That was a great segue for me, because I wanted to mention that as well and ask the commissioner about it.
The Senate put out this report. I don't know if you've seen it yet. It just came out. In “Controlling Foreign Influence in Canadian Elections”, they made a number of recommendations in order to ensure that foreign funding isn't playing a direct or indirect role in Canadian elections.
There are things like prohibiting influence by foreign entities, modernizing the regulation of third parties' involvement, increasing penalties, and removing the six-month limitation on that requirement to report contributions. Then, of course, they're also asking that Elections Canada be required to perform random audits of third parties' election advertising expenses and the contributions they receive that may be used during an election period. Those are some of the recommendations they made.
You've indicated to us, obviously, that you think we need to look at third party financing and consider modernizing and updating that. You indicated in a response to me earlier that in order for provisions to be effective, they must apply to all possible election expenses. I'm looking for your suggestions on what the committee can do, because I firmly agree with you that we should be looking at this. This is an issue that needs to be dealt with. I would assume that when you say it must apply to all possible election expenses, you're indicating that the provision that it's only for advertising expenses is not broad enough, and that you believe we need to expand that further. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
In particular, I'd also like to hear your thoughts on the six-month limitation. With the fixed election dates, as I mentioned earlier, in terms of it being six months before the writ is dropped, everyone knows that if they want to get that money in, they can do it six months plus a day before then, and nobody knows. Nobody is the wiser. As a result, there could be very significant foreign funding that could seriously influence our election.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on those two things.