I want to start with some of the things you said prior to the question, because I think that's really important. Democracies—Canada and elsewhere—are facing a very serious array of threats to the health of democracy. I don't think we can regulate or legislate our way out of all those things.
As much as we want to make sure the legislation is an appropriate tool to deal with the problems and we want to make sure we get it right—we don't want to pass legislation and then say, “Look, there are a whole bunch of gaps that we didn't get to” and miss the mark—there's only so much, with respect to the health of democracy, that a piece of legislation can achieve, even if it's done really well. The health of democracy is going to relate to things like civic literacy, voter engagement and voter trust in processes—voters knowing that the processes that elect people are secure and have integrity and that there's accountability if things go wrong. There will be some accountability and a price to pay if people break the rules, and the public needs to know that.
As much as we know we are not the United States, we can see sometimes when the Americans are having real conversations and real disagreements about how they're going to count votes and people not wanting to abide by or not wanting to accept results they don't like, and those sorts of conversations have a big effect on us.
I say all of that because I think it's important to note that there are things we can do to boost the health of democracy that we are going to rely on no matter how good the legislation is. It's not going to work if people aren't really engaged. In terms of making sure we say it out loud and put it in law that we do not tolerate undue influence from foreign actors, it's really important to let voters know that it is wrong, that it is not appropriate and that it is not something that is part of a healthy democracy. Our decisions as an electorate have to be our own.
There are always going to be foreign actors who will talk about what they want to see in a Canadian election, but there's a difference between interference and influence. I think that's why we say “undue influence” in the law. It's about not spending money on it, not doing it in a way that's clandestine and not doing it in a way that undermines the legitimacy of the result. As much as people from other countries will absolutely talk about who they think should win a Canadian election, we can handle that; that's okay. It's the actual campaigning activity that could happen that we want to get our arms around.