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

[Jon Pammett]

Whether it is time to act is a question I was trying to avoid. I don't know whether I'm the one to decide that.

If it's convenient and if there's general agreement, perhaps—I don't know whether there is or not—and if it doesn't take up a lot of time.... What I'm thinking, of course, as I said before, is that this is all on the basis mainly of what might happen if things got worse, rather than the current situation. It's quite possible that this might peter out. If it's possible, then yes, I think it should be corrected.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC]

You've been listening to the testimony. Dr. Garnett said that it would be appropriate to change the law to require 100 unique signatures and to limit the ability of one person to acting as an official agent for just one candidate.

Do you think that both of those changes would be reasonable?

[Jon Pammett]

Yes, I do.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC]

I have a question for Dr. Garnett.

You talked about conflicts of interest for parliamentarians to be passing laws and reviewing laws relating to elections and citizens' assemblies. Perhaps you could comment on that. Are we actually in a conflict of interest?

I would note that in my home province of British Columbia, there have been several citizens' assemblies to deal with exactly this issue of electoral reform, and each one of those has resulted in a referendum where the electors of the province turned down any attempts at electoral reform. Perhaps you could comment on that.

[Holly Ann Garnett]

Thank you for that question.

One thing I want to highlight is that there are political interests involved for all stakeholders: not just for politicians but also for citizens and advocacy groups. Anyone involved in the electoral reform process—any stakeholder—is going to have political interests involved. It's a matter of using electoral reform processes that are going to build upon the principles that can ensure that is being done in a transparent manner.

There are some ways to go about doing that. The first is to clearly identify challenges before identifying solutions. You'd be surprised how many times solutions come for problems that don't exist. Try to use empirical evidence and consult those who have done the research on the impacts of these sorts of reforms. Allow input from a variety of stakeholders, which includes you as politicians but also community groups and advocacy organizations, in an acknowledgement that there are political incentives for all actors involved. Establish clear timelines and have a transparency of goals and processes. Have oversight by independent actors.

Citizens' assemblies are not the only way to go about doing that. Parliament can pass laws as well. It's just about ensuring that the procedure being used is following those general principles. I can direct you to the global network for securing electoral integrity for a set of principles that you might find interesting to take into consideration when reforming election laws.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC]

Thank you.

Have you had any opportunity to research the electoral reform attempts in my province of British Columbia?

[Holly Ann Garnett]

I have, yes.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC]

There have been several referendums, and the citizens always just turn down any attempts at reform.

[Holly Ann Garnett]

Yes. I think the citizens' assemblies on electoral reform that have happened in British Columbia, in Ontario and in other places demonstrate a few things. First of all, they show that this form of deliberate mini-public can happen and can take place in a constructive way and can be very useful for talking through different technical proposals that maybe not all citizens have a chance to really dig into deeply. That can be a very positive thing.

However, I think something we've also seen is that even the use of citizens' assemblies is not going to eliminate political considerations. The way they are set up, the sorts of thresholds that are required for any sort of action to take place afterwards, the way the public is educated about these sorts of issues.... These are all going to be decisions that are essentially political decisions. I think it's a misnomer to think that citizens' assemblies are the only way to reduce the politics from these sorts of decisions, because there is politics involved in citizens' assemblies as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Thank you so much. The time is up.

Mr. Louis, you have six minutes, please.

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to both of the witnesses for being here today. I will start by directing my questions to Dr. Garnett.

Something I want to talk about is campaign financing in Canada. I'm quite proud of our system. I think it's designed to uphold fairness, transparency and accessibility. By placing strict limits on individual contributions, we ensure that political influence is not reserved only for those who can afford it. I think that public financing mechanisms help to level the playing field and allow candidates from diverse backgrounds and communities to run viable campaigns. These rules not only reduce the undue influence of money in politics, but they also empower more Canadians to participate in our electoral system. However, a fast-changing tech environment makes it difficult to trace money that enters our political financing system.

Dr. Garnett, I understand that your research focuses on election integrity and campaign financing. Can you tell us about some suggestions you have to make our campaign financing more transparent, particularly with respect to third parties? Also, what can be done to limit problematic funds from entering our system?

[Holly Ann Garnett]

Thank you for that question. This is something I love to talk about.

You're absolutely correct. In the Electoral Integrity Project, one of the things we do is monitor cross-nationally the integrity of different stages of the electoral cycle, and Canada frequently comes out right on top in terms of campaign finance, because we have very strict donation caps. We have very strict limits as to how much you can spend. Many of my colleagues are very surprised at how much you would spend on one of your campaigns, so this is something we really have to safeguard.

The challenge with third parties is essentially that we see in other countries that third parties are being used as a means to circumvent those election financing rules. You end up with interest groups, corporations, unions and even wealthy individuals who end up taking over that deliberative space in elections. It hasn't happened yet in Canada, but we've seen it happen in other countries, including with our neighbours to the south.

What we have to do, then, is limit the ability of certain rich interests or certain specific groups that have a lot of money to overtake that campaign, while also not limiting the ability of citizens to come together as groups to engage in deliberation. We want to encourage that. How do we do that? Essentially, as you said, we can look to our campaign regulations for parties and candidates as a guide, because it does seem to strike the right balance in terms of not limiting expression and also recognizing the important role that parties, candidates and even third party groups can have in this moment of deliberation. We want to have vigorous deliberation. We don't want to reduce it and tell people that nobody can be using money to talk about these sorts of issues.

I think a lot of the measures that were in the previous Bill C-65 were good starts there—spending based on individual donations from domestic actors only, to limit the influence of foreign actors, and transparency in reporting, which at the moment does exist, so that you can go in and take a look. There hasn't been quite as much study of transparent reporting, which is something I hope to do.

The challenge, of course, with all of this is that many individuals or organizations, especially if they are not based in Canada, are not going to follow the official channels. That's where things get a little more tricky, because we know that those sorts of issues are very hard to legislate. It's very hard to find rules and laws that the sorts of actors who are not following the official channels and who may not be within Canada are going to follow. For that, I'm afraid I don't have super easy solutions that involve legislation. Rather, we need to look at more broad-based foreign policy and also domestic policy on how we educate people.

I would say, though, that some of the discussion that happened last fall about third parties and recognizing their role is perhaps a conversation that should resume.

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Are you referring to untraceable donations, like cryptocurrency, money orders or prepaid cards? Is that part of the challenge in trying to track that down?

[Holly Ann Garnett]

Yes. As one of the previous witnesses I watched this morning said, if someone is donating, we should know who that is, and the money should be traced. That's a no-brainer. Obviously, there are very small amounts that don't have to be put publicly online, for example. However, if money is being spent in the electoral sphere, transparency is what has made Canada's system so high-quality compared to other places on the globe.

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you.

I have less than a minute, so I want to thank both witnesses and cede that time to the chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

I appreciate that. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but as a politician, I guess I can talk out those few seconds.

In light of that, we will move on to Madame Normandin.

Go ahead, Ms. Normandin.

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

Thank you.

Thank you to both witnesses for being here.

I have the same question for both witnesses, but through a slightly different lens. Generally, it's about the impact that the activities of the longest ballot committee could have on the perceived credibility of the electoral system.

I will start with you, Professor Pammett. You are an expert on polling, and you said that these activities could affect voter turnout by causing longer lineups and making it harder for people to simply open their ballots.

Do you think that, if the electoral process is perceived as being less credible, it could also be a deterrent, causing fewer people to go out and vote, for example?

[Jon Pammett]

Again, this is all based on the potential for this to become widespread if it were to be the case.

The cases we had have not shown noticeable turnout declines, but that's partly for other reasons—the prominence of the races themselves, and so on. What would happen if this was done in a constituency, for example, where there were no incumbent candidates, that didn't feature people who were prominent in party leadership seeking election, or where voters were coming out to find out who the people were? Then you might have a better test as to whether turnout is affected.

In general, there are a lot of people who vote, and they vote now.... One thing to say is that the general concept called “civic duty” has changed for a lot of people, particularly young people. It used to be that people voted because that was the thing to do. We all voted. Our parents voted and we voted. We voted more or less independent of the circumstances. There was an election, so we voted. The attitude toward that has changed, particularly among younger people.

The new kind of civic duty involves this idea: “It's not that I'm determined not to vote. I'll vote when it's important to vote. I'll vote if there's something that matters to me, if there's somebody I really want to support or don't like, or if there's some issue I want to promote, but I'll pick and choose my votes.” Under those circumstances, the difficulty of doing it becomes a factor—whether younger people, particularly, will take the time to study all the information in order to see what the proper vote would be.

If this were to be widespread, the potential is there to have an effect on turnout, which is already, incidentally, overall going down, even though we have these spikes when particular elections of interest come along. Overall, the trend has been going down and continues to be.

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

Thank you.

Professor Garnett, I'd also like to hear your thoughts on the issue of credibility, since you are a world leader in elections analysis. I believe you've worked with agencies that conduct election monitoring around the world.

Do you think this type of activity could somewhat undermine the credibility of Canada's election process abroad?

Furthermore, in your research, have you come across similar situations elsewhere in the world? If so, how were they dealt with?

[Holly Ann Garnett]

Thank you for that question.

I will echo a lot of what Professor Pammett said. For the vast majority of individuals, the length of the ballot will not be the deciding factor. Other factors will most likely affect whether or not they vote. Those are pre-existing things like socio-demographic factors, or whether they care a lot about the contest. We do have evidence that people are willing to stand in long lines and deal with complicated procedures when they believe the stakes are very high in elections.

That being said, I think it has huge potential to dissuade certain population groups, those who are already likely to be more marginalized in the electoral system, from voting. Those are the population groups I was mentioning earlier—those with disabilities, perhaps seniors, those who have second-language English or French, those with mobility issues, those with dexterity issues or those who can't wait in a line that long. If it is affecting those population groups, we have a problem, even if overall we might not see a decline in turnout.

The second question you asked was about whether we've seen things like this internationally. As I was preparing, I was actually thinking that this was a really good question. I did a bit of a scan of the literature to see what kind of research we have about ballot length, how it affects individuals and how it affects voters. The challenge with this is that most places that have very long ballots have a different electoral system. They might have a proportional representation system, where you're choosing through lists of candidates. It might be a system like the one you see in the United States, where you have multiple contests happening on a ballot. A lot of the research that is coming out on the length of a ballot or the complexity of a ballot and how that affects people tends not to come from the exact same situation. It is really hard to say how generalizable it is.

I can say that there is evidence that the more choices an individual has to make on a ballot, or the more they have to navigate on a ballot, the more it can tax the voter's ability to cast ballots. It can also reduce...some of the likelihood of errors on ballots. However, again, it is a bit of a different situation, since you are making only one mark.

The other thing researchers have found is that longer ballots can disadvantage those who are further down in the alphabet. If your name is up at the top, it will be a lot easier for people to just say, “Oh, to heck with it. I'll just vote for somebody at the top. Then I won't have to unfold and refold and sort all that out.” This could possibly be important for long multi-page ballots, but we do not have very clear evidence, in the exact case of the Canadian context, how that would affect it.

That's what I can glean from international experiences.

[The Chair, Liberal, Chris Bittle]

Thank you very much, Dr. Garnett.

I believe Mr. Louis' time.... I put that on the end of Madame Normandin's time.

We'll go to Mr. Jackson for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I appreciate both of you being here.

I've asked a succession of witnesses who are academics these next questions. I think my colleague Mr. Van Popta got a very clear answer from Dr. Pammett, and I appreciate that.

Dr. Garnett, I would ask you the same question I asked Dr. Turnbull on Tuesday and then Dr. Moscrop this morning. Do you think that both 100 unique signatures and one official agent being the official agent for only one candidate are two reasonable provisions in order to address this campaign?

[Holly Ann Garnett]

Yes.

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

Great. That's excellent.

I'd like to pick your brains a bit, at this point. I don't know if you saw this or were able to take it in, but previous witnesses discussed the possibility or their conclusion that the longest ballot committee is actually operating as a registered political party without being required to register as one. There is a central organization of a very few people giving out centralized direction to candidates, or sometimes even prospective candidates who haven't agreed to fully participate in the stunt yet, as well as a unified collection of signatures, etc.

Dr. Moscrop said he hadn't thought about that before, but he felt the argument was compelling. That might not be quite the term he used. Actually—thank you, Mr. Cooper—he said it was a “cogent argument”.

What would your perspective on that proposal be? Maybe we can go to Dr. Pammett first, and then Dr. Garnett.

[Jon Pammett]

Well, I'm afraid I have to say that I haven't thought of it very much either.

Can I ask you what would be behind your question? Are there implications you're getting at if it were considered to be a political party?