Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2022

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

So when it is publicly stated that there was no foreign influence on the results of the 2019 and 2021 elections, that is a general statement. Based on the information you have, we can't confirm anything; we can't say there was no influence, but we also can't assume that the influence changed the results.

[Stéphane Perrault]

That's exactly right. I think talking about the impact on the results is very speculative. The article in question talks about contributions made to candidates. To me, it's much less about the possibility that it changed the outcome of an election than it is about the fact that people's loyalty was bought.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

It could go either way.

[Stéphane Perrault]

Indeed, what the article says is that it could go either way.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

I'm not necessarily talking about the article, but more in general terms.

I see my time is now up. It is a shame, because we were on to something interesting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Would you like to finish what you started to say, Mr. Berthold?

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

What I want to know is at what point you can say that something happened in a constituency, so that the overall outcome of the election was influenced by a foreign power. At what point does the Chief Electoral Officer consider that he has received enough information, complaints and contestations to say that there was foreign influence, even if it did not change the result of the vote? What does it take for the Chief Electoral Officer to come to such conclusions in his report to Parliament? Let's not forget that, as Chief Electoral Officer, you are the voice of the public.

[Stéphane Perrault]

That's an important question, but it is not my role to say whether or not the election in a particular riding is valid. My role is to report to the committee what I know about the conduct of the election. If a voter believes that the results have been influenced, the mechanism for contesting the results of an election is to go to court. Only a court has the authority to overturn an election. It is not the role of the Chief Electoral Officer to say that. My role is to convey to Canadians, through this committee, what happened in an election, what went right and what went wrong.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Sahota, you have the floor.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Chief Electoral Officer, for your presence here today.

My first question is regarding the recommendations you were just talking about. Through many Parliaments, you've been coming before this committee and making recommendations after an election. You made recent recommendations about foreign interference and financing rules that should be changed.

Were these recommendations made from a precautionary perspective, or were they based on some examples that you can give this committee of things you've learned through your partner agencies?

[Stéphane Perrault]

There's a long list of recommendations, so it's difficult to provide a blanket answer. For example, as we go through applying the law, we sometimes find that it is inadequate to deal with certain circumstances.

Here we're talking about contributions. In my recommendations report, I made some recommendations to better ensure the transparency of the source of money. Right now there are rules against cash contributions that are more than $20. It's not allowed. However, there are no rules against prepaid credit cards. That was a matter of debate during a recent leadership race. I took well note of that and I agreed, in my mind, that this needs to be addressed.

Also, in my report we talk about cryptocurrencies. We haven't seen any use of cryptocurrencies to fund elections in Canada, but they are used to a growing extent in the United States. What are the rules that apply? We have guidance on that, based on the existing rules, but I do not feel that the existing rules provide sufficient transparency for those contributions.

There are things that we are looking at, and that I'm looking at, in this recommendations report that are not specifically about foreign interference, but that may be of assistance in addressing issues of foreign interference, in that case, through contributions.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Thank you for that.

There's a saying that I'm fond of, that only a fool learns from their own mistakes. It's good to see that you are looking to other jurisdictions and other countries and learning from them, so we do not step into something that could be problematic.

You mentioned that Canadians should have confidence in their institutions. You are one of our finest institutions. I was wondering if you could elaborate on how Elections Canada can communicate to Canadians and continue their confidence in your institution.

I know many questions have been raised about what the threshold is. What would you do if there was an incident? The commissioner would investigate. What would that look like? You said that the investigation could be made public, but it might be private.

Could you walk us through a bit of that so Canadians can have that confidence?

[Stéphane Perrault]

I think an important role of Elections Canada is explaining the rules and the process. That's something that we take to heart. In the last election, for example, there were concerns about mail-in voting in light of the American experience. We were very deliberate in explaining every step of the controls and making sure that we were quite transparent and that Canadians could see what controls were in place.

Of course, we don't reach everybody. Not everybody looks at our website, but we have media and other partners to facilitate conversations about the security of our elections.

When anybody has specific information regarding non-compliance with the act, they should not hesitate to contact either my office or the commissioner. If it's my office, I will pass it on to the commissioner. Her mandate is to examine whether, in her judgment, this warrants a review or an investigation and to take appropriate steps to follow through on that. That may lead to a range of penalties, going from administrative monetary penalties all the way to criminal prosecutions. When those penalties are applied or the prosecutions take place, it is public.

That provides a degree of transparency at the end of the day on what took place during an election.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

You referenced earlier that we should be very careful about what is said or spoken about in the media or in Parliament, even.

Why is it that you say that? What is your fear about some of these articles that are being published?

[Stéphane Perrault]

I want to be prudent to not draw conclusions from information that is not demonstrated. Again, I want to show no disrespect in any way to the media outlets and the journalists, but in my capacity, and, certainly, other institutions that are involved in securing the election, we can't draw conclusions from just news reports.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

What would happen if we were to draw those conclusions?

[Stéphane Perrault]

We would risk discrediting the electoral process in situations that are not warranted. However, even in this case, even if we accept at face value what is said, we don't know which are the districts, what are the amounts of money and whether they went to the campaigns or to the pockets of the candidates.

Is this a corruption of individuals, or is it an attempt to support a campaign? We don't know any of that, so it's premature. Even if we accept those as facts, it's premature to draw conclusions. There are not enough facts at this point.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you.

Ms. Gaudreau, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm going to put all my thoughts together. We were discussing increased transparency and legislation to enhance our capacity to target any possible attempts at corruption and influence. My understanding is that there are a lot of things to consider when we get the opportunity to ask the commissioner some questions.

At the moment, it's difficult to really be sure about anything, because we can't prove anything. An investigation is needed and it's complicated. I may be wrong, but in addition to being much more vigilant, haven't we got to the point of having to look at the situation under the Lobbying Act and the Conflict of Interest Act? We've come a long way.

Voters, for whatever party they may support, as we were saying this morning, want to have more confidence in the system. I'd like you to reassure me on that score. Have you any suggestions to make? We could begin by reviewing Canada's privacy rules, which are clearly inadequate. Only yesterday, I was with the president of Estonia. We could learn from Estonia on that score.

What would you suggest? If you run out of time, I'd like to receive a report from you about this.

[Stéphane Perrault]

I would like us to pay attention to it here. I make recommendations about the Canada Elections Act, and I'm going to continue to do so. With support for these recommendations we can then amend the act.

Some measures could indeed go farther. I'll give you an example. I'm talking about potentially illegal contributions. Normally, every candidate submits a report that includes a list of their contributors, and everything is reviewed by my office; so how can such contributions be made? If that kind of money is coming in, it means that it's either cash, which is illegal beyond a certain amount, and if so it would require an investigation, or through prepaid credit cards, which I have recommended be eliminated, or through fake identities, a well-known problem.

Quebec has in fact adopted rules that are more strict than at the federal level. Employer names are requested so that several contributions from a given employer can be identified. That's not mentioned in my recommendations report, but the committee members may be interested in that. And don't think that I'm assuming the employer in this instance is the Embassy of China. The bottom line is that there are ways of improving the system.

Allow me to repeat that my role is to talk about the Canada Elections Act, and not other regimes that may be relevant with respect to instances of corruption.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you, Ms. Gaudreau.

Mr. Blaikie, please go ahead.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Perrault has already dealt with the issues I was going to ask about. I will therefore ask him to simply continue to talk to us about the recommendations made in section 4.2 of his June report.

If there are other ways to come up with legislation that would reduce the possibility of election interference, I'd like him to tell us about them.

[Stéphane Perrault]

My report contains another recommendation about the transparency of third-party funding which includes the issue of third-party foreign funding. We discussed this the last time I appeared before the committee.

Currently, third parties can neither receive nor use foreign contributions. It's important to note that a third party is any individual or group that is not a candidate or a political party. Third parties have a life outside of elections and have sources of income that can be commercial or consist of contributions received for general purposes to serve the causes they defend. So if third parties decide to get involved in an election, the funds they use are considered under the act to be their own, even when they come from abroad originally. That raises an issue of transparency and possibly of foreign financing.

What I recommend is that the possibility of requiring groups that receive a certain threshold of funding in the form of contributions to be limited, for the purposes of activities regulated by the Canada Elections Act, to using contributions from a bank account containing donations only from eligible Canadian donors under the act. Groups that do not receive contributions and have commercial revenue, can continue to use their own revenue.

This is an option I suggested to the committee to deal with the issue of third-party funding, including potential foreign funding.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Perrault.

Thank you, Madam Chair.