Evidence of meeting #34 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was political.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Lawyer, As an Individual
I'm not aware of any. More importantly, over the last 40 years, I've heard of cases where someone took a ballot box home. What if there was an allegation and then it turned out not to be true? Did they act in good faith? Did they have enough information to make the allegation?
To me, why would you do that when in fact it can't have any impact on the election? The election's already done.
Lawyer, As an Individual
I'm just saying take it out, because the election's done.
Conservative
Grant Jackson Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
In fact, the Chief Electoral Officer confirmed that it's actually a normal process for ballot boxes to be taken home in some circumstances by deputy returning officers for storage, until the boxes can be opened and counted.
Lawyer, As an Individual
But when they come back with more ballots than were issued, it sometimes raises questions.
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Chris Bittle
I will be equal in my cruelty: Ms. Fancy, you have four minutes, please.
Liberal
Jessica Fancy-Landry Liberal South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
As always, thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses.
I'd like to talk primarily with Mr. Loewen today in regard to nominations, unique official agents and long ballots. Bill C-25 contains two primary measures to deter these unruly long ballots. Notably, voters can sign only one nomination paper. Each candidate in a riding will also need one official agent.
I'm wondering if you could speak to the importance of including both the measures we have proposed in Bill C-25. What do you think are some of the merits of each of these measures individually? As well, why do you think it is important to include both?
Harold Tanner Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Cornell University, As an Individual
Thank you very much.
I was here at committee last autumn on this long ballot measure. I was glad to be included in that.
The long ballot effort is not an effort to enhance Canadian democracy. It's just an effort to gum up the works by people who have tried to reform the electoral system and have lost on every occasion they've tried. That's just the political reality of it. I'm glad you're trying to address it, because I think it is a nuisance and it's burdensome to elections.
On those two particular measures, limiting it to a single agent for single candidates is a very advisable thing. People may have a hard time convincing 200 other people to get involved in their shenanigans in trying to create long ballots.
On the issue of an individual signing multiple candidacies, I think there's potential for it to be a problem only because we all know people in our communities who are local notables and will help anyone out. You can imagine them being approached one month to sign a person's nomination. They sign it for the person to be on the ballot, and then they sign another one a few weeks later, and they forget they've done it. I would be concerned about the potential for that to be...not restrictive in creating candidates, but to create problems after an election that further gum up the works.
To the degree that the parties here can recognize that these long ballots are not helpful to voters in finding sincere candidates on their ballots, I think it's highly advisable that you do something.
Liberal
Jessica Fancy-Landry Liberal South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
What about the last part of the question, regarding having some of these official agents with multiple candidates?
Harold Tanner Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Cornell University, As an Individual
To be certain, I think allowing people to act as an agent only to a single candidate per riding is reasonable. If you say that an agent can't work for multiple candidates across ridings, it becomes restrictive, especially for start-up parties.
Liberal
Jessica Fancy-Landry Liberal South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
I come from a rural, coastal community where sometimes there are only one or two people who have that type of notability around the area, so I can see that piece.
Can you share your thoughts regarding some of the provisions of Bill C-25 that seek to prevent anonymous and sometimes hard-to-trace contributions by prohibiting political entities for all of their activities, and third parties for regulated political or election activities, from accepting contributions in the form of cryptocurrency, money orders or prepaid payment products? I want to know if you think this measure will help ensure transparency in our political financing regime.
Harold Tanner Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Cornell University, As an Individual
I'll just make two points on it.
Trying to regulate the medium of exchange will become increasingly difficult. The crypto stuff is all a grey area, but there are methods of payment that are becoming more acceptable and regularized.
The bigger challenge for you, as a committee, with bills like this is this: Whatever one thinks about restrictions on third parties, to Mr. Chipeur's point, it is the law. We've established that we're allowed to limit the speech of third parties so that elections are mainly fought between political parties. The way that's normally done—and you see it in this bill—is by regulating what individuals or organizations do by saying that these ones can speak and these ones can't—that is to say, legal entities or persons, in a sense. The second thing is limiting spending, with the notion that spending equals speech.
It's very plausible that we're getting into a world in which it's not people you're trying to regulate but agents, where someone is setting up a series of agents online that are then distributing information. They're not people and they're not organizations; they're something else. That's first.
Second, they do it at a cost basis that's close to zero. The idea that you will regulate the speech of people who shouldn't be allowed to speak during elections by identifying individuals or organizations and limiting their spending.... Pretty soon that will be fighting last year's war. That becomes a real challenge for you from a regulatory perspective.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Chris Bittle
Thank you so much.
I'd like to thank our witnesses for appearing today.
The committee will suspend for a few minutes while we set up our next panel.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Chris Bittle
Welcome back, everyone.
I'd like to introduce our next panel. We have, as an individual, Holly Ann Garnett, class of 1965 professor in leadership, Royal Military College of Canada, by video conference; Chris Tenove, assistant director, centre for the study of democratic institutions, University of British Columbia; and in person, the co-founder of Democracy Watch, Duff Conacher.
You'll each have five minutes.
Since you're here in person, Mr. Conacher, we'll go to you first for five minutes.
Duff Conacher Co-founder, Board Member and Chairperson, Government Ethics Coalition, Democracy Watch
Thank you very much, Chair, for this opportunity to speak before the committee on this very important bill, C-25, changing the Canada Elections Act. This is the eighth or ninth time I've been before the committee concerning this bill. I will make my presentation in English.
I have to practice my French, and there are a lot of technical terms in this area.
I filed with the committee a list of the recommended changes to the bill that I am summarizing today, changes to close the huge loopholes in Canada's election law that allow for secret, dishonest, unethical and undemocratic interference and influence by foreign governments, businesses and organizations, and by wealthy interest groups and individuals in Canada's nomination and party leadership contests, elections and by-elections. I also filed a detailed report on changes needed to close these loopholes with this committee in February, during its study of foreign election interference. If you want even more details, you can find my Ph.D. thesis online, but I warn you that it's more than 900 pages, so that's a lot of detail to absorb.
Unfortunately, the provisions in Bill C-25, in its current form, are incomplete, weak and ineffective and will do much too little to close these huge loopholes. Flaws and gaps in the bill mean that, among other failures, it fails to fix election dates. Snap elections are fundamentally unfair in many ways, including that pre-election spending limits do not apply when a snap election is called.
The bill also still allows most of the disinformation posts on social media, because the prohibition in the bill is much too narrow and unenforceable. It applies only to some false claims that a person knowingly posts with an intent to affect the outcome of the election or by-election. The Chief Electoral Officer and the commissioner of Canada Elections testified before this committee and in the Senate in 2018 in regard to Bill C-76, and both said that proving intent is essentially impossible, so if you require it, it makes the measure unenforceable.
The bill also still allows donations that only wealthy voters can afford. The total annual donation limit currently is a combined $3,550, which is much more than most voters can afford. Seventy-five per cent of donors give only $75 each year.
The bill increases secrecy around fundraising events by lobbyists and people who want something from party leaders, making it essentially impossible to determine whether a lobbyist is helping organize or holding a fundraising event for a party, riding association, candidate, nomination contestant or party leadership contestant. It does nothing to require disclosure of other fundraising activities. All that secrecy is a recipe for corruption, waste, trading of favours and other abuses.
The bill fails to require disclosure of donations to and spending by third party interest groups during nomination and party leadership contests, unlike the U.S., which does require disclosure.
It also continues to allow third parties to use their own funds to influence elections, which hides the actual donors of the money, because the measures in Bill C-25 are easy to get around. That's also unlike the U.S., which requires disclosure during primaries and election years of all donations to third parties, known as political action committees in the U.S. To be clear, our measures in Canada are weaker than the U.S. measures during an election year for third party spending and donation disclosure.
The bill fails to set lower spending limits for third party spending by individual voters, businesses and organizations that are supported by only a few voters.
The only effective way to close these loopholes to ensure free, fair and democratic nomination and party leadership contests in elections and by-elections is to prevent, prohibit and penalize disinformation and secret, unethical and undemocratic influence. Bill C-25 does almost nothing to prevent these activities and much too little to clearly prohibit them. It is good that the bill is increasing the penalties significantly in all these areas.
If you are in favour of and support and approve of Bill C-25 in its current loophole-filled form, you support and approve of unfair snap elections called at a time that favours the ruling party and foreign government and foreign entity-funded front groups continuing to interfere in Canada's political system by secretly spending unlimited amounts of money to influence nomination and party leadership contests.
Foreign government and foreign entity-funded individuals continue to interfere in Canada's political system by spending millions to influence a federal election. If this bill passes, a single voter or a number of companies supported by very few voters will still be allowed to spend millions of dollars of their own money directly or by funnelling donations to interest groups, most of it secretly, with no disclosure of the individuals, the entity or the people behind the numbered company.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Chris Bittle
Thank you, Mr. Conacher.
We'll now go online to Ms. Garnett for five minutes, please.
Holly Ann Garnett Class of 1965 Professor in Leadership, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual
Thanks for this opportunity to speak to this committee today.
I'm the class of 1965 professor in leadership at the Royal Military College of Canada, and I hold cross appointments at Queen's University and the University of East Anglia in the U.K. I am also the co-director of the Electoral Integrity Project, an international network of scholars and practitioners seeking to improve the quality of elections with academic evidence. My current Canadian research agenda focuses on political financing and public trust in elections.
In this vein, I want to address in my opening remarks the issue of the third party financing regime that has come up in previous discussions of this committee. I hope to give some additional context from the broader study of electoral integrity.
Third party financing regimes in Canada seek to balance two democratic principles. On the one hand, there is the freedom for all groups and individuals to engage in deliberation. On the other hand, there's a desire to see that firstly, these conversations are not drowned out by a small number of well-funded groups or individuals and, more recently, that only Canadians are engaging in this debate, rather than foreign actors.
There is reason to be wary of overly limiting third party spending in elections. Third parties come together as Canadians to share beliefs or concerns about issues. The organization of citizens around common goals is important for a robust civil society and thus a robust democracy. Third parties have included advocacy organizations, medical or trade associations, unions or corporations. These are all groups and people who we want to engage in the conversation during elections and who may have expertise or experience that can enrich the political debate.
To put this debate in context, it is important to remember that third party spending limits in Canada are among the lowest in comparable democracies. In the U.K., limits were approximately 700,000 pounds, and there are no third party spending limits currently in effect in Australia. To put this into perspective, third party spending limits, if an election were held this year, are about $630,000 overall, or a little over $5,000 in a specific riding, compared to spending limits of over $35 million for a major political party. We are talking about an already quite limited amount of money.
From listening to the discussions about Bill C-25 that have already taken place, my understanding is that the main concern identified is less about the strength of third party voices and the deliberative space of elections and more about whether the funds used to contribute to this debate are authentically Canadian. Bill C-25 makes really important steps in this regard. First, the prohibition against donations of less easily traceable contributions, including anonymous contributions, can help provide transparency. Also, the addition that third parties must not simply be based in Canada to influence elections helps to close a potential means for foreign actors to gain access to the system.
One concern that has been brought up in this committee is whether to allow third parties to use their own funds if the contributions they receive are not over 10% of their annual budget. This could open the door to allowing foreign entities to fund third party campaigns via other revenue streams such as general donations or payment for work or services; however, I believe this to be an entirely reasonable balance between the principles of freedom of debate and freedom from foreign interference that I mentioned earlier for a few practical reasons.
First, not all third parties are contribution-based organizations. They may use membership dues or the revenues of a corporation. Thus, the 10% rule seeks to ensure that these types of third parties are not pushed out of the electoral conversation and can engage in the debate with their own revenues.
Second, third parties do not register until the pre-electoral or electoral period in the current regime. Since elections can take place at largely any point in Canada, third parties must be allowed some flexibility to use their own funds in engaging in the electoral debate.
All this being said, I am enthusiastic about the steps towards further strengthening Canada's third party financing regime. It is already one of the most stringent and well respected around the world, and this bill will enhance the safeguards already in place.
In the Q and A section, I will also be pleased to discuss other parts of the bill, including measures put in place to ensure the seriousness of candidates and their nominators, measures to include the nomination process in electoral safeguards, and means to address disinformation. However, I'll leave it there for now.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Chris Bittle
Thank you so much.
We'll now turn to Mr. Tenove for five minutes, please.
Chris Tenove Assistant Director, Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Thank you very much to the committee for inviting me today to discuss how to protect Canada's elections.
My name is Chris Tenove. I'm a political scientist and the assistant director of the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions at the University of British Columbia, where I research digital media, democracy and tech regulation.
Today, I'm going to focus on challenges posed by artificial intelligence and social media. My general observation is that Bill C-25 resembles a security patch for electoral software. It fixes some important weaknesses and should be promptly enacted, possibly with some changes, but a more substantial update to the operating system is still needed.
I will flag gaps that remain regarding four issues. These are AI-generated content, false claims about electoral processes, chatbot errors and bias, and AI agents.
First, generative AI can create synthetic media that impersonates individuals or official publications. That's a real risk. The amendments to sections 480.1 and 481 are appropriate.
The Chief Electoral Officer and others have suggested that all synthetic content in electoral communications should be labelled as well. That may be helpful, but I don't think it's essential at this time. Enforcement would be difficult, and the core problem is misleading content, not necessarily that it is AI-generated. However, the deceptive use of unlabelled synthetic content could be a factor when determining whether an actor is being intentionally misleading.
Second, generative AI and social media platforms make it easier to spread false claims about electoral processes. Bill C-25 appropriately clarifies and expands prohibitions on such claims. I am sympathetic to the Chief Electoral Officer's proposal to add “intent to delegitimize elections” as a prohibited purpose, though that language may need to be narrowed. Importantly, neither the Chief Electoral Officer nor the commissioner of Canada elections currently has the authority to require prompt removal of prohibited impersonation or false claims about elections processes. The B.C. Elections Act gives Elections BC exactly this power, and I propose that equivalent authority be given to the commissioner of Canada elections.
Third, citizens increasingly get civic information from general-use chatbots like ChatGPT, AI companions and AI search tools. However, these models sometimes give incorrect information regarding elections. For instance, Demos, a UK-based think tank, tested several AI services during the Scottish parliamentary election and found that 34% of responses contained factual errors, including wrong dates and hallucinated candidates. Such errors could harm election participation.
Beyond errors, AI services may deliver biased outputs. For instance, in 2025, the Dutch data protection authority warned voters not to use chatbots for voting advice after finding that popular chatbots vastly over-recommended certain parties. Risks of bias become more acute if AI models face data-poisoning attacks or are designed to advance a bias, perhaps in alignment with business models. It's worth noting that OpenAI has begun running ads on ChatGPT in some markets.
Election laws should ensure that chatbots and other AI services document and report all political ad spending, and Bill C-25 should close any gaps. Moreover, just as the Elections Act was amended to improve transparency for social media advertising through ad registries, we need new mechanisms to bring transparency to AI services to address harmfully inaccurate or manipulated information.
Fourth, AI agents can do more than create content. They can plan, take autonomous action, coordinate across platforms, and raise and spend money. Responsible actors will build in human oversight and malicious ones will not. I suggest that you confirm that there is language that holds responsible those who use AI agents for prohibited activities and requires parties and other actors to ensure that there is a responsible individual organization behind all contributions.
Finally, election law alone cannot detect, stop and secure accountability for malicious AI agent activity and other threats I've mentioned. It needs to be supported by broader AI and platform regulation in order to act on illegal activity and impose obligations to mitigate systemic harms. We also need stronger protections for citizens' data that's held by political parties.
These are all parts of the updated operating system that I think Canadian democracy needs, in addition to the near-term patch that Bill C-25 provides.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Chris Bittle
Thank you so much.
We will now go to questions.
We'll turn first to Mr. Cooper for six minutes, please.
Conservative
Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to direct my questions to Mr. Conacher. You cited what you characterized as being huge loopholes in the bill, including with respect to the third party financing regime, which would allow the use of foreign funds. I presume that, by “a major loophole”, you were referring to the exception in the bill whereby certain third parties could use their own funds if contributions constituted 10% or less of the third party's revenue in the year prior to the pre-election period. Is that the loophole you're referencing?
Co-founder, Board Member and Chairperson, Government Ethics Coalition, Democracy Watch
Yes, and a key thing that others are not mentioning is that it is just the threshold of 10% of your revenue during the previous year. You can choose the fiscal year or calendar year, so it makes it very simple for someone to make a huge donation before the previous year, and then you can use those funds as your own funds and not disclose where that money came from. It's a ridiculously huge loophole. The threshold should be extended to 0%, and it should go right back to the last election.
Conservative
Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB
When you talk about this being quite easy, it's because, in a fixed election date timeline, it's quite easy for third parties and foreign interests to make donations or solicit donations two years in advance, for example, and those funds would be treated as melded.