Honourable senators, my question is to the government leader in the Senate. In the Forty-second Parliament, senators approved significant changes to Bill C-76, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act.

In my view, all of the changes to election procedures in that bill were improvements over previous arrangements, particularly the improvement to make voting more accessible to all Canadians. During consideration of that legislation, however, concerns were raised about extending the franchise to all Canadians living abroad. Some colleagues worried that extension would expose our electoral system to the threat of significant foreign influence. It was even suggested that enfranchising Canadians who had lived abroad for more than five years could be akin to handing a “whole stack of ballots” to a totalitarian government.

This morning, just a couple of hours ago, Elections Canada released a report on the 2019 election. While they provided numbers on non-resident voting, the report made no mention of security concerns with respect to those voters. My question is as follows: Did Elections Canada monitor or identify any instances or examples of voter manipulation of non-resident voters by foreign governments or other forces?