Evidence of meeting #44 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was elections.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
In other words, even if the commissioner recommends charges for filing false and misleading election returns, and even if they're found guilty for doing such a thing, this does not apply to the public office holders we're dealing with today. The penalty of losing your seat or not being allowed to run for five years does not deal with filing false or misleading returns; it deals only with exceeding the election spending limit. That's news to me. Am I reading that correctly?
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
You are correct. I think this illustrates some of the imbalance in this situation.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
What would be the maximum consequence or penalty, then, in the hypothetical situation in which one of the people mentioned in this list of 17 is convicted of filing false or misleading election finance returns?
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
For false or misleading returns, according to the table I showed you this morning, it would be a fine of $5,000 or five years in prison.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
It actually doesn't say anything for the candidates. That's only for the official agent.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
No, no. The table applies to candidates. Look at the top. The agent is also liable for offences.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
All right. I understand.
But the only situation in which you would be precluded from taking your seat in the House or barred from running again would be if you exceeded your spending limits. So in the situation we have of false and misleading documents being filed on an election return, the maximum penalty for, let's say, Maxime Bernier or Stockwell Day or Lawrence Cannon, if they were convicted, would be a $5,000 fine and five years in prison. Is that correct?
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
Again, as shown on that table, a false or misleading statement could lead to a fine and imprisonment of up to five years.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Mr. Mulcair, I have allowed you to go forward, but I did not acknowledge you. I haven't done it yet, and I apologize for that.
I now turn the floor over to Mr. Mulcair.
NDP
Thomas Mulcair NDP Outremont, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to go back to Mr. Mayrand and to pick up where we left off earlier. In his testimony in English, he very clearly suggested to us that he wasn't satisfied with the timing—for a lack of a better word—or with the moment selected by the Commissioner to conduct the search, that moment being the day before the civil proceeding that is his responsibility as Chief Electoral Officer, whereas the Commissioner is responsible for the criminal aspect.
Earlier I asked Mr. Mayrand whether he found that inappropriate and whether he thought the Commissioner had failed to grasp the importance of maintaining not only Elections Canada's objectivity, but also its image of objectivity. I was somewhat surprised by the answer I got. He told me that what the Commissioner is supposed to do is to enforce the act equally for everyone. Those comments cannot both be true. Mr. Mayrand cannot, on the one hand, tell us in English that he found that inappropriate and, in French, take refuge behind a supposed neutrality, whereas only one search was conducted, against one single political party, which is the Conservative Party of Canada.
I'm asking the question again in French. Since he himself questioned the Commissioner's choice at the moment, can he tell us that he found that choice inappropriate? Can he tell us that he, our federal Chief Electoral Officer, disagreed on the moment chosen by the Commissioner to conduct the search of the Conservative Party's offices?
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
I still think that, from my point of view, the timing could have been different. I can entirely understand that, from the Commissioner's viewpoint, he had investigation, logistics and coordination imperatives as a result of which he had to proceed because that's where he was in his investigation. I respect that decision, even though, with respect to timing, it was not a decision I enthusiastically welcomed.
NDP
Thomas Mulcair NDP Outremont, QC
At the very start this afternoon, Mr. Chairman, you asked Mr. Mayrand whether he had anything to change or add in the testimony he gave us earlier today.
I am going to take the liberty of asking a somewhat similar question. If you consider the following aspects: the facts as a whole, the concerns with respect to objectivity raised by the Conservatives, the Chief Electoral Officer's insistence that all the political parties were always treated in the same way, the concerns over a possible leak, the fact that it was all the parties, and the moment chosen, would he himself have done things differently in this case, or does he think that everything was done in accordance with the best of possibilities in the circumstances?
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
I think very sincerely that things were done in accordance with proper practice. I don't see how things could have been done differently, in view of the system we have to administer.
Liberal
Dominic LeBlanc Liberal Beauséjour, NB
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you again for your comments, Mr. Mayrand. You are a patient man, you are very generous with your opinions, and I very much appreciate that.
I would like to ask you a question on three specific aspects. With regard to the matter of the Director of Public Prosecutions, I myself learned today that the Director of Public Prosecutions was in fact mandated to represent or act on behalf of the Commissioner in the search warrant matter.
Did I correctly understand that, at that point, when the Commissioner requested a warrant or referred to the matter of the need for a search warrant, the Director of Public Prosecutions himself conducted an analysis, examined the whole of the evidence and agreed to proceed in court in Ontario? That's another judgment that was applied by the Director of Public Prosecutions in this case.
Liberal
Dominic LeBlanc Liberal Beauséjour, NB
That's interesting. For the first time I've learned that the Director of Public Prosecutions has already made a judgment--albeit an interim one--with respect to the evidence necessary to go and get a search warrant at the court in Ontario.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
Well, he's made an assessment as to whether the evidence or the facts presented to him justified the application for a warrant.
Liberal
Dominic LeBlanc Liberal Beauséjour, NB
Thank you.
I think a number of times earlier this morning you referred to bringing closure to these files. I appreciate from your comments that you didn't believe that there were sufficient grounds to authorize the reimbursement, or the refund, of this money in these 67 claims, and then you referred it to the commissioner and so on. What I'm trying to understand is if, in your view, they did not constitute appropriate expenses incurred by the candidates claiming them. I asked you earlier if presumably they would be expenses of the national party--advertising expenses that are clearly political in an election have to be assumed by some lawful authority in a campaign--and you said you didn't have enough information or you couldn't make that judgment yet; I forget the exact phrase.
Could you expand on that? Did you request information? For example, what information are you missing to be able to decide if in fact they should be attributed to the national party? Is there information that you've requested that the Conservative Party perhaps hasn't given you, or that the local candidates haven't given you? What's the process to decide where that $1.2 million ends up--on what column it goes?
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
There are a number of decisions that remain to be made on this file. First of all, some participants did receive a reimbursement. The matter was brought to our attention only after 17 candidates had received a reimbursement. There could be an issue there in that maybe we need to claim back the amount.
We also need to deal with the whole of the 67 candidates. If the expense is not approved, then there is a decision to be made about requiring amendments to the returns. Then there is a decision to be made with regard to the attribution of that expense.
These decisions were not made at the time because of the facts that were in front of me when I made the decision. Since then, of course, as we've discussed here today, there has been more information made available. But more importantly, I think it's fair to wait for the decision of the Federal Court before making those next decisions.
If the Federal Court were to reverse my decision--an order to pay--of course those other decisions will not have to be made. If the Federal Court supports my decision and determines that it was reasonably taken in light of the legislation, then those decisions will fall through....
Liberal
Dominic LeBlanc Liberal Beauséjour, NB
Thank you very much; that's very clear.
I have one final question concerning the falsification of documents. In a number of affidavits that, as you said, surrounded the civil proceeding in the Federal Court, reference was made to invoices that were filed on behalf of Conservative candidates and that had been provided by Retail Media.
For example, Conservative candidates outside the province of Quebec were invoiced by Retail Media an amount totalling $591,000 plus GST. Then the Conservative Party submitted to Elections Canada what appears to have been an altered invoice, or simply the Retail Media invoice, and then photocopied but blanked out were all the other candidates on the list. They simply included a particular riding and handwrote “plus GST”. That became the receipt the candidate's official agent attempted to give to Elections Canada in order to receive the refund, which ultimately you determined was not appropriate.
I am wondering, when you made your decision did you have some concern about the falsification of documents or the lack of clarity in the documents that official agents were submitting to you, the fact that it appeared to be a one-line invoice with handwriting that was the same for all the other candidates, and perhaps, as we saw, comments from Retail Media Group that they didn't recognize some of the invoices? I'm wondering if you could address the issue of the reliability of what the official agents may have sent to Elections Canada.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
I will say only two things. First of all, this is a matter that will be debated, I believe, in the Federal Court, and it will also be a matter for the investigation.
However, I will point out that the reference about alteration of invoices really came out for the first time, to my knowledge, when information became publicly available as a result of the search warrant application. That's all I can say. I'm not privy to the other matters in that regard.