Mr. Speaker, I am standing here today because the people of Alberta expect me to stand up when something is wrong. They expect us to fix it. As members of this House, we are guardians of the Canada Elections Act. This law is one of the foundations of our democracy. It is the contract that ensures power stays where it belongs, in the hands of the Canadian people. Our duty is to ensure that when a citizen marks their ballot, the process is fair, the choice is clear, and the results are beyond reproach.
Over the last decade, confidence in Canadian elections has decayed. The very foundations are beginning to crack. Bill C-25 is supposed to patch this up. When a foundation starts to crack, we do not ignore it or paper over it. We shore it up before the whole structure crumbles. The bill would start that work, but it is late, and it does not go far enough.
In my maiden speech, I said that the Bow River does not ask Ottawa's permission to flow. Even though obstructions are in the way, it cuts its path. Just across from my riding, my neighbours in Battle River—Crowfoot walked into a by-election and saw what happens when those foundations are neglected. They saw a ballot so broken it barely worked. The longest ballot committee flooded that by-election with 214 candidates.
It forced Elections Canada to abandon the normal ballot process, and people had to handwrite their vote on a blank line. They were forced to manually write out names and risk a spoiled ballot just to exercise their basic right. Let us think about that. A senior who has voted for 50 years walks in, ready to do their duty, and suddenly they are asked to reconstruct the ballot from memory. If someone spells a name wrong, their vote could be tossed. If someone writes too fast or writes a name slightly off, their vote could be tossed.
The government was warned by the Chief Electoral Officer that these ballots were becoming a barrier for voters with disabilities. This had been done before. It knew the longest ballot scam was threatening our democratic process, and it did nothing. It took something that should have been simple and made it fragile.
I have to say, I am most concerned about my Liberal colleagues, because we all saw what happened in the House. One of the Liberals stood up with complete confidence and berated this side of the House about the supposed hockey skills of Irish kickboxer Conor McGregor. We knew he was talking about Alberta's hockey superstar Connor McDavid, but close only counts in horseshoes.
We are human, and we all are susceptible to error. That is why we have to have rigid, reliable systems. It can be stressful standing up in the House, especially when the elbows-up PMO has the Liberal caucus on a strict hockey analogy quota. Let us imagine the same moment in a voting booth: Two Connors are in someone's head. They know who they mean to vote for, and they just hope they get it exactly right. That is the system the government forced on people.
The longest ballot committee exposed a weakness, not in our underlying system but in the administration of it. It cost this country millions of dollars. It delayed results. Most importantly, it shook confidence. Ultimately, it creates a cascading effect of doubt. If a voter in Bow River sees a circus across the fence in Battle River, they start to wonder if their vote is next or if the whole system is broken. When people see the process break down, they start to wonder what else is not holding. Everyone saw it coming. The warnings were there, and the government did nothing.
There is a deeper crack that we need to look at: foreign interference. While people were dealing with a system that was already under strain, foreign actors were pushing on it from the outside. We saw what happened to Kenny Chiu. There were smear campaigns, coordinated messaging and falsehoods designed to turn his own community against him. That pressure does not stay contained. It spreads, and it weakens the trust in the entire structure.
My family came to this country, escaping from communist Europe, to build a country where we could speak freely and participate in public life without fear. That belief rests on a democratic system that people can trust. When foreign governments start interfering in who gets elected, they are attacking that trust directly. It does not start on election day either, but far earlier.
In the nomination races, we have seen reports of buses of non-residents showing up to tip the scales. That is pressure being applied at the very base of the system. If one can shape who gets on the ballot, one can shape everything that follows. This legislation does nothing to stop it. Non-citizens should have no say in our elections, no say in who gets to be on the ballot, and certainly no say in who gets to stand in this House.
There is also the question of privacy, which is another part of the structure that should be solid. Back home, Rocky's Bakery in Strathmore sells some of the best hot cross buns one can ever find. When a customer swipes their credit card, a litany of laws kick in to protect that consumer data. Rocky's Bakery follows the rules. It answers to the law. However, political parties in this country think they are above the law. They collect vast amounts of data on Canadians and operate outside of any oversight. There are gaps in the system like this. These sorts of gaps will not stay small; they will widen.
Here is the reality. My neighbours are watching election after election turn into a circus. They have heard of and have seen foreign governments trying to influence outcomes. They know their data is being handled under a different set of rules and they are asking a simple question: Is the system as solid as we were told it is? Can they trust the system?
This is what needs to happen. We need real oversight of political party data by the Privacy Commissioner. We need serious penalties for anyone working with foreign actors to interfere in our elections. We need a foreign agent registry. We need to crack down on those who are interfering directly in our elections or from the shadows. We need clear rules to prevent these ballot stunts from ever happening again. We need to protect nomination races, because that is where the foundation is first laid.
I think the best place for this bill to go is to committee. I am really encouraged by the notion that we collaborate to get this right. I hope the government listens to constructive criticism and to how we can build a system that is reliable and can stand the test of centuries. Specifically, it needs to go to committee because I do not think it is complete. I think more work needs to be done, most importantly, because my neighbours deserve a system that holds. The country deserves a system that holds, one where every citizen can walk in, mark a ballot and know where it stands, where no foreign government can lean on it. That is what we are here to protect.