Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 4th, 2018

[Ryan O'Connor]

The concern is that it needs to be enforceable. It's one thing to have an anti-collusion provision between a party and a third party or two third parties, etc., but it needs to be enforceable.

We're seeing in Ontario right now unregistered third parties that are just not registering. There are unregistered third parties that are colluding with one of the registered third parties and they're doing it blatantly and obviously because Elections Ontario's compliance mechanism is responsive and not proactive. Elections Ontario will only respond to a complaint.

There are several complaints in the system right now that are not going to be addressed before the election on Thursday, so the electoral process may have been tainted by inappropriate collusion. If that's found to be the case, Elections Canada will have to be very proactive and it needs to be empowered to do so.

I can't emphasize enough the importance of the anti-collusion provisions. They could be worked on, certainly, in this legislation, but parliamentarians need to be cautious about rushing it through. Collusion is going to be an issue. As soon as you impose a spending cap on a third party, there is a concern that a third party will just break itself up, collude with individuals of a similar mind and similar interests, and if we're not enforcing the anti-collusion provisions, then the spending limits become meaningless. They're something that parliamentarians really need to focus on, and I think a lot more time needs to be spent being concerned with them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you very much.

Our last intervenor is Mr. Stetski.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you for being here today.

I'll start with you, Mr. Lavergne, and I just want to congratulate you on the great people you have working for Fair Vote in my riding of Kootenay—Columbia. They do excellent work. Thank you for mentioning proportional representation, which of course is still high up on our list.

You mentioned you had a number of proposed amendments in your paper. I'm wondering if you would like to highlight just the top two, because I do have questions for the other gentlemen as well.

[Réal Lavergne]

I think the easiest ones would be the clarification of what constitutes election advertising and what constitutes partisan advertising, those two cases.

If you want, when I step out, I can give you this and you can have a look at it or pass it around to others if you like.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

That would be great.

Mr. O'Connor, you mentioned trying to close some of the loopholes related to foreign influence and third party funding. Do you have examples of legislation that you think does this, which you could share with the committee?

[Ryan O'Connor]

I don't have any specific examples. I think every country's experience with this is going to be different.

What I would suggest, based on my reading of the draft legislation, is that a simple solution is to expand the prohibition on foreign financing of elections to all time periods. To use an example, the legislation with respect to third party election expenses in advertising actually creates a period between the preceding election and the date of registration during the pre-writ period in which it has to register incurred expenses or received contributions of $10,000.

We know that Parliament is empowered to regulate this. Certainly I think it's very important that Parliament do that, and I think the simple solution—without citing the international experience—is to extend the prohibition on foreign financing by third parties or anyone else participating in the process that is regulated under this legislation from the time of the last election until the pre-writ period.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Hicks, thank you for being there for Canadians with disabilities. It's very much appreciated. I know that everyone around the table here has a real interest in that.

Debates in particular, though, are quite challenging. In my riding of Kootenay—Columbia, in 2015 we had 12 community debates and three school debates. I'm wondering whether you could give us some idea of what would be the most practical recommendations to help people with disabilities, when it comes to debates. These are small rural communities. You're doing them in halls. You're doing them in gymnasiums. I'm really interested in how we can be most helpful.

[James Hicks]

There are a few things that may help. We just went across the country to do consultations with Canadians about what should be in the disability act. We used what's called CART services—captioning in real time—which allows people to read along with what's being done. It's up on a screen. They can do it from remote locations, and into remote locations. We used it while we were in Whitehorse and in Yellowknife, and in other places that have less access to those sorts of things.

The biggest thing is to work with parties to identify what supports are necessary. You may need to have different things, depending on who's coming. For instance, we don't always use CART services. We'll ask people to identify what their needs are ahead of time. You could take that approach. You put out a notice that there's going to be this meeting and if you want to attend you need to let us know ahead of time what your needs are. That way you're not spending money that's not going to be used.

We do. We end up spending money that, sometimes, because we wouldn't have an event without ASL and LSQ.... There may not be anybody who uses LSQ, which is a French sign language, but it's still there if somebody shows up. From our perspective, being a disability organization, we need that.

There are probably ways in which you could identify when these events are going to occur, and say that if someone needs support they need to let you know ahead of time. You're not necessarily having to do it every single time, but you could put some onus on people who want to come out that they need to let you know what their support needs are.

Then the other part is to make sure that's not included in the amount. The costs are not little. They can rise quickly. That's why we're suggesting that they not be a part of the general amount that parties are allowed to spend, but make it a provision that they can do those things and that won't go into the total of what they can spend.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Are you suggesting that this be a budget available to politicians or through Elections Canada, to ensure that there's more access to debates?

[James Hicks]

It's a good question. I don't have an answer for that right now. I'd like to think about that a bit. I sit on the committee for Elections Canada. I wouldn't mind talking to a couple of my colleagues on that committee about their ideas on that and how they think that could best work.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to our witnesses. It's been very interesting and helpful, with new perspectives from all views. We really appreciate that. Thanks a lot.

Just for the committee members, I've been taking the liberty of adjusting the witness list as people request, as people can't, and...but there are two I want to ask the committee about. One is that the commissioner of elections would like to either be a witness or submit a brief. I think that makes a lot of sense. Is that okay? Another request is from Angela Nagy, who was the CEO and then the financial agent of the Kelowna federal Green Party during the 2015 election.

Okay, so we'll add them.

We agreed first thing this morning that we'll reschedule those witnesses we couldn't get this afternoon, if we're voting all afternoon.

Mr. Clerk, do we need anything else?

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

Do we have any sense of where we're at in terms of lining up the schedule for tomorrow?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Andrew Lauzon]

I don't have a full picture right now, because there are people back at the office currently taking in the confirmations as they come in. I wouldn't be able to say definitively, but I'm confident that we'll have a slate of witnesses for both meetings tomorrow.

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

Would you be able to notify us about that before the end of business hours today?

[The Clerk]

For sure. Our plan is to put out a notice of meeting for both the morning and the afternoon session before the end of the business day.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

All right. Thank you.

The meeting is adjourned.