Debates of April 24th, 2026

Questions Passed as Orders for Return

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

Is it agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

[For text of questions and responses, see Written Questions website]

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-25, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and to enact An Act to change the names of certain electoral districts, 2026, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Strong and Free Elections Act

[Peter Schiefke, Liberal, Vaudreuil, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my dear friend, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, for her question.

I would simply say that my view of this piece of legislation is that it is intended to deal with imminent threats and challenges facing Canada's electoral system. I do not feel at this time that the suggestion by my hon. colleague with regard to the way in which parties are financed would fall under the scope of this piece of legislation but, perhaps, under a future piece of legislation. In this particular case, I do not feel that it is relevant at this time.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Mr. Speaker, one of my colleagues previously, in delivering a speech on this topic, brought up the idea of the previous removal of the costing regarding the entrance fee, so to speak, to become a candidate. I am very curious whether the member would be willing to incorporate that into the legislation.

[Peter Schiefke, Liberal, Vaudreuil, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will take my hon. colleague's comments on notice and take them to committee.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-25, which amends the Canada Elections Act.

We think the intention of the bill is good. We agree in principle and we will vote in favour of the bill at second reading. However, there are some nuances I need to talk about.

Of course we agree with the bans regarding foreign influence, election disinformation, election corruption, and those so-called “rewards”, or bribes, the infamous “brownies”. These things urgently need to be regulated. We also agree when it comes to addressing the problems with nomination contests and leadership races.

When it comes to political party financing, parties are also prohibited from accepting and using certain donations, namely those from anonymous sources. That is important, and we need to keep that up. Questions were raised about that earlier in the discussions on previous speeches. The bill as it now stands raises doubts in that regard. Political parties have a duty to protect the personal information of their donors and members. As for enforcement and sanctions, the bill gives more power to the federal Commissioner of Canada Elections and increases the administrative monetary penalties.

Finally, the bill also seeks to change the names of some ridings at the request of members, a move that, in our case, was approved by the communities covered by this bill.

As I said, we support the principle of this bill. We applaud the goal of protecting electoral integrity and combatting interference and corruption. We do, however, disagree with one of the measures in the bill, which we expressed in committee. We do not understand why this has not already been amended. We therefore want to work on this some more and propose amendments related to the measure preventing people from signing more than one nomination paper. It is a very slippery slope when the government starts limiting citizens' ability to endorse candidates with a signature. Signing a nomination paper does not mean that individual will vote for that candidate. However, if people are limited to signing only one, it will almost become—

Mr. Speaker, people are having conversations right next to me. Perhaps those folks could go into the lobby to do that. I do not think they are listening to my speech, anyway.

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

Some members are having discussions in the House, and the sound does carry, surprisingly, to the front benches quite easily and is interfering with the business of the House. I invite those members to go to the lobbies if they want to continue those discussions.

The hon. member for Berthier—Maskinongé may continue his speech.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a mild case of attention deficit. Nearby noises bother me.

I will pick up where I left off. I was outlining the serious doubts that we raised over the prospect of preventing constituents from signing more than one nomination paper. This is an important issue. Signing a nomination paper does not oblige constituents to vote for the candidate in question. They are free to watch the election campaign unfold and possibly change their mind along the way. Otherwise, what purpose would election campaigns serve? If we tell constituents that they cannot sign more than one nomination paper, it amounts to telling them that they have to make their choice at the start of the campaign, which would make election campaigns rather pointless. People would be unable to sign a nomination paper for the person they want to vote for because someone else got to them first. The problem with that is obvious.

The other problem is that the vote will be made public. Most people are comfortable with that. I think most people here could guess who I voted for in the last election and in every election of my life. However, some people do not want to reveal who they voted for, and that is fine, because it is all voters' prerogative to keep their vote secret. If a person can sign only one nomination paper, they might as well announce publicly which candidate they will be voting for. We understand how complex this issue is. I myself have gladly signed the nomination papers of certain opponents, because it is important to have an election campaign with diverse candidates and to foster democratic debate. We believe this provision should be removed from the bill. We believe the other measures will be enough to control the very high number of candidates seen in the last election.

I just said that I have signed ballots for certain political opponents, but I will never sign ballots for 48 candidates who are simply there to bog down the electoral system. There are different ways to express disagreement. Fundamentally, I agree with the cause these people are defending. However, I think they are taking the wrong approach. They are disrupting the entire electoral system. Through their actions, they are discouraging citizens from exercising their right to vote.

In large federal ridings, a list can sometimes include as many as 72 candidates, and voters often have to search through them. Take Berthier—Maskinongé, for example, with its 108,000 voters and 37 municipalities. As qualified and important as I believe myself to be, I am well aware that many people in my riding vote primarily for the party. They need to be able to find that choice on the ballot. We therefore agree that this needs to be addressed.

Compromises were found during the recent by-elections, particularly in Terrebonne, where candidates affiliated with recognized parties were placed on the first page. However, requiring voters to write down the name of the candidate increases the degree of difficulty, the duration of the vote, the risk of error and the risk of a challenge. There was no recount this time because there was a clear majority, but in the event of a judicial recount, it is easy to imagine how that could be challenged by lawyers for the other party that is seeking to overturn a vote, particularly if a candidate has a hyphenated last name and the voter only wrote part of the name. This can cause major problems and delays that must be avoided. That said, we agree with most of the measures proposed in the bill.

I hope the government will reconsider preventing people from signing more than one nomination paper, but there is something else we take issue with: Why not take this opportunity to review the issue of political party financing? I will again use Quebec as an example. I know I am always going on about this, but this is another fine example of how Quebec is ahead of Canada. Quebec reformed its electoral law several years ago. Public funding is allocated based on the number of votes obtained, and donors are limited to a donation of $100 per year and $200 in an election year. That limits influence. Let us not forget that, under the previous prime minister's government, Chinese-Canadian businessmen planning to open a bank in Canada attended receptions to gain access to the Prime Minister and donated over $1,700. That is a lot of money. There are not many ordinary citizens who can afford to donate $1,700 to a political party. It is time we sorted this out. These amounts and this way of doing things open the door to the possibility of electoral manipulation. It is never a good thing when money buys access to ministers, so we need to democratize the system.

Public funding of political parties could also prevent some parties from engaging in populism. The parliamentary secretary seems to be listening carefully to my remarks and I am pleased about that. I am sure that he will appreciate what I am saying about some of the more populist parties that post the same slogans or videos repeating the same lines on their social media to try to raise a lot of money. We could perhaps mitigate that by allocating a portion of public funding to the parties. That is something we could work on. Of course, I hope the government will work collaboratively and that the talk we are hearing will be followed by more practical measures than the ones in yesterday's motion.

I mentioned this briefly earlier, but it is also important that we have access to the names and addresses of people who make donations to political parties. Part of the bill raises doubts in that regard, and we have serious concerns about that. Of course, if we allow anonymous donations, it would only further encourage fraud, manipulation and corruption. We want to avoid that.

We also want to avoid foreign interference and the use of AI to send messages. We saw how a lot of messages were sent out to voters to direct them to the wrong polling stations. That is very serious and I hope that significant penalties will be imposed.

I look forward to questions from my colleagues.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I know a number of Bloc members have raised the whole voting dollar issue and how that could possibly help finance political entities. I do not believe there is any public will for that to take place, but I would encourage the member to bring it up at the standing committee.

I would like some clarification. The member talked a lot about the long ballot, and I do not know if it is me or possibly the translation, but I am a little confused. In the legislation, it says that a voter can only sign one nomination form. Then it also indicates that an official agent can only be the official agent for one candidate in that given riding. Does the Bloc support those two measures?

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, of course we will be there in committee to present our proposals, including on political party financing. That is essential.

To answer my colleague's second question, we support half of these measures. We believe that prohibiting an official agent from representing more than one candidate will solve most of the problem. However, we are very concerned, and we do not agree with preventing people from signing more than one nomination paper. This raises issues concerning the secrecy of the vote, among other things.

I do not know if the parliamentary secretary heard me say this earlier, but the fact that I can sign as many nomination papers as I want has in the past allowed me to sign the nomination papers of my own political opponents. I did so in good faith for the sake of a healthy political debate and campaign. However, if a voter can sign only one nomination paper, that means the individual signing the paper will be voting for that candidate. Even if that is not the case, it will prevent people from signing the nomination paper of the candidate for whom they intend to vote, and that makes the vote partially public. This raises issues that need to be addressed.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L’Érable—Lotbinière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am just trying to understand my colleague's position on signing multiple nomination papers, because we saw that this was a major problem in some ridings. People are using the election to send a political message. That never used to happen because a $1,000 deposit was required, which was just as problematic for some people who could not afford to pay that amount to run for office.

I know we will have the opportunity to discuss this in committee, but we absolutely must find a way to put an end to this election protest. How can this be solved?

I missed part of my colleague's speech, but what solutions does he propose to prevent us from ending up with ballots that are too long or ballots on which people have to write a candidate's name, when we know that a certain percentage of people—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

I must give the member for Berthier—Maskinongé time to answer the question.

The hon. member for Berthier—Maskinongé.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this is the second time that my colleague asks me a question that I appreciate, so it has been a good week. The issue has a lot to do with ballot secrecy. I had started to explain it to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government. Ballot secrecy is a privilege of citizenship. As long as citizens can sign as many nomination papers as they want, signing does not mean they are voting for that person. However, if we get to the point where citizens can only sign one nomination paper, the message would be that they are going to vote for that person. It also implies that there is some sort of commitment and that citizens cannot change their mind during an election campaign.

However, an election campaign is precisely when people change their minds. We are usually pretty good at changing people's minds, so we would not want that to change. We think that the other measures, such as having one official agent per candidate, could do the job. We agree on the basic objective.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like my colleague to tell us a little more about the importance of reinstating public funding for political parties and limiting the scope for donations. Why is that important for democracy and for the fight against corruption and conflicts of interest?

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, getting a portion of public funding is essential. I was told earlier that there was some uncertainty as to whether there was an agreement on this. I can confirm that there is public funding, because when someone donates $1,700, they receive a substantial tax refund. Public money is going into this.

What we are suggesting is simply changing the formula, the way it is done, to prevent anyone from donating as much as $1,700. We believe that only influential people can do this, so that poses a problem. The amount needs to be lowered.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-25, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act. This is a complex, technical piece of legislation, but its core objective is one we should all support: protecting the integrity of our democratic process.

Before I get into my speech, I would like to thank my hon. colleague from St. Albert—Sturgeon River for his thoughtful remarks on this bill and for the very good work he does on democratic reform.

While the Conservative caucus supports moving this bill to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs for a detailed study, there are specific areas regarding foreign interference and new enforcement powers that I believe require further scrutiny.

The bill focuses on three central themes. The first is bringing in changes to prevent further abuses of our democratic processes by the longest ballot committee. I know we have heard a lot about this issue during this debate. Over the course of many years now, members of the House, prospective candidates and Canadians have been subjected to a coordinated effort by a group that calls itself the longest ballot committee, whose members have sought to exploit our electoral process. They target specific ridings and flood the ballot with dozens of fake candidates, candidates who have no intention of campaigning, engaging with voters or putting forward solutions and policy proposals to run on.

This undermines the trust Canadians have in our election systems. The expectation of residents in the riding of Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek from Humboldt, Warman and Martensville to Radisson, just to name a few, is that as a candidate I run under a set of policies that I am committing to represent, and I put forward a vision of what I plan to achieve in Ottawa and how I plan to represent the voices of my riding here in this place.

The longest ballot committee is the exact opposite of this. To call it a protest is to misrepresent the way it undermines trust in our elections. A recent and prominent example was in the riding of Carleton, where we saw a metre-long ballot with 91 fake candidates. This creates voter confusion, marginalizes legitimate candidates and creates unnecessary barriers for voters with certain disabilities.

As of now, groups can use the same 100 signatures to qualify multiple candidates. This is a clear abuse of the spirit of the act.

Bill C-25 rightly proposes that an elector may only sign one nomination form and that an official agent may only act for one candidate per riding. This would help put an end to this sham of the electoral process by the longest ballot group.

The second part of this bill proposes changes to close foreign funding loopholes. Central to our democracy is the idea and trust that Canadian elections should be and are decided by Canadians. Currently, significant loopholes allow foreign interests to influence our outcomes through third parties. If foreign money is sent for a general purpose rather than a specific regulated activity, it can be treated as general revenue and used for campaigning. This allows third parties to potentially be significantly funded by foreign money in practice. That process is the melding of funds.

These new rules that would prohibit cryptocurrency, prepaid cards and money orders as contribution methods would extend to leadership contests as well. These changes to prevent anonymous and hard-to-trace funding channels are welcome.

As has been noted, with the instance of the 2017 Tides Foundation case, where foreign funds were funnelled through Canadian intermediaries to mask their original source, those entities ended up campaigning against then prime minister Stephen Harper in the 2015 election. That is an intermediary loophole that exists, where foreign funding is dispersed to legitimate Canadian companies and then transferred to third party groups and the funds do not appear to be from foreign entities.

This bill would require third parties to use separate bank accounts funded only by Canadians or permanent residents. However, there would be a 10% “own funds” exception that may still leave the door open for foreign influence. That is why Conservatives are urging the government to consider an amendment requiring all third parties, regardless of size, to use separate Canadian-only accounts to ensure a level playing field with political parties.

The third part of the bill I will be focusing on is the proposed changes in powers to the commissioner of Elections Canada and new monetary penalties. It is these proposed changes that may require greater scrutiny, which would be done in the House through each stage of debate, and then during the review process at committee.

The bill is proposing to increase monetary penalties for individuals from $1,500 to $25,000, and for corporations from $5,000 to $100,000. These are not small increases. Further investigation will be needed, given that the commissioner would have extraordinary powers to apply these fines, to see if it would be more appropriate to refer the matter to the director of public prosecutions and to proceed by way of criminal prosecution.

Some of the proposed penalties are for spreading election misinformation. Conservatives will do our part to ensure that the legislation reflects the intent and that it would not penalize or have a chilling effect on having debate and conversations about elections.

There are also greater powers being proposed for the commissioner of Elections Canada, in that they would no longer need judicial authorization to compel evidence in all circumstances. We will need to ensure that this is charter compliant.

These are examples of where Conservatives believe the bill requires further scrutiny, and I do hope this demonstrates that we are willing to come to the table and find solutions to the problems facing our electoral system.

The Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs tabled its report, and while some of its recommendations are being put forward in Bill C-25, some are not. The report was unanimous. Conservatives hope the government will be amenable to reconsidering the amendments that reflect the unanimous recommendations made by the committee.

Election interference is real, and it is important that we work to close the loopholes and combat foreign influence in our elections. We are all familiar with what happened in 2019 in the riding of Don Valley North, where the Liberal nomination became an entryway for foreign interference in our elections process. A Beijing consulate coordinated support for a candidate who would go on to win the nomination and become a member of the House. Instances like the one in Don Valley North are a warning to every member of the House that foreign interference in our elections must be fought at every stage, including nominations.

I know that there is much to consider in the bill, and in the short time I have had, I have not covered everything. Bill C-25 is a technical bill, as I mentioned earlier, and it includes numerous measures that are meant to close loopholes in the current legislation.

I would like to thank the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs for the report and for the fact that it was unanimously agreed to. Conservatives broadly support the measures contained in the bill that would safeguard democracy and ensure the integrity of our elections, and we will closely review individual measures at committee.

[Tom Osborne, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, you have obviously done a great deal of review on the bill. I will give the member an opportunity to elaborate. You talked about penalty increases and some concern with the size of the increases. The size of the increase, I believe, is to prevent bad intention or bad actors. If candidates, official agents or others are acting in good faith, they have no fear of an increase in the size of the penalty.

I want to give you an opportunity to elaborate on your thoughts.

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

I remind members to speak through the Chair. I will not be elaborating, but I will invite the member for Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek to do so.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the explanation that my hon. colleague has provided, and I would agree with that explanation. I do believe that the proposed increases are significant, and I think they demonstrate the seriousness with which both the committee and the drafters of the legislation take the monetary penalties that would be applied in cases where these fines are appropriate. I will leave it to the committee to determine whether this is something that needs further scrutiny.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to hear from my hon. colleague concerning the main point, that being our proposal to reinstate public funding for political parties.

What we currently see are very high caps on financial contributions to political parties. Obviously, not everyone can afford to contribute so much. Our point is that this opens the door to the appearance of a conflict of interest or privileged access to ministers, for example, when tickets to a cocktail party cost $1,500. Reinstating public funding for political parties would allow us to cap potential political contributions at, let us say, $500. In this way, contributions would not be limited to the fortunate few. It would also make funding a lot more grassroots and more representative of the number of votes cast for each party.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I would disagree with my hon. colleague on the efficacy of that suggestion. It is important that political parties are subsidized not simply by a few votes they receive but by the voluntary contributions of Canadians who believe in what a political party represents and hopes to achieve.

I know that, provincially, individuals can donate much more to candidates, and so can corporations and businesses. I believe that the threshold that has been set federally is appropriate and encourages people to stay engaged in politics and support the candidates they would like to have elected to the House.

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

Mr. Speaker, parliamentary democracy is a loose framework and is only as good as the actors in it. If the actors use good ethics, then it works well. For example, when 93% of the electorate votes for the party customarily rather than for the candidate and when a floor crossing happens in a case like that, we can see intent of parliamentary democracy.

I wonder if my colleague could expand on whether she considers the long ballot to be similarly detrimental to democracy.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I know that the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs produced a report on the longest ballot issue, and that it was unanimously supported by all parties. What I believe has been noted is that there are loopholes in the current legislation that allow for activities like those of the longest ballot committee to continue, just as it is legal for individuals to cross the floor in the House of Commons. So far this committee has been able to do what it is doing, but we are seeking to end that.