Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 1st, 2006

[Paul Lepsoe]

With respect to membership fees, I'm not sure we have strong views either way.

I was in favour of the amendment in Bill C-24 that said there wouldn't be contributions. I think the idea was that membership fees would be taken right out of the act so you wouldn't get into the complications of transfer rules, and they wouldn't be considered donations for certain disclosure purposes, and so on. I think that was the idea, to try to simplify. If you're saying it's almost having the opposite effect, and making it more complicated for some people, maybe it should be looked at. Making them straightforward contributions across the board does have some complications.

With respect to the transfer of debts, I'm not sure I fully understand that, because it's possible to do that right now. A riding association can simply pay the candidate's debts. That's perfectly permissible under the law right now. I don't think it's fair to third-party creditors to transfer these debts to someone else. If the riding association wants to absorb them, they simply pay off the third-party creditors and deal with the fundraising themselves.

With respect to leadership contestant spending limits, this is the first major party under Bill C-24 to have a leadership contest, so I don't know if we really have the data to have a position on that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you.

Mr. MacKinnon, would you like to comment?

[Steven MacKinnon]

Again, without needing to repeat, I share the views of my Conservative friend on my ambivalence on membership fees and on the debt thing, but I think we'd be open to any change that would make it easier and would be a reasonable one.

With respect to what you call an absence of accountability with respect to leadership spending limits, I must respectfully remind you that the Liberal Party, as the first party to go under Bill C-24--you'll recall the Conservatives acted in great haste to make sure their leadership election was conducted under the previous rules, and did so very, very quickly and mysteriously on New Year's Eve. They were able to escape the rather new regime of Bill C-24.

The Liberal Party has gone above and beyond the Elections Act and has declared a spending limit. All spending must be declared publicly through Elections Canada. All contributions must be declared publicly. I note some discussion around those. The leadership expenses committee, which is a quasi-judicial tribunal in our Liberal world, is there to enforce those rules. We have published those rules and made it clear that any transgressions will not be tolerated. The Liberal Party has acted with extreme accountability, extreme transparency, in running our leadership campaigns. We set the limit based on our party's constitution, based on the fact that we need a nine-month process to have a leadership race. It's a big country, and we want to be able to get from Halifax to Acadie--Bathurst.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

The real question is whether you think the voluntary imposition of limits is good enough or whether there should actually be limits specified in legislation.

[Steven MacKinnon]

As a general principle, I think it's possible to go too far. I don't accept the fact that political parties are not mature and have not evolved enough to run their own affairs, to run their own nomination meetings, and to conduct leadership conventions. At the end of the day, we respond to and are judged by the public. I know we are sensitive to that. I'm sure my colleagues on this panel are sensitive to that in formulating all rules. We make them public. You can read them. They are there for all to read. I don't think we've received any criticism for establishing an unreasonable limit, given the contribution limits leadership candidates must live under in the present context. Frankly, I doubt any of our leadership contestants will spend the limit we've allowed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Ms. McDonough, I'd like to give the others an opportunity. We can put you on the list for another question.

Thank you.

Mr. Gardner, please.

[Gilbert Gardner]

As regards the idea of classifying membership fees and contributions, I don't see anything against it, in principle. However, guidelines should be established because there could be membership fees for honorary members representing several hundreds, even thousands of dollars. So some guidelines should be set, taking into account the different cultures within the various parties. We should also take into consideration the fact that these membership fees include membership-related costs. Should they be subtracted from the total amount? A membership can be sold for $25 and cost the party $10 in administrative fees. Is that $10 amount eligible or not? That question should be considered.

As for debts, the act already provides that registered riding associations borrow and transfer funds to the candidate. Consequently, the candidate has no debts as such. Furthermore, candidates must have paid off all their bills before they can file their financial return, and do so within 90 days. So the act already contains provisions on loans.

As for the limits included in the act for leadership races, a trend has emerged in the past 15 years or so, in that the acts limit the amounts that can be spent in the context of a nomination. There remain leadership expenses. The cultures of the different parties and the different types of parties have to be taken into account. Obviously, a party that has a number of candidates won't adopt the same procedures for its leadership race as another party. However, I think we should start thinking about this and eventually include provisions on spending limits in the act.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you very much.

I'll allow the NDP the final comment, if you have one. Thank you.

[Eric Hébert]

Of course, as you might imagine, we agree with our brief.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Eric Hébert]

In terms of its debts, just to be clear, a riding can of course embark upon the debt to begin with. But at the end of the day, the expenses—not necessarily a loan of that nature—must all be paid by the candidate, who can have unpaid claims up to 18 months after an election. All of these sorts of provisions exist, which means that at the end of the day we're stuck with a situation where an account has to be left open because it has to be paid from the campaign account. All of these different aspects become problematic from an administrative perspective. So it seems like a fairly simple thing to be able to correct.

On membership fees, just to be clear again, as far as I'm concerned, these fees should not be counted in the $1,000 limit. I'm not suggesting that that contribution be considered part of the limit, but I do think we shouldn't be preventing it from being tax receiptable; I think that's the problem we've created. The vast majority of the people who give to political parties in this current context don't give huge amounts of money, and when they give, usually their membership contribution is one of the first portions of the money they give. And it's a bit unfair to those who can't afford much more than their $25, or $10, or whatever, membership fee not to grant them the tax credit but allow moneys over that amount to be tax creditable. I don't think that was the intention of Bill C-24 and I think it's something that needs to be corrected.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you.

We are entering our second round of questions. As you can probably tell, I'm giving a lot of leniency to the time we're spending, particularly on the answers. We'll start the second round at five minutes, and I would hope that we can keep the questions as short and succinct as possible so that we can hear from the witnesses.

Round two, Monsieur Simard.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

First, for information purposes, I'd like to go back to Mr. Proulx's remarks. In Manitoba, in two ridings in particular—mine and Saint-Boniface—the returning officer indeed posted the names of people who had voted, every hour or every two hours. Consequently, that's already being done. Personally, I assumed, and I assume that it's legal. That was done in Manitoba; that's what I wanted to tell you.

Mr. Chair, I'd like to pose three questions, if I could, and then have our panel respond.

I'd just like to know if Mr. Kingsley consulted you prior to tabling his report. I would imagine that he would have consulted the parties, being that you are involved in this on a daily basis. I would assume that would have been done.

My second question deals with what is probably one of the toughest issues we'll have to deal with here, the whole issue of fraud and registration. I'm assuming you have already determined some solutions for that. Could we hear what some of the solutions might be? I'm assuming that you probably won't have time to give us all the answers, so I think the members here would appreciate it if you could submit something to us in terms of possible solutions, because we will be struggling with them. So we would really appreciate some documentation on that from all four parties, if that's possible.

The third thing is that we're struggling and throwing around a lot of ideas right now, and while we have you here, I wonder if we could pick your brains on, for instance, the 100 signatures. Some people have indicated that's an issue. Is that a problem? What about the requirement for a photo ID, for instance, at the polls, and having advertising warning people that it is an offence to do illegal things? Are those things we should be looking at? There's also, for instance, voting on a Sunday to be able to increase voter turnout. Those are issues to consider, because it's our job here not only to analyze Mr. Kingsley's report, but also to make recommendations on how we can improve the system.

So if I could leave those questions with you, please....

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

It could be tough to answer five questions, but please remember the questions. These are good questions. Perhaps in a submission after today we could get those answers. We will start with the Conservative Party.

Do your best, Mr. Donison.

[Michael D. Donison]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

For the record, Mr. Chair, the leadership of the Conservative Party in 2004 was not governed by Bill C-24. We had self-imposed limits, full disclosure, and I believe the expenditure limits were less than the current Liberal one. In fact, on the website of our party for over two years, every single leadership candidate had to post every single donation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Please answer the questions, since we're using up the member's time.

[Michael D. Donison]

I wanted to put that on the record, Mr. Chair.

As far as tabling his report, Mr. Kingsley consults with the parties two or three times a year, but he doesn't specifically ask us to review his reports before they're tabled. We don't get a complete look at them before he tables reports before Parliament, and I'm sometimes as surprised as honourable members at what shows up in the report, but not always.

I think the ID issue in the polls is the most central issue you're facing. I think the photo ID is something you have to seriously consider as a basic requirement. I really do.

On the signatures, I like the idea of pre-nomination anyway, and I'm not so sure you'd need signatures. I'm all for candidates just being able to file their papers with Elections Canada, having been certified by the party that they've obtained a nomination and they're the nominated candidate.

On advertising, absolutely, there should be all sorts of warnings around polling stations--breach of this, breach of that, and the gendarmes are going to come and put you in jail. I'd be all in favour of that.

On voting on a Sunday, I'm going to have to think about that one. I'm not so sure about that one.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you very much for that brief answer.

Mr. MacKinnon, answers, please.

[Steven MacKinnon]

I would indicate the Conservative leadership race did not happen with the contribution limits as envisaged by Bill C-24.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

We're going to cut you off if we don't get answers to the questions.

Thank you.

[Steven MacKinnon]

Voting on Sunday is something that seriously has merit. With the risk of sounding like a heathen, it is something that should be seriously examined. Voting on a Sunday is something that would tangibly and manifestly increase voter turnout.

On the signatures, again, I agree with my friend on most of these administrative details, and as a general note it should be considered that frankly on most of the issues we agree most of the time. We have common experiences with respect to the administration of elections.

Photo ID should be seriously considered, and I would go one further. Proof of citizenship where required is something that should be considered.

I've done it as best I can, Monsieur Simard.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you, sir.

[Martin Carpentier]

Let's talk about the consultation following the last election. The Chief Electoral Officer did not even consult the advisory committee to tell it about the report he was going to submit. We weren't consulted on his recommendations or on what he wrote in his report.

The registration issue is one that affects a lot of things. I have questions even for Quebec. We also spoke with the Elections Canada people. In Canada, they use a permanent list that is compiled from data from the Régie de l'assurance maladie du Québec and from the Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec. Consequently, people are automatically on the electoral list from the time they turn 18. That's not the case of the National Register of Electors at the federal level.

There's also the entire matter of research. How do you go about registering youths and how do you get them to participate more in elections? Elections Canada should also ask itself some questions on that subject. If they start thinking about it, we should do so as well. We need a mechanism to allow that at the Canadian level, as is being done in Quebec.

In Quebec, they use two data bases to constitute the permanent voters list, which is updated every month. Surely there's a way to do the same thing in Canada. Unfortunately, there's too much data overlap. That's why the lists are incorrect. If Quebec only used the permanent list, that would already be a major step forward. Unfortunately, there is overlap with Revenue Canada and Citizenship and Immigration Canada. That's what causes all the problems and all the duplication you see on the list.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you very much.

I'm just going to remind the witnesses that there were three other questions. Could I get just a yes or no for the member on photo ID, advertising or warnings at polls, and Sunday voting. Are there any comments on that?

No? Thank you.

The NDP, please.

[Eric Hébert]

On documentation for protecting against fraud, I agree something needs to happen that's a bit better than just saying who you are. I agree with that; I just don't want it to become so onerous that we're actually disenfranchising people. I'm sure we can find ways amongst us to figure it out, but I think we have to be very careful.

Concerning the 100 signatures, it's a bit ridiculous. I don't think anyone finds the process actually makes it easier, better, or more authentic for a particular candidate to be a candidate by virtue of having found 100 people to say it was okay for them to be a candidate. I find that a bit weird and I'd be quite happy to see it go.

On advertising about illegal actions, sure, as often as possible, wherever possible; we're okay on that.

Concerning voting on Sunday, I'd certainly be more open to the voting on Sunday issue, and this despite being an active church-goer, than I would be to creating a national holiday, which was something else that was suggested: that voting day, on a Monday, become a national holiday. I fear that, because what it does is create a long weekend, and people leave. It doesn't exactly provide you with the right incentive. That would be my only comment on it.