Democratic Reform  Mr. Speaker, even police officers investigating the most reprehensible crimes do not have the power the hon. member is referring to. Even for violent crimes, police officers do not have this power. The commissioner already has the same investigative powers as police officers and

Democratic Reform  Mr. Speaker, when we introduced a bill prohibiting the use of other people's names to get around donation limits, the other parties said that this would prevent candidates from launching their own campaigns. We are therefore going to allow candidates to give themselves enough mo

Democratic Reform  Mr. Speaker, the NDP was not even able to run an electronic voting system for a thousand delegates at its convention. It shut down the entire convention for three or four hours. If that were to happen in a national election, imagine what kind of national crisis we would have. Th

Democratic Reform  Mr. Speaker, I commend the member to read the Canada Elections Act. In fact, the pilot project provision in the existing act allows the CEO to experiment with different methods of voting after consulting only the parliamentary committees responsible for that, which include, und

Democratic Reform  Mr. Speaker, I am the only who has actually presented any data on the question at all. First of all, I presented the fact that since Elections Canada started its promotional campaigns, the voter turnout has plummeted by roughly 15 percentage points. Among youth, between 1984 and

Democratic Reform  Mr. Speaker, the limits in question in the bill seek to limit the amount of money spent on election campaigns and not the amount of money spent on fundraising in the first place. That is a reasonable change. In fact, that same rule applied during the Liberal Party leadership race

Democratic Reform  Quite the contrary, Mr. Speaker, the former electoral officer in fact gave the bill an overall A minus, which is pretty good, I think. The bill will actually now go to committee after the vote next week, at which point, we can work hard with the former CEO, many expert witnesse

Democratic Reform  Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has made a factual error in her question. Section 18 of the existing act deals with promotional advertising by Elections Canada and has absolutely nothing to do with communicating allegations of wrongdoing. Sections 534 and 535, not section 18, requi

Democratic Reform  Mr. Speaker, clause 7 amends section 18, which has absolutely nothing to do with the reporting of allegations of wrongdoing. Section 18 deals with advertising. The last time I checked, Elections Canada does not combat or report allegations by purchasing advertising. It reports a

Democratic Reform  Mr. Speaker, in fact, we are making it easier to vote by giving them an extra voting day and allowing resources to reduce congestion at the polls so that voting is faster for Canadians. Furthermore, we are requiring Elections Canada to communicate to people the basics of voting,

Fair Elections Act  Mr. Speaker, I do not think anyone in the House of Commons failed to see the irony of that member standing in his place to talk about infractions for robocalls. He will go down in history forever as the first person in Canada to be convicted of making an illegal robocall. In the

Fair Elections Act  Mr. Speaker, one of the provisions in the fair elections bill would protect against voter fraud. Due to enormous volumes of Elections Canada mistakes in the last election, we saw heightened irregularities in the use of vouching. According to the report commissioned by Elections

Democratic Reform  Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his excellent question and his work on this file. Yesterday, the Leader of the Opposition said he did not think a new offence to cover impersonations was even necessary and asked where it even came from. It turns out that it was recommended by

Democratic Reform  Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for his suggestion. Obviously, we will continue to study the bill in committee. The fair elections act will protect the integrity of our votes and elections.

Democratic Reform  Mr. Speaker, it is important for the member to understand what powers the commissioner already has. One, he can seek a warrant to obtain documents from a judge already. Two, if there are charges, a judge can issue a subpoena to compel testimony in a court. Three, the powers tha