Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 28th, 2018

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

This is an accountability measure going back to the official agent. Correct?

[Manon Paquet]

Exactly.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

That was my confusion there. I apologize.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

From my understanding of that section too, it doesn't apply to the personal expenses, it's only the election expenses part of the expenses.

[Manon Paquet]

That's right.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

I want to talk about the laws when it comes to privacy and the data that's being collected by the parties.

It is my understanding that the party has to be more transparent. It has to transmit its policy through its own Internet site. What does that look like under this legislation? What are they compelled to do?

[Allen Sutherland]

It has to be made available on the Internet site. It also has to be submitted to Elections Canada. In what needs to be there, there are some requirements of how and what information they collect, how the party is endeavouring to protect personal information. A statement is also required around training measures that will take place as well as approaches to things including cookies. In addition, there is a requirement to have a name and contact information of a person to whom you can address privacy concerns. If I'm a Canadian, I can find out who I can talk to.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

I know I'm jumping around all over the place, but I don't have a lot of time.

On compliance agreements with the commissioner, it talks a lot in here about encouraging people who run afoul of the law to comply, and one of the ways of doing this would be the administrative penalties. In your opinion, what is going to be the biggest difference going into this election if someone runs afoul of this law, and how will the administrative penalties be helpful?

[Allen Sutherland]

Assuming the legislation passes, what would change is in the past the commissioner of Canada elections had a pretty stark choice. For instance, if you didn't close the bank account on time, they had the choice of taking you to court or encouraging you, but had no proportionate instrument that they could use to get you to comply. Now with administrative monetary penalties, the commissioner has a broader range of tools available to get better compliance from third parties and political parties.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Would these penalties make that relationship between public prosecutions and the commissioner easier? I'm assuming it would. How does it affect the relationship? I know right now they're being moved over to Elections Canada, but that aside, when it comes to the compliance agreements themselves, how would the public prosecutor be involved in that situation?

[Allen Sutherland]

I think the use of AMPs would ease the relationship—

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Acronyms drive me crazy.

[Allen Sutherland]

The smart use of administrative monetary penalties as a tool to enforce compliance would help ease the relationship with public prosecutions because it means there would be fewer dumb prosecutions where what's at stake is so trivial.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

I totally agree. In several departments, whether it's Heritage and CRTC and stuff like that, I notice it's fairly complex. I'm just trying to make my way through the ease between the two to get down to the most egregious people who run afoul of this particular law and how these administrative penalties will be enforced. I thank you for that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

And I want to thank you.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Why would that be, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

It's time for Mr. Richards.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I have some questions in a few different areas. We'll have a conversation, I guess.

This is in relation to third parties and the changes in this legislation as I understand them. Obviously they can't receive contributions from foreign entities during the election period or the newly created pre-election period, but they can receive them in the time prior to that, but they can't be for political purposes. What ways do we have, based on this legislation, of determining that? What's to stop someone from giving, say, $1 million for some other purpose? Of course what that does is it frees up maybe the $1 million they already had in their bank account to be spent on the election. In a way, it almost is still a way to influence—wink, wink, “I gave it to you for something else; spend your other million in an election.” How do we enforce and prevent that from occurring?

[Allen Sutherland]

You're speaking to the commingling issue, that the foreign money could be used for administrative purposes or other non-political purposes, and that frees up money elsewhere. What we have in the legislation creates a limit on it. I say that because it would be possible for the commissioner of Canada elections to demand receipts and to see the flow of the receipts into the third party. In a wild scenario where all the money going into the third party was foreign, it would be pretty easy to determine.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Sure. That would be true in that scenario. I agree. Between the pre-election and election period they can spend $1.5 million. Is that correct?

[Allen Sutherland]

Do you mean the combination of the two?

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Yes.

[Allen Sutherland]

Yes. Just for precision, in the pre-writ period, it's issue and partisan advertising, and in the writ period it's only partisan advertising.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Having said that, and let's use that $1.5 million figure just to make it easy, let's say the third party was to have $3 million in funding, and then $1.5 million came from foreign sources and $1.5 million came from Canadian sources. Is it possible for that organization to claim that the entire $1.5 million spent during the election was all Canadian, or if they have 50% of their funding from a foreign fund, would they have to...? Do you get what I'm getting at there?

[Allen Sutherland]

I understand the commingling issue. Ultimately, it would be up to the commissioner of Canada elections to determine whether or not he or she felt that what was being proposed—in your case that the money was just dislocating—was in fact occurring or was foreign money flowing into the partisan campaigns.