Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 7th, 2018

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

Thank you for your opening remarks.

Colleagues, we're still having trouble, it appears, connecting to our other witness by video conference. I'm not holding out a lot of hope at this point, but they're going to continue to try.

I'll move us to our rounds of questioning, and if some miracle occurs and we're able to make the connection, we'll go to that witness at the first opportunity. If not, what we'll have to do is, if there is a future opportunity, we would maybe offer it and/or ask for a written brief from the potential witness. Hopefully, we'll get our miracle, but if not, that's what we'll do.

We'll move now to our rounds of questioning. Up first, I have Ms. Romanado for seven minutes.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.

My first question is for Ms. Nagy. Your testimony has been received, and from what I understand—I'm looking at a copy of the commissioner of Canada elections' compliance report in front of me—the compliance agreement was between Elections Canada and Dan Ryder, the official agent for the 2015 Green candidate.

I understand the compliance agreement clearly indicates that what occurred was deemed unintentional on the part of Mr. Ryder in his use of Green Party signs, and that, despite a complaint that a thorough investigation of almost two years by Elections Canada was undertaken.... I'm referring to information from the Canada elections commissioner to Mr. Ryder that in the end, the commissioner decided that the allegations were not supported by the available evidence and that, at that point in time, considerable resources had been expended already on the investigation. The commissioner felt that there was no reason to pursue this and that this person went into a compliance agreement with Elections Canada with regard to this.

I also understand that, based on the information that I have, you were aware of this agreement that had been very well communicated to the Green Party members in advance of the writ being dropped in August. The MOU signed by the Green Party membership regarding the agreement between the Liberal Party candidate as well as the Green Party candidate was something that was communicated very extensively to people. People were aware of the fact that this agreement had been put in place.

Even though you had some concerns, you yourself had, based on an email of September 14, 2015 to the Kelowna Green board, asked Elections Canada to confirm in writing if having generic GPC signs out with Liberal signs, given the underlying MOU, could get you in any hot water if any party wanted to charge you with inadvertently supporting the Liberal Party's campaign.

He had already clarified, as I believe someone did to you, that it was fine from Elections Canada's perspective if Liberal and Green signs appeared together because of our unique situation. I want to be extra sure that we can push back against criticism.

From what I understand, Elections Canada had communicated that this was fine by them, and maybe the rules need to be tweaked based on what happened, but at that time, from what I understand, you were instructed that it was fine to have both Green Party signs and Liberal Party signs at an event.

Subsequent to the election and a complaint, it was decided that a compliance agreement would be put in place and that it will be looked at going forward. Maybe that's the point of your testimony here today, to look into that, whether or not in such an agreement be put in place if it were to occur again in a subsequent election.

I wanted to clarify the record to make sure that we all understood that.

My next question is for Professor Norris.

Professor Norris, you talked about issues that you think we should address in Bill C-76. You talked about the legal framework, including mixed member proportional, gender quotas, cybersecurity threats, and participation.

Out of those that you talked about, in terms of Bill C-76, what would be the priority? We just heard from a previous panel, and cybersecurity is obviously something we're hearing a lot about right now. Obviously we all want higher participation rate, and I think in Australia, if I remember correctly, it's mandatory voting. Obviously, with mandatory voting, 90% is fantastic.

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

No, it just shows that one in 10 didn't obey the law.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

When I say mandatory voting is at 90% I'm happy it's higher than 60% here in Canada. Let me correct that.

I know the electoral reform committee came back with not putting in mandatory voting, so that might not be possible in our case. With respect to the other two issues you asked us to address, what would your recommendation be?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

Witnesses, if you're asked a question by the members, you don't need my permission to answer. Feel free to go ahead. I'll let you know when your time is up.

[Dr. Pippa Norris]

Thank you.

Those are three different issues. Electoral reform is an incredibly difficult process and cannot be implemented anyway in the time you have before 2019. That's an issue I wanted to peg for future debate in Parliament and to think it through. Participation is a very long-term process, and I think some of the initiatives here, for example, allowing Elections Canada and the commissioner to engage in civic education and civic information is absolutely vital. I'm really pleased that's been restored.

One threat that I think absolutely has to be addressed is cybersecurity and fake news, one of the issues that we all know is being debated widely. For example, Germany very recently passed new legislation that made it the responsibility of the major social media platforms to monitor what was going on and where they were able to detect examples of Russian influence in particular. Social bots can be detected through technology to make sure that the media platforms are responsible for that and that they would be fined if, for example, they found instances of hate speech or other things. We know how divisive that was. The Russians essentially seeded information into the American campaign on both sides.

A lot of that information fuelled racial hatred either from those who claimed that the police were responsible or those who claimed the African American community was responsible. It's an incredibly difficult issue to monitor effectively but I think that's a danger for Canada as well. We don't want social intolerance, lack of social trust, and Canadian democracy to be polarized by foreign messages that aren't simply advertising.

As I read the bill, advertising for third parties, partisan advertising, is covered but these other forms of information communications aren't necessarily being covered, and that I would think Elections Canada or the broadcast regulators or other agencies should look into very hard.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

Thank you very much.

We'll now move to Mr. McCauley for seven minutes for our next round of questioning.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Welcome, everyone.

Ms. Nagy, I wanted to explore a bit more about the compliance or the issues you ran into. Could you tell me a bit more of your thoughts about the interparty collusion that happened in the last election?

[Angela Nagy]

The main concern I have is that there was no endorsement of the memorandum of understanding by any official party, the members of the party in advance of the vote that saw Gary Adams nominated as our candidate. A commitment was made to the members at the nomination meeting that this concept of partnership and co-operation would be undertaken only with the consent of the Green Party of Canada.

Ultimately, after several months of negotiation and discussion, it was determined and agreed to by all parties that there would be no formal endorsement of any other candidate or any other party, but that continued to happen regardless of that agreement and commitment undertaken by all parties. Ultimately, that led to voters being confused, misled about what had happened and what was going on. They were led to believe there was a partnership between the Green Party of Canada and the Liberal Party when there was not.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Do you believe it was unintentional, as commented on?

[Angela Nagy]

What may have been unintentional—and I agree—we both sought clarification from Elections Canada....

I raised several times that I believed we were contravening sections of the act, and I was disappointed when the feedback from Elections Canada was that the concept of using these signs was so interesting and they said you can use the signs. The fact that $700 or $800 was spent on 100 signs may have been an unintentional mistake that did not mean to contravene the Elections Act. This misinformation campaign to make it look like there was a partnership between the Green Party and the Liberal Party was 100% intentional and had been planned—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

The spending oversight was unintentional. The actual campaigning was—

[Angela Nagy]

Misleading of voters.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay.

Do you think the issue needs to be addressed better by Elections Canada, or the act strengthened on this matter?

[Angela Nagy]

I was really excited to see clause 323 proposing to amend section 481 of the Canada Elections Act around misleading publications. That essentially refers to any form of communication that could mislead voters and that contains false statements. There were numerous false statements and numerous documents, including the use of the Green Party signs, that were strategically used to confuse and mislead voters.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Right.

Do you think the compliance agreement is strong enough?

[Angela Nagy]

I don't. I actually believe that upon further investigation, it could be found that voters were misled.

What I understand from the letter I received from the commissioner of Canada elections was that a complaint regarding a violation of paragraph 482(b) would be difficult to prove, because it would require some form of an inquiry or a survey of voters to determine if voters indeed were confused about what was going on.

I believe that Elections Canada should investigate that further and determine if voters were confused. I have evidence, and I have witnesses who have raised concerns with me that they believed there was a partnership, and that influenced how they voted.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Great, thanks very much.

Mr. Aylward, welcome.

I was teasing him earlier. I've been trying to track him down for two years to talk about Phoenix. Here you are in front of me, so I'd like to go to Phoenix now. No, I'm just kidding.

Congratulations on your election as president. I'm hoping you didn't use Russian influence to win that role.

PSAC spent about $390,000, I think it was, on the last election. A very small amount of it was an offset for, I think, labour in kind. The large amount, I think, was advertising goods. Do you have a breakdown of that?

[Chris Aylward]

I don't have an exact breakdown in front of me, but with respect to the $390,000, you're right. It was just a little over $390,000. A lot of it was spent on paying an external company—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I saw that: Uppercut.

[Chris Aylward]

—to create materials and to place ads, which included billboards, and radio spots obviously. We created a micro-website as well, with videos, downloadable posters, and action letters, etc., for our members to use.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I want to go back to Phoenix, because my life seems to revolve around Phoenix. Obviously, it's a big issue right now, and we've heard comments that it might be an election issue.

How do you think Bill C-76 is going to affect PSAC's ability to communicate to its members about, say, Phoenix being an election issue?

[Chris Aylward]

That's part of the presentation. What we can do is going to be limited under what's being proposed in the bill. We believe that it's not only our democratic right but our responsibility to be able to communicate to our members, many of whom—approximately 140,000 of the 180,000 we represent—are federal public sector workers.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay, thanks.

I'm running out of time, so I'm going to pop over to Ms. Norris.

What do you think is the best way to stop foreign meddling in elections? We've seen, for example, the U.S. Treasury investigating Russia, and money going into Tides foundation, which has found its way into Canada. We have interference on two different fronts.

What's the best way to prevent this?

[Dr. Pippa Norris]

Thinking about foreign influence comes through many different mechanisms. Some of that is really the provisions that are going to be here on things like campaign spending and making sure there are regulations on third parties, if money is being challenged through third parties. It's often the case that you get other forms of influence coming in, as well as disinformation campaigns that are spread by Canadians or spread by Americans, which are seeded by international organizations, particularly Russia in the case of some of the most recent issues.

I don't think any government has a golden rule as to how you can address this, but we're certainly starting to learn. The European Union quite recently has produced a major report looking into this, involving cybersecurity experts and also people who are experts in political communication as well as people who are interested in campaigning, and they give some recommendations about how they think they need to protect European Union countries from these sorts of influences.

Similarly, the Department of Homeland Security came out in February with its report. I think we can learn from it. What you need is really a consortium of some of the best practices that are developing in campaigns across western democracies, as everyone is confronted with this issue. I think also the evidence suggests that the problem is not so much the vote, because of the influence of social media or direct attempts at hacking that have really turned the vote in some of the states in America. The problem is actually about social tolerance and the broader messages that these sorts of activities involve and the fact that the news becomes not credible, so you also don't believe public broadcasting and newspapers because of the climate of fake news that is so much surrounding you through social media.

The short answer is to learn from some of the other government reports. I'm very happy to send the committee the links to some of these that have recently come out from the European Commission and from others.