U.S. Border Guards Are About To Receive Alarmingly Broad Powers On Canadian Soil

A controversial Liberal bill, Bill C-23, which has been popularly dubbed the Pre-Clearance Act, has received royal assent. Although it is not yet in force, it is now law.

The Pre-Clearance Act relates to the powers afforded to U.S. border guards operating on Canadian soil. These border guards work in pre-clearance zones at Canadian points of departure to the U.S., like the Vancouver International Airport.

Elections overhaul bill includes loophole that could hinder investigations into fraud between election cycles

PARLIAMENT HILL—Opposition MPs mounting a last stand Tuesday in the face of government closure of debate on controversial election bill discovered yet more “bread crumbs for a starving man” as they realized last-minute Conservative amendments include a loophole that could hinder completion of investigations into fraud on voters between elections.

The provision, an amendment to original wording in the legislation that extended the length of time voter calling services will be required to keep records and caller scripts for robocall telephone calls to voters, would allow the calling services to destroy the records from one election a full year before the next election.

Jean-Pierre Kingsley still has concerns over electoral changes

Canada's former chief electoral officer has come out swinging against the amended version of the proposed fair elections act, known as Bill C-23, including the compromise on the controversial issue of vouching.

"This (Bill C-23) will result in some people having more difficulty voting," Jean-Pierre Kingsley told host Evan Solomon on CBC Radio's The House.

Fair Elections Act Debate Gets Ugly As Tories Push Bill Forward

OTTAWA - The Conservative bill to tighten up election laws is in the final stages of review at a House of Commons committee, and things are getting ugly.

After long hours of scrutiny of the Fair Elections Act's many clauses, only two technical amendments by the opposition had been approved by Thursday afternoon, and those Liberal measures only tweaked some wording.

Fair Elections Act: Conservative Caucus Behind Evolution Of Bill

OTTAWA - To understand why the Conservatives ended up amending the proposed Fair Elections Act, one has to look past the long list of opposition critics, academics and electoral experts who were pushing the government for changes.

Nor does the answer lie with the opinion polls, which seemed to show support — or at least indifference — to the legislation's key elements.

Ultimately, it was the Conservative caucus that shaped, moulded, rejected and approved elements of the bill going back more than a year.

Trudeau says PM Harper’s comments on vouching suggest he doesn’t trust Canadian voters

PARLIAMENT HILL—An assertion from Prime Minister Stephen Harper that there may be Canadian electors who have no intention of proving their identity at the polls even if they have it demonstrates he and the Conservative government “don’t trust” Canadians, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau said Wednesday.

Mr. Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) was responding to a comment Mr. Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) made Tuesday as the opposition parties made a final push in the House of Commons for last-minute changes to the government’s controversial election legislation, Bill C-23, prior to a 5:30 p.m. deadline Thursday for debate over a host of opposition amendments and 45 government proposals to amend several clauses and put in new ones in response to a range of criticisms.

Why The Fair Elections Act Is A Very Good Thing For Rich Politicians

OTTAWA — As MPs prepare for a second day of clause-by-clause debate over amendments to the Fair Elections Act, The Huffington Post Canada looks at how the Conservative government’s election bill increases the influence of money in the political process – and how it fails to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding how political parties spend their money.

Fair Elections Act back on fast track after 45 amendments submitted

The divisive Fair Elections Act has resumed its fast-track passage through Parliament, after the federal government submitted 45 changes in a bid to quell opposition to the bill.

The amendments were submitted to the committee and obtained by The Globe as MPs returned Monday from a two-week break, and are among roughly 275 presented by MPs of all parties. They all must be considered and voted on by Thursday evening – a short window that all but guarantees only cursory consideration of many changes.

Protests held against Harper government’s controversial elections bill

TORONTO - Protests are scheduled for cities across Canada today against the Harper government's contentious elections bill.

A few dozen people clutched signs and unrolled a banner during a demonstration in downtown Toronto.

Organizer Anna Goldfinch says that despite the Tories' pledge on Friday to strip the bill of some of its most contentious aspects, such as a residency ID requirement, the proposed legislation still goes too far and should be scrapped outright.

Academics call on Tories to drop Fair Elections Act

Hundreds of academics are collectively taking aim at the Conservative government’s electoral reform bill, directing criticism at a Senate committee they say has failed to adequately address concerns over the “irremediably flawed bill.”

In an April 23 open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, MPs and senators, some 465 signatories call on the government to withdraw the controversial Fair Elections Act and draft anew.

Conservatives unhappy with Poilievre’s ‘bombastic’ style on elections overhaul bill

Conservative Party insiders say there’s dissatisfaction within the Conservative caucus over Democratic Reform Minister Pierre Poilievre’s handling of the elections reform Bill C-23 and recently-recommended changes by a Senate committee are an opportunity for the minister to change tack and adopt a more conciliatory approach.

Opposition MPs aren’t buying the unanimously-supported Senate recommendations released last week, though, and they’re continuing to call for the bill to be withdrawn.

The More Canadians Know About The Fair Elections Act, The Less They Like It: Poll

Opposition to the Conservative government's proposed Fair Elections Act (Bill C-23) is widespread and growing, according to a new poll by Angus Reid Global.

The survey, conducted online from April 14-15 and surveying 1,505 Canadians, found that 59 per cent of Canadians who said they were very or fairly familiar with the proposed legislation were opposed to it, an increase of three points since Angus Reid last polled Canadians on the topic in February.

The snob factor in the Harper universe

After years of relative obscurity in the splendour of the Upper Chamber, Senator Linda Frum’s plunge onto the national stage last week was odd, to say the least.

Frum’s adamant insistence — at a Senate hearing and later in a series of well-publicized Twitter exchanges — that Elections Canada should not encourage people to vote sounded so out of sync with widely-held democratic principles that it appeared mystifying.

Indeed, it only made sense when you realized she was inadvertently revealing how deeply she and other Harperites mistrust the public at large — and how much they fear entrusting the vote to those beyond the Harper base.

The Fair Elections Act is ever so telling

The so-called Fair Elections Act, however it eventually turns out, will have shown again the hard face of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government.

Everything about the bill was wrong, from the way it was conceived to the method of presentation to the scorn for expert evidence. From conception to eventual adoption, even if amended by the Senate (a move obviously orchestrated by the government), the bill will have demonstrated a government determined to wring political gain from every measure, a fierce partisanship for something that ought to have been non-partisan, a dismissal of experts who, by virtue of dissent, were deemed enemies of the party.

The Fair Elections Act Is Republican-Style Cheating

The CPC's push for its absurdly named Fair Elections Act would make infamous Republican strategist Karl Rove proud. At best, it has been a campaign to mislead the public, at worst, an attempt to rig the electoral system to favour the Tories in 2015.

Last week, Conservative Senator Linda Frum, sister of former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum, launched an attack against Elections Canada on the grounds that its efforts to promote voter turnout constitute a "conflict of interest."

Fair elections act: 7 things you may not know

Most of the debate about the changes the government wants to make to how Canadians vote and run elections has centred around vouching. But there are many more controversial measures inside Bill C-23. Here are seven things you may not know about the proposed fair elections act.

Fair Elections Act: Senators Call For 9 Major Changes To Bill

OTTAWA - The Harper government is getting some serious push-back from Conservative senators on its controversial overhaul of elections laws, with a Senate committee unanimously recommending nine major changes to the legislation.

In an interim report to be tabled Tuesday, the Senate's legal and constitutional affairs committee recommends that the government drop provisions to muzzle the chief electoral officer and the elections commissioner, The Canadian Press has learned.

In the Tories’ partisan Bizarro World, every critic of Fair Elections Act is biased

Conservatives at their best disdain the lazy moral relativism that passes for sophistication in some corners of the left. There are such things as right and wrong, they insist, not right for some and wrong for others. Some absolutes remain.

Conservatives at their worst espouse their own brand of relativism, with its own slipshod reasoning and its own situational ethics. It is the achievement of this government to have relativized a number of what were once considered absolutes: whether the census should be accurate, for example, or whether governments should be answerable to Parliament. And, now, whether elections should be fair.

Very little ‘fair’ about how Conservatives are pushing controversial Elections Act

It is coarse to imagine the Conservatives are conspiring to fix the next election, in plain sight of everyone. If you were bent on suppressing the opposition vote, evading spending limits, and otherwise participating in electoral fraud, presumably you would not take the trouble to advertise this in legislation.

On the other hand, if they are not up to no good, they are doing their best to convince people they are. The secrecy surrounding the Fair Elections Act, the failure to consult in advance of its drafting, the curtailment of debate after, the supreme indifference to legitimate criticism, all under the chilling oversight of the Minister for Democratic Reform, Pierre Poilievre, would be enough to make anyone nervous.

Why 'Fair Elections Act' Means the Death of Reason

The "Fair Elections Act" is the ultimate battle of rhetoric versus reason. In response to weeks of credible, objective, unanimous expert committee testimony opposing this bill, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Minister Pierre Poilievre and their MPs consistently repeat evidence-free talking points.

Non-partisan civil society groups, respected academics and chief electoral officers warn that the removal of vouching and voter information cards will disenfranchise tens or hundreds of thousands of marginalized Canadians despite individual voter fraud being virtually non-existent.