Evidence of meeting #111 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 identification.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
If I told you—and it's slightly off topic, but it's on topic—that the House of Commons once told me that I could only use Internet Explorer on our computers because it's the only browser considered secure, how would you react?
Deputy Chief, Information Technology Security, Communications Security Establishment
I would say that we have to evaluate software constantly in terms of which is the most up to date. The key thing, no matter what you're using, is to ensure that it's up to date and patched. Those are the critical factors.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Okay. My connection has been reset, so thank you for that.
Liberal
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Thank you. We appreciate all of you being here today.
I'll start with the Canadian Federation of Students. I'm not sure who wants to answer. Mr. Zachariah could, I guess, but it's up to you. There are a few things I want to touch on.
First of all, I note that you were registered as a third party advocacy group in the last election. I want to first of all get a bit of context on that and then ask you for your thoughts on the changes in this legislation around third parties in terms of how those changes will impact you and whether there's anything more you'd like to see.
I see that you've spent about $15,000 on social media advertising, so I guess I'll back up here. Are you funded through student dues or do you receive donations and contributions? Could you tell me how you're funded for those purposes?
Justine De Jaegher Executive Director, Canadian Federation of Students
We're funded 100% by membership dues.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Okay. There would be no contributions that would be received from anyone outside those dues?
Executive Director, Canadian Federation of Students
That's right, with I think the exception of when we run our days of action. Sometimes there will be coalition partners who donate in-kind materials, resources, etc.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Would you have had any contributions coming from foreign sources?
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Okay. Are you talking about small contributions or would there be any major contributions from different sources?
Executive Director, Canadian Federation of Students
For our election campaign or for a day of action or something like that?
Executive Director, Canadian Federation of Students
For anything.... I guess it depends on what you consider small or large, but—
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Let's say over the contribution limit of political parties. That's roughly $1,500.
Executive Director, Canadian Federation of Students
For an election campaign, no. Perhaps for a day of action we would see a bigger donation from a solidarity partner.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Okay.
That $15,000 in the last election on social media advertising, what would that consist of? What type of advertising? What would you have done? What would it have been promoting?
Executive Director, Canadian Federation of Students
In the last federal election, we ran a get-out-the-vote campaign, primarily telling students how to vote, what kinds of ID they would need, and where polling stations were located. Oftentimes, there's confusion about which riding they should be voting in. Is it their parents' riding? Is it where they're going to school? A lot of it was informational and just promoting the idea of participating in the system.
Some of it would have been links to our page around issues that our students democratically identified as being important in the election. It was a non-partisan campaign. We don't support any particular party or candidate; however, we did identify through our membership some key issues that students wanted to see talked about in the election.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Let me ask about both those things.
First of all, I think this is probably a brief question on the issues part of it. Would that be one of these types of campaigns that you often see from different organizations or groups in terms of “here are the issues that we've identified as important, and here are the different parties' or candidates' stances on those issues”? Would it have gone any further than that to say “we think these parties are recommendable and these parties aren't”? What would that look like?
Executive Director, Canadian Federation of Students
That's right. For both of us, the election was actually before our terms, but I believe a survey was sent out to all political parties on the issues that had been identified, and we published those responses verbatim.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Okay. I appreciate that.
On the other part, actually, that drew up something interesting, because it's something that I've argued for in the past and that I think Elections Canada doesn't do a good enough job on, which is to let people know exactly what their options are for voting and how they can vote.
I've even brought up the idea that it's never really promoted that you can vote at almost any point during the election. There are a lot of ways to vote. On the forms of ID that are acceptable, that's another thing that I don't think is promoted well enough. I agree with you on the idea about students and where they vote: is it in the at-home riding or in the school-home riding?
These are all things that I think Elections Canada needs to do a better job of, and obviously you must agree, because you felt there was a need to advertise those things yourselves, which would tell me that you think Elections Canada wasn't doing a sufficient job of that. Would that be accurate?
Executive Director, Canadian Federation of Students
I think Elections Canada worked very well within the parameters it was allowed to operate under in the last election. We would, however, like to see a greater opportunity for us to work with Elections Canada to better promote these kinds of things.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Could you clarify what exactly it was that would have prevented them from being able to promote those types of things? I know that in the last changes to the elections law it was clarified that it was supposed to be their role. What prevented them from doing that?
Executive Director, Canadian Federation of Students
Right. I guess that's more in terms of our relationship with them and if we had worked more closely together to promote specific demographics.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Okay. I appreciate that you picked up some of the slack there. I certainly hope that they'll do a little better job on this.
To go back to where I was going with that, it was the third party rules. There are obviously some changes in this legislation. I'm sure you're familiar with them. I won't reiterate what they are. What are your thoughts on those changes? Do you think there's something in there that will be of concern to you or will affect you negatively? Are there any other changes that you might suggest?
