The federal government has yet to table a bill to address the robocalls issue and to prevent election fraud, more than 14 months past the House’s deadline, and opposition MPs say it’s “irresponsible,” “disgraceful,” and “frustrating,” that the governing Conservatives are delaying this important piece of legislation.The House passed the motion unanimously in March 2012 and the next federal election is expected in the fall of 2015.
“At some level, it’s either a mix of incompetence or deliberate delay seems to be underlying the holding up of the legislation that they promised to have in by last September. We’re looking at 14 months,” said NDP MP Craig Scott (Toronto Danforth, Ont.), his party’s democratic reform critic.
Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux (Winnipeg North, Man.) said last week that “it’s irresponsible” of the government to not have introduced anything yet after the House of Commons unanimously said there needed to be changes.
“The government made a commitment to Canadians to bring in some reform on the Elections Act. Elections Canada has been calling for tougher legislation and the government’s been turning a blind eye. All they do is talk, ‘Yes, someday someday, someday,’ well the election now is within two years away,” Mr. Lamoureux said.
Following issues surrounding misleading automated and live telephone calls to voters in the May 2011 election directing them to the wrong polling stations, MPs voted unanimously to deal with the issue by bringing in legislation to give Elections Canada the tools it needs to prevent fraud “within six months” of adopting the motion. That was in March 2012 and there has been no legislation since.
Parliament returned after a 16-week summer break with a Throne Speech on Oct. 16.
As the federal government’s “roadmap” for this session, the Throne Speech outlined that: “The road to 2017 is a fitting time to strengthen our institutions and democratic processes.”
Democratic Reform Minister of State Pierre Poilievre’s (Nepean-Carleton, Ont.) communications director Gabrielle Renaud-Mattey told The Hill Times in an email: “Our government is committed to introducing comprehensive legislative changes to strengthen our electoral system. These changes will be in place before the next general election.”
The government did have a bill, titled An Act to enact the Canada Political Financing Act and to amend the Canada Elections Act and other Acts, on the Notice Paper earlier this spring ready to be tabled in the House, but it was withdrawn after Conservative MPs complained about it. Conservative sources told Postmedia that they did not like the expanded investigative powers Elections Canada would have under the bill in addition to being able to prosecute people who made deceptive calls during elections.
Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand has previously said in order for the bill to be useful for the next election, he needs to have it implemented by spring of 2014. Elections Canada said Mr. Mayrand was not available for an interview last week, but he told Maclean’s last month that changes need to be made surrounding transparency during elections when candidates and parties use telemarketers.
“Part of what I’ve recommended to Parliament is that both parties and candidate campaigns keep records of who they are contracting for telemarketing purposes, and provide access to Elections Canada of those contracts. Also requiring telemarketing companies to maintain records, because what we’ve found is that some have very little records. So at least maintaining proper records by telemarketers and campaigns. Finance records, records of scripts, records of how many calls and what numbers were called,” he said. “I haven’t received any direct comment saying that this couldn’t possibly be done. These are basic requirements that in my mind should be introduced.”
Mr. Mayrand also said that while there are no “routine” meetings with the Democratic Reform minister, he wants to be more involved in crafting legislation so that it works.
“As an agent of Parliament, I report directly to Parliament. The process that’s envisaged in the act is that I put the recommendations out asking for legislative changes. A House committee examines them and then reports to the government, which takes them into consideration,” he said. “I think at some point it would be beneficial to get a little bit more involvement with the crafting of the legislative proposal. Elections Canada isn’t there to dispute the public policy aspects. It’s there to make sure that it works.”
Mr. Scott said that he also has not spoken to Mr. Poilievre regarding the delayed legislation.
“It’s not a collaborative government and it would be a pro-forma conversation if I were to ask what’s going on, there would be some kind of a deflective or cutesy answer on when we could expect legislation,” he said.
Duff Conacher, Democracy Watch founder, told The Hill Times that there’s no reason the government should be delaying the bill. “It’s not a difficult bill to draft at all,” he said, noting that “they’re running out of days quickly” if the government wants to introduce it before the House recesses on Dec. 13. “I’m guessing they want to introduce it at a time when they’ll get lots of media coverage about it. … They want to get full credit for whatever they’re going to do that means getting massive media coverage for it, otherwise it won’t sick in that they’ve changed anything.”
Mr. Scott speculated that the government could introduce the legislation at the last minute in February or March and move time allocation motions with limited debate and quickly move it through the legislative process in order to satisfy the spring 2014 deadline.
“This is a combination of annoying and frustrating for everybody, not least I should imagine, the chief electoral officer. We can’t forget how often he said he needs this legislation, he needs it to be right, but he also needs it to be ready in time to be implementable for 2015,” he said. “If Mr. Harper engages in any of his shenanigans about not respecting the next statutory date for the next election, then who knows what it means to be ready for the next election. With every month that passes, the chances of a new proper enforcement and investigation regime and a preventative regime, specifically for robocalls, becomes more and more tenuous in terms of whether it will be ready.”
Mr. Lamoureux said that regardless of the deadline Mr. Mayrand has indicated, the Conservatives would do what’s in their best interest. “One of the things I’ve learned about the Conservatives is that you don’t confuse Elections Canada’s timing requirements with their timing requirements. At the end of the day, the Conservatives will do what they do best and that’s what’s in their personal best political interest,” he said. “We have byelections that are occurring [Monday]. It’s interesting we brought forward an opposition day motion that was supposed to deal with Elections Canada helping out with the byelections [last Thursday] and in order to avoid a vote on it, it [the opposition day] was deferred till Tuesday [Nov. 26]. They go out of their way in order to try to get to the real issue of trying to protect our democracy and that’s unfortunate.”
The Liberals originally had an opposition day scheduled for Nov. 21, and they were going to debate a motion that called on Elections Canada “to fully enforce the Canada Elections Act for the four upcoming by-elections, especially in light of the Federal Court of Canada finding that the Conservative database CIMS was the likely source of election fraud in ridings across Canada in the 2011 general election,” Liberal staffer Kate Purchase said in an email. “We are doing this ahead of the by-elections so that the Elections Canada can receive this direction in advance of voting on Monday.”
The opposition day was cancelled and moved to this Tuesday instead.
Government House Leader Peter Van Loan (York-Simcoe, Ont.) said in the House last month that the Conservatives are still receiving input from the public on the bill. “With regard to election reform legislation, I think it is clear that there has been a continuing stream of submissions from important panels, including the chief electoral officer,” Mr. Van Loan said. “I know the minister is taking all of this into account and wants to make sure that all the considerations are taken into account so we have the best possible legislation in place for the next election. I look forward to that being introduced in the House and hopefully being supported by all sides of the House.”
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com
Author: Bea Vongdouangchanh
No comments:
Post a Comment