Thank you, everyone.
Thank you to the committee for inviting me to be part of the conversation.
I think the measures included in Bill C-25 are very important to the health of democracy in Canada, and I welcome the chance to talk about this in more detail.
I need to start with a disclaimer. As you know, several of the measures contained in Bill C-25 have connections to the report of the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions. It was my pleasure to serve as one of the four members of the research council who worked with Justice Hogue throughout the course of the commission and in the creation of the final report. While I could not be more excited and more proud about my connection to that exercise, I want to stress that I'm here today as an individual. Nothing I say should be interpreted as reflective of how Madam Justice Hogue feels about anything or how anybody else who worked with the commission feels.
The scope of Bill C-25 is wide-ranging and contains measures aimed at dealing with foreign interference, ballot manipulation, disinformation, the misuse of personal data and other things. I'm sure we'll get to all of that, so I'm going to limit my opening comments to one thing that I wanted to raise about the bill.
It would extend the reach of the law, and therefore Elections Canada, further into the span of activities run by political parties, specifically nomination and leadership contests. For example, the bill would extend the prohibition on the use of broadcasting stations outside of Canada to influence voters to the nomination and leadership contests and contestants. It would extend the ban on the use of foreign funds, services and property for promoting advertising to leadership and nomination contests and contestants. It would also amend the definition of partisan activity in section 349 to include leadership contests.
This is a really important part of the bill, because it recognizes that those nomination and leadership contests are not solely the purview of political parties, but they are really important parts of our election process. Without those measures, the only way Elections Canada provides any oversight of the leadership and nomination contests is largely through watching the money, whether it's through contributions and spending or with candidate registration in the nomination process. Once the party confirms the candidate, they tell Elections Canada, and then the name is on the ballot, obviously. Because of the emergent challenges we have, there's a need to think about going a step further. The bill does that, at least in an initial way.
We all know that nomination and leadership contests have become the subject of some media attention in recent years. That is often because there's a concern that they are a vulnerable part of the election system and could even be a target for different types of interference, including foreign interference. An editorial in The Globe and Mail on November 27, 2025, referred to these exercises as “a massive weak spot in Canadian democracy” because they are “almost completely unregulated.”
Parties tend to resist the infiltration of Elections Canada officials into their nomination and leadership contests, arguing that they are private clubs that run their own affairs. There's a lot of value to political parties being able to run themselves according to their own values. It means that Canadians have a real choice between parties. It's important to do that. There's also an increasingly complex grey area where a private club is also a custodian of public office, which is what makes it so compelling to so many people. We need to think about different ways this space can be regulated appropriately.
I welcome the fact that the bill takes a step in that direction. I just wanted to flag that before we get into all the details of the bill.
Thank you.