Procedure and House Affairs committee  Now you've put me on the spot.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  As I said, you always want to see what the record is. The Ontario legislation, which—full disclosure—I was involved in as a legal adviser, has a six-month limit. I think six months, speaking only for myself, is quite a defensible amount of time. The challenge is that there were s

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You'll know this better than I will, but to me, June 30 looks very clearly to be when the House is traditionally not sitting, so it is taking a small-c conservative approach to try to avoid the critiques that were made of the B.C. legislation. What would the Supreme Court of Cana

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The 90% reimbursement is a very substantial one as compared with some of the other reimbursements. You mentioned the 60% that's in the act. I don't think it will initially be transformative. There are a lot of inequalities in society, and one provision in the Elections Act can't

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's hard to predict. I think it will, certainly in some individual circumstances. We'll have to see what the numbers are. As I said, there are other factors—how the House conducts it business and a broader suite of considerations—but I'm hopeful that it will.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We have highly regulated TV and radio advertising. Many rules that are supposed to apply on social media need to be updated, but they are definitely under-enforced because of the micro-targeting issue, as you suggested. During the Super Bowl, everybody knows the ad happened. It's

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I have to say that when I read Bill C-76 the fact that the parties were required to have a position at all on the sale of data was quite surprising. I like to think I read pretty widely on what political parties do, and I don't think there was a widespread sense that the sale of

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There are already in the act some provisions related to robocalls. I think the provisions in Bill C-76 that deal with foreign interference and unduly influencing Canadian elections will go some way to reducing opportunities for interference from abroad. The act is always trying

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That is a very interesting question. As a constitutional lawyer, I'd want to see the evidence. I'd want to see the record. It remains to be seen what the record would be into a challenge. I said in my opening remarks that I would have been constitutionally comfortable with the

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm not an expert on telecommunications law. There are broader implications to face with being a broadcaster but in terms of the way broadcasters are treated for electoral purposes, yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There are other things that come with that in terms of licensing and Canadian content, so I'm not trying to suggest anything on those issues, but specifically on election advertising, yes, they should be treated like broadcasters.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Third parties face a spending limit, so one way you could try to get around that is to divide it into two, three, or 10.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Then each one would in theory have the same. That's deemed to be collusion.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You can take the Russian billionaire out of the scenario. You can just have Canadian money—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I wouldn't say it's a Bill C-76 issue. It's that the Elections Act uses that collusion standard. There are other mechanisms to try to get compliance agreements and things like that, but you don't see a lot of prosecutions and convictions for these, and not a lot of compliance agr