Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 4th, 2018

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

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I have lots of questions, but we'll get to what we can here. I'll start with Mr. Lavergne from Fair Vote Canada.

Just give a real quick response to this first question, if you could, because I have stuff here I'd like to go through. I think in your opening remarks, if I understood it correctly, you were advocating for contribution limits for contributions to third parties. Were you advocating for those being identical to those for political parties? Was that the intention of what you were stating?

[Réal Lavergne]

Not exactly. I was pointing out that's how they've done it in B.C. You have to figure out how to arrive at a figure. I don't really have a strong opinion to voice on that. We're not looking for, certainly, more than for political parties.

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

Okay, so you were advocating for contribution limits and you mentioned B.C. You're saying it should be either the same or less than what it is for political parties, is that what I heard?

[Réal Lavergne]

Without my having thought it through a lot.... I notice that Ryan wants to speak on that issue. I'll let him, if he'd like to add something.

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

Sure. Make it real brief if you do have something you'd like to add.

[Ryan O'Connor]

Thank you for ceding the floor, Mr. Lavergne. I appreciate it.

Just very briefly on that issue, I think there would be constitutional problems with preventing, for example, a trade union, which engages in political advocacy—frankly, all the time—on behalf of its members, from contributing to a third party when it is itself a third party. It would be hugely problematic from a constitutional perspective. You're effectively preventing them from participating in political discourse.

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

Okay, so you're giving the counterpoint to Mr. Lavergne.

In terms of foreign funding of third party groups, let me ask, first of all, does Fair Vote Canada receive any foreign funding?

[Réal Lavergne]

No, not at all.

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

Okay.

What would your position be on restricting or eliminating foreign funding of third party groups that participate in elections? What would your position be?

[Réal Lavergne]

Beyond what's already in the bill...?

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

Certainly what's in the bill prevents the contributions from being received during the election—

[Réal Lavergne]

During the pre-election.

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

—but not during the period prior to June 30, so for almost the entire election cycle, no, it doesn't prevent that. Would you argue that we should prevent it completely, or just have it be a name, as this does?

[Réal Lavergne]

Again, I don't have a really strong opinion on that. I would tend to see it as being restrictive. My reading of the bill is that it excluded it for both the pre-election period and the writ period.

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

The pre-election period means the period from June 30 until the call of the election, not for anything prior to that.

[Réal Lavergne]

Yes.

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

Obviously, what that does is that it tells anyone that if they want to contribute and they have foreign funds, to make sure they do it on June 29 or earlier. Everyone knows there's a fixed election date, so I don't think it really prevents anything.

Anyway, since you didn't really have much on that in terms of thoughts, let's move on. You had mentioned the fact that your group, for example, does issue advertising. You want some clarification about being able to name or not name political parties.

I guess I just want to run this scenario by you to see if you think it is something that should be permitted or not permitted. An example would be that an organization would indicate that candidate X wants to do Y. That Y just happens to correspond almost exactly with the messaging of a political party, so their messaging on a certain issue. The messages are very well-aligned. It wouldn't actually directly oppose or promote a specific party or candidate, but what it's doing, in effect, by naming them and also aligning with the messaging of a party, is that it would obviously give some disadvantage to the person being named or the candidate of the party being named, and give some advantage to the other entity.

Would you think it advisable that our legislation, any legislation, would try to prevent those kinds of things from occurring?

[Réal Lavergne]

Yes, and it does. If you look at the election period, any campaigning around an issue that names, that promotes or opposes—which is defined as “naming”—counts as election advertising, so there are restrictions on it. You have to register if you do that, at more than $500.

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

No, I understood that, but I understood you to be advocating that you didn't think that should occur. That's why I brought up this scenario.

[Réal Lavergne]

What I was saying is that under the pre-election period it's worded very carefully, differently, and it's saying that issue-based advertising wouldn't count. The question is, then, if in your issue-based advertising—which in our case would be proportional representation—you say party X is supportive of proportional representation, does that all of a sudden make it partisan advertising? The bill seems to say no, it doesn't, but it's not entirely clear. I don't want to be arguing about it afterwards.

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

Sure. I understand now what you were getting at. You're pointing out an inconsistency between the writ period and the pre-election period. That's something that we obviously need to look at, and there needs to be some kind of an amendment. Whatever it is that we choose to do, there needs to be an amendment to clarify that. That's what you're pointing at.

[Réal Lavergne]

If it's intentional, then make it clear. If it's not intentional, make that clear, too. Right now it's not clear.

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

I've got it. That's obviously something, because we're trying to rush this bill, that we could potentially miss, so I appreciate your pointing that out. That's something we need to take a look at to figure out how we need to amend it. Thank you.

I'm going to turn to Mr. O'Connor from Ontario Proud.

Ontario obviously made some changes to its third party regime. One of the things I'll point out as an example is that there were some anti-collusion measures enacted, I think. What can we learn from the experience of this Ontario election, or is it too early to be able to tell? If your argument is that it's too early to be able to tell, then would you argue that we should make sure we do take the time necessary to hear from other groups that are involved, like you, and from Elections Ontario probably, to make sure that we are learning from that experience?

Hopefully that's clear. I just tried to put it all together because we have limited time.

[Ryan O'Connor]

We're concerned that the collusion provisions of the Election Finances Act in Ontario are not being upheld by Elections Ontario. I've personally identified several instances of collusion between unregistered third parties and political parties or simply with unregistered third party groups that frankly just never bothered to register yet are engaged in issue advocacy and third party political advertising in excess of the limit under the act, which would then require them to be registered. There is one in particular that appears to be colluding with a registered third party. The collusion provisions are something that this committee and Parliament really need to take a look at to ensure not only that they exist but also that they are enforceable and are enforced.

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

Would the legislation before us address these concerns that you have, and if not, what do we need to do to fix it?