Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Oct. 9th, 2025

I think it's necessary to study this, and I'm glad you're studying it. I also think it's necessary not to blow it out of proportion. We have a world in which we're facing a number of serious problems, and we shouldn't pretend the longest ballot committee is going to destroy Canadian elections and make it impossible for folks to run and get elected. The fact is, the vast majority of people who run are running with parties. If you're going to win, you're likely to be with a party.

The problem is the long-term chipping away at the quality of our elections and trust in our elections, and making life more difficult for the people who make the elections in this country possible. Frankly, this country has one of the best electoral machines in the world. We run the best elections in the world, and we run them with a piece of paper and a writing implement. We have part-time, full-time and temporary workers who have other things they do, and we should work very hard to preserve that. I don't worry that the longest ballot folks are going to destroy Canadian elections, but I do worry that, if it gets scaled up or persists over time, it's going to start to add up and create problems.

As for prescriptions, I was listening to the testimony of Dr. Turnbull and others, and I was thinking that there are a few sensible things. One, I thought you couldn't have one person be an agent for more than one candidate. It is absurd to me that this is the case. That seems like an extraordinary oversight on the part of regulation in the first place, so that's a gimme, I think.

The other is this: Whether it's 100 unique signatures, or perhaps you can sign three to five, it's reasonable to have a bit more grit to get onto the ballot, in order to prevent stunts like this. It's a protest, but I also think it's a stunt. It needs to be corrected to preserve trust long-term, but we shouldn't overreact. In a sense, if we end up overreacting, the cure is going to be a bit worse than the ailment.

Liberal

Jonathan Wilkinson Liberal North Vancouver—Capilano, BC

Thank you.

Let me ask you a question about disinformation and misinformation. You appeared before PROC in 2018. Obviously, a lot of things have happened with respect to artificial intelligence and other things since then. At that time, you spoke about the need to be vigilant. Could you tell me about how your views have evolved and what we should be thinking about in that regard?

As an Individual

Well, things haven't gotten better. Things have gotten so much worse. When I get nervous about the future of Canadian democracy, I get nervous about the information environment.

When I did my Ph.D., I studied the psychology of democratic deliberation and political decision-making. I often joke that if you were to custom-design a world hostile to making informed, honest, good-faith and rigorous political decisions, it would look exactly like ours. It moves way too fast and there's way too much information. There are often emotional or in-group considerations that trump rational reasons or the public good. There's a massive corporate incentive to feed people slop to keep their eyeballs glued to the machines in their pockets that make them money. It's bad news.

However, we don't want to over-prescribe a solution that makes life difficult for people who are just trying to navigate the Internet and get through their day. We have the unenviable task of trying to rethink how we build citizens. It's very tough.

I'm in favour of an approach that labels. People should know what they're looking at and they should know what they're reading. They should have a sense that they can trust it. That onus will likely fall, in part, on the platforms.

We also need to build better citizens. We need people who have the capacity and the literacy to navigate a changing information environment. That's going to take effort by organizations and to some extent the state, but it's also personal responsibility. People have to want to be able to navigate this space.

When you look at data on who shares misinformation and disinformation, and who falls for it and who doesn't, you often see that there's a split among the population. Some folks who grew up with this technology are better able to navigate it than those who didn't. We may need an asymmetrical approach to see who's actually falling for this and where.

I'll close out on this point. I read this morning a bit from the Media Ecosystem Observatory saying that in the last election, influencers dominated political discourse. Something like nearly half of the engagement and the information that was shared about the election wasn't from politicians and wasn't from the media. It was from influencers. We don't even know what's going on there.

I would recommend to the committee and to the folks here that at some point, we ought to be thinking about that very carefully as part and parcel of this.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Chris Bittle

Thank you very much, Mr. Wilkinson. That was exactly six minutes.

We're moving right along.

We now go to Ms. Normandin for six minutes.

Bloc

Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC

Thank you.

Since the beginning of the study, our main goal has been to figure out whether we need to reform the act, to prevent actions such as those taken by the longest ballot committee in the future, or whether we should refrain from doing so. After all, a more restrictive act would have negative consequences as well. That is the balance we are trying to achieve and that is what my questions will focus on. They are for both of you.

In light of all this attention on the longest ballot committee and the violations that were committed, which you talked about, Mr. Davies, do you think the movement could die out on its own? Isn't it likely that fewer people would want to put their names forward, knowing that they could be violating the Canada Elections Act?

As an Individual

I mentioned forbearance earlier. I was thinking about this yesterday while walking around. I thought, I'm going to think about this as a democratic theorist. I'm going to think about this as a journalist. I'm going to think about this as a citizen of this country. I'm going to think about this as someone who actually supports electoral reform. What's the best outcome here? The best outcome is that they stop. It's that they take the message, exercise some forbearance and say, this isn't working and in fact it's doing harm to our elections and also our stated goals, so let's try something else and let's move on.

Then, perhaps, Parliament could look at small legislative changes to make it slightly less likely that this happens in the future.

Honest to God, I think the best answer is that they stop. I know they'll be seeing this. I certainly hope they take that message to heart, because it's not doing us any good.

Northern Perspective

We've done a lot of monitoring of the long ballot social media. They've been monitoring these committee meetings. They were monitoring the committee meetings last fall. They have heard all of these suggestions. On their own social media, they are saying not to worry, that no matter what happens, they're going to continue. They seem intent on this.

I think that was evidenced in the original court decision in Alberta, in 2017, when the lead organizer, Kieran, tried to have all of the restrictions to register as a candidate and to vote wiped away. Luckily, Judge Inglis ended up only striking down the $1,000 bond.

Bloc

Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC

As the Canada Elections Act is currently drafted, is there a way to better enforce the act so that this doesn't happen again? Is that possible?

As an Individual

I don't know the details about signature checking. I did listen to the testimony previously and heard that some candidates.... The returning officer rejected some things, so there was a check and balance there at some point.

Here's the thing. If there are problems with signatures, that needs to be caught before a candidate is on the ballot. If it's caught after the fact, then we're talking about consequences for that, but the damage to the public good is already done, to some extent. If people who ought not to be there are sneaking onto the ballot, that's a problem, and now we don't need to talk about checking these things a priori.

Incidentally, if we can't control signatures now and if we're going to introduce further restrictions on signature requirements, we need to be sure we're ready to actually check them. We can't just say, “Well, we'll let Elections Canada figure it out later.” This comes at a time when the country is looking at reducing budgets, so there is also a budgetary concern. If we are going to spend money, are people going to be ready to spend this money to do it?

I would say, before we start looking at making things tougher, make sure you can actually enforce the regulations that you currently have on the books.

Northern Perspective

I would say that I agree. Money is going to be the issue here.

There's an issue with the Canada Elections Act as it is right now. I look at this from a process architecture perspective, where this is just a big process on how to run an election. However, I don't see any controls in place for this process. You can say, for a candidate, or for a person who is authorized to act on a candidate's behalf, that is a requirement. I don't see any way to enforce that. Where's the control for that? There are many other examples in the Canada Elections Act where that's the case. The Chief Electoral Officer admitted that they don't have the resources to even implement any controls to check the act as is.

Bloc

Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC

If we are constantly trying to fix something, don't we actually run the risk of encouraging groups like the longest ballot committee to find all the gaps, all the loopholes in the act? We don't want to end up playing cat and mouse and ultimately missing the mark.

As an Individual

Absolutely. As we heard from Mr. Davies a second ago, if the longest ballot committee decides to keep going in different iterations, it's going to be whack-a-mole. We're all going to be back here in 18 months—maybe that's too soon—or in two and a half to four years, doing this again, and then again.

Meanwhile, there are serious problems at scale about the misinformation and disinformation environment, about the health of our democracy and so on. This is why I keep saying that often the best solution is forbearance, but if that's impossible, then it's going to invite a response that works against the outcomes that the longest ballot committee wants. It's going to make life more difficult for people to engage in electoral democracy. It's going to make people less inclined to want proportional representation. I'm less inclined to want it. I've been fighting for it for 15 years. I wake up thinking that it's getting hard to go to bat for this.

I hope they take this seriously, because I think there's a very serious problem, and the last thing we need is a game of whack-a-mole right now.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Chris Bittle

Thank you, Ms. Normandin.

We will go on to Mr. Calkins for five minutes, please.

Conservative

Blaine Calkins Conservative Ponoka—Didsbury, AB

Thank you very much, Chair.

Mr. Davies, in your opening testimony, you were very clear in what you surmise to be happening here, based on the information that you have. Could you elaborate a bit more on why you think the longest ballot committee is actually operating as a political party rather than as a protest group?

Northern Perspective

You just have to look at your own political parties. It doesn't matter which one you're a part of—Liberal, Bloc, NDP, Green, PPC, or what have you. If someone wants to know more about your party, where do they go? They go to your centralized party website, where you have all of your media. The longest ballot committee was centralized on X, and now they're centralized on Bluesky. Most of their media isn't there. They have random social media posts that they put up there, but all of their formalized statements, political statements and formal responses—even to committee meetings or to statements by the Chief Electoral Officer—are all posted on the Marxist-Leninist Party website, so there's that. They formalize all of that into one specific website.

Where it really comes into play is that they operate as if they're a political apparatus. They're talking to their candidates as if they're running across the country, but they're not; they're running in one riding. They give them all one direction. They're running under a single platform. They are—

Conservative

Blaine Calkins Conservative Ponoka—Didsbury, AB

Just to be clear, a political entity is allowed to have only one candidate on the ballot in each constituency. Is that correct?

Northern Perspective

October 9th, 2025 / 11:30 a.m.

That's correct.

Conservative

Blaine Calkins Conservative Ponoka—Didsbury, AB

You believe they're committing an offence either by running more than one candidate or by failing to register as a party. Is that correct?

Northern Perspective

That's correct. The main crux of it is that a registered party is allowed to run only one candidate per riding, so they get around this by not being registered.

Conservative

Blaine Calkins Conservative Ponoka—Didsbury, AB

Do you think a legitimate candidate gets zero, one or two votes in an election?

Northern Perspective

I think a legitimate candidate would be embarrassed to get that number.

Conservative

Blaine Calkins Conservative Ponoka—Didsbury, AB

I've personally been quite frustrated, since 2017, with a decision by a court in Alberta. Ironically, the witness who was here on behalf of the longest ballot committee is suggesting that people outside of Parliament should be making rules. We have a ruling made by a judge in Alberta in 2017. Somebody who's not a politician, has likely never run and appears to have no political experience whatsoever made a decision to remove the $1,000 bond. I've often thought it was a mistake by the government at the time not to appeal that decision.

Can you tell me more? The individual was Kieran Szuchewycz, and the case was Szuchewycz v. Canada. Is there any relation between that Mr. Szuchewycz and the one who testified here two days ago?

Northern Perspective

Sure. He's the brother of Tomas Szuchewycz.

The biggest thing that jumped out at me in this decision is in paragraph 23, which reads, “The Applicant submits that while the deposit requirement is allegedly an attempt to deter frivolous candidates, it may well deter non-frivolous candidates who are not affluent.”