Fair Elections Act

LawNewsPolitics

In 2014 the Harper Government passed the Fair Elections Act (FEA). It modified the Canada Elections Act (Act), our existing legislation on how our elections are conducted and run. Before we go into Harper’s modifications, let’s quickly discuss who is allowed to vote and what your voting rights are.

If you are a Canadian citizen and over the age of 18, you are allowed to vote in Canada’s elections.

You need one or two pieces ID, one of which has to be issued by the Canadian Government i.e. Medicare Card or passport, and have your name, photo, and address on it. If you don’t have any ID with your current address on it, you can show two pieces of ID with your name and have someone whose name and address are confirmed at the same polling station take an oath in writing attesting to your current address.

Please note: the voter information card you get in the mail is no longer considered a proof of address and no longer acceptable as one of your two pieces of ID.

For more information, check out Elections Canada’s website.

Those not allowed to vote include the Chief Electoral Officer (the Officer), the head of Elections Canada in charge of making sure elections run smoothly and fairly, and his assistant.

If you are currently imprisoned in a correctional institution for more than two years, you can’t vote either.

All that said, let’s tackle some of the new rules imposed through the Fair Elections Act.

Not Actually Fair

Despite its title, the FEA isn’t actually fair. It doesn’t guarantee or encourage fairness in our elections. It only ups the costs of Elections Canada by creating new positions and committees in order to give Canadians the illusion of fairness.

Take the new Advisory Committee of Political Parties (the Committee) created by article 21.1 of the now modified Act. Its role is to advise the Chief Electoral Officer “on matters relating to elections and political financing.”

The committee consists of the Chief Electoral Officer and two representatives of each registered political party chosen by the party leaders. It has to meet at least once a year and is presided over by the Officer.

At first glance this committee seems like a great idea, after all, it gives registered political parties a say in how elections are run, right?

WRONG!

According to article 21.1 (3), none of the Committee’s recommendations are actually binding on the Chief Electoral Officer. That means that the Committee’s existence is purely symbolic, and the Officer can disregard its advice if he or she chooses.

Then there’s the whole advertising issue. There has been a lot of anger regarding the Fair Elections Act’s modification to the Officer’s advertising rights.

In the past, the Chief Electoral Officer could use ads to encourage people to the polls. Under the new rules, the Officer’s advertising capabilities are limited to ads regarding how to become a candidate, how to be added to the list of electors, how voters can establish their identity and address at the polls, and how elections officials can assist the disabled on election day.

There is also Part 16.1 dealing with calls to voters. Calling campaigns are an effective tool used by candidates and their parties for fundraising, increasing voter awareness, and getting people to the polls. Since phone lines can be costly, it makes perfect sense for political parties to negotiate agreements with telecommunications service providers in order to limit costs.

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Image: canadians.org

At first glance, the modifications to the Act make sense for according to the new rules under the FEA, these agreements can only be entered into by a registered party or candidate or, if the person is an unregistered third party, they do so under their own name. They also have to inform the service provider that the contract is for calling voters. The problem arises with all subsequent actions required under this part of the Act.

Service providers have to file registration with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) for every group for which they have a contract for voter contact calling services, and they have to do it within 48 hours after the first call is to a voter is made.

They also – under article 348.16 of the modified Act – have to get a copy of every phone script used to make live and automated voice calls to voters. The political parties in agreements with these service providers have to not only keep records of their phone scripts, automated and live, they also have to keep records of every single date the scripts were used!

From a logistical standpoint, these requirements are absurd. Anyone who’s volunteered for a political party knows that calling campaigns have to be run as quickly and efficiently as possible and that any reasonable hours prior to polling day are opportunities to get in touch with voters.

One could argue that these rules ensure that the public knows exactly what is being said to voters on the phone during the election. However, laws should always be applied with a degree of reasonability in mind, and having to track every single day a phone script is used seems more like a political tool to limit parties’ abilities to get in touch with voters by adding new, tedious tasks to their overtaxed schedules. This is especially silly when the CRTC already has copies of these scripts and records of the days they were used.

The elections are a ‘coming and with parties using wedge issues to obscure their actual plans for our future government, it is imperative that we all go to the polls. We need to make sure we actually can vote by carrying the correct documents and a will to vote out governments that increase our taxes via unnecessary tedium.

NewsPolitics

In the past two weeks, “democratic reform” has been on everybody’s lips within the spectrum of federal politics, from Trudeau’s supposedly “bombshell” announcement that Liberal senators would now sit as “independents” in the upper chamber of Canadian parliament or the dreaded Fair Elections Act which was tabled this week by Pierre Poilievre, Minister of Democratic Reform.

Now all this talk about democratic reform would be fairly encouraging if it wasn’t just mere talking points concocted by an array of political spin-doctors. Both Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre’s “blueprints” for democratic reform are the epitome of double-speak, a perfect representation of how the debate to reinvigorate democracy in Canada has been hijacked by buzz words and catch phrases.

The fact is that it seems, that within the Liberal and Conservative parties, there is a severe lack of courage and imagination. The question to be asked is how can the Liberal and Conservative parties truly understand the profound systemic change that Canadian democracy is itching for, when the system in place has benefited them time and time again?

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The polarization of Canadian political life between a centre-right wing Conservative Party and a centrist –whatever that means- Liberal Party has been the configuration of the Canadian political spectrum since time immemorial.

The first truthful challenge of this system came with the rise of the Reform Party in the 1990s. The Reform Party challenged in many ways the homogeneity of Canadian political life; the ascendency of this unorthodox political formation of libertarians, social-conservatives and neo-liberals repositioned the point of equilibrium of Canadian politics towards the right.

This movement of transformation of Canadian political life wasn’t initiated by Stephen Harper. It was continued by him and since last election has found in his government its apogee.

But the Reform Party and later the Canadian Alliance had to conform to this Canadian binary vision of politics and thus, throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Progressive Conservative Parties on provincial and federal levels were increasingly infiltrated by the “new right” until the final merger of the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance in December of 2003.

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During the period from the 1993 election and the final merger of right-wing forces in 2003 the Liberals reign was undisputed in Parliament. The Reform Party and its successor the Canadian Alliance had indeed profoundly changed the political discourse in Canada but unfortunately within the boundaries of a First-past-the-post voting system, the potency of your message doesn’t count when a majority can be achieved with merely 38% of the vote.

The right-wing forces compromised and this gave birth to the biggest political re-branding (or takeover, which ever you want to call it) in Canadian history, the birth of the contemporary Conservative Party. But the newly anointed Conservatives in many ways were caught at their own game.

Moral of the story: yes the point of equilibrium of Canadian politics had shifted with the “Reformist Revolution” of the 1990s but in joining forces with Progressive Conservatives, the ideological “unity” of their group was compromised. Their “radical ideas” such as abolishing the Senate were thrown to the dustbin of history; they adopted a new position, which was an elected senate.

Then this newly formed coalition started winning elections and now shortly after the mid-mark of their first majority mandate it looks like the Conservatives have adopted status-quo as their modus operandi when it comes Senate affairs. Status quo was saved.

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Anti “Fair Elections Act” messaging from canadians.org

This is the question that isn’t addressed by either of the so-called reforms introduced in Parliament in the past two weeks: the question of representation, the representation of divergent political ideologies, of every single Canadian voice. Trudeau’s idea of an “independent” but still non-elected senate is the brilliant idea that wasn’t.

It quite simply puts a fresh shade of paint on a collapsing structure, because independence is nothing when you’re accountable to no one but yourself. Who would an “independent” unaccountable Senate represent but themselves as they already do quite well.

When it comes to the Fair Elections Act, it’s anything but fair. The changes give accrued importance to money and disenfranchises scores of Canadians.

The system of first-past-the-post has a twisted way of self-preservation; it excludes the “unwanted” voices, banishes them to the sidelines thus upholding the status quo. This is how this morally bankrupt system and has survived since the days of Confederation.

The senate scandal is merely the most recent manifestation of a crisis of democracy in Canada, not the crisis itself. And the only solution to this crisis is to reopen the debate of defining a system that truly represents all Canadian voices, all political affiliations and all groups within the boarders of this Canadian federation.