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.