Liberals New Election Bill: Criminal Jail Time for "Misinformation" During Elections

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]loopholes that have enabled third parties to use foreign money for regulated activities are not closed and in fact remain wide open.

[00:00:09]>> I would agree.

[00:00:10]>> Regarding your concerns about criminal uh penalties for conveying false information, the threshold um in the bill is intended to prevent capturing personal opinions.

[00:00:21]>> The voters's list, you suggested that the cure is worse than the disease.

[00:00:24]Would you elaborate on that, please?

[00:00:26]Well, >> this guy's garage.

[00:00:31]>> Like and subscribe.

[00:00:33]>> I would like to welcome our witnesses for today's first panel. Uh, as individuals, uh, Gerard, uh, Chippier, his lawyer, Eve Gam, a lawyer and PhD student, and Peter Lohan, uh, the Harold Tanner dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Cornell University. Welcome to everyone. loopholes that have enabled third parties to use foreign money for regulated activities are not closed and in fact remain wide open.

[00:01:02]I would agree and um I would point out that it is completely inconsistent to provide in section 349.914 A to C that there is a $200 limit on the or a $200 registration requirement. So, anything over 200 must be registered there. Yet, we could have $200 million come in if your organization was governing was spending $2 billion. And there are foundations that have that kind of money. There are organizations, corporate organizations that have that kind of money. So it it just it it's illogical to have these two sections right after each other where you're creating something that a freight train could drive through.

[00:01:58]>> Right. When I questioned the chief electoral officer about this loophole, uh he rebutted by citing general provisions within the Canada Elections Act that prohibit the use of foreign funds by third parties. But these general prohibitions against using foreign funds have been readily exploited by foreign actors and certain registered parties. Correct.

[00:02:22]>> Absolutely. And but my point is that yes, foreign might be uh prohibited under another section, but the whole idea of third party regulation that was upheld in Harper is the idea that everyone is going to be fairly governed.

[00:02:39]And in this case, certain organizations because of the fact they have a lot of money will not be treated the same as other political parties in particular will not be treated the same as members of parliament or political parties. They will have an advantage just by their size.

[00:02:56]>> Okay. And I agree with that. Now, the chief electoral officer has said that this exception is necessary due to charter considerations including freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

[00:03:09]Does that make sense to you?

[00:03:10]>> Well, okay. I'm going to give you my personal and then my professional opinion. Personally, I disagree with Harper. And so, I would agree with the chief electoral officer that we should have absolute freedom of expression. I don't like those kinds of limitations, but that's not the law. And I have to live with the law and so does Parliament. and Harper and all of the cases following Harper make it clear that you may limit third parties and you may require all donations to be identified. There is nothing that I am aware of in any precedent that would suggest that there are some individuals who get to make secret donations and don't have to disclose those because of the charter. That's just not the law.

[00:03:54]Now you have extensive experience as a constitutional lawyer. Correct? Yes.

[00:03:59]>> And uh is it your interpretation, your view uh that if this exception were removed uh that it would be charter compliant?

[00:04:10]>> Absolutely. There's there's nothing that the charter requires with respect to disclosure. This is just disclosure. It doesn't cause someone to remain silent.

[00:04:22]It just simply requires them to disclose the fact that they're spending money during an election.

[00:04:29]Now, um it seems to me that the best approach towards closing the very large loopholes that exist that have been readily exploited uh is to consistently apply what this bill uh attempts to do for what I I believe the government thinks would be the vast majority of registered third parties, and that is simply to require all third parties instead of all but those that apply where the exception would apply to simply set up a bank account and solicit contributions from individual Canadians.

[00:05:07]Would you agree that that is the best approach?

[00:05:09]>> Absolutely. Very administratively simple, straightforward, and consistent with the law that applies to everyone else. um regarding your concerns about criminal uh penalties for conveying false information. The threshold um in the bill is intended to prevent capturing personal opinions or parody and to moderate any potential chartered concerns. With that in mind, um can you comment on the threshold contained in Bill C25 that requires a person to know the statement is false and to make it with the goal of undermining trust?

[00:05:43]The problem I have with the 482.01 is not that we shouldn't have some rules.

[00:05:54]My concern is just one area and that is part 20 gives the right to challenge the results that had been stated. And in my view, by giving the commissioner the option to charge, it creates a in my view a high u standard for the individual to try to prove particularly if it turns out what they said was not true. They may have someone who reported to them. They shouldn't have relied on that report.

[00:06:28]They went forward. It's just the problem of having to defend oneself for no good reason. There's no good reason to stop someone from commenting on the results of an election. It just won't impact the election. So, let's not create an administrative burden for no purpose.

[00:06:50]Um, I think many people uh who have commented on this specific issue would have a divergent uh view on that because the goal is to um keep Canadian trust um and make sure that there there's no false statements being made about candidates uh and and no interference on that. But I do want to go to another question. Um with sorry I just because of time I I really do want to get to my my next question. Uh with respect to the concern that you have raised um around third parties using their their own funds. Um there are still reporting requirements for third parties with respect to the source of the funds. Uh reducing the 10% threshold would prevent third parties from using their own funds to pay uh for regulated fundraising activities even if the funds are generated entire entirely in Canada and from Canadians. Um, this would also prevent them from engaging in regulated fundraising activities and consequently from exercising uh their charter rights to freedom of expression under uh subsection uh 2B, freedom of association under section uh subsection uh 2D and the right to vote section 3. As I'm sure you are aware that Canadian courts have a history of scrutinizing restrictions on uh third party participation in elections as illustrated in uh for example uh Harper versus Canada uh attorney general 2004 regarding spending limits and Ontario attorney general uh versus working families coalition Canada Inc. and 2025 regarding uh limits to political advertising outside of election period. Although the uh bill C-25 takes many important steps to close uh channel for dark and foreign funding, it's also strike uh it also strikes an important balance to ensure that Canadians uh charter rights are respected. So I'm hoping that you can speak on the importance of protecting our uh Canadian charter rights.

[00:08:34]>> Absolutely. And and one of those rights is equality and certainly by using 10%.

[00:08:39]That's just just not equal. So, if you wanted to use $1,000, $10,000, $100,000 and say that's the limit that can be given by a third party organization that is not using some bank account where individuals deposit money. I'm I'm all for that because then it would apply to everyone equally. But 10% when you have such a diversity of third parties certainly is not equal. And so my view is that's a limitation on freedom of expression that simply is not justified in a free democratic society.

[00:09:19]>> In your uh opening remarks uh when you talked about um the voters list, you suggested that the cure is worse than the disease. Would you elaborate on that, please?

[00:09:28]>> Well, all of those rules related to privacy are going to apply to all of you. You're putting handcuffs on yourself. That's number one to keep in mind. Number two, freedom of expression in our constitution has always been about political expression that is unlimited and your ability to express yourself to all of your constituents could be severely hampered if we applied normal privacy considerations because under normal privacy considerations you can be blocked. They can say you can't talk to me, you can't send me an email, you can't call me. To me that is pretty close to a violation of not just the charter but the whole idea of parliamentary uh government. The idea of our system is everybody communicates on political matters and no one is able to say I'm not playing. I'm not going to participate. So I just don't think that privacy laws should apply in the political realm. But if they are going to certainly they have to apply the same at the federal level. We can't have the provinces involved. That would be uh a that would be a disaster if you allowed the provincial laws to apply. So it has to be federal. But I recommend none.

[00:10:51]There there's no need. And think about it. Thousands and thousands of people go doortodoor knocking on doors and asking people to vote for their favorite candidate using those lists. I think that this uh concern in Alberta is way overblown. There is no problem with people communicating with other people and people knowing names and addresses because it's out there. You can get it from so many different sources. The information that is important to be protected is how you vote in the ballot box and the chief electoral officer does a very good job of protecting that information. Beyond that, I don't think there's anything that needs to be protected.

[00:11:32]>> Okay. Thank you very much. Uh, moving on to your your third item. You talked about a a a different proposal for the ballot, and I wasn't sure I quite understood what you were talking about.

[00:11:42]Are you talking about a like a a two option ballot where you can either vote for the party or you can vote for the individual? Could you explain to me the why you would change and put the party names first? I'm just I want some clarity on that.

[00:11:55]Well, number one, because parties have been regulated and parties are what makes our parliamentary system work.

[00:12:02]Parties are heavily regulated and provided for in the legislation. So, my idea is that you take the parties, you list them, maybe in alphabetical order, it doesn't matter. And then an individual can choose a party, it'll have the name of the candidate and the party, and then that just rotates through each each ballot gets a different one at the top. and it rotates, but it's the first thing you see on the ballot. You can ignore that and say, "I don't want to vote for any of the parties. I hate political parties. I'm going down to the list of independents." And then the independents would then be listed separately rotating, but they would not in effect hide the political parties.

[00:12:43]You would put the political parties first on the ballot and then all of the individual candidates would follow. But you only get one vote. You either vote for a party with a candidate name or you go down and list go down the list to those who are not associated with the political party who've decided to run.

[00:13:02]Anyway, >> are there any changes that are being proposed in the current legislation where the uh where the you know the intended unintended consequences are obvious? My concern is the unintended consequences uh being more problematic.

[00:13:16]Is there anything that you would recommend to this committee or recommend uh uh a change for uh other than the ones that you've already listed uh that that this committee consider?

[00:13:27]>> No, I I think I've given you all of the the the biggest one though, and this is something that the two uh decisions from the court have highlighted over and over again. My recommendation, pull the chief electoral officer and commissioner out of any discretionary role. Their neutrality is protected by them carefully following a statutory provision. They need to be restricted to making those kinds of decisions, applying the statute as written. They should not have a discretion with respect to party policy on the issue of privacy. I mean, it just doesn't make any sense.