Evidence of meeting #71 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 200.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
Correct. If a prior condition for attending the event is having made a contribution of more than $200, so that includes a donor appreciation event, it would be caught, unless the donor appreciation event is held during a party convention. There it is exempted.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
Okay. If the pre-condition is that in the calendar year at some point you would have to have donated a certain amount, then this legislation catches that.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Thank you.
I'm a little disappointed we didn't get a chance to hear the other three recommendations—
October 3rd, 2017 / 11:55 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Sorry, Mr. Christopherson. With the committee's indulgence, I'll let him do that at the end.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Then I'll just ask one quick question and let you get to that.
Going back to the first recommendation on the five days, we've had some discussion about it, but another aspect of this is you don't plan a fundraiser in five days. If you do, it's going to fail. There is lots of preparation. As one way to solve this, in addition to letting you know directly, wouldn't it make sense to give a little more time?
I don't know how far you can go in commenting on this, because I know you are very careful about the technical interpretation and not getting into the “our” politics of it, so I respect if you can't go where I would hope you do. But by extending it for more than five days, you then give everybody an opportunity to actually see it. To make it five days and say that we're doing this so it is transparent, and we're even putting in the legislation, in the regulations, that it has to be prominent—whatever that might mean—on the website.... But with five days, you'd pretty much have to have somebody whose daily duty it is to monitor from a political point of view. You would have to do the same sort of thing.
Wouldn't one answer to this be to just make that time frame longer, a little more realistic? This looks like they want to be able to say, “Look, we have a new provision”, but in reality it doesn't change anything in the real world.
What are your thoughts on that?.
Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
I only would link that to the previous comment that was made about a minister being able to come more or less at the last minute, so the longer the notice is, the more likely it is that you'll be caught in a situation where there is uncertainty in terms of who is going to be participating. You have to look at the two issues together, and if you want to be strict about making sure that all the events are caught, then you'll have to consider what is a reasonable timeline. I won't draw a line for that for the committee.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Chair, I'll just contribute the rest of my time to the review of the final three amendments.
Thanks.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Is it okay with the committee that we go a little over time so that the witness can elaborate a bit on his recommended changes to the act?
Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
Thank you.
We have covered the first two, and I am down at the third one with respect to the new provision, 384.5. This is something I did address in my opening remarks. There may be situations where there is a missing element in the report and the CEO should have the authority to request formally a change to the report to be made. This is something that exists for all the other reports that are in the Canada Elections Act, I believe, and does not exist for this one. It's a very technical amendment.
The next one is regarding offences—and again we spoke to that one—for filing a false and misleading.... There is a requirement to file within a certain timeline, but there is no separate offence for filing a false or misleading return either by way of negligence or deliberately. This is something that exists again for other provisions to the act dealing with reports, and I believe there should be one here as well.
The next one is again on the timeline of reporting. It combines the obligation to file currently in the bill with the obligation to file in a specific timeline, and if you look at the other provisions of the act on filing, it separates the two. There is an obligation that each and every one of you had as a candidate to file a report, and then there is a separate obligation to file that report within a separate timeline. So, if you do file but you happen to file late, then that is addressed specifically. By combining the two, it may be a bit more difficult in terms of enforcement.
Again, this is a great example. The point was raised that if we have administrative monetary penalties, then that should be the way to deal with it, but we should separate the obligation to file from the timing obligation.
The last one is the one we discussed regarding the definition of leadership and nomination campaign expenses, which if you look at the language of the clauses in the bill, carry with them references to parties, promotion of parties and candidates and other entities that have nothing to do with nomination contests or leadership contests, and I would recommend this be made cleaner. Certainly, I would interpret those provisions as referring specifically to expenses in relation to the nomination contest or the leadership contest, as the case may be, and not these other expenses.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Is that okay for committee members?
Thank you very much, witnesses, for coming today. This has been very helpful and I'm sure we'll see you again.
Could the committee members just stay for a minute. We have one housekeeping thing to do in camera
[Proceedings continue in camera]