Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 28th, 2018

[Stéphane Perrault]

Certainly in our case our number one priority is to make sure there is neither misinformation nor disinformation with respect to where, how, and when to register and to vote. One of the measures we are taking is that we will have a repertoire of all of our public communications on that subject, so if somebody is concerned that they are receiving information that they are not sure is from Elections Canada, they can verify against the repertoire to make sure it is, in fact, a communications from Elections Canada. Parties certainly can do the same thing. They can ensure that their communications, if they wish, are listed in a way that people can check.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

I have a very quick question. I know I'm running out of time.

Is there a tool within Elections Canada's tool box—so if you can't beat 'em, join 'em—a positive bot that Elections Canada could employ to go out and fight the negativity and potential foreign interference? If it can be used against us, can it be used to assist Elections Canada in ensuring fairness?

[Stéphane Perrault]

It's certainly the case that not all bots are dangerous. There are some positive uses for bots. I have not explored the possibilities of those positive bots in terms of fighting misinformation, but perhaps that is something we can explore.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

Now we will go to Mr. Reid.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Perrault, did you get a chance to watch or listen to the minister's testimony from earlier today?

[Stéphane Perrault]

I heard most of it.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Did you have a chance to hear the part where she and I had a discussion about provisional balloting?

[Stéphane Perrault]

I did.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Okay. In there she expressed concern that the concept of provisional balloting—which I don't have to describe to you, because you're familiar with how it works—had been left out of the legislation because of a concern for dignity. I expressed complete puzzlement. If I turn up at a poll and I've forgotten my wallet at home and have to put my ballot into an envelope so they can confirm that I actually am who I claim to be, I can't figure out how that affronts my dignity.

I promised I would bring it up with you. I want to ask you what your view is on the subject.

[Stéphane Perrault]

I think in terms of provisional ballots, the issue we have to keep in mind is...and I know it's something that exists in various jurisdictions and it's used for different purposes. In some jurisdictions it's used, for example, if there's no polling day registration. If you vote on polling day without being registered, then your ballot is treated as a provisional ballot. That makes sense for those jurisdictions that do not have polling day registration.

In our case, the issue seems to be more around voter identification, if I understand your question. I'm not quite sure how the provisional ballot would assist us in that context. A provisional ballot is a complex procedure. Voters who have a problem proving their address would have to come back at some point to the returning office. In rural areas, this may be some distance.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Sorry, Mr. Perrault, if you don't mind my saying so, with regard to that, you can structure it so that they don't have to do that. It could very well be that it's up to the local returning officer to do the work of following up and making sure people live where they say they do and so on.

[Stéphane Perrault]

That raises the question of, if documentary proof of address is not available, how it would be available later on and whether the work on the returning officer would delay the count of the vote and the result.

I must say, I do have some reservation. Until I see clearly how this would assist in resolving the issues that we find in terms of more identification, I'm not eager to go down that road. I must confess, it may be that I'm missing something about how these procedures could be of assistance.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

You indicated to us earlier that you were consulted as far back as last autumn on the bill. I wanted to ask, with relation to—I think you said last autumn—the foreign funding for third parties. How long ago were you consulted about that?

[Stéphane Perrault]

That, I believe, was just very recently. I don't have a date on that, but that was.... My counsel advises that it must have been around Christmas.

[Anne Lawson, General Counsel and Senior Director, Legal Services, Elections Canada]

I honestly can't remember. That did come in later, but it was possibly before Christmas, but I honestly can't remember.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Can you get back to us on that?

[Anne Lawson]

Okay.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Thank you.

You've made a number of suggestions regarding proposed amendments to various sections of the bill including the foreign funding for third parties. I'll just make the assumption that you were consulted, but you did not actually get to see anything that is really close to the final draft until either some time shortly before it came out or perhaps at the time that it was made public to Parliament. Does that seem correct?

[Stéphane Perrault]

I've seen various iterations of that bill, so again, the time is a bit fuzzy. I must say that in terms of my suggestions today, some of them are more on the policy side, and I think it's more appropriate for me to make those recommendations to this committee than to the government. On the government side, it's more of a technical.... Some are technical, and in some cases, we may have raised them. We did raise many and they had addressed many. I think those consultations were very useful. In some cases, we failed to raise them. In other cases, we raised them, and for some reason, they were not retained. I don't know why.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Okay.

I assume at this point you are looking for the committee or perhaps the government via the parliamentary secretary and representation that it has on this committee to make amendments to address essentially the advice you give us here vis-à-vis proposed amendments.

I assume that's all you're planning on giving us, or were you planning on giving us actual draft, new sections, to put in place and correct things?

[Stéphane Perrault]

This is what I'm offering. I've been requested to provide more specific language on the privacy side because that language was more generic in style. The others are fairly specific, I think, in terms of what can be done. It refers to specific provisions and changes to be there, but they're not drafting language, I agree.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

With regard to the discussion you had on foreign funding for third parties, would the provision being added, or that you suggest to be added, to proposed sections 349.95 and 358, which are the ones mirroring the anti-circumvention provisions elsewhere in the Elections Act, I can certainly see how they would take care of some of the concerns you raised regarding foreign funding, but I'm not sure I see how they would deal with the problem that you characterize in the following words in your table: “Also, if foreign funds are specifically given to free up domestic resources of a third party so that it could conduct regulated activities, it is not clear that this would be prohibited.”

I don't see how that does that, given that money is fungible. Is there a way of overcoming this problem that you can direct us towards?

[Stéphane Perrault]

If you're asking for an airtight regime, this is not it, I agree. This would deal with egregious attempts to deliberately circumvent the rules on foreign funding. If we're talking about just the mere fact that at some point in time some organization received foreign funding, and it still exists in some form on its balance sheet, and then they entertain to participate in the campaign, that does not deal with that. In order to deal with that, you need to go much further than what I have proposed and what the bill currently proposes, and that's where you get into difficult considerations of balancing freedom of expression and freedom of association.

My suggestion is that you may not need to go all the way to a full regime of contribution limits, but you could consider that an entity that has received a certain amount of foreign contributions—which is different from commercial revenue, for example, investment revenue—at a certain level within a certain time period, then perhaps may not be able to use general revenue.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Thank you very much.