A start, but election reforms fall short

One might have thought that when the Conservative government finally got around to reforming election law, it would be to try to prevent the kind of voter suppression and electoral fraud Canada saw in the 2011 election. But when they said they would make it harder to break the rules, it seems they were talking about cracking down on homeless voters, not party bagmen.

Rather than giving Elections Canada the investigative power for which it has asked, the Fair Elections Act will take investigating power away from the agency. It will take away the ability for people without identification to vote using a vouching system. It will increase donation and spending limits.

Stephen Harper has been at odds with Elections Canada since long before he became prime minister. Whether it was spending limits on advertising, or the transmission of poll results across the country, Harper saw many of the country’s rules, and their enforcers, as unfair and wrong. “The jackasses at Elections Canada are out of control,” he wrote in a fundraising letter while he was at the National Citizens Coalition. He called Jean-Pierre Kingsley, the country’s chief electoral officer, a “dangerous man.”

This was personal, long before Harper’s Conservatives started winning elections. Then in 2006, Marc Mayrand, Kingsley’s successor, refused to reimburse some advertising expenses for local campaigns, because he judged that those campaigns hadn’t really purchased the ads — the national campaign had. The Federal Court of Appeal ultimately supported Mayrand’s view.

Fast forward to 2011, and the disturbing robocalls in Guelph, and the other voter suppression tactics in several other ridings, apparently by someone with access to the Conservative voter list. A Federal Court judge found that while there was no evidence of involvement by any Conservative MPs, those MPs and their party made little effort to help in the investigation.

It is in this context that the Conservative proposal to take away investigative power from Marc Mayrand and Elections Canada must be understood. The commissioner of Canada Elections office will now be within the director of public prosecutions, not Elections Canada.

With another election coming soon, Canadians still don’t know what really happened in 2011 or who was responsible. Mayrand has said that the commissioner of Canada Elections should have the power to compel testimony; this bill does not create that. Minister for Democratic Reform Pierre Poilievre said on Tuesday that such power is inconsistent with democratic values, yet it is a power already possessed by the Competition Bureau — an agency that both enforces and administers a set of rules, as Elections Canada does.

The creation of a robocalls registry could be useful. The elimination of vouching, for voters who do not have ID, could very well cut down on electoral irregularities — but the government should take measures to ensure it does not disenfranchise the homeless, young adults and others who might not have appropriate ID showing their current address.

But the removal of investigative powers from Elections Canada is the most revealing change.

“The referee should not be wearing a team jersey,” said Poilievre. This suggests the Conservatives still see Elections Canada as an opposing team; they still think Mayrand is simply out to get them.

This government has a history of setting up new offices and agencies to increase government accountability, and then demonizing, starving or undermining those offices. We can certainly hope this does not happen with the commissioner of elections, and it is worth noting that the existing commissioner, Yves Côté, will remain in the role.

There seem to be some positives in this bill; some loopholes will close and there are some new penalties. Harper has always been right about the ban on premature transmission of election results; that was a stupid, unfair rule and this bill confirms its repeal. But the bill does not go far enough to ensure transparency or accountability.

A bill that declaws Elections Canada, increases donation and spending limits and repeals the ban on the premature transmission of election results must be satisfying for Stephen Harper. It is unlikely to restore public faith in the elections process, or in this government.