Evidence of meeting #82 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 debate.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
I'm going to take one more minute, Dave, but then I'll put it over to you. My colleague wants to ask another question.
One of the witnesses previously spoke about the commissioner being engaged in outreach with respect to stakeholders and ensuring research is done in order to get input from stakeholders generally, Canadians across the country, to determine what shape and form these take.
Would you support that?
Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
I have no particular view on that.
I think that's one model. Another model is to have an advisory group of people from various walks of life that could assist the commission in making sure that, in their choices, they're reflecting the needs and interests of a range of people.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Thank you.
I'll pass the last minute to Mr. Graham.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Thank you.
I had a question earlier that I lost, so I threw it over to Ruby.
Do you think that it is possible, workable, advisable, supportable to have any kind of a commission require mandatory carriage of debates in some way, shape, or form? Presumably, you can have all the debates you want but if the networks aren't carrying them, you're limiting who's actually going to see them.
Would it be workable—and I guess this is more for the CRTC, but you're both free to answer—to say every network must carry at least one debate in the language of their regular broadcasts?
General Counsel, Communications Law, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
I think some sort of mechanism would have to be put in place, whether it's an amendment to the Broadcasting Act or a direction or something, in order to make carriage of debates mandatory.
Right now, there's not an obligation in the act for broadcasters to carry debate programs. They have done it. The commission is happy with that, but there's not an obligation that requires them to do it. Some mechanism would have to be put in place in order to accomplish that.
Manager, English and Third-language Television, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
Yes, and just to loop back to my opening remarks, we don't take a stand on the programming that a broadcaster must broadcast. We don't dictate their editorial decisions or their business decisions. We leave it to them. To echo Mr. McCallum's response to you, there would have to be some form of change.
Liberal
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for your excellent testimony.
It seems to me that it's boiling down to two questions and each of these bodies, Elections Canada and CRTC, have a role to play if we're looking at what kinds of rules we might want to put in place to have fair debates that reach the maximum number of Canadians. It looks like one mechanism is to get the debates on air, so that deals with broadcasting. The other is to get the leaders to show up in front of the podium.
Certainly your preference, Mr. Perrault, is that Parliament determine the criteria. I think that also makes a lot of sense. They should be predetermined so that, as Scott Reid was pointing out, we don't find out in the middle of the election campaign who's in and who's out, because it creates a lot of uncertainty.
On the point of how we might get the leaders there, I just wanted to put a question to you, Mr. Perrault.
It seems to me that election campaign financing might give us a bit of an effective inducement to show up. Contrary to the rhetoric when they cancelled the per vote support that we used to have due to the reform put in place by Jean Chrétien.... The rhetoric at the time of getting rid of that $1.75 per vote, or whatever it was, was that the Canadian taxpayer doesn't want to fund political parties. However, we know that the Canadian taxpayer does fund political parties quite a lot, and the part that was cancelled was the smallest part. The biggest part is the rebates at the end of the campaign, and there's also the benefit of very generous tax treatment.
Focusing on the rebate...and I got this idea from a private members' bill that Kennedy Stewart put forward, which didn't succeed. He was trying to put forward the idea that if you had gender parity you'd get all your money back, but to the extent that you didn't have gender parity in your candidate selection a political party would get less money back.
I'm just wondering what your view would be if the Canada Elections Act was amended to say that any party leader of a recognized political party who meets the criteria to participate in the debate and who refuses to participate, faces some form—I'm not going to dictate what it might be—of financial penalty for failing to provide the Canadian public with what we all agree and all witnesses agree is the moment of maximum public engagement to see how policies and proposals are put forward by different leaders.
Would that be something that you'd think the Canada Elections Act...? Obviously, Parliament would determine it, but I think it would be an effective inducement. I'd just love your opinion on that.
Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
I may disappoint you. I don't have a strong opinion on that in the sense that I do think that's a fundamental policy decision for Parliament.
I do think I could certainly administer such a regime. You may want to consider whether the mere fact of having created a commission, should you do that, which gives some standing to that debate, may be a sufficient incentive to participate in the debate and whether you actually need that additional financial incentive. It may be something to consider over time, but these are policy issues for Parliament.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
As another policy issue, you mentioned the notion that there might be 22 leaders on the stage. I just want to clarify that in the current situation, I think, we have 15 recognized federal political parties.
Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
We do have 15. We were up to 23 in the last election. It tends to go up as you get closer to the election. I suspect that next year we'll see additional parties registered.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Okay.
Although I may be wrong on this—I couldn't find it quickly in any Wikipedia sources, so I'll put it to you—to my recollection, other than the Liberals, Conservatives, New Democrats, Greens, and Bloc, the total vote count for, at that point, all the other 18 political parties didn't reach 2%. Is that correct?
Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
I do not know the answer to that.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Okay. That's my recollection. You would agree that none of them come close to 1% on their own.
Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
I think so. I think that's correct.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
And 2% is the threshold in the elections act for the rebates that flow.
Acting Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
It's 2%, or 5% in the ridings in which the party supports candidates. It's dual criteria.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Those give us some guidance in terms of existing policy moving forward. If we're looking at the past record of which parties are able, despite.... We're not going to get into a discussion of electoral reform. A number of us around this table were part of the special parliamentary committee on electoral reform.
Setting that aside, under our current first-past-the-post voting system, it's very difficult to get MPs elected across the country if you're not able to.... Getting 2% is a tough challenge. That's what I'm trying to suggest.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Okay.
In terms of what the CRTC does—this is again a policy question for Parliament—do you think there would be ways that Parliament could say to networks that provide news coverage, Canadian content across the country, that the participation in broadcasting debates could be made a licensing requirement?
General Counsel, Communications Law, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
As I said earlier, I think it would require some sort of amendment to the act or some other measure to accomplish that.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
That was my assumption, that we'd be talking about amending the Broadcasting Act. Just as Elections Canada can't determine what's in the Canada Elections Act but can administer it, the CRTC would administer if it were in the Broadcasting Act as an amendment.
General Counsel, Communications Law, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
That's correct. If it were done by Parliament, CRTC would administer it.
