Mr. Speaker, I rise today on Bill C-524, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act, which was proposed by the previous speaker, the member for Winnipeg North.
The bill proposes to extend the regulation of advertising by parties, candidates, and third parties to periods between elections and to establish new advertising identification requirements for parties, candidates, and third parties.
The House should be aware that the Canada Elections Act already provides that parties, candidates, and third parties must identify themselves in their election advertising messages.
In my opinion, Bill C-524 is a solution in search of a problem. As a result, and due to the way the bill is drafted, I cannot support it.
I wish to identify four problems with the bill. In my view, the problems are serious and should give all members reason to oppose the bill.
The bill is too broad. The first problem with the bill is its long reach. In my view, it is overly broad. I will provide an example.
The bill targets not only partisan advertising but also issue advertising; that is, advertising on an issue with which a party or candidate is associated. Issue advertising can raise some difficult questions. All parties in this House have policies dealing with the various issues our country faces, and who is to say which party or candidate is uniquely associated with a particular issue?
Consider a fictitious organization that has as its mandate the elimination of the $2 coin. It has an advertising campaign in print media and has undertaken this campaign for some time. The question is this. How would one know if this becomes an issue associated with a party or a candidate? If a party leader in an interview said that the $2 coin was here to stay, would that be sufficient to make this an issue associated with the party? What if a senior member of the party said that eliminating the $2 coin was an idea worthy of consideration? It is not altogether clear, outside of an election period, when an issue becomes associated with a party such that the fictitious organization now becomes caught by Bill C-524. Once caught, the organization would have to comply with the new identification requirements in its advertising messages. Failure to do so would make it liable to prosecution and penalties.
These examples go to show that instead of bringing transparency, the way in which the bill is drafted risks bringing confusion and uncertainty to the regulation of third parties on matters that have nothing to do with a federal election.
The bill also would impose new costs on political expression. As mentioned earlier, the Canada Elections Act already provides that parties, candidates, and even third parties must identify themselves in their election advertising messages, yet Bill C-524 would add an American-style requirement that would impose additional costs on parties, candidates, and third parties. This would lead to less time by parties and candidates to get their messages across. Here is why.
One provision in the bill provides that, in the case of audiovisual messages, there must be an unobscured, full-screen view of the candidate, party leader, or authorized representative of the third party, as the case may be, who is making the statement. If the statement is made in a voice-over, it must be accompanied by a photographic image of the person making the statement. In addition, the statement must be clearly displayed in print form for at least four seconds at the end of the audiovisual message.
This is no small requirement. Four seconds of air time is potentially of great monetary value. That would be more than 10% of a 30-second television ad. For a 15-second spot, it represents more than 20% of the duration of the advertising. That means that a party, third party, or candidate looking to television advertisement would have to reduce the length of its already short message or may have to give up on this form of advertising altogether. The bill would unnecessarily restrict a party's freedom of speech in this regard, even when the leader already features prominently in the ad. It is a political party's choice whether to include its leader in advertising or not. There is no evidence that adopting the U.S. approach solves anything. Anyone watching U.S. political ads will immediately understand this.
Another problem with this is signage respecting electoral district associations. Even if we accept the goal of the bill at face value, the fact that it does not say anything about electoral district associations is a problem. Members will know that electoral district associations are prohibited from advertising during an election. Bill C-524 does not propose to extend this prohibition on advertising by electoral district associations outside of the election period. Instead, it proposes new regulations on parties, candidates, and third parties.
What about electoral district associations? There is a loophole that would allow them to avoid the new identification requirements proposed by the bill. A party could simply avoid the new rules by running ads through an electoral district association on the party's behalf. I am not sure that is what is intended by the bill, but it is nonetheless another way in which the bill fails to achieve the objectives of transparency and accountability that it sets out for itself.
I would like to take a moment before I close to highlight the successful record that our government has had as part of its democratic reform agenda. We have taken big money out of politics with the introduction of stricter contribution limits. We have also eliminated corporations and unions from making contributions to candidates and parties. All of this has increased the accountability of political actors in our political system.
In addition, transparency has been improved with the passage of the Fair Elections Act. We have banned the use of loans to evade donation limits. We created a voter contact registry to protect voters from rogue calls and impersonation. I was proud to have supported these measures.
I hope I have made it very clear as to why the House should not support Bill C-524. It is in part because of the many deficiencies, but primarily because it risks undermining the very goals it aims to realize.