Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 8th, 2017

[Yves Côté]

I'll say three things.

One is that we got the Senate report literally half an hour before we came here, so I merely flipped through the pages and cannot comment in any way on its contents.

Yes, it seems to me that there are things such as the organization of rallies by third parties, for example. Currently, the position that we and Elections Canada have taken is that this is not political or electoral advertising. Therefore, as it stands right now, a third party may conceivably expend a huge sum of money in organizing rallies, maybe in various cities across the country, and maybe spending many thousands of dollars. Because it is not technically electoral advertising, this is not regulated in any way.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Could it be for things such as paying for door-to-door canvassers as well?

[Yves Côté]

Yes, exactly. Totally. Or having—

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Are you saying that broadening this would be helpful?

[Yves Côté]

—people working the phones and trying to get people to vote one way or the other.... Quite clearly, this is currently an open field and people are free to do a number of things.

On the six-month rule, I really think this should be looked at very closely and perhaps have steps taken to eliminate it totally or to make it in such a way where much more is caught and regulated than is the case now—no question.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Yes, I appreciate that. I firmly agree with that as well.

In order to ensure that more of it is caught, there's this idea of performing random audits of third parties' election expenses. Would that be helpful in ensuring that more of it is caught?

[Yves Côté]

Well, assuming that the legislation, the new regulatory framework, is such that many more things have to be reported and also that there are some limitations, spot audits certainly would be a good way of getting the information that perhaps is needed to uncover or discover illegal actions on the part of some of these third parties.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Thank you, I appreciate that.

Do you have any other suggestions if we're going to look at that, and I firmly believe we should, on things we could do to modernize that? For example, should we increase penalties, or are there other things we could do to make sure more of this is being caught and to ensure we're keeping foreign influence out of the elections? If you don't have any suggestions you can give us verbally today, would you endeavour to provide us something in writing that would be helpful?

[Yves Côté]

Yes, we could provide you with additional ideas. One suggestion I would make is not necessarily to have more severe penalties, because I think the penalties provided for are quite severe. For me, the real challenge, the real objective Parliament should pursue, is to identify what it wants to do in terms of how it wants to limit third parties in what they would be allowed to do or partially allowed to do.

Yes, Mr. Justice Bastarache said what I said a few minutes ago, but at the same time, the courts, as you probably know, have invalidated third party spending on a number of occasions in the past. It's a very delicate area in which to go, and you really have to be careful how, once your objective has been identified, you go about accomplishing it.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Thank you. I appreciate your suggestions and thoughts.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you, Blake.

We just have a couple of minutes left for the last questioner, Mr. Chan.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Commissioner and Mr. Chénier, I want to thank you both for appearing today.

I want to follow up on some of the comments from my fellow colleagues about a particular recommendation, B27, inducements by non-residents. I want to deal with a very specific example in my mind, and I want to get your thoughts about it.

I have within my riding a fairly large number of schools that provide services for foreign students, international students, who come to Canada often in order to complete secondary school and prepare potentially for continuing their education in Canada at a post-secondary level.

One of the things that often comes up, and it certainly happened in my election, is they're interested in participating in the Canadian political process. One of the requirements they have, for example, is to get enough volunteer hours, which is a requirement for graduation. In Ontario, they need 40 hours. They often come banging on my door saying that they would like to help me in my election and asking if they get any volunteer hours. These are essentially non-resident international students.

Do they breach the act under the current provision of section 331 by participating in a Canadian election?

[Yves Côté]

Section 331 states, “No person who does not reside in Canada”, so presumably—

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

These are non-residents, so they're here on a temporary basis. They're residing in Canada but they're not.... They're temporary residents so they're non-residents. They don't have status in the sense of being a Canadian resident. Technically, are they fine because they have this temporary status?

[Yves Côté]

If they are studying here, a good argument can be made that in fact they are residing, even if only temporarily, in Canada.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Again, I was just concerned about that particular.... I know the current recommendation is the repeal of the section, and I agree that the most difficult part related to this normally is enforcement, particularly for those who reside wherever they reside. If you're blogging about the Canadian election and you're living in Burma, it's hard to actually have any kind of a.... You can say that, yes, they are intending to influence our election, but there's no real practical enforcement mechanism.

I'm sensitive to the issues that Blake and others have raised with respect to foreign influences, but in the world of social media, I just don't know how we effectively, other than as it relates to actual resources like monetary, have any kind of regulatory control over this type of activity in this day and age.

[Yves Côté]

It poses a very serious challenge; there's no question about that. Many countries around the world are trying to grapple with this, not only in the electoral context but in other contexts. It is certainly not a simple issue.

By the way, Mr. Chair, I think Mr. Chan said that my recommendation was to abolish section 331. That is not my recommendation. My recommendation is that you should look at it with a view to perhaps refining and—

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

—if possible—

[Yves Côté]

Yes.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

—and if you can't, then repeal.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Commissioner, just before we finish, do you have any closing comments you'd like to make?

[Yves Côté]

If I may, and perhaps this comes out of the blue for members of this committee, we get a lot of complaints about missing tag lines on political signs during the campaign. Sometimes the tag lines are not missing; it's only that they are printed in a slightly off colour that makes it very difficult to read. By way of perhaps trying to address this issue, sometimes we have to actually use magnifiers to see that it is there, and once we see it's there, we have to drop the investigation. If there were a way for you to recommend or to propose an amendment that would say that the tag lines have to be reasonably visible, that would remove a big headache for a number of us.

That's a very small point, but as a parting comment, that's a request I would make.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

That's the line on the election signs that says it's authorized by the official agent of a party.

[Yves Côté]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you very much for coming. That was very helpful input on the recommendations that we're going to deal with now.