Mr. Speaker, this unfair elections act would actually strip Elections Canada of its investigative powers, not strengthen them. We saw how weak those powers are with the Penashue scandal.
The Commissioner of Elections Canada would be under the Director of Public Prosecutions and, therefore, no longer be a part of Elections Canada. My party and I would compare that to removing the RCMP's ability to investigate breaches of the Criminal Code. How is that going to fix anything? It is not.
Get a load of this. Under this unfair elections act, the Chief Electoral Officer would have to seek Treasury Board approval to hire technical experts. That theoretically means that the Chief Electoral Officer could have to seek government approval to investigate possible election cheating by government MPs.
Two key missing elements of the unfair elections act that Elections Canada actually requested and did not get include, first, more power for the Chief Electoral Officer to request financial documents to ensure that political entities are complying with their obligations. That is not in the bill. Second, the unfair elections act is also silent on the powers of Elections Canada to compel witness testimony. A major problem that Elections Canada faced in its robocalls investigations was that Conservative staffers refused to give testimony. That is not going to change either. I wonder why that is.
This unfair elections act would make voting more challenging for some Canadians. It would mean we could no longer vouch for someone when he or she does not have identification. Here I note that aboriginal people, university students, the homeless, and seniors in residences are less likely to have ID or mail on hand. Some 120,000 people used vouching to exercise their vote in the 2011 election, but they will not be allowed to use it in the next election. Clearly, the Conservatives are targeting certain demographics to suppress the vote.
The Conservatives are also changing the political financing rules in their favour. The unfair elections act would increase the limit for individual contributions from $1,200 to $1,500. That would favour the Conservatives, who tend to receive bigger contributions. The unfair elections act would also allow candidates to contribute up to $5,000 to their own campaigns and leadership candidates to contribute up to $25,000 for their own campaigns, which, once again, would give an advantage to the wealthy candidates the Conservative Party attracts. Conservatives look after their own.
The unfair elections act would remove the Chief Electoral Officer's power to engage in public education. The Chief Electoral Officer would be limited to telling voters where, when, and how to vote, but not why they should vote. Who better to talk about democracy than a key expert on democracy, the Chief Electoral Officer?
Under this unfair elections act, Elections Canada would be banned from teaching our children about our democracy, encouraging people to vote, and warning them about electoral fraud. Tens of thousands of students, seniors, aboriginal people, and low-income Canadians would be blocked from exercising their right to vote.
Between the robocalls scandal, the ongoing Senate debacle, illegal contributions, and campaign overspending, faith in elections in this country, the legitimacy of campaign results, has been shaken. What do we get? We get this unfair elections act.
The Conservatives are focused on shutting down debate. They are focused on ramming through a bill designed to stop people from voting and to ensure that they, the Conservatives, will win the next election. Only that will not happen. Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, and Canadians generally, know the difference and we will make sure that they do.