Evidence of meeting #106 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was elections.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Andre Barnes  Committee Researcher
Allen Sutherland  Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet, Machinery of Government, Privy Council Office
Manon Paquet  Senior Policy Advisor, Privy Council Office
Jean-François Morin  Senior Policy Advisor, Privy Council Office
Clerk of the Committee  Mr. Andrew Lauzon
Stéphane Perrault  Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
Anne Lawson  General Counsel and Senior Director, Legal Services, Elections Canada

8:15 p.m.

Conservative

Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON

I'll make my intervention really short.

I assume amendments will be suggested dealing with at least some of the seven areas you've highlighted, and we'll all get to see them when they come out. After those amendments have been put out would you be willing to come back to this committee to give us your views on whether they accomplished the goals you were seeking? Would that be acceptable to you?

8:15 p.m.

Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada

Stéphane Perrault

Certainly my officials or I could come and testify if necessary, if the committee wants us to. Of course, we'll testify whenever.

8:15 p.m.

Conservative

Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON

We'll certainly move the motion to enable that on this side.

I haven't checked with anybody, but I suspect the government side would be agreeable to that as well.

Thank you.

8:15 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell

Mr. Richards.

8:15 p.m.

Conservative

Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB

I will not be quite as brief as Mr. Reid. That's probably not said very often either, I don't imagine. If you feel you need to cut me off and put me back on the list again, do so.

The voter information card has come up a couple of times. There are obviously some differences of opinion among the members of this committee as to whether it's being used as a form of identification. Is it a wise move or not? Of course, you have your own viewpoint on that.

This bill authorizes you to have it used as a form of ID. If this legislation passes, would your intention be to do so?

8:20 p.m.

Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada

Stéphane Perrault

If the legislation passes, my intention would be to authorize it after I've consulted the political parties, through the advisory committee of the political parties, to see whether there are ways we can alleviate, perhaps, some concerns that parties may have. I do want to engage the parties on how we do it. As to authorizing it, it is my intention to do that.

8:20 p.m.

Conservative

Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB

You've certainly met a better barrier than the government has in terms of trying to work with the parties, so that's good. I'm not expecting you to comment on that, obviously.

In terms of the stuff around the expat voters, I had some conversation on this earlier with the officials. I don't know if you saw the conversations we were having there or not. I was asking a little bit about the removal of any kind of intention to return to Canada someday.

If we as a committee wanted to make an amendment around that, would you see that as something that we could easily amend? If so, how?

8:20 p.m.

Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada

Stéphane Perrault

Certainly, the amendment is not difficult. I think the point was made, and I agree, that there's a limit to the enforceability of that. It's an expression of intention. The fact that someone does intend is hard to verify. Whether they do or don't return is a fact that is irrelevant, at that point. It's only relevant later on.

8:20 p.m.

Conservative

Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB

Okay.

The other one you've probably heard, as we've raised it a number of times in question period and elsewhere. It's about ministerial travel and government announcements. Our concern is that we think that gives the governing party a bit of an advantage, because there's a new restriction in the pre-writ period on what political parties can do, but when ministerial travel and government advertising are able to be done, of course the governing party could benefit from that. We feel there's a concern that this pre-writ period is longer than the period when the government is saying they would restrict advertising. Of course, on ministerial travel there's no restriction.

If we wanted to try to look at an amendment on that, would you see...? I think there are a couple of ways it could be done. Obviously, you could try to harmonize that. It wouldn't be the elections law, I know, but it could be done within the context of this legislation, I would think, or it could be done in such a way that those could become election expenses.

I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that. Is that something that's feasible and possible? If so, would you have any advice on how we might do that, if we were seeking to do it?

8:20 p.m.

Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada

Stéphane Perrault

I have a few comments. First, I think the point made earlier today was that to the extent there's an imbalance, it's on the advertising side, because there is no limit pre-writ on the parties' or MPs' travel.

On the advertising side, this is something that is captured, as you know, by a government policy. Certainly, I would welcome some harmonizing of the timelines. That's not something that perhaps should be done under the Canada Elections Act.

I do note that, if I'm not mistaken, the policy also currently requires all advertising not to be partisan. If it is not partisan, then it wouldn't be a contribution, so I'm not sure that contribution is the best angle. I think the better angle would be to harmonize the timeline, but that's something to be done within the policy.

8:20 p.m.

Conservative

Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB

I guess what you're saying, though, is that you would like that idea of the harmonizing. You think that might be a beneficial approach.

8:20 p.m.

Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada

Stéphane Perrault

Certainly, to me it would be sensible. I think it's one of the benefits of having a relatively short pre-writ limit. It allows that form of harmonization. If you were to have a much longer pre-writ spending limit, apart from the charter issues it would raise, it would also make it impossible to even contemplate no government advertising for a prolonged period.

8:20 p.m.

Conservative

Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB

Okay.

You had talked the last time you were here about some of the compromises or the things that wouldn't be able to be implemented. I want to dig into a couple of areas specifically and ask you what changes you could undertake to actually implement prior to the next election and which ones you couldn't.

This is specifically with regard to third party spending. That's one of the areas that I have the greatest interest and concern about. Could you give us a sense as to what you think can and can't be implemented in time, based on where we're at right now? I don't know when we can reasonably expect this legislation to pass, whether it would be this spring or this fall.

Can you give us some sense of what that looks like?

8:25 p.m.

Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada

Stéphane Perrault

In terms of the mandatory elements of the bill, not those elements that provide the CEO some discretion—the third party regime is a mandatory element—I'm quite confident that the bill will be implemented. What I said the other day and what I can repeat today is that the manner in which it's implemented may not be the long-term optimal manner.

Specifically, for example, in the case of third parties, we would like to move to a form of online transparency that goes beyond simply PDFs. You can search within a report, but you can't look at contributions, not easily, across third party reports using PDFs posted online. It's very labour-intensive.

Certainly, that's the kind of work that will not be done for this election. That does not mean that the rules will not be implemented, but certainly that after the election there will be room for improvements in the manner of their implementation.

8:25 p.m.

Conservative

Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB

Were there any areas that you feel will go beyond even this third party regime, or any of the rest, just generally? Are there any areas that you feel you wouldn't be able to implement in the legislation? Would the compromises—I don't know how else to put it—you would have to make in the implementation create a concern? In other words, we wouldn't be meeting the expectations of the legislation as a result.

8:25 p.m.

Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada

Stéphane Perrault

No, I think we will be meeting the expectations of the legislation. As I said, for the transparency side, it can be improved, but otherwise, we will be meeting the expectations.

There may be some discretionary capabilities that I would have liked to leverage, and I don't know at this point that I will. For example, in terms of advance votes, to have mobile advance polls requires relatively minor IT system changes, but because we're going to prioritize those that are mandatory, I don't know whether we'll get to it in time and whether we'll do that. We haven't had it in the past and we'd love to have it in the future, but perhaps not for this next general election.

8:25 p.m.

Conservative

Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB

Okay. I think that gives me what I was looking for. Thanks.

8:25 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell

Thank you.

Is there anyone else?

Okay. Thank you very much for being here. Do you have any closing comments?

8:25 p.m.

Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada

Stéphane Perrault

On the issue, perhaps Madam Lawson can respond.

8:25 p.m.

General Counsel and Senior Director, Legal Services, Elections Canada

Anne Lawson

Sorry, Mr. Chair, I just want to answer because it was raised earlier. When we were involved in reviewing drafts of the legislation—and I did confirm with some colleagues—we signed confidentiality agreements. I don't want to get into what we saw when, but basically the bulk of what we saw was before Christmas, to answer the earlier question.

8:25 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell

Thank you very much for being here again at this late hour. I thank all the people who supported the committee today. It was a long day. Thanks to all the staff for everything.

Is there anything else for the good of the nation?

We'll see you tomorrow at 11 o'clock.

The meeting is adjourned.