Evidence of meeting #141 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 elections.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Stéphane Perrault  Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
Stephanie Kusie  Calgary Midnapore, CPC
Linda Lapointe  Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, Lib.

11:20 a.m.

Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada

Stéphane Perrault

I generally sleep well.

I think we're doing what we need to do. We have a busy schedule ahead of us until June. We have some further work to do on the security side, but it's planned and we're working with partners and things are getting done.

11:20 a.m.

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL

Okay.

On the local level, my riding just hired a new returning officer. Several others have done the same.

What is going to be the most noticeable difference for the workers at one riding? I'll start with that. Go ahead.

11:20 a.m.

Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada

Stéphane Perrault

I'll say a few things. For this election—

11:20 a.m.

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL

What's the big difference?

11:20 a.m.

Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada

Stéphane Perrault

The big difference is advance polls. Two things will be different for the poll workers. One is the hours of advance polls. Remember, it used to be from noon until eight o'clock. Now it's from nine to nine, a large increase. For the workers, that's a big challenge, so we are looking at doing some shift work, which we didn't do in the past but we can do under the new rules, to give some relief for some workers during the day. These are long hours for four days in a row. That's one big change.

The other major change is that, even though we're not deploying technology for the voting process, we've simplified the paper process. We're using it in these by-elections. We've tested it. The streamlined paper process is a lot simpler for poll workers to understand and use. That will assist them in the training, in reducing record-keeping errors, hopefully, and increase the speed of processing voters, especially at advance polls.

These are the main changes for the workers.

11:20 a.m.

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL

For the voters themselves, there won't be a huge, noticeable difference in how they—?

11:20 a.m.

Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada

Stéphane Perrault

They may not see that. We're hoping they will not see lineups. You'll remember at the last election we had a 75% increase at the advance polls. At every election before, we had a 10% increase at the advance polls. It went up to 75%.

We are now anticipating this is going to be an ongoing feature. If you look at other jurisdictions around the world, they're getting close to 40% and sometimes above that, so we need to prepare for that. To do that, we've increased the hours. We've increased the number of advance polls by 23%. We've streamlined the paper process. With these three measures, we think we can offer better service at the next election than at the previous one.

11:20 a.m.

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL

From my riding....

11:20 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell

Your riding will have to wait.

11:20 a.m.

Some hon. members

Oh, oh!

11:20 a.m.

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL

I'll just leave it at that.

11:20 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell

Ms. Kusie.

11:20 a.m.

Stephanie Kusie Calgary Midnapore, CPC

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Perrault, Mr. Roussel and Mr. St-Pierre, thank you for being with us today.

You talked a lot about security. Last week, there was a press conference on cybersecurity. In my opinion, one organization wasn't included in the process, and my first question is about that.

Do you believe that Elections Canada should have been included? I do believe that. It has been stated that there was foreign influence in the 2015 election, based on what we have seen not only in Brexit and the United States, but around the world. The CFCA determined there will be an increase in 2019, and electoral processes indicate that.

Do you feel your organization, Elections Canada, should have been included in the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force initiated by the government last week?

11:20 a.m.

Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada

Stéphane Perrault

It's a very good question. Because it was a government announcement, and we're not part of that, we didn't have a chance to explain our role, so I welcome this opportunity.

We will not formally be among the five public servants who would be called upon to speak publicly, if necessary. But as I explained, we're doing scenarios with the security establishment, the intelligence community. All the players who will be feeding the information to that group of five will also be working with Elections Canada.

The group of five will be speaking on matters that are not within my mandate. For example, if a party database is hacked and used to distract voters from their polling location, that's my role. I need to step out and speak publicly to that. That is not the role of this group. But the hacking itself may involve foreign actors, so CSIS, Global Affairs and CSE have an interest.

It is not a single entity's responsibility and we will be working together. But in speaking publicly, I will be speaking to the electoral process matter and that group will be speaking to the other aspects.

11:25 a.m.

Calgary Midnapore, CPC

Stephanie Kusie

You mentioned that you feel you were excluded because you are an independent non-partisan agency. Don't you think for that specific reason you should be a part of it?

The other five individuals are making the critical decisions, first of all, that the other parties should be informed as to potential influence. We have no say as to what information we will receive until it is released to us by the decision of these five public servants—and as a former 15-year member of Global Affairs Canada, I say “public servants” respectfully. Then they are left with the decision as to when to release this information to the public through this Liberal government.

Don't you think that is the very reason you should be a part of this important body—the fact that you are non-partisan; that you are an independent organization; that you report directly to Parliament and not to the Liberal government? Doesn't that make you feel, even more so that you should be a part of this critical organization?

11:25 a.m.

Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada

Stéphane Perrault

I certainly need to be part of the conversations that relate to the security of our electoral process. Now, I'm not here to defend the government's proposal. I do though, having been a public servant throughout my career, have a high degree of confidence that public servants do the right thing and that they're loyal to the public service. I have no reason to think that these very senior public servants would not do that.

Are there ways of improving the process? I don't think that's for me to speak to. That's the government's announcement.

February 7th, 2019 / 11:25 a.m.

Calgary Midnapore, CPC

Stephanie Kusie

Further to that, another concern beyond influence of course is interference.

We on this side of the table put forward 200 amendments regarding Bill C-76. Only a handful were accepted, while many of them, we think, would have further contributed to the stopping of foreign interference, including the watertight mechanism of segregated bank accounts, accounting for funds not only through the writ period but also in the pre-writ period. This is starting to seep beyond elections into other sectors of society, industry approval processes on things that are very critical.

What role do you feel Elections Canada plays in an effort to prevent interference in Canadian elections? What safeguards or mechanisms do you have in place in an attempt to resist these?

11:25 a.m.

Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada

Stéphane Perrault

There are many aspects to this question. I may not get a chance to capture them all.

You started with the political financing rules on third parties. As you know the new regime right now has been significantly increasing.... It has a requirement for segregated bank accounts. It has pre-writ limits. It will cover activities that were not previously regulated. Foreign money could have come in to support these activities that are now regulated. Our role there is to try to promote these rules in compliance with these rules and make sure that the reporting is done. At the end of the election we'll have to assess that, assess whether that was sufficient, or whether we need to restrict further. I'll be making recommendations to Parliament on that point after the election.

11:25 a.m.

Calgary Midnapore, CPC

Stephanie Kusie

I look forward to that. In a nutshell, what are your biggest hurdles to implementing the changes to Bill C-76 in time for the 2019 election? Where do you need support? What should we as the opposition be looking for to assist you in your most challenging procedures to properly implement Bill C-76, Mr. Perrault?

11:25 a.m.

Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada

Stéphane Perrault

Thank you for the offer. I think at this point in time I have what I need.

The real challenge is the time, and the time between now and the pre-writ period to engage third parties and social media platforms. We are, for example, working with the main social media platforms so that they understand the new registry requirements, but we don't know how many platforms out there hit the threshold. We will be pushing that information, but we can't do a sort of hand-holding exercise with those platforms. Similarly, a third party is, by law, anybody who is involved in the election other than a party candidate or district association. We will be reaching out to the ones who have been registered in the past who are sort of repeat customers, or who spent more money. We will be reaching out to them, but beyond that, our only way of reaching the general population is basically through our website or social media. The rules are really complicated. If you look at the third parties, they have to submit up to five reports, including four prior to the election. This is a very high degree of reporting that they have to understand and comply with. That's the main challenge.

11:30 a.m.

Calgary Midnapore, CPC

Stephanie Kusie

Thank you, Mr. Perrault.

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell

Thank you, Mrs. Kusie.

Mr. Cullen, you have the floor.

11:30 a.m.

NDP

Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

Thank you.

It's nice to see you again, Mr. Perrault, and your colleagues as well.

When we talk about the threats to our election, we've had enough experiences around the world to understand that the threats are real. Is that fair to say?

11:30 a.m.

Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada

11:30 a.m.

NDP

Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

They are towards Canada as well. I think some Canadians like to think that we're a nice country and who would ever want to try to hack into our elections. The Canadian intelligence services have also identified that threat, come the 2019 election, which you're well aware of. Is that correct?