Procedure and House Affairs committee  The way to level the playing field is to have only individuals be able to donate for election purposes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  —obviously not in a partisan way but in a controlled, objective way.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I know. It's a difficult role for the government—and I mean the government in a big sense there, because you don't want state regulation of communication. You don't want the government to come in and say, “That's fake; you're not allowed to say that.” However, on some level we need something.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That was my big example—the information commissioner in the U.K.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Again, this is sort of in its infancy. We're watching to see how other countries are responding to the same challenges we're having, which is when messaging is so quick, how do you verify and how do we know that what people are getting is true and accurate? How do we force people to have balanced messages?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you very much for the question. Actually, that's really fantastic. You've just said everything, so I can just say “yes”.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  But I'll say a couple more things. For the purposes of elections and election spending, I would argue that if we want to make things level and we want to level out the playing field, we would look at the same process for third parties as political actors, as we do for everybody else.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Oh, that's a great question. Thank you.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  In some ways, the answer is yes, because the bill gets to some things that we have to get to. In some ways, too, you're always fighting the last battle a bit, so the bill is looking at some realities that have taken place and we have to catch up to it. People worry about things such as too long an election campaign.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think many Canadians are not relying on traditional forms, or what we might consider traditional forms, of political communication to receive their messages. Even the conversation about how we do the leaders debate is fine, but that's not where a lot of people are getting their messages.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you very much for the invitation to appear before the procedure and House affairs committee on Bill C-76. Before I get into the bill, I'll make some general comments about political finance regulation in Canada. We've been regulating spending and contributions for candidates, parties, and third parties in some form or another since 1974.