Thank you.
I don't think I can compete with Professor Lee on the humour.
I have quite a lot of experience in this area, including at the Lortie commission on electoral reform 20 years ago, and two years at Elections Canada as the director of research and policy 10 years ago. In light of that, I want to begin my comments on this bill from the perspective of policy development.
I find that on a number of important matters, Bill C-23 proposes major policy changes that are not backed up by solid evidence. By this I mean, what is the nature and extent of the problem that needs to be rectified? I researched the answer to this question by checking the backgrounders on the democratic reform website, ministerial speeches, and other documents. I'm now going to talk about three policy changes to demonstrate the point about the lack of evidence.
First, the bill proposes to abolish the voter education mandate of the Chief Electoral Officer. Members probably know that this responsibility dates from 1993, and to my knowledge no political party has ever called it into question until now. Research has shown that the decline in turnout observed in Canada and most advanced democracies has been particularly sharp among youth. In the early 2000s, concern about this rose and not just among researchers and election administrators, but on February 17, 2004, almost 10 years to a day, the House unanimously adopted a motion, part of which reads as follows:
That the House direct the Chief Electoral Officer and Elections Canada to expand its initiatives to promote the participation of young Canadians in the electoral process, and that these initiatives include making available educational material to schools and other organizations.
When I was at Elections Canada, which coincided with the adoption of that motion, I was pleased to lead the development of the first partnership with the organization that came to be known as Student Vote. We also consulted with a number of aboriginal organizations about ways of encouraging more aboriginal Canadians to exercise the franchise. Since then, a decade ago, the voter education activities of Elections Canada have expanded considerably. In the last election, for example, Student Vote reached over half a million students who participated in mock elections in schools as a voter education program.
This mandate is not unique to Elections Canada. Interestingly, the Australian Electoral Commission, the federal body, has a mandate to educate and inform the community about electoral rights and responsibilities. Similarly in New Zealand, its Electoral Commission has a mandate to promote public awareness of electoral matters by the conduct of education and information programs.
The government's backgrounder on the voter education mandate change describes this move as “back to basics”. Sounds nice, but to me this implies that voter education is not really very important. After all, we should be focusing on the basics, not on these things that are tangential, or perhaps it also implies that this is not a legitimate thing for a public management body in the field of elections to do. I strongly disagree.
Turning to political finance, there are a number of changes in the bill, but one of them is particularly puzzling. I want to highlight it because this is an area we worked on at the Lortie commission. The definition of election expenses was made comprehensive in 2004. Now the government proposes to exempt the costs of fundraising. Once again, the evidence is scanty. I could find none at all in the backgrounder that is subtitled, “Keep Big Money Out of Politics”. Why should this important activity no longer be subject to spending limits, which themselves are being raised through the same bill? I think we can predict difficulties with enforcement. After all, as you're fundraising, you're also promoting your own party or candidate, or possibly opposing the other side, or doing a bit of both. We could see that the commissioner is going to have some difficulty with this down the line. I think it's a potential Trojan Horse. It opens the door to a lot of potential difficulty and confusion.
Finally, on the Commissioner of Canada Elections, I must say it has not been demonstrated that the theoretical argument for separating the administration and the enforcement of elections is a compelling one. In my experience, according to the witnesses who have been before you, the Commissioner of Canada Elections has not been hamstrung in carrying out his duties in an independent manner. The commissioner is not a puppet of the Chief Electoral Officer, even though the commissioner is appointed by the Chief Electoral Officer.
If this bill is adopted, the appointment method will change. Rather than being appointed by an officer of Parliament, the commissioner will be appointed by the Director of Public Prosecutions, an office that was established in 2006 as part of the Accountability Act. In other words, the commissioner will become part of a departmental bureaucracy, more or less at the level of a director general, if I can look at things in the hierarchy and that sort of thing; we haven't seen the salary range and so on, that's not in the bill, of course. The commissioner will be within a departmental bureaucracy, reporting to the Attorney General who is the minister in cabinet responsible for the administration of justice. It's quite a difference in the architecture.
I find it particularly strange that the bill doesn't even allow the commissioner a public reporting role on himself or herself. Rather, it provides that the Director of Public Prosecutions will cover the general work of the commissioner in his or her annual report. So, I'm appointed to an office, I'm the commissioner of Canada elections, and I can't even report on myself. It's the Director of Public Prosecutions who reports on me.
Within a bureaucracy, where often reports are shared, things are nudged, things are nuanced, and so on. You can see the point I'm making about diminished transparency and accountability.
All in all, setting aside some of the increased penalties and that sort of thing, the commissioner's position has been significantly downgraded in the architecture of election administration and enforcement.
Based on my professional and research experience which dates back some 35 years, I would say that in a number of important respects, Bill C-23 is a step back. It is a regressive measure in the evolution of Canada's election law. If adopted in its present form, it can be expected to diminish accessibility to the vote, particularly for youth, because the education and information function will no longer be there, will no longer be part of the basics of election.
The bill could also weaken the fairness principle that lies at the core of the regulation of political finance and election spending that dates back to 1974 and was significantly enhanced under the Chrétien government, and also under the Harper government.
Finally, it will lessen transparency and accountability with regard to the role of the Commissioner of Canada Elections. The bill is flawed in a number of respects and in my view should not proceed unless amended on the matters that I mentioned and some of the other matters that have been pointed out by a number of the witnesses.
We are in the most unusual situation also, I would add, just in closing, of having a bill that is not only dividing political parties sharper than ever before, but has the incumbent Chief Electoral Officer opposed on a number of very major counts. This is unprecedented in the three decades and more during which I've been studying election law. It in itself is, I think, quite a worrying development.
Thank you for your attention.