Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 28th, 2018

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I'm pleased to be here. I'm not normally on the committee, so unlike all those who have said that “It's great to see you” or “I haven't seen you” or “I just saw you lately”, I've never seen you before.

Thank you for being here.

I'm trying to clarify a couple of things. We talk about transparency and creating a level playing field when it comes to political financing. I want to touch on the transparency part first.

On page four of your presentation, you talked about about how “vouching does not remove the obligation to prove identity and address, it simply provides an alternative mechanism”, in which the voucher and the voter take a declaration. That is required. Then you said that they still require a piece of ID.

[Stéphane Perrault]

No. If that's what I said, then it's mistaken. Under the use of the voter information card as proof of address, the elector needs to have another piece of ID and needs to make sure that the voter information card has the same name on it as the other piece of ID. That is what I certainly intended to refer to.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Not a correct address, then...?

[Stéphane Perrault]

You have to have the address and the name on the VIC and another piece of ID with the elector's name, as well.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

You gave me a stat just a minute ago. You said that 172,000 people couldn't vote because they didn't have identification for whatever reason. Can you tell me how many addresses change on that voter information card from the time it goes out until the day advance polls and voting days start?

[Stéphane Perrault]

If I remember correctly—and my colleague will correct me if I'm misleading the committee—there were roughly just under a million revised VICs that were issued at the last general election. These are VICs that are reissued to the elector because they've made a correction to their information during the election process.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

When you go to the polling station, how do you correct that? First of all, you may have your hydro bill or your lease or your cheque from someplace that says this address, but your information card is different. How do you square that? Now you have two documents that don't match.

For example, when I just voted in the Ontario election I had to show proof of who I was two times. It seems to me that what we're certain about—or I am, anyway, maybe nobody else is—is, how do we know? Now we have a million people who have changed their addresses, and we're talking about 170,000 people who maybe didn't have the right to vote last time because they couldn't get the right information. Yet we know all that information is actually available if you should desire to go get it so you can have the privilege to vote in this country. I'm just trying to square the hole here.

[Stéphane Perrault]

I will perhaps make a few clarifications.

In Ontario, as in Quebec, there is no requirement to prove your address when you vote. There is only a requirement to prove your identity. It's the address portion that is challenging to most Canadians, not the identity portion. In Ontario and Quebec, that's not a requirement.

In the case of an elector who's changed address, and who informs Elections Canada during the revision period, they receive a revised VIC at their new address. The original VIC would have been sent to a former address. They will not have that VIC with them, so they will be using their current address VIC that they will have received at home. The fact that they have, in hand, that VIC means that they have received it and that the name on that VIC is not somebody else's name, it's their name, and it's the same name that appears on another piece of ID. At some point, I think we have to decide when enough is enough. That, to me, is sufficient proof to vote in a Canadian election.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

It proves that they are Canadian to do that.

[Stéphane Perrault]

Pardon me?

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

It will prove that they are Canadian.

[Stéphane Perrault]

It will not prove that they are Canadian. That proof is done when they register through a declaration. That's been the system in Canada, as we don't have a documentary proof of citizenship in Canada.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Okay.

I want to move on to the next question.

As acting Chief Electoral Officer, maybe you can explain this. I'm trying to figure out the benefit to the voter and to Canadians. On third party money, foreign money coming in through a third party, can you give me the value or the advantage or the benefit that the Canadian voter gets from that?

[Stéphane Perrault]

I think I'll take it from another angle. There's a group that wants to participate in a Canadian election. That group has revenues from many sources over many years, so the difficulty is untangling.... In some cases, there may be, in that revenue stream, some foreign sources.

The value of the participation, of course, is the value of participation in a democratic society. What we certainly want to avoid is the case of a foreign entity funding a third party to influence the voting process. There are several measures in this bill to do that. But when you're getting into the more grey zones of the commingling of money, it's a trickier nut to crack.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

I'm trying to understand that part where you say it's a benefit to society for someone who wants to invest in Canada. If Canadians are seeing the benefits of having a democratically elected government in Canada, why do we need third party and foreign money coming in? Why not just use the Canadian money that comes through our donations to parties, and we use the caps that are given, both as a party and as individuals, to each of the parties? That cuts it pretty clear, and that way we know that it's actually Canadians who are supporting the Canadian election and not foreign and third party enterprises.

[Stéphane Perrault]

I'm responding to your question. If I'm not, please tell me.

My point is that, as recognized in the Supreme Court of Canada, there's a value to people participating in the electoral debate, not only by voting or directly supporting political parties, but also by engaging in the political debate, which could include doing some advertising or other campaign activities in favour of one idea or another. That's been recognized in our law and our Constitution. The questions are this: how do you distinguish that from illegitimate foreign funding, what is the right balance, and when do the filters against foreign funding become so tight that you're preventing legitimate activity?

There are no easy answers. It's a matter of vetting it and funding a calibrated regime to deal with that issue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Shipley.

Now we'll go on to Mr. Simms.

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

Thanks again, Chair.

I'm just looking under division 3 in the legislation. It talks about third parties' bank accounts, registry of third parties, and third-party expenses returns. I see that under proposed subsection 358.1(2), the account shall be in a Canadian financial institution as defined by section 2 of the Bank Act. It talks about payments and receipts, closure of the bank account. The reporting mechanism is there. To me, this seems quite thorough and something that you would have trust in when it comes to the third parties. This to me is an essential part of this in order to track third party spending. Would I be safe in saying that?

[Stéphane Perrault]

It is, absolutely.

The fact, however, of having a Canadian bank account does not mean that it only includes money of Canadian origin, right?

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

Right, so this is my question. If it's not fail-safe, it's pretty close to it. You may have touched upon this in your recommendations, but is there any way of closing any other possible loopholes there?

[Stéphane Perrault]

No system is fail-safe.

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

Sure.

[Stéphane Perrault]

No system is watertight. We have a contribution regime, for example, for parties and candidates. It says that you can only use your own money to make a contribution. We know from incidents in the past that this is sometimes circumvented. At some point, we have to accept that the regime will not be absolutely airtight. The question is, where is the right balance? I'm saying there's no clear answer, which is why I didn't make a specific recommendation. I'm offering avenues for the committee to reflect upon this issue.

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

Right, that's in order to close it there. I see what you're saying. Certainly, it goes a long way, especially the idea of a Canadian bank account and the registration of that.

Let's go to the return. The third party expenses return, that's proposed subsection 359(2). It says, it shall contain, “in the case of a general elections held on a day set in accordance with” a certain subsection, “a list of partisan activity”. In respect of the return here, are you satisfied with the fact it's going to be partisan activity expenses, election advertising, and surveys?

[Stéphane Perrault]

Correct.

I think that's something I tried to point out at the outset, but I'm happy to emphasize it here. The proposed bill includes very significant improvements on the third party regime. In particular, it expands very significantly the scope of regulated activities well beyond the sole issue of advertising. So this is what you're referring to. It also has the effect of regulating foreign funding with respect to those activities.

Currently, for example, a third party can do canvassing—it's not regulated—and can solicit funds from a foreign source for canvassing activities, which is permissible under current law. That would certainly not be possible under C-76.