In terms of partisan and election advertising, the strongest tool that exists in the Elections Act is spending limits. I believe the Chief Electoral Officer mentioned that there are quite generous spending limits for third parties in the pre-writ period. They're stricter during the writ period.
Spending limits have been upheld as constitutional by the Supreme of Canada on multiple occasions. There's the Harper case, the Libman case and the B.C. FIPA case. There are a number of cases.
The tool is, in some senses, less effective because technology has made it so much cheaper to engage in political communications. That is a positive thing. It has democratized people's ability to communicate with large numbers of voters, but it means that the third party spending limits and the political advertising and partisan advertising spending limits are less effective when entities are using technology to communicate at a very low cost.
Part of the reason why we have these offences about false statements and other things is that they are trying to target the communication in the advertising, rather than the amount that is being spent. I think where it puts us is we need to come up with new mechanisms for the responsible use of technology. Parliament did so in relation to social media companies in the Elections Modernization Act. We didn't know what ads were being run on Facebook, so now there's a repository of ads.
I think we need similar updating of election laws in relation to artificial intelligence and other new technologies. There is some of that in Bill C-65, but I think there's a lot more thinking, frankly, that we all, as Canadian society, have to do to try to address that. The technology and techniques are changing so quickly that it's a matter of trying to respond in real time.