Madam Speaker, I will pick up where I left off before the Liberals imposed a legislative guillotine to cut off debate.
My greatest concern about Bill C-76 is the Liberal claim that it would combat and control third party spending. It would not properly address a problem that could have been easily solved if, and this is a big if, the current Liberal government had actually wanted to solve it.
At first glance, it appears that the legislation might contain foreign financial interference by setting some spending limits and requiring third parties to have a dedicated Canadian bank account. However, Bill C-76 would double the total maximum third party spending amount allowed during the writ period, and it would still allow unlimited contributions from individual donors and others, unlimited spending by third parties and unlimited foreign donations outside the pre-writ and writ periods.
Some of our Liberal colleagues claim that foreign financial interference has been adequately blocked, but the reality is that a huge loophole, exploited in recent elections with increasingly larger amounts of foreign funding of third parties, still exists. Foreign charities, such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in New York or the American Tides Foundation in San Francisco, can give millions of foreign dollars to Canadian charities such as the Tides Canada organization, Leadnow, the Dogwood Initiative or the Sisu Institute, and those millions can be disbursed as Canadian dollars to third-party groups to support parties and candidates of their choice and to oppose parties and candidates of their choice. Elections Canada can do nothing without new legislation.
Bill C-76 would do nothing to stop these, effectively laundered, American dollars from being used, as they were in 2015, to work to defeat a Conservative government, or next year, to attempt to re-elect the current Liberal government. In fact, the Canada Revenue Agency, before the 2015 federal election, had been working to audit 42 registered Canadian charities for political activity. There is research, accumulated by the skilled investigative journalist and researcher Vivian Krause, that indicates that 41 of the 42 audited charities were not fully compliant with the law and that the CRA would have recommended that at least five of these so-called charities be disqualified and shut down completely. However, in 2016, the CRA shut down those audits without reporting, coincidentally after the revenue minister was issued a mandate letter that directed her to “Allow charities to do their work...free from political harassment".
Ms. Krause testified last week, before the ethics committee, that she spent six months in 2016 writing a report, which she submitted to Elections Canada. Elections Canada sent investigators to Vancouver to meet with Ms. Krause, and she testified that after extensive discussion, it became clear to her that Elections Canada cannot do anything if the Canada Revenue Agency allows charities to Canadianize foreign funds.
The Income Tax Act is very clear that charities are to operate for purposes that are charitable as defined by law. While charities have been able to get away with it by pointing to language that permits a limited amount of political activity, the original intent was that the political activity was intended to further a charitable purpose. If that political activity does not support a charitable purpose, the allowable political activity should be, as Ms. Krause pointed out very clearly before committee, absolutely zero.
In wrapping up, while there are, admittedly, some modest improvements made to Bill C-76, it remains a deeply deficient attempt to restore fairness to the Canadian election process. It is a testament to the current Liberal government's deliberate decision, as with Bill C-50 before it, to leave loopholes the Liberals believe will enhance their efforts to save their political skin in 2019.