Right now in the Canada Elections Act, there's an implicit contracting authority. The Chief Electoral Officer doesn't have an explicit contracting authority, so the bill would make his ability to contract for services an explicit provision. The clause that's proposed in the bill is a clause that's standard in a lot of government entities, including some of the agents of Parliament that are part of the executive, like the Chief Electoral Officer. In other words, the Commissioner of Official Languages and the privacy and the information commissioners have this type of clause.
On April 29th, 2014. See this statement in context.