Thank you for this opportunity.
My presentation here is based on a complaint I made a number of years ago to Elections Canada with regard to involvement of Elections Canada and their staff in a publication which was put on their website and otherwise distributed. It's dated December 2005, so it occurred during a federal election campaign. It says that the document was prepared with the support of Elections Canada, and it has a list of the staff at Elections Canada who were involved in this publication.
My complaint is that it's talking about women's political equality, and I'm hoping to make this relevant to the current bill. One of the things they were asking for in this is a change of legislation and policy so that, under certain circumstances, men would be banned from running as members of Parliament. Elections Canada looked into my complaint, the actions of their staff, and the posting of this during an election campaign. They decided that this question, this issue, had not arisen during the election campaign, and had no relevance to this. In my opinion, it has been raised in every election campaign.
They also said that this was merely editorializing during an election campaign by Elections Canada staff and that there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to do it. Bringing this into relevance to the current bill, it seems to me that if Elections Canada is going to be deciding who is in the rules, then you have to have some mechanism for ensuring that Elections Canada and their staff also follow the rules.
I should point out that I attempted a number of years ago to make this exact presentation to this committee. I was told by five members of Parliament that I was right, that this was not the thing that Elections Canada should be doing, and that this was a violation of the law, the Canada Elections Act. I was also told that they would not present me in front of the committee because they feared that Elections Canada would pull their right to run in the next election.
It seems to me that I largely support these provisions of this bill. My concerns are, in this case, that you have Government of Canada money, through Status of Women, going into this publication, and money from Elections Canada going into supporting this issue, and yet these people are deciding themselves as to whether they're in violation of the rules.
This, I agree, is a bit of a conundrum. I'm certainly concerned about foreign money. My thinking is that the Government of Canada money, and Elections Canada money and staff, also should be considered as foreign money, and should not be used to influence elections and issues that are raised during that election.
Thank you.