Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Oct. 7th, 2025

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Jackson, you have five minutes.

[Grant Jackson, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thank you, Chair.

I'd like to confirm something with you, Mr. Szuchewycz. Whoever wrote your submission to the committee—I'm not sure if that was you—said they watched the testimony of the Chief Electoral Officer last week. Was it you who authored that document? Did you watch the Chief Electoral Officer's testimony last week?

[Tomas Szuchewycz]

My brother and I wrote that document. Yes, I watched the testimony last week.

[Grant Jackson, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

You'll have seen that the Chief Electoral Officer testified last week that your actions in various constituencies, whether they were in a general election or a by-election, affected every voter's access to voting. The actions of your organization particularly hurt and blocked the ability of seniors and folks with disabilities to cast their ballot. Those who were born with additional needs and the seniors who built this country should not have barriers put in their way by a political stunt that has no motivation or request from the public to change our electoral system.

What kind of organization would try to prevent those most vulnerable in our society and our seniors from being able access their constitutional right to vote?

[Tomas Szuchewycz]

Mr. Chair, that's a great question. As we all know, the design of federal ballots is prescribed by the Elections Act, which is written by you MPs.

I'm not aware of any documented cases of people being prevented from voting because of too many candidates. I am aware of existing accessibility concerns surrounding the voting process. The Canadian National Institute for the Blind gave a series of recommendations to this very committee on improving accessibility when Bill C-65 was being discussed. I would point out that none of their recommendations have been implemented by you. I would also point out that none of their recommendations involved arbitrarily restricting citizens' rights to run as a candidate.

I'm not an expert on accessible ballot design. I would suggest that you talk to the disability advocates about that.

[Grant Jackson, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

I think the Chief Electoral Officer has spoken to disability advocates and has heard multiple complaints. The number of complaints in this election was higher than it has been before, which was also presented as part of his testimony. Whether or not it's the end goal of your organization, this is the result. People had a more difficult time casting their ballot in this election—both in the Battle River—Crowfoot by-election and in the general election—than ever before. They were predominantly seniors who had to wait in longer lines and found the sometimes metre-long ballot more inaccessible or people with disabilities, including, as you mentioned, people who are vision-impaired.

These actions not only have caused people to be unable to wait in line longer to vote but also meant, in many cases, that people no longer had the ability to vote privately, because they required assistance in the ballot box in order to manage the ballot that your organization forced to be so unwieldy that they could not manage on their own.

Why would you take these actions, and what do you have to say to those Canadians who had their privacy breached because of their inability to manage the ballot on their own because of your campaign's actions?

[Tomas Szuchewycz]

Mr. Chair, again, I don't design the ballots. The ballot design is written in the Elections Act, which means that you MPs actually designed the ballot. If the Chief Electoral Officer had followed the will of Parliament, then it actually would have been twice as long in those two-column situations. Of course, for operational reasons, understandably he had to make emergency amendments to the Elections Act in order not to make it four metres long.

If you're concerned about accessible ballot design, I strongly suggest that you talk to disability advocates, because I'm not an expert on this, and I have no power to change the design of the ballot.

[Grant Jackson, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Sir, with respect, you do have the ability to stop your committee's actions from blowing up our ballots to achieve a political goal where there is no political consensus in this country to change our electoral system. The professor has already noted it. You have a Liberal Party that campaigned on it in 2015 and then backed away from it because they recognized that there was no willingness to change the electoral system—nowhere near a consensus or even close to a majority of Canadians.

You're wasting everybody's time and, in the process, harming some of our most vulnerable Canadians' ability to participate in Canada's democracy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

I will interject there, as it has been five minutes.

Perhaps, Mr. Szuchewycz, you can answer that in subsequent questions that may come up.

We will move along to Madame Kayabaga for five minutes.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I'd like to thank our witnesses for being here today.

I have a question for Dr. Loewen.

Do you think there are any empirical studies in Canada or anywhere else in the world that show that the ballot length affects voter error rates, spoilage or even voter turnout, including the ability of voters to understand the ballot, and how that impacts or doesn't impact their decision-making?

[Peter Loewen]

It's literature that I used to know better 15 or 20 years ago, so I don't want to characterize all of it, but I'll say two things about it. One is that ballot design effects are generally small. Very rarely do ballot design effects matter for the outcome of an election. I think we should be clear about that.

There are, however, a few notable irregularities. One is that ballots that are alphabetically ordered favour people who are at the top of the ballot. There's fairly well-established empirical evidence that ballot order matters, so people who are closer to the top of a ballot matter more. The length of the ballot is thought to increase those effects, because the longer a ballot is, the more likely you might be to say, “Oh, come on. This is too much. I'll just go for someone near the top.” That said, a lot of that comes out of studies in the United States, where you have a lot of different offices that you're voting for at once, for example.

Here's the most notable case. There's pretty good empirical evidence that in Palm Beach County in 2000, Al Gore lost and Pat Buchanan won that county because of the ballot design. They had a so-called butterfly ballot, which opened up in such a way that it was unclear which person you were voting for on which side of the ledger. This is a famous example of how a ballot design can lead to unintended effects.

To make a long story short, I think the effects of this would be small, but the frustration for voters could be real in having to confront a ballot with hundreds of names, which we've never really seen before in Canada.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

As a quick question on that, what kinds of reforms do you think can be brought to bear on the lengthy ballots, especially if they're impeding someone's right to vote and to understand the ballot, and the kinds of impacts they may have on that decision-making?

[Peter Loewen]

I think the tension you have here, in designing the legislation, is this: How high a bar do you set that makes this kind of gumming up the ballot very difficult, yet is not too high so that a sincere candidate, who may not have the backing of a party or who may have the backing of a party that's not popular in that part of the country, can still get over that bar?

I will tell you that the thing that stood out to me, as I learned more about this, was the idea that a single agent can act on behalf of multiple candidates. I think that most Canadians would find that curious. We understand that elections are competitive processes among teams of people, so the idea that you would have one coach or manager for multiple teams strikes people—I think, rightfully—as against the competitive spirit of the election and suggests that this is something other than candidates who want to contest the election. I think it is clear, even from what the committee has said, that they're not actually about putting up competitive candidates. They're about making the larger point that they want a different electoral system from the one that we have.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

To switch gears a little, I just want to hear your thoughts on the risk of foreign influence through political financing. What do you think are the many vulnerabilities that exist in our political financing regime right now?

[Peter Loewen]

It's a good question, and it's one on which I'm not an expert. You will hear from other people who are experts on it.

I think the biggest vulnerability is a bit of what I articulated to Mr. Louis, but put slightly differently. As the costs of communicating go down, the ability of people to use small amounts of money to influence our elections is greater than it was before. The idea is that it would be impossible for a person from Russia to put an ad on the CBC or CTV, but it's not impossible for them to put one on Twitter. The permeability of platforms versus broadcast and radio networks is, I think, probably the most serious vulnerability. It's less about where the money is coming from; it's about the ability of money to be put to speech on these platforms.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Thank you so much, Madame Kayabaga.

We will proceed to Madame Normandin. I'm just keeping in mind that we are approaching noon, but we do have a little bit of extra time, so I will add another minute for the remaining three questioners.

You have three and a half minutes, Madame Normandin.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Szuchewycz, the idea behind the Longest Ballot Committee was to campaign for electoral reform. I would like to hear your thoughts on how effective your message has been in reaching the public. Do you feel that the initiative you launched has enabled the public to truly understand what you were trying to achieve?

[Tomas Szuchewycz]

Mr. Chair, I think my being invited here is pretty good evidence that we've been very successful. We get lots of media attention. Just at a basic level, whenever I talk to someone and say, “Hey, did you know politicians write the rules of their own elections?”, they say, “Oh, that's stupid.” It clicks with people right away. It's very obviously a conflict of interest.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

I will rephrase my question.

People are aware of the existence of the Longest Ballot Committee, but in your opinion, do they understand your message regarding electoral reform?

[Tomas Szuchewycz]

Yes, I think people do understand the message. It's very straightforward that politicians are obviously in a conflict of interest when they are in charge of writing the rules for their own elections. It's a very simple message, and people understand it and generally agree with me, unless they have partisan interests.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

I understand that you are using your presence here to gauge the success of your endeavour. Do you have any other indicators of the clarity of your message and how it is reaching the public?

[Tomas Szuchewycz]

As I said, we get a lot of media attention. It's really great. We get a lot of candidates putting themselves out there and doing media interviews. We've had international attention for the first person in history to get zero votes, so that was very cool.

We get lots of positive messages. People are always happy to see what we're doing, and they want to join next time. It's been very positive, and people really resonate with the message that politicians shouldn't be in charge of the rules of their own elections.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

At the risk of repeating myself, one of the ways you measure the success of your actions is your presence here. That’s what you said.

Do you really feel that your presence here contributes to your call for electoral reform, or, on the contrary, are you undermining the credibility of an issue that is nevertheless very legitimate and commendable?

[Tomas Szuchewycz]

As I was saying, people with partisan interests obviously don't want to hear that election laws should be decided by non-partisan bodies. You people are in charge of the Elections Act, and I get to be right here in front of you, telling you that maybe you shouldn't be, so yes, this is very positive.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Thank you very much.

I'd like to thank Madame Normandin. She is always on time and keeping track of the time, which is something for all of us to strive toward.

Thank you very much.

Mr. Calkins, you have six minutes, please.