballot integrity, the threat of foreign interference and the roles of new technologies and the challenges those bring in terms of security for our democratic process, it is absolutely vital that we get it right. There is an internal dynamic to getting this right that we are responsible for in the House, as well as providing the proper resources and legislation to Elections Canada, from its CEO right down to the frontline poll workers.

As Canadians go into the voting booth, we want to make sure that we provide a process and resources that make it as smooth and as easy as possible to vote, so that when a Canadian goes in, there are poll workers there, the ballot process is fair and there is an integrity to the process so that Canadians can have confidence, and they should, at the federal level in Canada. We have a nationalized election system that has paper ballots. They are done the old-fashioned way, the way I like it. On election night, in tens of thousands of polling locations across the country, with tens of thousands of workers, those ballot boxes are opened and advance poll votes are counted by hand on paper, the way it should be at the federal level. This ensures a smooth process, but a lot of work goes into that process, into the experience that the elector has when they walk into a voting location of having a smooth process. There is also the stuff behind the scenes, and the political financing that we have in this country. It is important to get it right and make sure that we have that.

We owe a great deal of gratitude to the poll workers who step up in every one of our communities and ridings across the country. From those who serve at the local polling station on election day or in an advance poll, to the staff who work at the local returning office in 343 ridings across the country, they have a very difficult and intense job to do. It is intense in the fact that they have to ramp up and conduct an election. Elections can be longer, but most have typically been 36 days. Sometimes, depending on the scenario and the setup, there has been a runway or a ramp-up to let people know to expect an election, but in the business we are in, we could have a snap election called at any time over the course of a mandate, so we have poll workers, staff and returning officers in our communities who could ramp up and do a very intense job in a short period of time.

They have to ramp up and get a returning office. They have to staff up that office. They have to recruit hundreds and hundreds of advance poll and election day workers: not only recruit them, but train them, do the HR for all those processes and make sure they are equipped with the skills needed to have a smooth voting process. They have to take the nominations in for local candidates and go through and vet the signatures for nominations that go through, and then there is the post-election vote validation process. To do all of that in 36 days, which is generally the election period, and to do it times 343 ridings across the country, is quite the job.

The geography of our country makes the job even more unique in the need to get it right. I have been interested in this, in my time on the procedure and House affairs committee, when we studied reports of by-elections, general elections and the election process. What is difficult to do, in a country as vast as ours, is to not have the process be too cookie-cutter. We need to have regulation and we need to have structure, but we also need to make sure we understand the difference between ridings. Stormont—Dundas—Glengarry is a rural riding, but not as rural and remote as, for example, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories or Yukon. We then go all the way to, for example, Ottawa Centre or Vancouver Centre. We have some ridings that are a couple of square kilometres, and in some cases a riding is thousands of square kilometres. That is the geography of administering an election. The returning offices, the staff, the training, the distribution of ballots, all of these issues continue to come up, and we need to work on that to make sure that Elections Canada can give that feedback to the procedure and House affairs committee, give it back to us as parliamentarians, about the important work they do and what we need to do.

I just want to make a note as we talk about this legislation. I want to put this on the record, and, again, this is getting a bit nerdy in my personal passion. It is about what is not in this legislation, which has been proposed in previous attempts by the government and has been discussed as we look at ways of improving the voting process for Canadians. One thing that was not put in this piece of legislation is a change to the advance poll days and the number of hours for advance polls.

Why am I mentioning something that is not in the bill? Frankly, I am glad that it is not. Sometimes something looks good on paper, related to improving the democratic process, but there is an old saying that it does not matter how flat one makes a pancake; there are still two sides to it. There has been a push to increase the number of advance polling days, for example, when electors can cast their ballots in advance of election day. While on paper it sounds good to add a day or two or three to give Canadians more days to do it, it would come with logistical challenges that I have raised before at committee and will continue to raise. I am not saying I am completely opposed to any increase, do not get me wrong, but we have to make sure we hear from Elections Canada staff about the ability to do two things.

One is the ability to recruit workers. If we were to go from three or four days to six days of advance polls, we would have to have that same team working up to 10 hours a day. It is not just the hours that the polls are open. They need to report half an hour to an hour before. They are often there 15 minutes to half an hour after shutting down the location, driving back home, getting up the next morning and driving back to their polling location. I talked about rural and remote ridings, and some of those are very difficult to access and find workers for. To find somebody who is willing to give up three straight days for an advance poll is one thing. To have them give up four or six straight days, we would run into the ability to recruit effectively the number of staff, the tens of thousands of Canadians, who are needed to step forward to work for Elections Canada in these roles. That can be an unintended consequence.

The second thing, which can be difficult as well, and why I am glad changes to advance polls have not been made at this time, is the ability to secure venues. In those longer ranges of time, there may be other bookings at those church halls, community halls, schools, wherever the locations may be. We may feel it is great that we have added x number of days, but at the end of the day, what happens, particularly in rural communities, in my experience, is that driving to a local venue can take 10 or 15 minutes, but when one in a rural community is not available and people have to drive another 15 or 20 minutes, that starts to disenfranchise voters from casting a ballot.

We can say we mean well by adding more days, but all of a sudden, certain venues are not available, and we are actually making it more difficult for people to vote because Elections Canada cannot recruit enough staff, as I mentioned, or the closest regular voting locations may be not be available because of the increased period.

I apologize for the technicality on this issue, but I wanted to put that in Hansard and note my concern. Again, I am not opposed to increasing it in the future, but it certainly warrants more conversation. I am glad to see, as we debate the legislation before us, that it is not included at this time.

In this piece of legislation to amend the Canada Elections Act, there are various amendments and additions that would modernize several aspects. As mentioned, several of my Conservative colleagues here today are in support of this bill moving to the PROC committee for further study and to continue discussions on this. I will say, frankly, that Bill C-25 is a big improvement to changes to the Canada Elections Act compared with the last attempt, in Bill C-65.

Members may not remember from the last Parliament what Bill C-65 was by its number. It was the NDP-Liberal pension protection act. In the midst of a variety of changes the government was proposing in its coalition with the NDP, the Liberals were caught blatantly trying to benefit themselves by pushing the election day back a couple of weeks. For those who might lose out on having their pension vested by a couple of days, they moved it back. It was a very selfish move on their part, one that rightfully did not resonate with Canadians very well. That bill, thankfully, did not advance. It died on the Order Paper when the last election was called. It was not a serious attempt by the Liberals and, at that time, their coalition partners, the New Democrats, to meaningfully, respectfully and with integrity make the various amendments and additions to the Canada Elections Act that are needed.

There are several provisions in here that we can get behind. For example, there are new offences that would be added to this legislation. Before, there were no specific offences in the Canada Elections Act for intentionally spreading false election information, tampering with election computer systems, or using AI and deepfakes to impersonate. Now all three of those would be criminal offences. We have also added an extraterritorial application, so offences committed outside Canada would be captured and charges could be pursued in the event of nefarious actions by players outside Canada.

Anonymous contributions would be banned. Before, cryptocurrency, money orders and prepaid payment products were permissible methods to make a donation to political entities or third parties. This loophole has now been closed. All three would be prohibited as contribution methods, closing anonymous and hard-to-trace funding channels.

There would be changes to personal information disclosures. One of the things I did not know, until the suggestion came up to change it, was that returning officers' full home addresses were published in the Canada Gazette. Preliminary voters lists were distributed broadly to any party that requested them. Now, the listed address for the returning officer would be limited to the municipality and province. Voters lists would be restricted to qualifying parties only, namely those with House representation, those with prior candidates running again or those that had candidates in two-thirds of ridings in the last election. This is to make sure that data and that information would be protected as much as possible.

On foreign interference, here is an interesting thing we talked about. To combat foreign interference, third parties were banned from using foreign contributions for regulated activities, but they were not banned from making those contributions. Leadership contests had no foreign funding restrictions. In the legislation we have before us, foreign entities would now be banned from contributing to third parties at all. Foreign funding would be banned from leadership contests, and foreign corporate activity would be more broadly captured, regardless of where it occurred.

The most important piece of this proposed legislation is the attempts made to address the longest ballot committee's nefarious efforts to cause chaos and confusion in our ballots and in our democratic process. We saw this in the riding of Carleton in the last election. We saw it in the Battle River—Crowfoot by-election. We just saw it in the by-election in Terrebonne. These were attempts by a small group pretending to protest. These were not protests. They were an abuse of the democratic tools that we have in this country.

The longest ballot committee would get people to go in, the same 100 people, to sign 100 people's nomination papers, and one person would serve as a financial agent for every single one of those people. All of a sudden, we would have a ballot that was three, four or five feet long with 100 candidates on it. This was an absolute disrespect of our democratic process. It was not a protest. It was done to cause chaos and confusion and disenfranchise voters from the process.

We have an amendment now. I am glad to see that the Liberals have agreed with our call and have included in this proposed legislation that one person can only sign the nomination papers for one candidate in that riding. A person can only serve as official agent for one campaign. These changes would be put in to ensure that candidates on ballots are serious candidates, and are not just doing it for some form of political protest, causing a ballot to be cancelled and the name needing to be written in, or creating a ballot that is four feet long, as we saw in the last election. This not what Canadians want. They do not want a joke made of the democratic process. They want it to be respected. This specific change to ballot integrity, I believe, will go a long way.

I will wrap up my comments just by saying it is important that we see this legislation advance to committee for further study and debate. I look forward to hearing those contributions from my colleagues on this legislation and others. I think it is vitally important that we get our Canada Elections Act right so Canadians can have full confidence in our electoral system.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill C-25. I will be sharing my time with the member for Carleton.

This bill that has been put before the House by the government House leader is intended to strengthen our democratic process and the election process in Canada. I am certainly glad that there seems to be widespread support for it from throughout the House. I will focus my comments on the changes to the Elections Act.

I am very content with the riding name Kingston and the Islands. It goes back quite a way in my riding, to former Progressive Conservative Flora MacDonald, Edgar Benson and much further back than that.

The bill, and in particular the changes to the legislation as it relates to our elections, would implement recommendations from the Chief Electoral Officer and the commissioner of Elections Canada, and it would reintroduce and expand on the measures that were in the original Bill C-65, which died on the Order Paper in 2025.

There are five main components to the bill that I will speak to briefly. The first is with respect to the protections for elections. We have heard others speak in the House already about the long ballot, and we are dealing with that issue. As the member who spoke previously said, this seems to be from a good place in terms of people trying to protest and make their voice heard on a particular issue they are trying to advance, which is why so many names are being put on the ballot. At the same time, I think there are other ways to do that and to advocate for change, whatever that might be.

I am glad to see that we would change the legislation to require only one nomination form, and each candidate would have to have their own official agent. Doing this would, in my opinion, significantly reduce the number of additional names being put on a ballot. At the end of the day, what this really comes down to is making the democratic process as easy as possible, while still allowing as many people as possible to run who justifiably are doing it for the right reasons, namely to be elected, not just as a way of protesting government policy or legislation.

Some of the other protections in the bill would include setting new rules with respect to foreign influence, bribery, misleading publications, etc., to apply year-round. There would be new offences: knowingly spreading false information to disrupt or affect an election, tampering with computer systems to disrupt elections, and false information on nomination papers. All these offences would be extended to outside Canada as well.

The second part of the legislation would focus on protections for leadership and nomination contests, in particular, extending election period offences, be they foreign influence, bribery, impersonation, misleading publications, or unauthorized computer use, etc., to leadership and nomination contests as well.

I think this is really important. One thing we have heard a lot about in recent years, and I can recall this from my time sitting on the procedure and House affairs committee, is the lax rules that exist at the nomination contest level. Some nomination contests can get quite heated and have a lot of political participation. It is critically important that we make sure participation is kept domestic and is not influenced by foreign actors, so I am very glad to see strengthening around that.

The third area that the bill would attempt to tackle is stronger political financing rules. It would ban anonymous or untraceable contributions, such as cryptocurrencies, prepaid cards, money orders and things of that nature. It would also ensure that third parties could use contributions only from Canadian citizens or permanent residents, or that their funds are not greater than 10% of annual revenue. It would also expand bans on foreign contributions and foreign-provided property or services and extend foreign funding prohibitions to leadership contests.

The fourth area the bill attempts to strengthen is enforcement tools. It would expand who can be investigated, including conspirators, accessories and counsellors. It would broaden offences to include attempts, conspiracies and counselling. Also, it would expand the administrative monetary penalties, which I think is extremely important, for individuals from $1,500 to $25,000 and for entities from $5,000 to $100,000. This is very important because if the penalties can just be seen as a cost of doing business, then they are not going to be effective tools of deterrence or proper penalization. I am very glad to see that the bill also includes that.

In addition, there would be higher penalties for foreign-funded third party violations. The bill would give new powers in this regard, to compel testimony, documents and preservation orders. It would allow for MOUs with federal agencies in co-operation with international bodies and would expand prohibitions on foreign entities conducting regular activities.

The fifth and final area where the bill attempts to create safeguards is physical security and privacy protection. It would remove the five-day advance notice requirement for regulated fundraising events. Post-event reports would list only municipalities and provinces. The returning officer's home address would no longer be published. Parties would have to meet criteria to access the preliminary voters list. Also, it would raise reimbursable personal security expenses for candidates to $3,250. Again, this is very important. One of the unfortunate realities of the democratic process today is that candidates need to think more about their personal security and employing and contracting people to assist with that. Knowing that would be reimbursable is extremely important. It would allow for people to take those matters extremely seriously and have the proper resources they need.

Finally, in regard to strengthening those, there would be new privacy obligations for political parties. It would include stronger safeguards for personal information, mandatory breach response steps, ensuring third party processors meet equivalent standards, an annual meeting with the Chief Electoral Officer on privacy, and prohibitions on misleading individuals about data use, selling data or disclosing it improperly.

To summarize, I would say that a number of the measures, in particular, the five themes I touched on today, would contribute significantly to strengthening our democracy and the election process. We know that during an election, it is very easy to overlook things or not pay as much attention to various things that might be going on with respect to foreign interference, etc. Knowing that these things would be treated seriously, and that those responsible have the right tools in their hands to deal with things as they are happening, is extremely important. It speaks volumes to ensuring that our democratic process and, in particular, the electoral process are upheld.

I will again say that I am encouraged by the fact that I am hearing many in the House in agreement with this. I hope we can pass this quickly, send it to committee, take care of any necessary amendments, if there are any, and then have it come back to the House so we can vote on it, make sure it is in place and give those responsible for executing the legislation ample time to prepare to do that prior to the next election.

I look forward to any questions.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as always, it is such a pleasure for me to rise in the House on behalf of the residents of my riding of Davenport, to speak in strong support of Bill C-25, the strong and free elections act.

Before I speak to the details of the bill, I want to step back and talk about the moment we are living in. Around the world, democracy is under pressure, authoritarian regimes are growing bolder, independent journalism is being squeezed, trust in public institutions is being deliberately undermined and the information environment that citizens rely on to make free and informed choices is being polluted by foreign states, domestic bad actors and the rapid, unregulated power of artificial intelligence.

This is not a distant or theoretical concern. In January of this year, our own Prime Minister stood at the World Economic Forum in Davos and told the world that we are in the midst of “a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction, and the beginning of a harsh reality”. He reminded us that the multilateral institutions that middle powers like Canada have relied on for decades are under strain, and he called on countries like ours to build our strength at home and to act together.

Democracy does not sustain itself. It depends on strong institutions, an independent justice system, the rule of law, a political system that citizens trust enough to peacefully choose who leads them, and access to independent, fact-based journalism. Every single one of those pillars is under pressure today, and Bill C-25 is part of how Canada is responding.

Let me be clear. The bill was not written in a vacuum. It responds directly to the recommendations of the public inquiry into foreign interference, led by the hon. Marie-Josée Hogue; recommendations from Canada's Chief Electoral Officer; and recommendations from the commissioner of Canada Elections. It also builds on the work that was introduced in the last Parliament through Bill C-65. I want to commend our federal government, in particular our minister responsible for democratic institutions, for bringing the legislation forward and for working across party lines to build as much consensus as possible. Our democracy belongs to every Canadian. The laws that protect it should rise above partisanship whenever possible.

Now let me turn to what Justice Hogue actually told us. After a 16-month inquiry, more than 150 witnesses and a seven-volume final report, Justice Hogue confirmed that foreign interference in Canadian democracy is real. She documented attempts by hostile foreign states, most prominently the People's Republic of China and India, to interfere at the riding level in our 2019 and 2021 elections. Justice Hogue went further. She pointed to something she considered even more dangerous than the traditional tools of foreign interference. In her own words, not mine, “information manipulation (whether foreign or not) poses the single biggest risk to our democracy. It is an existential threat.”

This is not a line from social media; it is the considered conclusion of a then sitting justice of the Quebec Court of Appeal, after a year and a half of evidence. She warned us that if we do not address misinformation and disinformation, they have the power to distort our discourse, to change our views and to reshape our society. The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, known as NSICOP, which includes members of every recognized party in this place, has reached similar conclusions. NSICOP has documented disinformation as a central tactic used by hostile foreign actors against Canada, and NSICOP has been clear that foreign interference in even one riding is one riding too many.

I want to share one more piece of context with the House. I have the enormously great pleasure of serving as the chair of the Canadian NATO Parliamentary Association. In that role, I meet regularly with parliamentarians from across the alliance, and I can tell the House that disinformation and hybrid threats come up in virtually every single conversation we have.

Last year at the 71st annual session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Ljubljana, I had the opportunity to ask the NATO secretary general, Mark Rutte, directly about the application of article 5 in the context of hybrid warfare and cyberwarfare, because these are not abstract questions for our allies. Russia, the People's Republic of China, Iran and North Korea are running sophisticated hybrid campaigns against democracies right now, with disinformation, cyber-attacks and political interference. NATO itself calls these campaigns attempts to “sow doubt in the minds of target populations [and] to destabilise and undermine societies.”

Our NATO allies are asking us to do more, and the bill would be Canada's doing more. What would Bill C-25 actually do?

First, it would protect the ballot itself. It would create a new offence for intentionally spreading false information about the voting process to disrupt an election. It would criminalize tampering with the computer systems that run our elections. For the first time, it would criminalize digital impersonation and the use of AI-generated deepfakes to impersonate candidates, the Chief Electoral Officer or other election officials. In an era when a convincing fake video can be produced in minutes and shared with millions of people in hours, this protection is long overdue.

Second, it would close the doors on foreign and dark money. It would prohibit anonymous and untraceable contributions, including cryptocurrency, prepaid gift cards and money orders. It would strengthen the rules on third parties. It would prevent foreign entities from funnelling money into our politics through Canadian intermediaries. Critically, it would extend these protections to nomination and leadership contests, which Justice Hogue identified as real points of vulnerability.

Third, it would give the commissioner of Elections Canada enforcement tools she has asked for: higher penalties, the power to summon witnesses and compel evidence without clogging up our courts, the ability to co-operate with international partners, and a specific requirement that the commissioner consider foreign interference when determining penalties. These are tools our election watchdog needs, and experts have been calling for them for years.

Fourth, the bill would protect candidates and election workers themselves, because threats to our democracy are not abstract. They are directed at real people, including candidates, returning officers and their families, who increasingly face harassment and intimidation.

Fifth, it would finally establish a comprehensive privacy regime for federal political parties. This has been recommended for years by the Privacy Commissioner and by the Chief Electoral Officer, and it is time we got it done.

I want to be clear with the House. The bill is a necessary step but not the final step. Justice Hogue has called for a dedicated body to monitor disinformation. The Chief Electoral Officer has called for transparency labels on AI-generated election content. Our NATO allies are asking us to build whole-of-society resilience that includes media literacy, support for independent journalism, accountability for platforms, and deeper international co-operation. We will need to keep going. We will need to keep updating our laws as the threats evolve. We will need to keep doing this together, across party lines, because the adversaries trying to weaken Canadian democracy do not care which party any of us belongs to. They want to weaken us all.

I commend our government for bringing forward Bill C-25. I urge every member of the House, from every party, to support it. I urge every one of us to recognize that defending Canadian democracy is not a one-time vote. It is an ongoing responsibility, one that this generation of parliamentarians has been asked to carry. Our democracy is strong, but it is not invulnerable. Canada is worth protecting. Our democracy is worth protecting. The residents of Davenport and of every riding in the country are counting on us to do exactly that.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, since the official opposition has had good success in obtaining amendments by working with the government, I wonder if the hon. member for St. Albert—Sturgeon River will be willing to pursue changes to the Elections Act that were in former Bill C-65, which died on the Order Paper when the House prorogued on January 6 of last year. Might he be willing to get amendments over the line in committee to address the issue of the difficulty presented to candidates in collecting signatures, as was addressed in Bill C-65?

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we have certainly engaged in a process. I thank the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands and her party for their constructive participation, and I look forward to her suggestions as this debate unfolds.

In fact, with Bill C-65 in the last Parliament, proposals to amend the Elections Act, some of those proposals emanated from the processes I outlined, notably recommendations from the Chief Electoral Officer and from the commissioner, and some others did not emanate from them.

My purpose in developing Bill C-25, the strong and free elections act, was to have a unifying vote of the chamber and a unifying debate in the chamber, where all members could feel comfortable getting behind the initiatives and proposals, and working together, the 343 of us, to strengthen our democracy, contrary to what is perhaps going on in some other countries.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I ask the hon. minister a very direct question and thank him for improvements made in the amendments in Bill C-25 to the Elections Act.

I wonder if the minister could give the House a quick rundown on the sections of former Bill C-65, which had been through committee, was being studied and had elements that are not included in this act. I wonder if he could explain why the government chose not to include improvements to the Elections Act from slightly more than a year ago that are now not included, such as removing obstacles for the collection of signatures for candidates.

Making Life More Affordable for Canadians Act

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the chance to speak to Bill C-4. First of all, I want to make a couple of observations about the legislation we are seeing in this place under the new government.

I am distressed. It may be a manageable issue, and maybe I am the only one who is noticing that almost every bill that comes before us is in omnibus form; in other words, many different bills are addressed within the same bill. Some of the issues are connected one to the other, which makes it a legitimate omnibus bill, and some seem to be for the purpose of convenience, to save the government time. For instance, in Bill C-2, the strong borders act, there are some aspects that do not really have to do with borders at all, and there is significant concern from people who are in the refugee law community, and from Amnesty International.

We are looking at Bill C-4 tonight, and I will give it more detail, but briefly, Bill C-5 should have been two different pieces of legislation. Part 1 deals with interprovincial barriers between labour mobility and recognizing different kinds of restrictions to moving goods. Part 2 is the building Canada act, which is entirely different. Part 1 has drawn attention from the Canadian Cancer Society, as it is concerned the bill may lead to a weakening of standards across the country. Meanwhile, part 2 needs massive study, appears, at least to me, to give unprecedented levels of unfettered political discretion to cabinet, and is unprecedented in its scope.

On Bill C-4, before I go to the affordability section, let me just point to the anomalous inclusion of changes to the Canada Elections Act. The Canada Elections Act and privacy concerns for Canadian citizens under the Elections Act have no connection whatsoever to affordability. However, here we have it: part 4, Canada Elections Act amendments that are similar to what we saw in the previous Parliament in Bill C-65, which I do wish had carried before we went into the last election, as it would have certainly expedited the collection of signatures for candidates and their chances of getting nominated candidates onto ballots.

This is weaker than that, but it does have some connection to what we saw in Bill C-65 in relating to restrictions on political parties' ability to save information and violate Canadians' privacy. It does not belong in an affordability act at all. We have heard at least one other MP tonight, the hon. member for Souris—Moose Mountain, mention the issue that we want to protect personal information and that privacy laws should extend to political parties.

Unusually, in Bill C-4, new subsection 446.4(1) would assert an ability for federal legislation to negate provincial privacy laws and what provincial privacy laws can say about federal political parties. That is questionable at best. It also, to me, is somewhat offensive, or very offensive I suppose, that clause 49 of part 4 of Bill C-4 deals with the date of coming into force.

Experienced members of this place who look at statutory interpretation, which we do, and I hope we all read the legislation and all bills carefully, know certainly that coming into force is usually a date in the future. A bill would pass through the House, pass through the Senate and then come into force, sometimes at a date that is certain. I have a pretty good memory. I may have forgotten that there was ever a bill like this one, but within my ability to remember everything I have ever read in legislation, I do not think I have ever seen a bill that purports to come into force 25 years before the date on which it is passed.

Members who are learning this for the first time, if they look at clause 49 of Bill C-4, will find that the date on which the bill we are discussing today, June 11, 2025, would have come into force is May 31, 2000. This would exempt federal political parties from any offences they may have committed in failing to obey provincial legislation to which we were subjected, by going all the way back, resetting the clock, to May 31, 2000.

In this place, we like time travel; let us face it. We do like seeing the clock at midnight when it is not midnight, and we can do that in this place. We can say, “Gee, I wish it were midnight. I am ready to go home. Let us all agree we see the clock at midnight.”

I do not know whether anyone has ever tried a trick like seeing the year at 25 years ago. I am worried about this, and I do not know that we will have time, but I certainly hope we will properly study Bill C-4 in committee, and maybe we can persuade the government that part 4 should be pulled apart and studied separately from the rest of the bill.

The rest of the bill is tax measures. There is only part of the tax measures I would want to address at this point, and I am cognizant of the time. I know we are coming near a point where I should close to avoid being interrupted, but I do not mind interruptions, certainly for unanimous consent motions, because I think we are unanimous on that.

However, let us just say I am probably the only remaining member of Parliament who will stand up and say that the consumer carbon price was a good idea. It is a shame to see such cowardice on all sides of the House from the parties that used to support using market mechanisms, which is actually from the right-wing tool kit invented by Republicans in Washington, D.C., of how we can reduce emissions of whatever. Air pollutants in the area around Los Angeles is one of the first places market mechanisms were used.

Carbon pricing is being accepted by economists around the world as having a more efficient economic impact, reduced transactional costs of implementing the regulatory approach. Generally, people on the right do not like regulation. That is a choice: If we are going to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, we could use a regulatory approach. We could use the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, part 4, which already exists, and put in place regulated, required hard caps on emissions of any pollutants, thus bringing them down sharply without having to use the more complex measures of pricing.

I would rather see the consumer carbon price used as what is called, in the literature, carbon fee and dividend, in other words, maintaining pollution taxation as revenue-neutral. A key feature in good, solid gold-standard carbon pricing is that the government should not live on pollution as a source of revenue to government. We want to make sure that whatever we take in on a carbon price is rebated as efficiently as possible to those who paid it.

To the idea that we do not want to have this, I just add again that according to the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development—

Democratic Institutions

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

Madam Speaker, the government is committed to protecting and strengthening Canada's democracy. We look forward to the ongoing work of the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions, including the commissioner's final report in December. The government will review the report in due course. In the meantime, the government continues to take steps to counter foreign interference. This includes proposed amendments to the Canada Elections Act, recently introduced through Bill C-65. I look forward to the ongoing engagement with members of the House as we consider potential changes to further protect and strengthen our Canadian democracy.

I want to wish my colleagues and everybody in the House happy holidays. We will see them in the new year.

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Rural Economic Development and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak about the important issue of combatting foreign interference in our democratic institutions. It is a little ironic for my colleague to talk about political interests in matters of national security when his leader still will not get his security clearance to learn more about foreign interference taking place in his party.

Since coming to office, our government has taken a range of measures to address the threats of foreign interference, such as amending the Canada Elections Act in 2018; creating both the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency and the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians; standing up a range of initiatives to strengthen our electoral system against cyber and other threats through the plan to protect Canada's democracy in advance of the 2019 election; and building upon and further strengthening that plan in the advance of the 2021 election.

Bill C-65 would ensure key protections against foreign interference are not limited to the election period; ban intentionally false and misleading statements about election activities or the voting process to disrupt an election or its results; prohibit contributions through money orders, prepaid gift cards or crypto assets, the source of which can be difficult to trace; and introduce new third party contribution rules to increase transparency and mitigate the so-called dark or foreign funds from entering the system. If passed, these amendments would continue the cycle of continuous improvements to Canada's electoral process. Members will have a chance to study the amendments proposed in Bill C-65 and we look forward to the discussions that will follow.

Alleged Intimidation during Proceedings of the House

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Madam Speaker, I agree with you, but we find ourselves in this position because that is exactly what the NDP members have done with these outrageous and baseless accusations. I think it is only fair and just that, after making these kinds of allegations, the official opposition be allowed to not only defend ourselves and our integrity, but also put the actual facts of the matter before the Chair if the Chair is going to rule on this.

My NDP counterpart also claimed that pages were withdrawn from the opposition lobby because of what he alleged was the conduct of Conservative MPs. I was briefed by a representative of the House administration relating to the page program and was informed that the baseline issue that ultimately led to a decision being made happened earlier and was completely unrelated to behaviour in the lobby. It was an administrative issue within the page program itself.

I can also say that during the evening there were requests from one side to the other, from the NDP lobby, to turn the volume down on the television that was on. It is a request that was accommodated. This is in stark contrast to the actions of NDP members that evening.

I would also point out that I have been in this place a long time, and on both sides of the House. I have been in a situation where I have shared opposition lobbies with NDP members. They are often gathered together, having a jovial time, just as Conservatives were that evening. I have heard them playing guitars and leading each other in songs. That happens from time to time on late-night sittings. Both parties usually just accommodate each other when they are doing that. We have to share the same space. We try to stay out of each other's way.

This all has come as a complete shock to Conservative staff and Conservative MPs who viewed the events of that evening as exactly that. Our MPs in our corner of the lobby enjoying the evening, knowing that we were about to come in and vote on a confidence matter, having a playful time in the House of Commons, chirping the NDP members who were voting on another side of the issue, which they do all the time. They are now just being selectively sanctimonious.

That being said, let me talk a bit about the NDP member's conduct in the House. We saw unhinged conduct directed at the Conservative lobby coordinator by the NDP member for Vancouver East. Not once, but on two occasions on Thursday night, she used profane language and likened him to a certain body part. On the second occasion, an NDP staffer had to physically come between her and the staffer in question, much like how the Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms had to direct the NDP deputy House leader away from the Conservatives she was harassing, as seen on the video that hundreds of thousands of Canadians have witnessed so far.

That interaction between the NDP member and the Conservative staff was an exercise of a position of power, to assert authority over and to bully an employee. There are witnesses to this conduct, as well as, I understand, a video, which I expect will be viewed in other forums.

Earlier in the evening, the hon. Conservative member for St. Albert—Edmonton was attempting to record a message for his constituents and Canadians about his work as our democratic reform shadow minister on Bill C-65, which proposes to delay the fixed-date election by a week in order to secure the pensions of 28 Liberal and NDP MPs.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Madam Speaker, it is always a privilege and a pleasure to rise in this place. On this particular issue, I rose last in early October to speak to the House about the Liberals' failure to turn over documents on the green slush fund as requested by the House of Commons' duly elected members and agreed to by the Speaker.

Two months later, it is pretty obvious the government is more concerned about what damage might emerge from handing over these documents and the consequences that may follow. Instead of moving ahead with its own agenda, as flawed as it may be, it is choosing to let this place live in gridlock. Then, from its ivory tower, it stands and lectures us on how our quest for transparency is impeding the business of this place.

There is a pretty easy solution to this. The Liberals could just hand over the documents, as requested by the elected members of this place. If they had done that by now, we would not be here today. I would not be speaking on this privilege debate today. They could do it today. Recognizing that my time will run short at adjournment, I will come back Monday morning to conclude my speech and take hopefully decent questions from members of the NDP-Liberal government. However, I am willing to sacrifice and cede that time if the government were to just do the right thing and hand over the documents. It is a Friday afternoon. It is a dump. The government can get rid of it. Maybe nobody will notice. The reason that it is obviously hiding the documents and refusing to do so is because it is very worried about those consequences.

I mentioned the legislative agenda of the government, if we want to call it that. Let us review where we are at to perhaps understand why it might not want to move forward with its own agenda.

Of course, the Minister of Justice has the Orwellian bill, Bill C-63, a widely panned piece of legislation that would see Canadians arrested for speech the Liberals deem impermissible, speech that they do not like. George Orwell's dystopian future is proving eerily correct under the Liberal government, with thought crime set to be added to our legal books should that bill ever pass.

Then we have Bill C-65, the electoral participation act, that is also under way in theory. Maybe we should call it by what it more appropriately would be, the “ensuring the leader of the NDP's pension act”. Since the NDP and the Liberals got together and cut some backroom deals to get another payout on the backs of hard-working Canadian taxpayers—

Democratic Institutions

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indigenous Services]

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today to speak to the paramount issue of combatting foreign interference in our democratic institutions. I certainly take this matter very seriously. I have respect for the House, and I wish the member would demonstrate the same. The allegations referenced here are misleading and defamatory, and he is simply peddling misinformation.

On this side of the House, the Prime Minister and ministers of the Crown have security clearances and have been vetted by national security. That is more than I can say for the Leader of the Opposition, who the member opposite is sitting closer and closer to. That is why I would like to turn my attention to what matters, which is what the government is doing on foreign interference.

In September 2023, the government announced the establishment of the public inquiry into foreign interference in federal processes and democratic processes following extensive consultations with all recognized parties in the House of Commons. All parties agreed to the terms of reference and the appointment of the commissioner, Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, a judge of the Court of Appeal of Quebec. The commissioner is mandated to examine and assess interference from China, Russia and other foreign state or non-state actors, including any potential impacts, to confirm the integrity of and any impacts on the 2019 and 2021 federal general elections at the national and electoral district levels.

As members of the House know, the commissioner's interim report was delivered on May 3, 2024. Some of the key findings from this initial report were that foreign interference did not affect the overall outcomes of the 2019 and 2021 elections, and the administration of these elections were sound. Foreign interference did not undermine the integrity of Canada's electoral system.

The commission's initial report did not make any recommendations for the government or other stakeholders. These will be included in the commission's final report. The government looks forward to reviewing the final report and any recommendations the commissioner may have for better protecting federal democratic processes from foreign interference. These will help inform future measures. In the meantime, the government continues its work to counter the evolving threat of foreign interference in Canada's democratic institutions.

Since the commissioner was appointed, the government has taken a number of steps. In September 2023, the Prime Minister made a statement in the House of Commons that there were credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the Government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen in British Columbia. In October 2023, the government issued a second public statement on a probable Chinese government's “spamouflage” disinformation campaign targeting dozens of Canadian parliamentarians and issued letters to those parliamentarians who were targeted.

In December 2023, Canada joined the United Kingdom's attribution of malicious cyber activity in Russia that targeted U.K. politics and democratic processes. In January 2024, early preparations for the critical election incident public protocol panel began with individual briefings to panel members. Also in January 2024, the government published and shared a tool kit to resist disinformation and foreign interference and “Countering Disinformation: A Guidebook for Public Servants”.

In March 2024, the government introduced Bill C-65 which proposes amendments to the Canada Elections Act, including measures to further strengthen federal electoral processes against foreign interference. This bill has passed second reading in the House and is currently being studied in committee. In June 2024, unclassified briefings on foreign interference were provided to members of Parliament. On June 20, 2024, Bill C-70, the Countering Foreign Interference Act, received royal assent.

The Government of Canada has taken a range of measures to address the evolving threat of foreign interference in Canada's democratic processes. We look forward to reviewing any recommendations that Commissioner Hogue may have in her final report. In the meantime, the government continues to take steps to protect Canada's democracy.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

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

Madam Speaker, before I begin my comments about the Sustainable Development Technology Canada scandal, knowing that we are coming into Remembrance Week, I want to share with the House a poem. It is called We Remain, and it was written by T.S. Bedford:

We remain.
We stand between the living and the lost;
Between memory and tomorrow.
We give voice to the silent;
Presence to the missed.
We share yesterday with the parted
And today with the loved.
No one knows the shape of the future
Or where the path will lead.
But the lost will always walk with us;
So long as
We remain.

I have to say, at the start of this speech today, that I cannot believe we are still here. I cannot believe that we talked about this topic in September and for all of October, and that it is November and we are still talking about it. For those at home who do not know what this privilege motion is about, it all started with Sustainable Development Technology Canada, a fund that was supposed to support sustainable technology development. The fund was created in 2001 and worked fine under both Liberal and Conservative governments until the current corrupt Liberal government.

Basically, it appointed people to the committee that was going to decide who got the money, and all its members gave it to their own companies. The Auditor General found 186 conflicts of interest, a whistle-blower implied that there was criminality involved and Parliament voted to have the documents related to this scandal produced. Of course, the Liberals did what they always do: They delayed and then produced the documents all blacked out without anything useful. The Speaker has correctly ruled that they need to produce the documents unredacted and that no government business or private member's business is going to take place in the House until that happens. We have been waiting for five weeks for the Liberals to produce the documents.

Bills are not coming forward, but there are some bills that I am glad are not coming forward, like the online harms bill, Bill C-63, which would do absolutely nothing to help children being sexually exploited online. Everybody wants that to be dealt with, but it would create a parallel system with no criminal consequences, and that would not help anyone. It would also put a person in jail for life if someone thinks they might commit a hate crime in the future. That is a chill on freedom of speech in this country. I am also happy that we do not have Bill C-65 coming forward, the bill that would give all Liberal and NDP members who are going to lose their seat in the next election their pensions by moving the election date out a week.

One of the bills that I would like to see come forward is unfortunately not happening. As part of the federal redistribution process, my riding was renamed Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong. The new chief of Bkejwanong, which is Walpole Island, objects to the use of that name. As soon as I heard that he objected to it, I asked it to be part of a bill to alter riding names that need to be changed, which is done regularly in the House. I am very disappointed that this bill is not coming forward, because now I am not able to do what the chief asked me to do and what I said I would do, which is bring it forward here.

The reason we are here is that the Liberals continue to block us by not producing the documents. Let us talk about some of the arguments that have been made.

The Liberals are saying they do not want to give the documents to the RCMP because that would be a violation of people's charter rights. I want to be clear that the RCMP gets tips all the time, like from Crime Stoppers. It follows up on them. Nothing is a violation of anybody's charter rights with respect to that. What would happen is that RCMP members would look into the documents, especially if we give some indication of where they should be looking, and if they found evidence of criminality and wanted to pursue criminal charges, they would go to a judge and order those documents to be produced so they could be officially used in a criminal trial. That is where we are at today.

I just want to recap a bit of the history of how this fund went so wrong.

[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.

Electoral Reform

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Madam Speaker, our government recognizes that a healthy democracy requires youth engagement. Parliament has continued to support the current voting age of 18 for a variety of reasons. At the same time, important actions have been taken to further foster youth participation by the government and stakeholders, as well as youth-led organizations and initiatives. However, I would note that voters aged 18 to 24 continue to have much lower turnout than the national average. Our government believes more can be done to make voting easier for these electors, many of whom are post-secondary students. That is why the government's proposal to make voting on campus permanent through Bill C-65 is so important.

I want to thank Canadian youth for their continued engagement in our democratic institutions.