Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 7th, 2018

[Sherri Hadskey]

I'm the elections commissioner, but I'd love to be the outreach director. That's one of my favourite things.

A little while ago, we started doing union elections, a state police election, or anything that is what we call a private election to get people to use the equipment. While you're there doing these services, you can also provide voter registration information and other information. It's a good way to allow people to see the equipment and remember about voting.

We have a GeauxVote app that we're very proud of. It's an app on your phone, and there are push notifications on it reminding you that an election day is coming up. That has had great, great response. We love it. You can go on there, look at where you're registered to vote, and check to make sure your polling place is at the right location. You can get a sample ballot on that app, and you can review it before you go to the polls.

We truly have an incredible outreach department. We do a voter registration week and an outreach week, when we try to get more people involved in that direction. Of course, when you look at.... I've turned machines over three times in this state, meaning new equipment. It's critical to get out there and get people to use and feel comfortable with the machines and that type of thing. We're doing everything we can.

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

Thank you.

My next question, if I have a few seconds left, is for Mr. Moscrop.

You talked a little bit about fake news and digital threats. I sit on the Standing Committee for National Defence, and we've done some interesting studies on hybrid warfare, fake news, Russia's attempts to infiltrate with fake news in Crimea in the Ukraine, and a lot of the misinformation campaigns that you're referring to. We've heard recently in the news here in Canada the likelihood of misinformation campaigns occurring in the next federal election.

Do you feel that Bill C-76 adequately prepares us for this new reality that we are facing? As you said, this generation wants news quickly. My own mother will call me up and say she that saw something on Facebook and that it must be true.

What do we do? People want information. They want it quickly. They're looking at sources online that maybe can't be verified, so what can we be doing, and does this piece of legislation move far enough in that regard?

[David Moscrop]

I try to be an optimist. It is 5:16 in the morning here in Seoul, so it's particularly difficult.

The problem at a global level is epistemic. There's just a ton of information, and it's moving very quickly. We have evolved for a very different sort of environment from an environment in which information is flying at us from all over the place all the time and we can't process it or reflect on it.

On top of that, this being a partisan-charged environment where people have incentives to use that information to try to mislead, the troubles are going to be extremely difficult and increasingly difficult, especially as the technology gets better. We're now seeing deep fakes, the ability to fake video. It's very convincing and very terrifying, as far as I'm concerned. That's going to be a global problem that's going to be difficult to deal with.

To the extent that [Technical difficulty--Editor] deals with this, it's going to be through limiting money and through limiting foreign activity. The way to choke it off to the extent that it's possible is to try to get to the source of what's driving it, and that's often money. Keep in mind that a lot of this is being driven by profit. Some of it's driven by political ends or ideological ends, but a lot of it is just profit. We all know that the Macedonian teens in the U.S. election ran fake news websites from their basements because it paid better than anything else, but for a long time they were doing it on both sides. They started to switch and did more for the right-wing Republicans because the money was better. It was about the money.

I think the thing we can do in the here and now is figure out the broader epistemic concerns about how we train better citizens and how we produce capacity for digital media and trusted sources. How we protect the news environment so that we have trusted sources in new and traditional media is to find a way to limit the money, and this is a good start, but there is a bigger issue, as I've just indicated, which is how we protect the news media so that people have a reliable source and a gatekeeper. That is a discussion we need to have as well.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Now we'll go on to Mr. Reid. You have five minutes.

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

Thank you very much.

I'll start with Mr. Moscrop.

When I see discussions of fake news as a new thing, my reaction tends to be that fake news seems really old to me. It was, after all, 1898 when William Randolph Hearst was able to convince Americans they should go to war with Spain by arguing that the USS Maine had blown up in Havana harbour thanks to Spanish sabotage. The Onion has been milking that story for a long time.

It seems to me that the difference today, speaking epidemiologically, is that it's easier to get a meme out there, and also the falsification occurs more quickly. It seems to me that fake news is more virulent now than it was in 1898, but also the realization that it's fake occurs more quickly, causing us to be hyperaware of the fact that it's out there.

Obviously that changes the environment, but I'm not sure how it changes the policy response. Can I ask for some commentary on that, given that we are trying to develop policy to deal with this more virulent and more rapidly disproved fake news?

[David Moscrop]

Yes, you're right. Propaganda and misleading information have been around as long as politics has been around. The difference is the speed, the reach, the volume, and the ease at which it can deployed. That's unprecedented.

When we talk about these hacks, the thing that's being hacked is the human brain, for the most part. People are trying to capture the human brain and direct it.

How do we provide people with more reliable information that they can trust? Part of that is structurally protecting media. That's not just legacy media; it's also making sure there's space for new media, that people have these trusted sources they can go to and know they are legitimate. That part involves some degree of transparency, so that when something is posted online, there's some very easy indication that it's trustworthy or verified.

We discussed this a little in a project I'm working on: red, yellow, or green on a story. The problem—and I don't have an immediate answer to this—is who does the verifications? This is the broader epistemic problem. If part of the issue is that we need stuff we can trust, who decides what's trustworthy? That used to be the news media, and they were the gatekeepers. Now that's all fallen apart. To some extent that's good news, because you want the stuff democratized, but we just haven't figured out what an alternative model would look like. The best structural answer I have is we need to protect the media.

In microanswers, you might want to at least have a discussion about how social media posts that can be controlled by Facebook, Twitter, or whomever could bear some sort of marking or system to identify them as trustworthy.

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

I think to some degree elections are typically determined not by the best-informed voters, who as a rule are also the ones who are most firmly committed to one or another of the camps. They've thought things through and they have recognized that they are a principled Conservative, a socialist, or whatever it happens to be, and therefore they have a home. Those are low-involvement voters.

It strikes me that those who are intensely involved voters essentially look to certain people to curate the news. They have the editorialists they trust. They have ways of filtering things.

This is the greatest issue for the low-involvement people. The difference is that the low-involvement or the low-awareness people then make decisions that ultimately decide whether party X or party Y winds up winning the election.

Would you agree that those are the people about whom we need be the most concerned? That said, do you have any ideas on how to deal with that? It seems they're the hardest people to reach with the inoculation, essentially.

[David Moscrop]

Yes. I would go back to heuristics. It doesn't matter how educated, sophisticated, or experienced we are; every one of us uses mental shortcuts to make political decisions.

Some research from the United States from a few years ago suggests that when it comes to, say, motivated reasoning and rationalization, we think we're making our own rational decisions, but we're really rationalizing. Low-information voters do it, but sophisticated voters sometimes do it as well. The difference is that they do it with ideology and a more sophisticated story. It is a problem that cuts across groups, although you are right that there is more susceptibility with lower-information voters.

What's interesting is that those folks often rely on their family or friends to get political signals. One of the interesting things about Facebook and Twitter is that people are getting a lot of information, but the stuff that seems to be having a huge impact is that their Uncle Larry posted this thing, and they trust and like him. He's a lot like them, so they're going to do this. Then a lot of those heuristics have moved to family and friends, especially on Facebook.

How do we start a virtuous cycle or a positive cycle in which the stuff people share is informed? When we talk about this stuff, we think of it as a demand and supply problem. There's a demand for nonsense and good information. There's a supply of nonsense and good information. How do we encourage the supply and demand to link up and for that information to be better?

Part of it is making sure the environment is filled on the supply side. We're going to supply-side epistemic economics here. The supply side is good stuff. You want as much good reliable information as you can get on the supply side to try to drown out and provide choice for those who want something better than fake news, misleading news, or tabloid trash.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you very much.

We'll finish up with Ms. Tassi.

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to each of you for your time and testimony today.

Ms. Hadskey, I sense your passion for outreach, and for me youth engagement and involvement are very important. I'm pleased that this legislation has a number of initiatives. The education mandate has been brought back to the Chief Electoral Officer, so that's important. Then we've talked a little about early registration of voters.

Because you have some experience in this, I'd like to tap into your expertise, and that may help us moving forward. I was interested to hear you talk about bringing the equipment into the schools and having elections take place in the schools using the equipment. Am I understanding that the technology is grabbing the students? How does that transfer to getting youth more involved in the actual voting that takes place outside the school?

[Sherri Hadskey]

It's very interesting. I have actually done so many of these elections. In a presidential year especially, the kids hear their parents and everybody talking about the election, and they feel as if they are a part of it when they're not voting for just something to do with their school or something to do with their class and putting a piece of paper in a box. They feel that they are allowed to do something that only 18-year-olds can do. Their faces lights up when they get to do something that they feel is a privilege or is something interesting. When we bring the machines in and they are actually looking at their name or the school name or the school colours, it's just really intriguing to them.

When we're dealing with high schools, most of the senior classes automatically, right then and there, start filling out registration cards. If they haven't done it already, they're going to grab these cards right there in the schools.

In Louisiana we also have, in the month of January, a special private election called the Louisiana Young Readers' Choice Election. The libraries have a state-wide program through which they let the kids pick the books they like the best, and they all participate. At the end, they have all of the results. They get to see the results tapes. It's uniquely getting children and young adults involved in the elections process before they turn 18. It really is a good thing.

I believe that the turnout we get.... Now, we also do private elections in universities, so if the university has its student president election or something like that, we will offer our services for those elections as well.

We're a top-down system, meaning we program our own voting machines and we work on our own voting machines, so programming the elections is not a problem. If it is for an educational purpose, there is no charge. There is no service fee, nothing. We do this to help the state get out there and get people to vote.

I really do believe it's a great program.

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Yes, it sounds fantastic.

With respect to the schools it's offered to, you just offer the service, and then does the school call you and that's how the participation happens?

[Sherri Hadskey]

The registrars and clerks in each parish of the State of Louisiana are very well aware of this service. Sometimes the entities get in contact with the registrar or clerk of court, or sometimes they'll call us directly. It's on our website. We list it on our website, and then if you would like a private election or if you would like to conduct election visits, this is who you contact. We get the information and provide all of the machines.

We keep a lot of information back—how many people we registered while we were there, or how many people actually touched the voting machines—and we turn that over to the legislature every year, showing how many people we touched to [Inaudible—Editor].

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

What is the percentage? What would you say is the percentage of students who participate in the vote and then follow up with the registration? Can you guess? Is it 50%? Is it 80%?

[Sherri Hadskey]

I would say that with the high schools, at the end of the election, that's a big part of it. Everybody sits down at the table and fills out their voter registration card, so I do believe that it's a huge influence with the high schools.

For the younger kids, they know when January comes around that they're going to get to vote. The reason I know this from both sides of the fence is that my sons both attended a school where they allowed the voting machines to come in, and they were really excited and proud about it and they talked about it in the weeks leading up.

I believe they do get a large number of registrations as a result of this program.

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Okay. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you all, David Moscrop, Sébastien Corriveau, Sherri Hadskey, and Victoria Henry. It was a very enlightening panel. It was great. Thank you very much for taking the time out to help our committee work.

We'll suspend while we change witnesses.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

I call the meeting back to order.

We have our next panel here. It's my understanding we are having a little technical difficulty with the individual we have appearing from New Zealand, but we're going to work on that. In the meantime, we will introduce our other witnesses and let them have their opening remarks.

In fact, maybe we have a couple witnesses by video conference. At least at this point, we have in front of us, from the Public Service Alliance of Canada, Chris Aylward and Morna Ballantyne. We will start with you.

We have our other witnesses planned, all by video conference: Leonid Sirota from Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand; Pippa Norris of Harvard, who is appearing from Massachusetts; and Angela Nagy, the former CEO of the Kelowna—Lake Country Green Party of Canada, who is appearing from beautiful Kelowna, British Columbia.

We will start with those we have in person, and then we will go from there.

Public Service Alliance of Canada, I'm not sure who's giving your opening remarks, but we will turn it over to you and let you sort that out.

[Chris Aylward, National President, Public Service Alliance of Canada]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the committee for allowing us to appear today.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada represents 180,000 members. We are the largest union in the federal public service.

Bill C-76 proposes extensive changes that have a significant impact on our democratic process. We strongly support the amendments in the bill that will remove barriers to voting and make it more accessible.

My comments will focus on changes related to third parties.

Our usual election activity is to inform our members about issues and encourage them to exercise their political rights and to vote. We do this by communicating with them in a number of ways, including advertising. During the last federal election and in a number of previous elections, the Public Service Alliance of Canada registered as a third party.

Bill C-76 has not changed the definition of third party election advertising; however, the definition curtails our right to represent our members' interests during an election period. Messages we transmit that can be received or seen by the public, such as information posted on bulletin boards or included in flyers, are considered to be election advertising if they take a position on an issue that a registered party or candidate is associated with or if the message opposes a registered party.

I challenge you to think of an issue that affects Canadians and our members that cannot be associated with a party, leader, or candidate at some time or another. The vast majority of our members are employed by the federal government and by federal agencies controlled or regulated by the government, and we take on issues associated with registered parties on an ongoing basis. It is our role and responsibility to advance their interests and concerns, and our right to do so has been upheld by the courts.

The existing restrictions on third party advertising, the proposed changes to the election period, and the introduction of new pre-election periods deny our legitimate advocacy role. This is particularly crucial when governments attempt to prevent our members from speaking out on issues and to restrict their political rights and activities because they are government employees.

During the last federal election period, we were in the middle of bargaining with Treasury Board for approximately 100,000 members. When we demonstrated against the government's proposals, Elections Canada advised us that the messages on our picket signs and banners might be considered election advertising under the Elections Act. They were seen as transmitting a message to the public during an election period that could be seen as opposing a registered party or speaking out on an issue associated with a registered party—in this case, the previous governing party.

Bill C-76 proposes to extend similar although not identical restrictions during a new pre-election period. The difference is that advertising during the pre-election period excludes messages that take a position on an issue associated with political parties and their candidates or leaders; however, the restrictions could still be interpreted to put limits on what we can say publicly about positions being taken by our government employers.

I refer you to the landmark 1991 Supreme Court case of Lavigne and the Ontario Public Service Employees Union. In that decision, the court affirmed the interconnected nature of political activity and union interests, or democratic unionism. The court said that many political activities, “be they concerned with the environment, tax policy, day-care or feminism, can be construed as related to the larger environment in which unions must represent their members”. Note that the court said “must represent their members” in this “larger environment”.

We are also concerned about the unnecessary burden the proposed legislation would put on unions to track and report all advertising expenses between elections. PSAC is a large organization, with 15 relatively autonomous components and over 1,000 locals; however, the third party provision treats us as a single entity. We would now be required to monitor all those parts in order to report expenses related to messages to the public amounting to $10,000 or more between an election and the pre-election period.

In conclusion, we ask the committee to review the proposed sections on third party advertising very carefully before proceeding with the bill so as not to affect the legitimate rights of unions to speak out on behalf of their members. We also ask you to consider splitting the bill and moving quickly to deal with the sections where there is general agreement and support, such as the sections that were originally contained in Bill C-33, and spend more time assessing the changes proposed by Bill C-76 before making other adjustments to the federal elections process.

Thank you for your time.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

Thank you very much.

We'll go next to Ms. Norris, a professor of government relations and laureate fellow from the University of Sydney, and a lecturer in comparative politics at Harvard.

We'll turn to you, Ms. Norris.

[Dr. Pippa Norris, Professor of Government Relations and Laureate Fellow, University of Sydney, McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics, Harvard, Director of the Electoral Integrity Project, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the invitation.

First, I very much welcome the legislation. I think trying to modernize electoral administration, expand participation, and regulate third parties is really critical for any sort of electoral integrity. I speak also with my hat on as the director of the electoral integrity project.

The things that are proposed—for example, allowing child care expenses, expanding access for voters with disabilities, modernizing the processes, and in particular restricting foreign influence—are all very positive steps. That being said, I'd like to make three points, essentially about things that could potentially be strengthened or that aren't necessarily highlighted in this bill.

First, of course, is the legal framework. There's no reference to major forms of electoral reform, including things like the mixed member proportional system, which is under discussion in the referendum in British Columbia. Of course, there's no reference at all to legal gender quotas, although currently Canada has a quarter of the Parliament female, which is about average worldwide. New Zealand has 38%, the U.K. has 30%, and so on. Those are two issues that I think are still on the agenda and that need to be addressed.

The second issue is about cybersecurity threats. I do think this helps by, in particular, trying to eliminate foreign influences and making campaign spending more transparent on advertising, but when we look at what has been revealed by the Department of Homeland Security in the United States, we find that this bill doesn't address some of the key issues that are real threats to every western democracy, including Germany, France, the U.K., and Canada. In the United States, for example, the cybersecurity of official records, including, for example, the electoral register, was targeted in 21 states. In five states, Russian hackers are reported to have actually gotten in, looked around, and downloaded files. All we need is that sort of cybersecurity breach in even one or two computers in Elections Canada, or in any of the provinces, and immediately the credibility and legitimacy of the election comes into question, and you end up with great disputes. Maybe the Communications Security Establishment is already doing a tremendous job of looking into this, but perhaps some other legislation or initiation before 2019 is really in order.

Of course, it's not just about the official records of registration. It's not so much the paper ballots, which can be validated. It's the electronic records of states and provincial offices, of course cybersecurity of political parties, and of course regulating bots on social media, which are not addressed in this bill. It's not just the advertising but also the systematic ways in which Russia has tried to influence, through social media, divisions in American society, divisions in Brexit, and divisions in other countries in Europe. All of those are very difficult issues to address because of freedom of expression, but they are things that obviously the government and Elections Canada should put high on its agenda.

The last point is about participation. Again, I think the ideas here are very important. For example, making sure that people who are younger are on the potential register for future elections and expanding accommodation for all persons with disabilities are both important. However, I think we still need some innovative suggestions. Remember, the participation in the last Canadian election was 68.5%. That's higher than in the United States, but amongst most countries we're talking about participation around 75%, or 80% in some European countries. Of course, in Australia we're talking about over 90%. Thinking about other ways to make voting more convenient while preserving security would, again, be a very welcome thing to add.

None of the things that I've suggested can be done before the next 2019 election. It's urgent to get this bill passed, and I recognize that. In future, though, to think about the electoral framework by law, to think about the security threats, and to think about further forms of participation would really strengthen, I think, and go along with the ideas that have been embodied in this report.

Thank you very much for the chance to give some thoughts on the bill.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

Great. Thank you very much.

We'll now move to Ms. Nagy from Kelowna, former CEO of the Kelowna-Lake Country Green Party of Canada.

You have the floor now for your opening remarks.

[Angela Nagy, Former Chief Executive Officer, Kelowna - Lake Country, Green Party of Canada, As an Individual]

Thank you, and good afternoon. As the CEO of the Kelowna federal Green Party electoral district association, I served here in Kelowna from 2006 to 2015 and was subsequently the chief financial officer of the EDA in 2015 before resigning following the 2015 general election.

I'm pleased to see many of the proposed amendments to the Canada Elections Act, as they address some serious concerns that I raised before, during, and after the 2015 general election, which ultimately led to several complaints being filed with the commissioner of Canada elections. Although not a complainant myself, I provided evidence as part of the investigation that ultimately led to finding Dan Ryder guilty of contravening the Elections Act, for which he entered into a subsequent compliance agreement on May 4, 2018.

Dan Ryder was found to have contravened subsection 363(1) of the act by making a contribution to a candidate while ineligible to do so. This was a result of Green Party signs being purchased and used to support the Liberal Party candidate in the Kelowna—Lake Country riding, which I will explain in a moment. However, I continue to have significant concerns that paragraph 482(b) and potentially other sections of the act and other Canadian laws were violated. Paragraph 482(b) states that every person is guilty of an offence who “by any pretence or contrivance...induces a person to vote or refrain from voting or to vote or refrain from voting for a particular candidate at an election.”

I have evidence to support that indeed voters were suppressed and induced to vote or refrain from voting for a particular candidate in the 2015 general election due to a misinformation campaign that Dan Ryder and the local Liberal Party campaign knowingly started and continued to spread beginning in July 2015, in order to confuse voters and influence the outcome of the 2015 election.

I would like to take this opportunity to walk the committee through a condensed timeline of events and statement of facts that support this concern. In March 2015, Dan Ryder and his wife, Zena Ryder, took out memberships in the Green Party. Shortly after, as CEO of the local EDA, I began receiving correspondence from both of them regarding the idea that they had for electoral fusion or co-operation between the Green Party and the Liberal Party to defeat the Conservative candidate in the upcoming election.

Several months later, a nomination contest was held and the Ryders' straw man candidate, Gary Adams, was nominated based on a platform that he would withdraw from the race and publicly endorse and support the Liberal candidate in the name of the Green Party, with the public commitment to the membership of the Green Party in advance of the vote at the nomination meeting that he would seek approval from the Green Party of Canada prior to undertaking such an approach. This commitment was made after concerns were raised that this approach would be contrary to the constitution of the Green Party of Canada. Unfortunately, regardless of this commitment, the so-called co-operation agreement was officially announced to the media immediately following the nomination meeting, and from then on, a misinformation campaign ensued.

Ultimately, it was found that such an approach was indeed contrary to the constitution of the Green Party of Canada, and the Green Party of Canada disapproved of any endorsement of another candidate or party. Through extensive consultation and discussion, a compromise agreement was struck between the Green Party of Canada, the Kelowna—Lake Country Electoral District Association, the candidate, and his campaign team.

This agreement included the following provisions: The candidate would withdraw. There would be no Green Party support in any overt or official way for any other party or candidate. Any communications about this compromise would be jointly drafted, shared, and approved. No money would be spent by the EDA and no Green Party of Canada resources would be used in furtherance of another party's candidate. Unfortunately, every aspect of this agreement was disregarded. One hundred generic Green Party signs were ordered and positioned next to Liberal Party signs along major roads and on private properties to demonstrate some form of partnership. Several of these signs were used during public Liberal campaign events, photo ops, and “Burma shaving” to demonstrate some kind of official support by the Green Party for the Liberal Party candidate.

Several public statements were also made suggesting that there was indeed an ongoing partnership between the two candidates and parties. Ultimately, I would argue that these statements were fraudulent and intended to mislead or suppress voters. In McEwing v. Canada in 2013, the Federal Court concluded:

In the context of the Act as a whole, the object of the Act and the ordinary and grammatical meaning of fraud, it is sufficient to show that a false representation has been made in an attempt to prevent electors from exercising their right to vote for the candidate of their choice:

What I have always been against from the very beginning of this issue is the perversion and manipulation of our electoral process and our democracy.

The Green Party of Canada has already made changes to its bylaws to prevent this kind of thing from ever happening again, and I strongly support clause 323 which amends section 481 of the act, which would help to prevent confusion amongst voters through the use of misleading information and material and would support the further strengthening and clarification of the language in this amendment.

To quote the remarks made by Mr. Marc Mayrand,, Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, on March 29, 2012, to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs at the House of Commons, “These are very serious matters that strike at the integrity of our democratic process. If they are not addressed and responded to, they risk undermining an essential ingredient of a healthy democracy, namely the trust that electors have in the electoral process.”

Thank you.