Thank you very much for the invitation from the committee to testify on this very important bill, Bill C-65, and the overall issue of election reform.

I am going to make my statements today in English.

My French still needs quite a bit of work.

I welcome your questions.

I'm going to quickly summarize what I think you can change in the bill. Unfortunately, the bill was not referred to the committee after first reading, as past bills have been, so you're constrained to making amendments within the framework of the bill. I'll set out things that I think fit within that framework, and then I'm going to also summarize what else needs to be changed. There are many other things that this bill does not address that Democracy Watch has called for in its many appearances before the committee since 1997—that is, over the past 27 years.

First of all, with regard to what is in the bill, I won't refer to section numbers. Democracy Watch will be filing a written submission with details, so I'll quickly summarize some of the key areas.

First, do not increase the registration threshold for third parties to $1,500, as the bill proposes. As Professor Loewen noted, the cost of informing voters has decreased, not increased, significantly. If you increase the registration threshold, you're just allowing for secret third party activity. With less than $1,500, you could reach every voter in a riding—tens of thousands of voters—and voters have a right to know the third parties who are doing that. The registration threshold should be decreased to something like $200.

The bill changes third party spending rules. One of the most important things the bill does not address is that, still, even if it were enacted as proposed, one individual or a business could spend $1.6 million to influence an election. That's one voter. Allowing one voter to spend as much as a citizens group that has tens of thousands of supporters is not democratic. It's also unethical. It allows that voter to have greater influence and do huge favours for a party. Bill C-65 does not close that loophole.

I disagree with the Canadian Labour Congress's position that groups should be able to flow money to other third party groups. That has been used to hide who is actually spending and trying to influence an election through the use of front groups across the political spectrum. It's good that the bill closes that loophole.

The bill should also be amended to require third parties to register for nomination and party leadership contests and disclose their donors and spending. We're here on election day in the U.S., and lots of people think the rules in Canada are better than the rules in the U.S., but for PACs—third parties, or political action committees as they're known in the U.S.—our rules are much worse. A third party individual—again, one voter, business or interest group—can spend an unlimited amount of money, in secret, to support or oppose a nomination contestant or a party leadership contestant. It's one of the biggest loopholes that allows for foreign interference, and it can and should be closed with amendments to this bill.

The bill changes voting rights. You should amend the bill to prohibit voting by foreigners and anyone under the age of 18 in nomination contests or party leadership contests, in the same way that only citizens who are 18 and over are allowed to vote in elections and by-elections currently.

The bill prohibits various further types of disinformation. The problem is that there are huge loopholes that allow candidates and party leaders to mislead voters and huge loopholes that allow voters, interest groups and lobbyists to mislead other voters about candidates and party leaders. You should simply change the provisions—we'll set out in detail, in our written submission, how to do this—to prohibit all false claims. There is no right to mislead voters. It's not part of the freedom of expression right, and it causes enormous harm and needs to be prohibited.

The bill mandates Elections Canada to do reports, and you should add three reports to the list: one on the cost to inform voters, because every spending limit or donation limit has been set arbitrarily, and we need a study of how much it costs to actually inform voters; a second one on how much it costs to operate a party in between elections and during an election, and then all the limits could be changed to fit with what those actual realities are; and the third would be on electoral reform.

Finally, on larger questions, our system allows for legalized bribery and allows for foreign interference that is secret, undemocratic and unethical. Many more changes are needed to the election law and other laws to stop secret, unethical lobbying and all sorts of other secret, unethical and undemocratic influence in our elections and all our political processes.

I hope that after the Hogue commission inquiry reports you will return with another bill to close all of those loopholes, as well as to strengthen enforcement and penalties.

Thank you, again.