Procedure and House Affairs committee  Section 331 states, “No person who does not reside in Canada”, so presumably—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  If they are studying here, a good argument can be made that in fact they are residing, even if only temporarily, in Canada.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It poses a very serious challenge; there's no question about that. Many countries around the world are trying to grapple with this, not only in the electoral context but in other contexts. It is certainly not a simple issue. By the way, Mr. Chair, I think Mr. Chan said that my recommendation was to abolish section 331.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  If I may, and perhaps this comes out of the blue for members of this committee, we get a lot of complaints about missing tag lines on political signs during the campaign. Sometimes the tag lines are not missing; it's only that they are printed in a slightly off colour that makes it very difficult to read.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you very much.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'll say three things. One is that we got the Senate report literally half an hour before we came here, so I merely flipped through the pages and cannot comment in any way on its contents. Yes, it seems to me that there are things such as the organization of rallies by third parties, for example.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, exactly. Totally. Or having—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  —people working the phones and trying to get people to vote one way or the other.... Quite clearly, this is currently an open field and people are free to do a number of things. On the six-month rule, I really think this should be looked at very closely and perhaps have steps taken to eliminate it totally or to make it in such a way where much more is caught and regulated than is the case now—no question.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Well, assuming that the legislation, the new regulatory framework, is such that many more things have to be reported and also that there are some limitations, spot audits certainly would be a good way of getting the information that perhaps is needed to uncover or discover illegal actions on the part of some of these third parties.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, we could provide you with additional ideas. One suggestion I would make is not necessarily to have more severe penalties, because I think the penalties provided for are quite severe. For me, the real challenge, the real objective Parliament should pursue, is to identify what it wants to do in terms of how it wants to limit third parties in what they would be allowed to do or partially allowed to do.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That would be easy enough. There are provisions in the act that set out illegal acts or corrupt practices. That's section 502. If you decide to go that route, it would be a question of adding a paragraph to one of those two sections to make it clear that from now on this would be that.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. It's probably my not expressing myself clearly enough, so I'll try to clarify what I meant when I said that perhaps there would be an issue in whether it should be broadened. Section 91 as it reads now applies only to candidates or prospective candidates, and yet people could make some very damaging comments about, for example, a political party or a senior organizer in a political party that, by nature of these words, could have a very detrimental effect on the outcome of an election.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, there are improvements that could be brought to the legislation to make it easier to do that. At the same time, when you keep in mind that very often for us Canadians the companies or the Internet players involved, if you will, are outside Canada, whether it be Google or Facebook, all kinds of issues also arise in trying to get to these companies in a legal way to make them co-operate or cease what they have been doing.