Elections bill pushes tighter spending rules

Legislation would limit funds parties can spend on partisan advertising

OTTAWA— The federal Liberal government wants to make it easier for Canadians to cast a ballot, while making it harder for political parties to spend vast sums to persuade them who to vote for — or to violate their privacy.

Treasury Board President Scott Brison introduced a bill Monday meant to address several promises Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made on the campaign trail, including tackling how much political parties and third-party advocacy groups can spend before and during election campaigns.

“We know that the protection of our electoral system is absolutely essential and over the years, we have seen new threats and new challenges appearing that may affect the integrity of our electoral system,” Trudeau said Monday in Vancouver.

Brison is acting as democratic institutions minister while Karina Gould, who usually fills that role, is on maternity leave.

The proposed legislation, if passed, would limit how much political parties can spend on partisan advertising leading up to the official campaign period, which would be about $1.5 million in 2019.

Third-party advocacy groups, meanwhile, would be limited to spending $10,000 per electoral district — up to $1 million in total — on partisan advertising, activities and election-related surveys.

After the writs are dropped, however, those third parties would be able to spend up to $500,000 in 2019, which is more than allowed now, but none of it could come from foreign entities. The bill is also meant to modernize the Canada Elections Act to reflect the fact that a lot of campaigning now takes place online, introducing a number of new risks to the privacy of Canadians.

The proposed legislation, known as Bill C-76, would require all political parties to create and publish a policy on how they will protect the privacy of voters, including what information they are collecting from potential voters, how it will be safeguarded and how it will be used.

Bill C-76 also contains some measures to make voting more accessible, such as allowing advance polls to remain open for 12 hours, and creating a registry of Canadians between the ages of14 to17, who would be allowed to vote within the next few years. The Liberal government introduced some reforms in November 2016, aimed at undoing some of what the Conservatives introduced through their Fair Elections Act — including restoring the use of the voter identification card as a valid piece of ID.

That bill, stalled at the introductory stage ever since, will be rolled into the new one.

The Liberals are confident the changes will be in place in time for Canadians to vote in the next federal election.

“We want to have these measures in place by the election in 2019, because Canadians expect elections to be reliable and safe,” Trudeau said.

But acting chief electoral officer Stephane Perrault said last week that anything meant to apply in 2019 should have been in place by now.