Mr. Speaker, my colleagues are leaving for what we hope are greener pastures. I imagine most of them are heading to committee meetings. Hopefully they will go well. There are not many meetings left before the session ends.
I would like to say a few words about Bill C-25. Since we are nearing the end of the process having debated it in the House and discussed it at length in committee, I am not going to leave people in suspense. The Bloc is going to vote in favour of Bill C-25, which has moved forward with relative consensus in both the House and in committee. Everything went smoothly, that much is true. Furthermore, once I have outlined the bill's objectives, I will highlight its strengths. I will save the less positive aspects for last, because there are some.
Bill C-25 amends the Canada Elections Act and addresses various issues.
More specifically, it seeks to prevent large numbers of candidates from registering, as the protesters from the longest ballot committee have done. The hope is that we avoid ending up with ballots featuring 290 candidates that have to be unfolded like road maps and clog up the ballot boxes. We have worked to find solutions to prevent this from happening again.
The bill also aims to strengthen the integrity, security and transparency of federal elections, but once again, there are a few minor pitfalls that I will address later. The bill seeks to update the electoral framework to address the risks of disinformation, foreign interference and cybersecurity. These issues were not yet as prominent during the last review of the Canada Elections Act.
The bill also seeks to formally change the names of certain electoral districts. I will take the liberty of going over the changes affecting my colleagues. The hon. member for Beauharnois—Salaberry—Soulanges—Huntingdon will now have a much easier riding name to remember. She will become the hon. member for “Vallée-du-Haut-Saint-Laurent”. The member for Jonquière's riding name will get a little longer, but it will make his constituents happy. He will now be known as the member for “Jonquière—Hébertville—Pays-des-Bleuets”. The Bloc Québécois already has the maple capital in one of its ridings. Now we officially have the blueberry capital too.
The member for Rimouski—La Matapédia is heading in the opposite direction of the future member for “Vallée-du-Haut-Saint-Laurent”. From now on, he will be the member for “Rimouski-Neigette—Mitis—Matapédia—Les Basques”. That name includes every single RCM in his riding.
As I was saying, the goals of the reform introduced by Bill C-25 are broad and entirely legitimate, but in our view, they have not been fully achieved. I said we would be generous, so we will talk about the positives. One of the changes to the Canada Elections Act is the end of anonymous donations. The new version of the act will no longer allow it.
It used to be allowed. People may not know this, but it used to be possible to make a donation completely anonymously, including through prepaid credit cards or cryptocurrencies that are impossible to trace. The new version of the act states that, should a member of Parliament happen to receive this type of donation, the money would be returned to the donor or destroyed if the donor could not be identified.
This prevents funding from being received from obscure sources, such as donations from foreign entities. Attempts are being made to interfere with our elections. This is one aspect of the bill that helps counter this interference, which is unfortunately becoming increasingly common. Just look at the work carried out by Justice Hogue, who chaired the foreign interference commission.
There are also stricter guidelines for nomination contests. In the wake of what is known in Quebec as the brownie scandal, we expected to see an equivalent measure put in place at the federal level, because Quebec had already quickly stated that it would close this loophole allowing fundraising for certain people in an electoral process, including leadership candidates and nomination contestants.
In stronghold ridings, the question is not so much who will win the riding as who will win the nomination contest. If a party is contributing money to a nomination contestant, there is a reasonable expectation, in some cases, that they would then become the member of Parliament.
That was not covered, but Quebec acted swiftly. We were happy to see the federal government follow suit. We were prepared to introduce a bill to that effect, but everything we were prepared to introduce was included in Bill C-25. We applaud the initiative.
As for the work that is also being done on disinformation and other forms of interference, we know that interference can be done through social media and online publications, among other things. The bill already prohibits deepfakes, which mislead people and cause them to unduly vote against a candidate or favour a candidate by manipulating the content of a post or publication. We have seen examples of members of Parliament being victims of deepfakes that encouraged people to invest in certain products, which was completely misleading. Therefore, the bill prohibits creating or disseminating AI-generated content that falsely claims to be authentic and is in fact intended to deceive voters about a political actor or even the electoral process itself.
We are also banning disinformation specifically regarding the electoral process. Unfortunately, among our neighbours to the south, we are seeing more people growing to distrust the integrity of the process. Bill C-25 addresses exactly that. It aims to expand existing provisions to further crack down on the publication of false or misleading information regarding voting procedures, such as voter eligibility, the various candidates and the nomination process. For example, a publication urging people to vote the day after the election would be subject to penalties now provided for in the bill.
Bill C-25 also addresses issues related to hacking. There are new offences related to hacking and the unauthorized use of a computer, among other things.
One of the issues that has interested us greatly, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, is the idea of preventing a large number of candidates from running. We know that the right to run for office is a fundamental right, but unfortunately we have seen in the past that this right has been used to subvert democracy. It was a highly militant act to attempt to break the record for the longest ballot.
Every member of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs agreed on the importance of addressing this issue, to the extent that we even moved a motion to conduct a study in committee specifically on the longest ballot. Most of the recommendations that emerged from that study are reflected in the bill. For example, it is now impossible for an official agent in a riding to serve as the official agent for multiple candidates. The longest ballot committee had a single official agent for 290 candidates. This is nonsensical considering the fact that legitimate candidates are meant to compete against one another.
Bill C-25 also establishes a new offence intended to deter individuals from encouraging voters to sign multiple nomination forms. We know that approach taken by the longest ballot committee involved group signing sessions where everyone would gather together and sign numerous nomination forms in a single sitting.
The bill also makes it an offence for a candidate to provide false or misleading information on their nomination forms or to encourage people to sign unidentified nomination forms. One of the things the committee pointed out was that, in order to recruit candidates, their nomination forms are already provided for them. Blank forms are already signed and given to them so that they can apply.
Various offences have also been added in this respect, but something has been added that we do not agree with. I am referring to prohibiting a voter from signing more than one nomination form. I talked about group signing sessions earlier, when a hundred or so forms are signed in a single sitting. That is one thing. However, a voter may legitimately want to or wish to sign more than one nomination form. Adding this limit, in our opinion, does not solve the problem. That is what the Chief Electoral Officer, or CEO, confirmed. The CEO does not have sufficient resources to cross-reference the data between the nomination forms to see whether there are indeed multiple signatures. In any case, candidates would not de disqualified on that basis.
Canada's Chief Electoral Officer has been very clear on this point. Allowing multiple signatures would not disallow certain candidates, in part because it would be impossible to determine which signature was obtained first in order and then establish which ballot is valid or invalid. This therefore places an unnecessary burden on the voters—not on the candidates—as they must limit themselves to signing only one nomination form. In our view, this also runs counter to the principle of the ballot secrecy.
If a voter is limited to a single signature, they might legitimately conclude that they are indirectly supporting a candidate and that, since they can sign only one nomination form, they will sign the nomination form of someone they are interested in. This could harm candidates from smaller parties. Indeed, if a candidate from a small party or even an independent candidate has to inform people that they can sign only one nomination form, that person may want to reserve their signature for someone from a larger party. It becomes difficult for someone from a smaller party to get signatures.
This could be seen as undermining ballot secrecy, but perhaps individuals who have not yet made up their mind might want to support two candidates running against each other so that they can make a more informed decision between the two later on. They might then want to sign two nomination forms, which would now be prohibited under the new legislation, which, as I mentioned, does not compel them one way or another. It might be a deterrent, but given the other offences created, particularly those targeting individuals who induce others to sign more than one nomination form, in this case the offences would apply to a voter. In certain cases the voter might mean well by signing more than one nomination form, and in any event, the various candidates would be accepted. That was the part that bothered us.
I also spoke about the fight against foreign interference. There is no denying that when it comes to elections, what really matters is money. Deepfakes, bribes and misinformation were all looked at. When it comes to fundraising, an attempt was made to address the matter of foreign funds, but the issue has only been partially dealt with, because it is still possible to circumvent the intent of the bill. I will explain what I mean.
Under the new legislation, a third-party entity that might want to promote an idea during an election campaign without being a political party may do so only with Canadian funds. So far, so good. However, we were told that for smaller entities, it becomes a bit complicated to sort out which funds are exclusively Canadian and which of their own funds come from various sources. To avoid complicating matters by requiring such entities to maintain separate bank accounts, the idea was to allow third parties to use up to 10% of their funds, regardless of the source of those funds, in order to participate in an election. It is worth mentioning that the Conservatives did a good job on this issue.
The problem is that for a third-party entity with vast resources, 10% can amount to a significant sum. For example, if several small entities were to join forces and raise a fund of $200 million, $20 million could still be spent without the source of the money being identified. We would have preferred to maintain the principle that only Canadian funds can be used to campaign in an election on behalf of a third party, rather than having this loophole that ultimately allows donations from outside the country to be accepted without additional scrutiny.
We are also disappointed that parties will no longer be required to provide five days' notice of a fundraising event and post it on their website. The report submitted to the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada would remove the exact addresses of those participating in the fundraising event for entirely valid security reasons, and I understand that. However, virtually all information about the donors is removed. We would have liked to at least retain the location and time of the event, as well as the postal codes of those who attended.
All of this comes in the wake of what happened with Wealth One Bank. There was a fundraising event in the Papineau riding that Chinese stakeholders had participated in. In the days that followed the fundraising event, the 46 donors from the Toronto area who had participated in it secured federal approval for the creation of their chartered bank, giving them the right to operate in Canada.
It was a form of pay to play. As a result, in 2018, the government created more transparency surrounding fundraisers by requiring the names of attendees to be disclosed. However, these provisions have been removed from the bill, which we believe is an unwarranted step backward when the goal is more transparency.
Another shocking irritant is the fact that the Liberals voted against our recommendation. The bill removes the requirement to return funds to donors when a violation occurs in the filing of the report within 30 days of a fundraising activity. For example, someone might neglect to file a report. It would then never be known who attended a fundraiser. The party would be fined, which it could pay out of the funds raised at that very event. This means that there is no deterrent to committing a violation when people hold a fundraiser, because they could reimburse themselves using the funds collected during that event if the rules are not followed. That is something that the Liberals removed from the original legislation. We tried to restore it through an amendment, but unfortunately it did not pass. That was certainly disappointing.
As I also mentioned, we would have liked to see more transparency in the reports. Both the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois tried to achieve this. Unfortunately, their efforts went nowhere.
Another issue was raised, and that is privacy. We know that this is a very sensitive issue these days. Our digital identity is becoming increasingly prevalent and increasingly important. Governments must follow suit and ensure that organizations collecting sensitive information protect it adequately.
Bill C-25 takes a small step in the right direction by requiring parties to adopt formal privacy policies. However, it does not go any further, and that creates problems. The idea that parties will self-regulate when it comes to protecting privacy is flawed. For example, different parties will likely have different policies, and there is no federal framework to ensure consistency among them. This is essentially self-regulation, which is problematic.
Furthermore, last June, we passed Bill C-4. This bill allows political parties to be exempt from privacy protection measures implemented in Quebec and the other provinces. For example, a province may adopt a rigorous data protection regime that it wishes to impose on organizations such as federal political parties. This is precisely what British Columbia did, and that is what prompted the decision regarding Bill C-4. However, Bill C-4 exempts federal parties from the application of these measures.
We wanted to reinstate this requirement in the new version of the Canada Elections Act, but it was not included. Several witnesses told us that, pending a national federal privacy policy for political parties, ensuring that parties are at least subject to provincial regulations was the lesser of two evils. If a province has strict regulations, one can assume that the parties will comply with them. At the very least, in the meantime, while we wait for a genuine national policy, this would help unify data protection systems, rather than letting the parties regulate themselves.
I see that my time is almost up and that I have just a few seconds left. I just want to point out that the Bloc Québécois will vote in favour of the bill even though it could have been improved more than it was. This is a little like someone telling us they are going to repaint the house, but they end up painting just one room and dirtying the floor in the process. It is better than it was, but it is not perfect.
Anyway, we will vote in favour of the bill even though it is somewhat disappointing, unfortunately. We hope that, in the near future, we will have an opportunity to revisit those shortcomings and fix them.