Thank you, Chair, and good morning to the committee members.

We, the CLC, represent three million workers in virtually all sectors, industries, occupations and regions of Canada. We have two major concerns about Bill C-65. Both concerns relate to third party participation in elections.

We and many of our affiliate unions actively engage in federal elections. The Elections Act requires that we register as third parties and follow all regulations for third party communications and activities during elections. We understand the crucial objective of regulating communications between third parties and the general public to ensure electoral fairness and informed debate. However, the current act includes a major overreach that restricts our ability to communicate with our own members during elections.

The act includes three categories of regulated activities for third parties—election advertising, partisan activities and election surveys. There's an inconsistency between these categories with respect to communications between a third party and its members. The first category of election advertising contains an explicit exemption for unions to communicate with their members and not have to register as a third party, but the other two categories—partisan activities and election surveys—do not include an exemption. Elections Canada has interpreted this to to mean that a wide range of communications and activities with our members, such as phone calls, emails, texts, websites, mailings, organic social media content, rallies, surveys and door-to-door canvassing, are regulated third party activities.

We believe these restrictions on our ability to communicate with our members are a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It's a violation of the charter's freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association.

At the core of a union's mandate and function is the ability to communicate freely and effectively with its members. This is essential to representing and protecting their interests, not only at the bargaining table but also about and during elections. Communicating with our members about elections is essential for unions representing federal workers within the federal jurisdiction. After all, the federal government is their employer, and a change in government can have profound consequences to the terms and conditions of employment. More broadly, the decisions made by federally elected officials about labour laws, employment standards, health care, pensions, skills training, child care and education have a direct impact on the working conditions and quality of life of our members.

We believe that all communications during an election between a union and its members should be exempt from all third party regulations. Unfortunately, C-65 does not address this concern. We urge the committee to amend the bill to ensure that the act contains an explicit exemption from the definition of partisan activity and election surveys for trade union communications and activities with our members.

Our second concern relates to the section that will prohibit unions from making contributions to third parties in the future. Clauses 54 and 59 of the bill add new provisions to the act that will restrict a third party to use only contributions from Canadian individuals for regulated expenses. In addition, subclauses 52(3) and 57(3) of the bill repeal provisions of the act and will eliminate unions and all other current lawful classes of contributors to third parties. We oppose this unwarranted prohibition against domestic unions from contributing to third parties.

The act already has strong constraints on foreign union involvement in elections and needs no supplementation by an absolute ban on the ability for domestic unions to contribute to third parties. Section 349.02 already states, “No third party shall use funds for a partisan activity for advertising, for election advertising or for an election survey if the source of the funds is a foreign entity”, and subsection 282.4(1) already prohibits “a trade union that does not hold bargaining rights for employees in Canada” from unduly influencing an elector. In addition, the act already prohibits a trade union from contributing to candidates and political parties, and it already prohibits third parties from acting in collusion with a candidate or political party.

The current act already has ample and effective constraints on both foreign and domestic unions from improperly influencing an election. Therefore, the changes proposed in Bill C-65 are completely unwarranted. We urge the committee to delete clauses 52, 54, 57 and 59 from the bill.

Once again, thank you for this opportunity. We look forward to your questions and comments.