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Branden Leslie

Conservative 12:15 p.m.

“I want to make it cheaper to become a candidate. Will you put that in the bill?”

Luc Berthold

Conservative 12:25 p.m.

“I don't like letting people sign multiple nomination papers. It let too many people run and sent a political message. A $1000 deposit could block some people from running. I want to stop too many people from running without a deposit. The other guy must have ideas to not have confusing long ballots or making people write in names. I missed his first ideas. We need to talk more at committee.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I am just trying to understand my colleague's position on signing multiple nomination papers, because we saw that this was a major problem in some ridings. People are using the election to send a political message. That never used to happen because a $1,000 deposit was required, which was just as problematic for some people who could not afford to pay that amount to run for office. I know we will have the opportunity to discuss this in committee, but we absolutely must find a way to put an end to this election protest. How can this be solved? I missed part of my colleague's speech, but what solutions does he propose to prevent us from ending up with ballots that are too long or ballots on which people have to write a candidate's name, when we know that a certain percentage of people—

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Kelly Block

Conservative 12:30 p.m.

“I think this bill is important. It tries to protect our elections. There are some parts that need more scrutiny. We need to prevent fake candidates and foreign funding. The commissioner of Elections Canada shouldn't have too much power. I hope we can work together to improve this bill.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-25, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act. This is a complex, technical piece of legislation, but its core objective is one we should all support: protecting the integrity of our democratic process. Before I get into my speech, I would like to thank my hon. colleague from St. Albert—Sturgeon River for his thoughtful remarks on this bill and for the very good work he does on democratic reform. While the Conservative caucus supports moving this bill to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs for a detailed study, there are specific areas regarding foreign interference and new enforcement powers that I believe require further scrutiny. The bill focuses on three central themes. The first is bringing in changes to prevent further abuses of our democratic processes by the longest ballot committee. I know we have heard a lot about this issue during this debate. Over the course of many years now, members of the House, prospective candidates and Canadians have been subjected to a coordinated effort by a group that calls itself the longest ballot committee, whose members have sought to exploit our electoral process. They target specific ridings and flood the ballot with dozens of fake candidates, candidates who have no intention of campaigning, engaging with voters or putting forward solutions and policy proposals to run on. This undermines the trust Canadians have in our election systems. The expectation of residents in the riding of Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek from Humboldt, Warman and Martensville to Radisson, just to name a few, is that as a candidate I run under a set of policies that I am committing to represent, and I put forward a vision of what I plan to achieve in Ottawa and how I plan to represent the voices of my riding here in this place. The longest ballot committee is the exact opposite of this. To call it a protest is to misrepresent the way it undermines trust in our elections. A recent and prominent example was in the riding of Carleton, where we saw a metre-long ballot with 91 fake candidates. This creates voter confusion, marginalizes legitimate candidates and creates unnecessary barriers for voters with certain disabilities. As of now, groups can use the same 100 signatures to qualify multiple candidates. This is a clear abuse of the spirit of the act. Bill C-25 rightly proposes that an elector may only sign one nomination form and that an official agent may only act for one candidate per riding. This would help put an end to this sham of the electoral process by the longest ballot group. The second part of this bill proposes changes to close foreign funding loopholes. Central to our democracy is the idea and trust that Canadian elections should be and are decided by Canadians. Currently, significant loopholes allow foreign interests to influence our outcomes through third parties. If foreign money is sent for a general purpose rather than a specific regulated activity, it can be treated as general revenue and used for campaigning. This allows third parties to potentially be significantly funded by foreign money in practice. That process is the melding of funds. These new rules that would prohibit cryptocurrency, prepaid cards and money orders as contribution methods would extend to leadership contests as well. These changes to prevent anonymous and hard-to-trace funding channels are welcome. As has been noted, with the instance of the 2017 Tides Foundation case, where foreign funds were funnelled through Canadian intermediaries to mask their original source, those entities ended up campaigning against then prime minister Stephen Harper in the 2015 election. That is an intermediary loophole that exists, where foreign funding is dispersed to legitimate Canadian companies and then transferred to third party groups and the funds do not appear to be from foreign entities. This bill would require third parties to use separate bank accounts funded only by Canadians or permanent residents. However, there would be a 10% “own funds” exception that may still leave the door open for foreign influence. That is why Conservatives are urging the government to consider an amendment requiring all third parties, regardless of size, to use separate Canadian-only accounts to ensure a level playing field with political parties. The third part of the bill I will be focusing on is the proposed changes in powers to the commissioner of Elections Canada and new monetary penalties. It is these proposed changes that may require greater scrutiny, which would be done in the House through each stage of debate, and then during the review process at committee. The bill is proposing to increase monetary penalties for individuals from $1,500 to $25,000, and for corporations from $5,000 to $100,000. These are not small increases. Further investigation will be needed, given that the commissioner would have extraordinary powers to apply these fines, to see if it would be more appropriate to refer the matter to the director of public prosecutions and to proceed by way of criminal prosecution. Some of the proposed penalties are for spreading election misinformation. Conservatives will do our part to ensure that the legislation reflects the intent and that it would not penalize or have a chilling effect on having debate and conversations about elections. There are also greater powers being proposed for the commissioner of Elections Canada, in that they would no longer need judicial authorization to compel evidence in all circumstances. We will need to ensure that this is charter compliant. These are examples of where Conservatives believe the bill requires further scrutiny, and I do hope this demonstrates that we are willing to come to the table and find solutions to the problems facing our electoral system. The Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs tabled its report, and while some of its recommendations are being put forward in Bill C-25, some are not. The report was unanimous. Conservatives hope the government will be amenable to reconsidering the amendments that reflect the unanimous recommendations made by the committee. Election interference is real, and it is important that we work to close the loopholes and combat foreign influence in our elections. We are all familiar with what happened in 2019 in the riding of Don Valley North, where the Liberal nomination became an entryway for foreign interference in our elections process. A Beijing consulate coordinated support for a candidate who would go on to win the nomination and become a member of the House. Instances like the one in Don Valley North are a warning to every member of the House that foreign interference in our elections must be fought at every stage, including nominations. I know that there is much to consider in the bill, and in the short time I have had, I have not covered everything. Bill C-25 is a technical bill, as I mentioned earlier, and it includes numerous measures that are meant to close loopholes in the current legislation. I would like to thank the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs for the report and for the fact that it was unanimously agreed to. Conservatives broadly support the measures contained in the bill that would safeguard democracy and ensure the integrity of our elections, and we will closely review individual measures at committee.

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Kelly Block

Conservative 12:40 p.m.

“I want higher fines. More fines show we mean business. I hope the committee agrees.”

Kelly Block

Conservative 12:40 p.m.

“I don't want taxpayers to fund political parties. I want people who believe in a party to donate. Limiting donations is good. Raising money from more donors is better.”

Scott Anderson

Conservative 12:40 p.m.

“I want to talk about how well or poorly our election rules are working. I want my colleague to say more about her election ideas.”

Kelly Block

Conservative 12:45 p.m.

“I think this loophole lets people run in too many ridings. All parties agreed on that. I want to close this loophole. I think it's bad like when MPs switch parties.”

Helena Konanz

Conservative 12:45 p.m.

“I think the election law needs to change. We need to be careful about changing it. One party should not change election laws by itself. I want the committee to study this more. I am happy the government is finally banning foreign election interference. I also want to stop the longest-ballot protest. They use a loophole to put too many protest names on the ballot. That is not fair to real voters and local volunteers counting ballots late at night. Protest candidates should be allowed but should follow the rules. The government should let all parties make changes to this law.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-25, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act. Our Elections Act is among the most important laws we have as a nation, as it sets out the rules and procedures for our democracy to function. All members of the House believe in democracy, of course. It is how we all ended up here. However, any time measures are brought forward that would change our laws, this could change how we vote and whom we can vote for, and the proposed measures must be considered with a microscope. Any proposed changes to how an election would operate must be considered with strict consideration to make sure the rules of the games would not be stacked in the favour of the party in power. We only need to look around the globe to see nations where democratic decline has started because free and fair elections have been watered down by legislative majorities. Canada and many of our allies have avoided this, but the decline of democracy can come swiftly. What once started in a forum in ancient Greece largely disappeared for more than a millennium. Democracy is not a natural occurrence. It must always be reasserted, and changes made to it must be agreed to among the largest possible number of parties and citizens. Given that the House now has a Liberal majority government constructed behind closed doors instead of at the ballot box, extra consideration is needed. The proposed changes that are before us could now be passed by one party alone, changing how our elections would be conducted. I know that the minister said in a minority government that he wanted to have consensus support for legislation amending the Canada Elections Act, and he expressed an openness to entertaining supporting other parties' amendments. I hope he keeps his word on this and trusts that members on this side of the House are working in good faith to possibly make further changes. For the most part, I think the bill contains many welcome proposed changes, though many are long overdue. Other areas will require careful study by my colleagues in committee. For the people watching at home, I will explain that the legislation would make the following changes. First, the bill contains measures to counter foreign interference in our elections, as well as in nomination and leadership contests. Foreign entities would be banned from contributing to third parties at all. Foreign funding would be barred from leadership contests. Also closed would be contributions made anonymously, and funding channels such as money orders or cryptocurrency would be traced. After years of delays by the Liberal government, I am pleased that this would finally be addressed. Additionally, the bill would create several new offences and extend existing offences under the act to leadership and nomination contests. The bill would give significant new powers to the commissioner of Canada elections to undertake investigations and to enforce the act, among other measures. Last, the bill includes welcome measures to counter the disruptive and anti-democratic activities of the so-called longest ballot committee. Under the act as it stands, a candidate must obtain 100 signatures from electors in a riding in order to get their name on the ballot. The longest ballot committee, however, identified that the same pool of 100 voters could sign the nomination forms of hundreds of protest candidates who were seeking to get their name on the ballot, even if few or any of them were from the riding. This is clearly an abuse of the Canada Elections Act, insofar as the purpose of that section is to require that a candidate have the support of at least 100 electors, not that the same 100 voters can flood the ballot with an endless list of candidates. It is a low threshold but a threshold nonetheless. This point is of great importance because it does touch upon the issue of protests. Protests are in the blood of any democratic system. No country can call itself free if it does not allow for protests. I appreciate that the members of the longest ballot committee wish to make their case for changes to our election system. Canada has a long legal tradition that does not prescribe how these protests should be done. What one person may think is serious, another may feel is frivolous. The law does not discriminate, however. Protest candidates also have a long tradition in Canada and other democracies. British Columbians still remember the Marijuana Party of Canada. Others will remember the Rhinoceros Party of Canada, which campaigned on jokes. John Turmel is probably the most famous candidate, having run in 112 elections between 1979 and 2024, never once elected and yet never forgotten. In some ways, his persistence is a symbol of our democracy itself. However, it is not a universal right to subject other Canadians to protests. We are allowed a million ways, for example, to protest at an airport. We are even allowed to run for election to protest an airport. What we are not allowed to do is to stand on the runway and block the plane. The longest ballot committee chose to exploit a loophole in the Elections Act to fill ballots with hundreds of candidates, none of whom had any connection to the riding where an election was being held. This strikes against the principle of local representation. As a result of its actions, the metre-long ballots that were printed for voters were enormously burdensome. Other ridings chose to make ballots write-in only, which limited voters' ability to consider their candidate in the voting booth. If the longest ballot committee wishes to protest our voting system, that is fine. It is not fine to disrupt the ballots for citizens in ridings across the country with long lists of people who do not live there and do not intend to represent them. It also strikes against some of this country's strongest democracy supporters, such as the volunteers who take time every election to assist in the election process with Elections Canada. Forcing them to count enormously long ballots deep into the night is wrong. They give their time freely, with no reward, to ensure our elections are conducted fairly. They are heroes of democracy whom I know every MP in the House respects enormously. We literally cannot have elections without them. The changes that would be made here to limit the longest ballot committee are simple and fair and will leave a wide amount of space for protest candidates to continue. The amendments brought forward would require that electors sign only one candidate nomination form, as well as that an official agent act for only one candidate per riding. This is good for candidates, voters, election volunteers and even protesters. As I said previously, I look forward to seeing the bill go forward to committee for further study and possible amendments from all parties. I ask that my Liberal colleagues do not look to pass this legislation unilaterally and operate with an open mind to good ideas. Lastly, given this is on the subject of elections, it has been almost a year since I was elected myself as the member of Parliament for Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay. On this one-year anniversary, I would like to thank all the residents, whether they voted for me or for others, for granting me the honour of my life, to serve them in our nation's Parliament. Over the past year, I have come to know the distinct character of this vast region, from the vineyards and beaches of the Okanagan to the mountains and valleys of the Similkameen, the forests and rivers of Boundary Country and the alpine landscapes of West Kootenay. Each community is unique, with its own needs and challenges, and I will work hard to ensure those voices are heard here in Ottawa.

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Helena Konanz

Conservative 12:55 p.m.

“I'm glad everyone will work together on this. Canadians are watching. Virtual voting must be very safe before we use it. It is not safe yet.”

Helena Konanz

Conservative 12:55 p.m.

“I want to talk about election rules in committee. Some ridings are really big. It is harder to campaign in a big riding. Maybe we should spend more in big ridings.”

Helena Konanz

Conservative 12:55 p.m.

“I want our party to talk with other parties about this bill. I want to discuss whether someone needs to be a citizen to vote in nominations. I think we should vote on that.”

David Bexte

Conservative 12:55 p.m.

“I'm supposed to stand up for Alberta when something's wrong. Elections are a mess right now - too many candidates, confusing ballots, people's votes not counting. It's shaking confidence in the whole system. Plus foreign interference is undermining trust even more. We need way tougher rules and penalties to fix this. The bill's a start but doesn't go far enough. Let's work on it more in committee.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I am standing here today because the people of Alberta expect me to stand up when something is wrong. They expect us to fix it. As members of this House, we are guardians of the Canada Elections Act. This law is one of the foundations of our democracy. It is the contract that ensures power stays where it belongs, in the hands of the Canadian people. Our duty is to ensure that when a citizen marks their ballot, the process is fair, the choice is clear, and the results are beyond reproach. Over the last decade, confidence in Canadian elections has decayed. The very foundations are beginning to crack. Bill C-25 is supposed to patch this up. When a foundation starts to crack, we do not ignore it or paper over it. We shore it up before the whole structure crumbles. The bill would start that work, but it is late, and it does not go far enough. In my maiden speech, I said that the Bow River does not ask Ottawa's permission to flow. Even though obstructions are in the way, it cuts its path. Just across from my riding, my neighbours in Battle River—Crowfoot walked into a by-election and saw what happens when those foundations are neglected. They saw a ballot so broken it barely worked. The longest ballot committee flooded that by-election with 214 candidates. It forced Elections Canada to abandon the normal ballot process, and people had to handwrite their vote on a blank line. They were forced to manually write out names and risk a spoiled ballot just to exercise their basic right. Let us think about that. A senior who has voted for 50 years walks in, ready to do their duty, and suddenly they are asked to reconstruct the ballot from memory. If someone spells a name wrong, their vote could be tossed. If someone writes too fast or writes a name slightly off, their vote could be tossed. The government was warned by the Chief Electoral Officer that these ballots were becoming a barrier for voters with disabilities. This had been done before. It knew the longest ballot scam was threatening our democratic process, and it did nothing. It took something that should have been simple and made it fragile. I have to say, I am most concerned about my Liberal colleagues, because we all saw what happened in the House. One of the Liberals stood up with complete confidence and berated this side of the House about the supposed hockey skills of Irish kickboxer Conor McGregor. We knew he was talking about Alberta's hockey superstar Connor McDavid, but close only counts in horseshoes. We are human, and we all are susceptible to error. That is why we have to have rigid, reliable systems. It can be stressful standing up in the House, especially when the elbows-up PMO has the Liberal caucus on a strict hockey analogy quota. Let us imagine the same moment in a voting booth: Two Connors are in someone's head. They know who they mean to vote for, and they just hope they get it exactly right. That is the system the government forced on people. The longest ballot committee exposed a weakness, not in our underlying system but in the administration of it. It cost this country millions of dollars. It delayed results. Most importantly, it shook confidence. Ultimately, it creates a cascading effect of doubt. If a voter in Bow River sees a circus across the fence in Battle River, they start to wonder if their vote is next or if the whole system is broken. When people see the process break down, they start to wonder what else is not holding. Everyone saw it coming. The warnings were there, and the government did nothing. There is a deeper crack that we need to look at: foreign interference. While people were dealing with a system that was already under strain, foreign actors were pushing on it from the outside. We saw what happened to Kenny Chiu. There were smear campaigns, coordinated messaging and falsehoods designed to turn his own community against him. That pressure does not stay contained. It spreads, and it weakens the trust in the entire structure. My family came to this country, escaping from communist Europe, to build a country where we could speak freely and participate in public life without fear. That belief rests on a democratic system that people can trust. When foreign governments start interfering in who gets elected, they are attacking that trust directly. It does not start on election day either, but far earlier. In the nomination races, we have seen reports of buses of non-residents showing up to tip the scales. That is pressure being applied at the very base of the system. If one can shape who gets on the ballot, one can shape everything that follows. This legislation does nothing to stop it. Non-citizens should have no say in our elections, no say in who gets to be on the ballot, and certainly no say in who gets to stand in this House. There is also the question of privacy, which is another part of the structure that should be solid. Back home, Rocky's Bakery in Strathmore sells some of the best hot cross buns one can ever find. When a customer swipes their credit card, a litany of laws kick in to protect that consumer data. Rocky's Bakery follows the rules. It answers to the law. However, political parties in this country think they are above the law. They collect vast amounts of data on Canadians and operate outside of any oversight. There are gaps in the system like this. These sorts of gaps will not stay small; they will widen. Here is the reality. My neighbours are watching election after election turn into a circus. They have heard of and have seen foreign governments trying to influence outcomes. They know their data is being handled under a different set of rules and they are asking a simple question: Is the system as solid as we were told it is? Can they trust the system? This is what needs to happen. We need real oversight of political party data by the Privacy Commissioner. We need serious penalties for anyone working with foreign actors to interfere in our elections. We need a foreign agent registry. We need to crack down on those who are interfering directly in our elections or from the shadows. We need clear rules to prevent these ballot stunts from ever happening again. We need to protect nomination races, because that is where the foundation is first laid. I think the best place for this bill to go is to committee. I am really encouraged by the notion that we collaborate to get this right. I hope the government listens to constructive criticism and to how we can build a system that is reliable and can stand the test of centuries. Specifically, it needs to go to committee because I do not think it is complete. I think more work needs to be done, most importantly, because my neighbours deserve a system that holds. The country deserves a system that holds, one where every citizen can walk in, mark a ballot and know where it stands, where no foreign government can lean on it. That is what we are here to protect.

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David Bexte

Conservative 1:05 p.m.

“I'm not going to take a firm position on your question. Let's just say it's close to what I want, and send it to committee so more people can weigh in and change it.”

David Bexte

Conservative 1:10 p.m.

“I want this bill studied more. I don't trust what the government says it does. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

Helena Konanz

Conservative 1:10 p.m.

“Do you agree that a financial agent should only work for one party during an election? It's a big job with lots of red tape. It's hard to find agents.”

David Bexte

Conservative 1:10 p.m.

“It's important to have rules for how election money is handled, but it's even more important to have people who know what they're doing and can be trusted. If we spread those people too thin, we'll have problems.”

Scott Reid

Conservative 1:10 p.m.

“I want the bill to pass and I hope the committee makes it even better. The bill does good things like ban anonymous crypto donations and protect ballot integrity from performance art stunts. Too many fake candidates spoil it for real independents and make it impossible for disabled or elderly voters to use mail-in or template ballots. That takes away their right to vote.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, today I would like to address very briefly two topics and then dwell at greater length on a third. Like many of my colleagues here, I am generally supportive of this legislation. I do think it is good that it will go to committee where it will, one hopes, be open for genuine good-faith amendments to improve it. Since we agree on the substance of the bill, it should be easy for us to find improvements that make sense to all of us. I am very hopeful that will happen. There are three areas that deserve being noted because they are particularly valuable. One is the banning of anonymous contributions through cryptocurrency, which I think removes a loophole on the idea we have had established in Canadian electoral legislation for some time, that we ought to be able to identify all contributors and that all contributions are public contributions. It is also a way of getting around potentially maximum contribution levels for individuals. Dealing with that is useful. The removal of some forms of foreign interference is also beneficial. Then, of course, there is the issue of ballot integrity, which is dealing with the problems introduced by the activities of the longest ballot committee. I want to spend a bit of time talking about that. I had the chance to see this up close in the last federal election, about this time last year, when I spent a considerable amount of time campaigning in the riding of Carleton, where the leader of my party was running. It is the riding that joins my own riding. It was clear that there was a need to get in there and do what we could to help the leader. Ultimately, the efforts that other individuals and I made were insufficient, although we did cause him to experience the highest Conservative vote he had ever had in his entire career, but that was insufficient to win the riding. At the same time that was going on, there was an effort by the longest ballot committee to put many people onto the ballot, ostensibly, in the service of their goal of trying to draw attention to the abandonment, way back in 2017 ,of Justin Trudeau's stated goal of changing the electoral system. We will recall that in 2015, then candidate Trudeau said this would be the last election under first past the post. There was then a series of hearings of a parliamentary committee for this purpose. I served on that committee, and so did my colleague who is nodding. She still looks somewhat exhausted from the experience. We came up with a proposal that, ultimately, he decided was not very satisfactory, so Trudeau stepped away from it. The longest ballot committee felt this would be a way of drawing attention to their concerns with his abandonment and his approach. I think that may be how it started, but as time went on, it went from being a form of political protest to being a kind of performance art. There is nothing wrong, I suppose, with engaging in performance art if it creates no harm, but I think in this case it did create harm. I will, first of all, show how over a period of time, over six different elections, this transformation occurred. In the year 2021, in the riding of St. Boniface—St. Vital, the longest ballot committee put forward 15 candidates. Of those 15 candidates, the maximum number of votes garnered for one candidate was 58 votes. The minimum number received by a longest ballot committee candidate was seven votes. In 2022, there was a by-election in Mississauga—Lakeshore. This time, there were 33 candidates from the longest ballot committee, more than double. The maximum number of votes received by any of them was 48. The third by-election took place in Winnipeg South Centre. It resulted in 42 candidates that time, so it is going up, as we will notice. There was a maximum number of 36 votes for any of those candidates and there was a candidate who received only one vote. The fourth time this happened, when the longest ballot committee weighed in, was in a by-election in 2024 in Toronto—St. Paul's. This time, there were 77 longest ballot committee candidates. For the first time, we saw a candidate who received zero votes, strongly suggesting that the candidate was not a resident of the riding and was not even able to vote for himself or herself. The fifth time this came up was in a by-election in LaSalle—Émard—Verdun in September 2024, with 77 longest ballot candidates again. By the way, I got all this information from Wikipedia. In each of these, as I looked it up, it said that it was a new record-breaking result. It seems that whoever wrote those articles was starting to cover it as a kind of sporting event. There were 77 candidates for the committee. The maximum number of votes achieved was 34, so we notice a gradual downward trend here. Two candidates got zero votes. The next one was in Carleton last year, with 85 candidates, a significant number of whom received zero votes. Finally, last August, in Battle River—Crowfoot, we saw something in the neighbourhood of 200 candidates for the longest ballot committee. The point is that 77 of those candidates got zero votes, and a significant number got one vote each. That was the performance chart. Now, what are the consequences of doing this? In Battle River—Crowfoot, there were two independent candidates, both of whom complained that they had a hard time being taken seriously and drawing independent attention to local issues, which is often what independent candidates are trying to do, because they were being conflated with the people on the longest ballot committee. In fact, the second-place candidate in that by-election was an independent candidate, Bonnie Critchley, and she largely got attention for the issues she was concerned about by criticizing the longest ballot committee and asking, “How can we express our concerns when these guys are hogging all the bandwidth and distracting?” As I said, she came in second. In all fairness, she got only 9.8% of the vote, but that was more than twice what the Liberal candidate got. She was a serious candidate. These other people were not serious candidates. I think that's a legitimate harm they are doing. Perhaps it is not a harm that is a cause to ban them. However, I will point out as well that my step-mother lives in the riding of Carleton. She is quite elderly now and cannot get out to vote, so I looked into getting a ballot for her to participate from home. In these circumstances, it is very difficult to get a mail-in ballot that would be usable by someone in her situation. Likewise, someone who is visually impaired is normally enabled to vote and to participate fully, with a confidential, secret ballot, when there is a normal-length ballot, in the following manner: People are given a ballot and then a template with a series of holes. They can feel which hole is in which spot, while the names of the candidates are read out to them in order, typically in alphabetical order. They identify that they will vote for candidate number three, who is the candidate of their party. They go behind the screen, count down to the third spot and mark their X. It gets put into the ballot box with everybody else's ballot. The result is that they have a secret ballot. Once this is done, that is taken away from them. Taking away the right of a citizen to participate fully and properly in an election is, in my view, a contravention of section 3 of the charter, which guarantees every Canadian the right to vote in a federal election. I am sure that was not the intention, but that is the practical result. The practical proposal being adopted in this legislation is one that eliminates the ability to engage in this kind of frivolous balloting. It is not that independent candidates cannot get on the ballot, real independent candidates like Bonnie Critchley. It is a way of ensuring that candidates who have taken what started off as a legitimate protest and turned it into a form of performance art cannot engage in that performance art at the expense of the constitutional rights of Canadians who have disabilities, who are prohibited by their actions from participating in a full, proper and rights-respecting manner.

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Scott Reid

Conservative 1:20 p.m.

“I don't think we need those rules. Some good MPs weren't from their riding at first. Let's not make rules that would stop good stories like that.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, to be honest, I think the measures that have been proposed would actually serve the same purpose, basically eliminating non-serious independent candidates. I do want to say, though, that we have to be a bit careful about what we put in there. I will just throw this out as a thought. In 2011, the New Democrats won a significant number of seats in Quebec, where the candidates were not resident in the riding and had not visited the riding. It appears that the people who voted for them we actually aware of that fact. This was their way of expressing support for Jack Layton and his vision. After some of them got elected, they went to heroic efforts, in some cases, to move to the area. We all remember Ruth Ellen Brosseau, who went to her riding. She did not speak French very well. She learned to speak it better. She moved. She raised her son there. The result was that she was re-elected. I do not ever want to preclude the possibility of that happening again.

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Scott Reid

Conservative 1:25 p.m.

“I'm not worried about it. I signed for someone else before but I still voted for me. People know they can sign papers just because they support the process.”

Burton Bailey

Conservative 1:25 p.m.

“I want to add something. In my riding, a long ballot cost more money and needed more staff. Do you know how hard and expensive that was? People keep saying by-elections cost a lot. Can you say something about that?”

What they said. What they meant.

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