Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 26th, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 34 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3), the committee is meeting to continue its study of Bill C-25, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act and to enact an act to change the names of certain electoral districts, 2026.

Today's meeting is taking place in public in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders. Members are in person in the room and have the option to appear remotely on Zoom. Before I continue, I'd ask all in-person participants to consult the guidelines written on the cards on the table. These measures are in place to help prevent audio feedback incidents and to help protect the safety of everyone, including our interpreters. There's a QR code. Please watch the video.

I'd like to remind witnesses that committee members may ask questions in either English or French. If you need interpretation, please take a moment now to prepare your earpiece and select the listening channel you need in advance, in order to take full advantage of the time allotted for questions and answers.

I have a few comments for the benefit of members. All comments should be addressed through the chair. If you're in the room or on Zoom, please raise your hand, and we will do our best to call on you.

I would like to welcome our witnesses for today's first panel. As individuals, we have Gerard Chipeur, lawyer; Eve Gaumond, lawyer and Ph.D. student; and Peter Loewen, Harold Tanner Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University.

Welcome, everyone. You will each have five minutes to deliver opening remarks. We will start with Mr. Chipeur.

You have five minutes, please.

[Gerald Chipeur, Lawyer, As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

Members of the committee, in my submissions I plan to address four edits that I believe will improve Bill C-25.

Before I address those edits, I would like to state that Bill C-25 will significantly improve the protections that Canadians have with respect to the electoral process and will increase the protection from hostile state actors and others outside of Canada desiring to influence Canadian elections. Thank you for those proposals.

I would also like to remind the committee of my previous recommendations that the nomination process not be governed by the Canada Elections Act. I continue to recommend that nomination processes be left entirely to the parties. That is something that I continue to recommend because it is my view that, in its current form, the Canada Elections Act continues to violate section 3 of the charter in the manner highlighted by Justice Epstein of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

In 1999, in Galati v. Ontario Liberal Party, Justice Epstein said, “It is apparent from the authorities that, contrary to the plaintiff’s claim, the intervention of the government in the nomination process of political parties would constitute a breach of constitutional rights.” I think he was right then, and I have seen no cases that would challenge that conclusion.

Now, I'll move on to the four edits.

First, I recommend the removal of certain unnecessary red tape. Second, I recommend the preservation of the neutrality of the administration of the Canada Elections Act. Third, I recommend the prevention of certain fraud and abuse. Fourth, I recommend the protection of freedom of expression.

My first point is on the question of privacy. It is my view that we do not need amendments related to privacy. In my view, the cure is worse than the disease. The publication of voter names and addresses has never been a problem in the past—at least, I'm not aware of any problems. No harm has come from that. In any event, there are thousands of people across Canada who have these voter lists, and nothing has come from it. I recommend that you don't go there, but likely you will.

If you do, my recommendation is to at least delete your proposed paragraphs 385(2)(k) and 387(d), because they are duplicative. There is no need to have a role for the Chief Electoral Officer if you already have it statutorily set forth. The statute sets forth in section 446.6 the rules that will apply, but then says that a political party must have a policy and that the Chief Electoral Officer has a role in approving that policy.

My view is that there should be no role for the CEO. There should be no policy. Just follow the act if you're going to have rules related to privacy. There's a Court of Appeal for Ontario decision from 2007, Longley et al. v. Canada, but I won't read that because of the limitations of time.

Another very important change is with respect to neutrality. Right now, the act allows the commissioner to proceed to investigate and require testimony under oath without judicial review. This is problematic, because it gives the commissioner the opportunity to move forward without an independent third party saying, “Yes, there's enough evidence here to interfere with the right of the subject”—which typically is in place with respect to criminal law—“to remain silent.” It doesn't make sense to allow the commissioner to have that kind of power.

My view is that the rules in section 510.01 that require judicial review should apply to any of the investigatory powers exercised by the commissioner.

I have three great recommendations for the issue of the abuse of the ballot, but I know I'm probably over time.

First, require 200 signatures instead of 100. Second, take out the limitation in proposed 477.2(b.1) to the same electoral district. Third, my recommendation is that, on your ballot, you have the parties listed first, in alphabetical order. Of course, this changes with each ballot. You have the parties listed first and all individuals listed second. Therefore, you enable individuals to make a wise choice if they choose to.

I'll stop there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Thank you so much. You'll have plenty of opportunity to expand on that.

We will now go to Ms. Gaumond, please, for five minutes.

[Eve Gaumond, Lawyer, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, committee, for the invitation to contribute to your discussions on the Canada Elections Act.

My name is Eve Gaumond. I am a lawyer and Ph.D. student in the Faculty of Law at the Université de Montréal. My research focuses in particular on the Canada Elections Act and preserving the integrity of electronic voting. I served as guest expert at the citizens' assembly on democratic expression in relation to the work of Élections Québec and during consultations between Canada and the Netherlands on the Global Declaration on the Integrity of Online Information. I have also taught courses on the protection of personal information at Université Laval.

Bill C‑25 is a good bill, but it isn't perfect. In terms of the protection of personal information, it is by no means adequate, and improvements could be made as to the transparency of online political activities. Nonetheless, at a time of eroding trust in public institutions, I want to stress something. While there is always room for improvement, the current legal framework is robust and resilient, and it has served to protect the integrity of elections thus far.

My remarks will focus on two aspects of the bill which, in my opinion, should be improved: the regime for the protection of personal information and the transparency mechanisms designed to enhance the integrity of online political activities.

Since my time is limited, I will quickly run through each of the areas for improvement. I have submitted a written list of recommendations to the committee and can elaborate on each of the suggestions during the question period.

Regarding the protection of personal information, a line must be drawn between matters that fall under the Canada Elections Act and those that fall under privacy legislation. These two legal instruments serve different purposes.

The purpose of the Canada Elections Act is to establish the basic rules to ensure the integrity and proper functioning of elections. It is entirely appropriate for it to include offences relating to certain practices that are problematic politically. Those often involve personal information from a party or personal information that is disclosed to harm someone, for instance. In other words, subclause 36(1) of the bill is relevant and is warranted in the act.

On the other hand, the Canada Elections Act cannot create a complete, national and exclusive regime for the protection of personal information. The right to privacy is a complex and technical field that cannot be addressed incidentally in legislation on other matters. It is therefore imperative that sections 446.2, 446.3 and 446.4 be repealed so that existing provincial privacy legislation can apply to federal political parties, at least until a real and complete national framework is created.

The federal Privacy Act is due to be reviewed soon. The government should take the opportunity to include federal political parties in the regime. It is concerning that political parties are the only entities in Canada that are not subject to basic privacy rules, especially considering that the Cambridge Analytica scandal primarily involved the use of personal information to exert political influence.

As to transparency, the Canada Elections Act is in large part based on the idea that transparency fosters integrity. That principle works well in the real world, but three changes are needed for activities conducted in the virtual world to meet equivalent transparency standards.

First, some of the existing regimes need to be adapted to the realities of artificial intelligence. When a party uses so-called robocalls, it has to register with the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC, provide a list of the phone numbers used and a copy of the recorded message or the script that was used.

Parties that use chatbots to communicate with electors should at the very least be required to provide the queries used to program the chatbots and a list of the electors they communicated with. Parties should also be required to disclose information related to advertising that is generated or considerably altered by an artificial intelligence system.

The second change relates to influencers who are playing an ever-increasing role in politics. Right now, they often operate outside of traditional transparency rules. Consideration should be given to adding a regime that specifically governs contributions offered in exchange for endorsements. The regime could require influencers to label their sponsored content and disclose any significant link to a political entity, including benefits and incentives.

The last change pertains to digital platforms. Section 325.1 should be amended to require major platforms to play a bigger role in transparency. Specifically, that means that government should work with digital platforms and researchers working on election integrity issues to codify broader transparency requirements. Those requirements must guarantee that researchers will have access to the necessary information to study the information ecosystem, regardless of the political stripe of those who head up those platforms.

Thank you very much. I'm looking forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Thank you so much.

Now we'll turn to Mr. Loewen for five minutes, please.

[Peter Loewen, Harold Tanner Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Cornell University, As an Individual]

Thank you very much to the committee for this invitation to appear.

I understand the committee is considering questions related to electoral district naming, including proposals affecting a small number of constituencies with indigenous names. I'm grateful for the opportunity to comment on this issue, and I hope I can be helpful to the committee in its consideration not only of these particular cases but also of broader questions surrounding the naming of ridings in Canada.

I want to make three points in the time I have.

First, there are good reasons for including more indigenous names in our constituencies.

Second, the process for considering indigenous matters during boundary redistribution could be revisited.

Third, the process or the practice of naming constituencies could likewise be reconsidered.

I've appeared before this committee several times, usually on the basis of my expertise as a scholar of elections, electoral systems and democracy. I gather that I'm here today as one of three commissioners responsible for redrawing Ontario's federal boundaries in the last process in 2022. I did have occasion to consult with the other two commissioners, Madam Justice Leitch and Professor Bird, and they're largely in agreement with what I have to say here today.

It was an honour and a privilege for all of us to take part in that work and to serve Canadian democracy in that way. As part of that process, my fellow commissioners and I believed it was important to better recognize indigenous peoples and histories in constituency names. The substantive representation of indigenous peoples is explicitly considered in redistribution law and jurisprudence. The naming of constituencies is much less systematically addressed. I'll return to that point.

My first point, though, is that there are good reasons to include more indigenous names in our constituencies. The first is that indigenous place names are already deeply embedded in Canadian political geography, even if we do not always stop to notice: Mississauga, Skeena, Nanaimo, Timiskaming, Etobicoke and even Brant. These names derive from indigenous languages, indigenous peoples and indigenous history. They are familiar to Canadians. They are understandable to their communities. Also, they remind us that our political geography did not begin with Confederation.

The second reason is reconciliation itself. This asks us, at least in part, to share more fully in the history of the country. It asks us and asks Parliament to strive to make our institutions places where indigenous history and representation are more visible and able to thrive. Parliament is an institution for all the people of Canada. It becomes more fully Canadian when it incorporates more of the histories and traditions of this place, not out of guilt or shame but out of a desire to better reflect the country we actually inhabit. Part of this process, I hope, is that indigenous names in ridings may encourage Canadians to learn more about the indigenous past and present of the places where they live. I'll give you just one example.

It's humbling for me to think about what may have gone through the mind of Étienne Brûlé as he travelled down the Humber River toward Lake Ontario, becoming likely the first European to see the Great Lakes. Shortly before reaching the lake, he likely would have encountered the area and the people around Teiaiagon, a large and sophisticated indigenous settlement near the river. Looking toward the lake, he would have seen a landscape very different from the one we know today: longhouses, cultivated land, black oak savannah and burned grasslands where High Park now stands. This was a civilization long before it was Baby Point. We recognize and remember things by naming them.

On the process, I have two points.

First, the redistribution process is sequenced in such a way that maps are drafted and ridings named before public consultations occur on particular recommendations. The sequencing could perhaps be revisited by Parliament and by future commissions, though it would be difficult to change in practice. It's hard to consult on particular riding names until an entire map has first been constructed, but perhaps a different process is possible.

Second, members might consider whether Parliament should routinely alter names recommended by independent commissions after redistribution has concluded. You might also consider whether changing riding names is the first step to changing other features of ridings after the process has concluded.

MPs should not, I contend, get to name their own ridings, which might be a fair characterization of what is happening here. I'd be happy to discuss that point further.

I have a final observation. Ridings do not necessarily have to be named after places. Australia commonly names electoral districts after historical figures, and provincial ridings in Quebec, for example, often follow a similar practice. There's much to recommend that approach as well. I personally think there's value in the geographic naming of ridings, because our electoral system remains, at least in part, a system of geographic representation.

I hope these remarks have been helpful. I look forward to your questions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Thank you so much.

We will go to Mr. Cooper for six minutes.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

I'm going to ask Mr. Chipeur some questions regarding third party financing.

As you noted, the bill closes certain loopholes in the Canada Elections Act that have been exploited by foreign actors and certain registered third parties in terms of foreign actors and foreign interests being able to fund registered third parties for regulated activities. In that regard, the bill, as a general rule, requires registered third parties to set up a separate bank account for regulated activities, with the stipulation that contributions to that bank account come only from individual Canadians. However, there is an exception where third parties can use their own funds for regulated activities if contributions constitute 10% or less of the third party's revenue in the year prior to the pre-election period. According to the Chief Electoral Officer, where this exception applies to a third party, the funds used by the third party would be treated as commingled, whatever the source. That could mean contributions from a foreign source, hypothetically.

Would you agree that, with this third party exception in the bill—the 10% exception—loopholes that have enabled third parties to use foreign money for regulated activities are not closed and, in fact, remain wide open?

[Gerald Chipeur]

I would agree, and I would point out that it is completely inconsistent to provide in paragraphs 349.91(4)(a) to 349.91(4)(c) that there is a $200 registration requirement. Anything over $200 must be registered there, yet we could have $200 million come in if the organization was making $2 billion. There are foundations that have that kind of money. There are corporate organizations that have that kind of money. It's illogical to have these two sections right after each other. You're creating something that a freight train could drive through.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB]

When I questioned the Chief Electoral Officer about this loophole, he rebutted by citing general provisions within the Canada Elections Act that prohibit the use of foreign funds by third parties, but these general prohibitions against using foreign funds have been readily exploited by foreign actors and certain registered third parties. Isn't that correct?

[Gerald Chipeur]

Absolutely.

My point is that foreign funds might be prohibited under another section, but the whole idea of third party regulation that was upheld in Harper is the idea that everyone is going to be fairly governed. In this case, certain organizations, because of the fact that they have a lot of money, will not be treated the same as other political parties. In particular, they will not be treated the same as members of Parliament or political parties. They will have an advantage just because of their size.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB]

Okay. I agree with that.

The Chief Electoral Officer has said that this exception is necessary due to charter considerations, including freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Does that make sense to you?

[Gerald Chipeur]

I'm going to give you my personal opinion and then my professional opinion. Personally, I disagree with the Harper decision, so I would agree with the Chief Electoral Officer that we should have absolute freedom of expression. I don't like those kinds of limitations, but that's not the law. I have to live with the law, and so does Parliament.

Harper and all of the cases following Harper make it clear that you may limit third parties and that you may require all donations to be identified. There is no precedent I am aware of that would suggest that there are some individuals who get to make secret donations and don't have to disclose those because of the charter. That's just not the law.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB]

You have extensive experience as a constitutional lawyer. Is that correct?

[Gerald Chipeur]

Yes.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB]

Is it your view that, if this exception were removed, it would be charter-compliant?

[Gerald Chipeur]

Absolutely. There's nothing the charter requires with respect to disclosure. This is just disclosure. It doesn't cause someone to remain silent. It simply requires them to disclose the fact that they're spending money during an election.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB]

It seems to me that the best approach towards closing the very large loopholes that exist, which have been readily exploited, is to consistently apply what this bill attempts to do for what I believe the government thinks would be the vast majority of registered third parties. That is simply to require all third parties—instead of all but those where the exception would apply—to simply set up a bank account and solicit contributions from individual Canadians. Would you agree that that's the best approach?

[Gerald Chipeur]

Absolutely. It's administratively simple, straightforward and consistent with the law that applies to everyone else.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Thank you so much, Mr. Cooper.

I will now turn to Ms. Brière for six minutes.

[Élisabeth Brière, Liberal, Sherbrooke, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will ask my question in French.

Hello, everyone.

Thank you to all the witnesses for joining us.

Ms. Gaumond, with regard to the discussions about foreign interference, disinformation and online content, such as deepfakes, various people are afraid that the stronger measures proposed in Bill C‑25 could be a deterrent to legitimate speech that is protected by freedom of expression.

Do you think Bill C‑25 strikes the right balance between protecting the integrity of the electoral process and the need not to criminalize or limit legitimate democratic debate?

[Eve Gaumond]

In my opinion, yes.

The bill strikes an interesting and effective balance. There is a provision pertaining to impersonation. I believe paragraph 480.1(1)b) pertains to false representation of what someone said. That part is a bit too vague. I will give you the wording of that provision after my colleagues have answered your questions. Other than that, I think the rest of it is sound.

There is another aspect of the bill that has to be considered: where technology use is referred to as deepfakes. There is a sunset clause. Right now, disclosure is desired. It is more broadly prohibited for now, but there is the option to reinterpret in the future if necessary and if artificial intelligence becomes perfectly acceptable and widespread and no longer poses a problem.

Those are the two problems I see, but otherwise Bill C‑25 strikes a good balance, in my opinion.

[Élisabeth Brière, Liberal, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Chipeur, I would like your opinion on that question too. Could you also include the 10% thing?

[Gerald Chipeur]

Thank you.

I agree with my colleague that there is, generally speaking, a good balance within the bill. I agree that sunset laws are wonderful and that it would be a good idea to revisit this—to require yourselves to revisit this—very shortly, because it's not just the law changing. Technology is also changing daily, it seems.

I would suggest that you revisit one section, proposed section 482.01. There is a list of things that would be prohibited. One of the last ones is in proposed paragraph 482.01(g). It would allow prosecution when someone comments on the results of an election. The problem with this is that part 20 of the act allows you to challenge the results of an election. I could see someone saying, “I think the Chief Electoral Officer lost a ballot box.” That sounds like you're challenging the results of the election. If you had a debate over that in a civil court and decided it was or wasn't lost, that's fine. However, putting it into quasi-criminal territory, where just because you raised that question.... In a prosecution, you would have to prove your bona fides. Your good faith would be on the table.

Think about it. Once the election is over, how can your commentary have an impact on that election? It's already done. To me, proposed paragraph 482.01(g) goes further than necessary and therefore would not be a reasonable limit “in a free and democratic society” under section 1 of the charter.

[Élisabeth Brière, Liberal, Sherbrooke, QC]

Can you speak to funding and the 10% limit in relation to freedom of expression?