Procedure and House Affairs committee  I have a couple of examples that I can share with the committee.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  One is a case going back to the 2000 general election involving somebody by the name of Shannon Jones. In the course of an electoral campaign, she stated that the outgoing MP, who was running again, had, as I think she put it, one of the worst attendance records in Parliament at

Procedure and House Affairs committee  She was charged with an offence under the provision at play here, and the judge found that this was not sufficient to justify or to warrant a conviction under the provision. The judge said that the provision should be used where the candidate is alleged to be, and I'm quoting fro

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No, I'm not suggesting that.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think what I said in my opening remarks is that I think there is a role to be played by that provision, and I think the challenge for you MPs and for Parliament is to find a way to refine it, to make it better adjusted to the reality so that it's easier for us to apply and also

Procedure and House Affairs committee  As you said, this would raise very complicated and very difficult issues. For the purpose of simplicity, I will assume there has been no co-operation with a Canadian party or player, so we have a Chinese company on its own doing that. First, it becomes very difficult to investiga

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Assuming there is this real Canadian connection in the example you gave, depending on the facts of the case, you could possibly investigate and lay charges against the Canadian outfit or enterprise that did that on the basis that they became party to the offence committed by the

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The numbers we have now suggest we had 14 complaints in the course of the last general election having to do with possible infringements of section 331. A number of those were disposed of fairly quickly. I made reference to that in my last annual report. They had to to with a nat

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, I would start by quoting a judge of the Supreme Court of Canada in the Harper decision, going back to 2004, and that was Mr. Justice Bastarache writing for the majority. What he said was this: “For spending limits to be fully effective, they must apply to all possible

Procedure and House Affairs committee  As you said earlier, since Bill C-23 was passed, we have been an entity within the office of the director of public prosecutions. Officially and legally, we have been removed from the CEO's organization. In my opinion, things are going quite well on the whole. They are going ve

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, the question as put mentioned that usually where there's smoke there's fire. I have to say that sometimes where there's smoke there's only smoke. I say this because, when you look at section 331, as I said in my opening remarks, you can think that it applies to all kin

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You understand that I will not comment on that.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You will understand that I will not comment on that.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I don't think you would be committing an offence when we have the law as it is now. I think that for any investigation, or any way in which this matter would be dealt with, we would look at the guarantee of freedom of expression that certainly the charter extends to everyone. B

Procedure and House Affairs committee  If we receive a complaint about electoral fraud, we assume it is something major and relatively big. We begin with a preliminary review of the allegations and facts brought to our attention. If we confirm that there are sufficient grounds to proceed and launch an investigation, w