Strong and Free Elections Act

Moved second reading of Bill C-25, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and to enact An Act to change the names of certain electoral districts, 2026.

She said: Honourable senators, I rise to speak in support of Bill C-25, the strong and free elections act. This legislation represents an important step forward in protecting the integrity of Canada’s free and fair elections and ensuring that Canadians can continue to have confidence in our electoral system.

Honourable senators, before we dive into the mechanics of the bill, I want to step back and speak from a place of personal experience that I know many of you share.

Many of us in this chamber have spent time in the trenches of democratic life. Some have stood for office as candidates. I look around this chamber and I see former mayors, council members, MPs, provincial members and ministers and a former premier. Others have been the heartbeat of campaigns as volunteers or organizers, party officials or directors. Many of you have been active as advocates, as campaigners or as leaders of civil society organizations, working tirelessly to push forward policy objectives and shape the national conversation.

The Senate is appointed, but do not let it be said that we do not understand elections.

In our various capacities, we have likely all seen the incredible successes that occur when things go right and the profound structural dangers that arise when things go wrong, not just at the level of the ballot but in the integrity of the process itself.

We understand that political parties and advocacy organizations are not commercial entities. They are essential engines of democracy. When these institutions are robust, our dialogue is richer, our engagement is deeper, and our democracy is stronger.

Having spent my own time in those hierarchies and on those campaign trails, I recognize first-hand the immense dedication required to power these movements. But I also recognize the increasing complexity that our volunteers and our officials face. That is why I agreed to act as sponsor of Bill C-25. Bill C-25 creates a framework that provides clarity and the shield that those on the front lines deserve against modern digital threats and administrative risk.

Now, I am fully aware that some will look at this bill and ask for more. I understand that sentiment. However, we must be pragmatic.

Bill C-25 is not the ceiling, colleagues; it is the floor. It is the solid, essential foundation upon which we can build. We need a starting point that is evidence-based and consensus-driven, and that is exactly what this legislation provides. It is a necessary modernization that allows us to move forward with the confidence that our electoral infrastructure is resilient, accountable and ready for the challenges we now face.

At its core, this bill asks us a simple question: Do we wait for vulnerabilities in our democratic system to become crises, or do we act while our institutions remain strong?

I think we can all agree that Canadians expect us to act.

We are fortunate to be debating this legislation from a position of strength. Canada’s electoral system is among the most respected in the world. The Canada Elections Act is widely recognized for its robust safeguards, strict political financing rules, transparent spending limits and strong reporting requirements.

These are not accidental features of our democracy. They are the product of decades of careful stewardship by Parliament and the independent institutions charged with protecting our electoral process. Indeed, one of the reasons Canada’s elections enjoy such a strong reputation internationally is because Parliament does not treat the Canada Elections Act as a static document. We have consistently updated it in response to changing circumstances, technological advances, expert recommendations and emerging threats. The strength of our system today is not the result of standing still. It is the result of continuous improvement.

Bill C-25 follows that tradition. It reflects the work of experts whose responsibility is not to react to democratic failures after they occur but to identify vulnerabilities before they become a crisis. This arrives at a very important moment. Despite Canada’s position of strength, the threats facing democracies around the world are becoming increasingly sophisticated and increasingly difficult to detect.

Waiting to respond until these incursions have already taken hold is a luxury we no longer have, as the cost of remediation far outweighs the value of prevention. Foreign interference has evolved. Disinformation has evolved. Technology has evolved. Artificial intelligence has evolved. Our laws must evolve as well.

Some may argue that Bill C-25 goes too far. Others may argue that it does not go far enough. That is often the case when Parliament attempts to modernize complex legislation. In that light, I feel it is important to stress that Bill C-25 comes before this chamber as a deliberate, targeted response to the extensive body of work conducted by our electoral experts.

This legislation draws directly from the 2022 post-election reports of the Chief Electoral Officer and the Commissioner of Canada Elections, as well as the critical findings of the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions, or PIFI. Furthermore, it incorporates and addresses many of the core provisions and concerns previously debated in Bill C-65, which died on the Order Paper.

By building upon these foundational studies, the government has attempted to craft a bill that is both informed by expert testimony and sharpened by the parliamentary debates that preceded it. While this bill does not implement every single recommendation arising from these numerous studies, it represents a strategic prioritization of what is most urgent and actionable. Most significantly, the government has moved to address all six of the public inquiry’s urgent recommendations regarding the Canada Elections Act, either in whole or in part, alongside every safeguarding recommendation put forward by both the Chief Electoral Officer and the Commissioner of Canada Elections.

The government also chose to prioritize measures that could be addressed effectively and directly within the Canada Elections Act, ensuring a focused and efficient response to the threats facing our democratic institutions.

Other recommendations and findings discussed in these reports were deemed beyond the narrow core priorities of this specific legislation, but they remain under government consideration for potential implementation through other means.

Additionally, I would note that Bill C-25 arrives here today with the strength of full unanimous support from the other place, reflecting a clear consensus among all parties. My hope is that by the end of this debate, colleagues will be satisfied, as I am, that Bill C-25 strikes an appropriate balance. It strengthens our electoral system where necessary, addresses known vulnerabilities and recognizes that future Parliaments will continue to refine and adapt these reforms as new challenges emerge.

Honourable senators, this legislation is built on a vital recognition that election threats do not wait for the writ to drop. While the Canada Elections Act traditionally anchored its protections to the election period, that approach belonged to an era when campaigns were largely confined to well-defined periods of time, but that is no longer the world we inhabit.

Disinformation campaigns do not wait for election day. Foreign interference efforts do not consult the election calendar. Cyberattacks do not begin when candidates start knocking on doors. Threats emerge continuously. Bill C-25 responds by extending important electoral protections beyond the campaign period and making them applicable at all times.

That may sound technical. It is not. It is a recognition that democracy must be protected year-round because those seeking to undermine it operate year-round.

Honourable senators, a firewall that only functions during an election campaign is not much of a firewall. This legislation extends protections against foreign interference, vote buying, bribery and false communications impersonating electoral actors beyond the election period. This is a sensible modernization. It aligns our legal framework with the reality of the modern information environment.

I will now expand on some of the major provisions and enhancements brought forward in Bill C-25.

To protect the integrity of the National Register of Electors, Bill C-25 establishes rigorous new access criteria that ensure voter data is shared only with parties that have a verified, ongoing role in our democratic process. Under these new provisions, a registered or eligible political party may only receive a copy of the preliminary list of electors, or PLE, if they meet one of three conditions: First, they were represented in the House of Commons on the day before the writ was issued. Second, they have endorsed a candidate in the last two elections in that specific electoral district. Third, they have endorsed candidates in at least two thirds of all electoral districts.

This measured approach directly addresses a significant vulnerability identified by the Chief Electoral Officer, where the system’s previous openness was exploited. In his 2022 recommendations, the Chief Electoral Officer highlighted that the PLE was accessible to political parties even if they had no intention of fielding candidates, creating a substantial risk to elector privacy. This risk became an unfortunate reality after groups promoting hatred registered as political parties specifically to gain access to these voter lists — an issue that notably emerged in Alberta.

These criteria represent a positive strengthening of our system. By closing the loophole that allowed bad actors to exploit the registration process, we are significantly enhancing privacy protections for individual electors and safeguarding the National Register of Electors from misuse.

This reform strikes a balance. It preserves the ability of legitimate parties and confirmed candidates to communicate with voters, which is essential to a healthy democracy, while providing a robust, enforceable layer of security that protects the system as a whole from those who use electoral data to cause harm.

While these changes apply to registered and eligible parties, the PLE remains fully accessible to all confirmed candidates once their nomination packages are verified by Elections Canada, ensuring that legitimate participants maintain the necessary ability to communicate with voters.

Equally important, Bill C-25 recognizes that modern threats do not stop at our borders. Here I am talking about foreign interference. A generation ago, attempts to interfere in Canadian elections generally required a physical presence in Canada. Today, a foreign actor can launch a cyberattack, coordinate a disinformation campaign, amplify false narratives using artificial intelligence or target Canadian voters directly from thousands of kilometres away. The digital world has effectively erased geography as a barrier to interference. That is why the bill expands the application of key protections to conduct that originates outside Canada.

This is an important principle, colleagues. Canadian elections belong to Canadians. To that end, Bill C-25 introduces upwards of 30 targeted amendments to the Canada Elections Act, including securing electoral integrity. It closes foreign funding loopholes, prevents dark money and enhances protections for nomination and leadership contests.

To combat modern threats, the bill addresses digital risks by banning electoral deepfakes, preventing digital impersonation and creating new offences for the misuse of computers and the dissemination of false information.

The bill strengthens enforcement. It expands the administrative monetary penalties regime, increases penalty amounts and provides the Commissioner of Canada Elections with improved investigative tools and interagency information-sharing capabilities.

It enhances accountability and security, mandates stricter privacy requirements for political parties, improves the protection of personal information on electoral lists and bolsters physical security for returning officers and candidates.

Bill C-25 sends a clear message that attempts to interfere in our democratic processes will not be tolerated, whether they originate inside Canada or halfway around the world.

Honourable senators, the bill also addresses a defining democratic challenge of our time: the weaponization of disinformation. Bill C-25 does not prohibit opinions, criticism, advocacy, satire or parody, nor should it. Instead, it targets deliberate efforts to deceive Canadians about the electoral process itself.

When someone knowingly spreads false information about how, when or where Canadians can vote, they are not participating in democratic debate; they are attempting to undermine it. That distinction matters. Freedom of expression remains protected. Electoral deception does not.

Artificial intelligence presents an even newer challenge. The bill appropriately extends existing prohibitions against impersonating electoral actors to include deceptive deepfakes, which is a welcome and necessary step.

We should also recognize that technology continues to evolve at an extraordinary pace that often outstrips our laws. The challenge is not merely the existence of a deepfake; it is whether the voter knows it is a fraud.

Synthetic media, such as AI-generated images, videos or audio recordings, can now bypass traditional definitions of impersonation while still weaponizing deception. Artificial intelligence does not need to violate the letter of our laws to hollow out the spirit of our democracy; it needs only to skirt it. That reality should encourage continued vigilance. Bill C-25 is an important step forward, but it is unlikely to be the final word on AI and elections.

Future parliaments may wish to consider further safeguards, from disclosure requirements and authentication standards to watermarking technologies, that help citizens distinguish between authentic and synthetic content. Ultimately, transparency is the best defence against deception.

As we refine these protections, we must recognize that this is an iterative process. While Bill C-25 establishes the necessary foundation for accountability and integrity today, the work of building democratic resilience is continuous.

That distinction — the ability of Canadians to trust the information they receive — is the bedrock of our democratic resilience, and it is a project we must continue to advance alongside the rapid pace of technological change.

Colleagues, taken together, these measures reflect a common objective: ensuring that Canadians can participate in elections free from manipulation, intimidation, foreign interference and deliberate deception. But protecting elections also requires protecting the information Canadians entrust to those who participate in the democratic process.

That brings me to the issue of privacy. I see Senator Deacon has perked up.

Some argue that political parties should be regulated in exactly the same manner as commercial enterprises. I understand that instinct, but it ignores a fundamental reality: Political parties are not retailers, telecommunications providers or social media platforms. They are democratic institutions. Their mandate is not to sell a product; it is to engage citizens, communicate with electors, recruit volunteers, identify supporters and facilitate the democratic process.

The debate, therefore, is not whether political parties should be subject to privacy obligations. The answer to that is an unequivocal yes. The debate is whether those obligations should reflect the unique, constitutional role that parties play in our system. Bill C-25 moves us past a one-size-fits-all solution to create a framework that is both rigorous and relevant to the nature of our democracy.

Far from creating an exemption, this bill builds a comprehensive set of obligations specifically designed for the electoral context. First, every federal political party must maintain a publicly available privacy policy, written in plain language, in both official languages. Canadians will be able to understand not only what information is collected but how it is collected, used, disclosed and protected. The policy must explain these practices clearly and provide practical examples that make them accessible to ordinary Canadians.

Second, political parties must also implement physical, organizational and technological safeguards to protect personal information. They must establish procedures to respond to privacy breaches and ensure that individuals are notified whenever a breach creates a real risk of significant harm.

Importantly, these obligations extend beyond the party itself. Any contractor, supplier, consultant or third party handling this data must maintain equivalent protections.

Third, the legislation also introduces meaningful, direct accountability mechanisms. Every party must designate a privacy officer responsible for monitoring compliance. That officer must participate in annual meetings convened by the Chief Electoral Officer concerning privacy protection and best practices. Parties must also provide appropriate training to those acting on their behalf. Critically, these obligations are enforceable. They are not a “maybe I want to” but a “you have to.”

Failure to comply with a party’s own privacy policy can result in administrative monetary penalties under the Canada Elections Act. Colleagues, these are not aspirational commitments. They carry consequences.

In considering these proposals, it is important to understand what Parliament is attempting to accomplish. The legislation focuses on creating a robust and effective framework for privacy protection within our political system. By establishing clear, meaningful obligations for political parties, including the appointment of designated privacy officers, the implementation of formal breach response protocols and strict notification requirements, Bill C-25 builds a system centred on public transparency and genuine accountability.

This framework is designed to empower the Commissioner of Canada Elections to exercise strong oversight and enforce meaningful penalties where those obligations are not met.

The goal is to ensure that privacy protection is integrated directly into the operations of our political parties, leveraging the existing expertise of our electoral agencies in administration and compliance to create a system that is both actionable and effective for all Canadians.

Colleagues, I am mindful that our chamber has previously held rigorous debates regarding the privacy framework for political parties. I recognize that, for many, there remain strong views on the balance between party autonomy and external regulation. That debate resulted in the legislative landscape we operate in today. Bill C-25 exists in that space. It is purposefully nested within that new framework. Clearly, I am talking about Part 4 of Bill C-4.

While some may wish to revisit the foundational principles established by that previous legislation, I would suggest that our focus today should be on the progress this bill represents. Bill C-25 moves us further along the path toward meaningful regulation and oversight of political parties than existed prior.

We may have differing views on the pace of this evolution, but I believe we can all agree that establishing these new, enforceable obligations is a substantial improvement over the status quo.

I hope we can build on this progress rather than relitigate the past, ensuring that our electoral system continues to evolve in a direction that prioritizes transparency and accountability.

Honourable senators, this bill also addresses the issue of unduly long ballots.

At first glance, this may appear to be a relatively minor administrative matter. Let me assure you that it is not. This is not about having “too many” candidates. It is an issue of addressing a coordinated gaming of the Canada Elections Act to create logistical and administrative chaos.

Voting should be accessible, understandable and efficient.

When ballots are deliberately manipulated to create confusion, delay or administrative burden, the consequences fall on ordinary voters, election workers and, in particular, those who encounter systemic obstacles to full political participation.

To understand the importance of this provision, consider the foundation of candidacy itself. When an individual runs for office, they file a nomination paper — the formal document that verifies they are a legitimate candidate — backed by the support of their community and, where applicable, their party. It is the first step in our democratic process, confirming that the person seeking our vote is a citizen who is entitled to stand for election.

Crucially, that nomination requires the appointment of an official agent. This is not just an administrative clerk. The official agent is the legal and financial backbone of the campaign. They are the individual responsible for all campaign finances, from ensuring every dollar raised is disclosed to guaranteeing that every expense complies with the strict limits of the Canada Elections Act, or CEA.

By requiring these roles and filings, we ensure that every candidacy is transparent, documented and accountable.

The measures contained in Bill C-25 are targeted, reasonable and proportionate. Our electoral system must be accessible, fair and easy for every Canadian to navigate. When ballot design becomes a barrier rather than a clear choice, it is the voter who loses out. Therefore, this legislation prioritizes the clarity of the ballot.

By limiting electors to signing only one nomination paper per election and requiring each candidate to have their own unique official agent, the legislation promotes a ballot that is clear and navigable, ensuring that our electoral process remains accessible to every candidate and easy to understand for every voter.

Ultimately, the bill restores the nomination process to its original purpose: a localized expression of democratic support, rather than a performative, system-gaming exercise.

During the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee’s pre‑study of Bill C-25, the issue of administrative monetary penalties, or AMPs, was discussed. I welcome the opportunity to provide further comment.

Bill C-25 expands enforcement powers and strengthens the consequences for violating the Canada Elections Act. The legislation makes conspiring to commit a violation, attempts to commit a violation, counselling another person to commit a violation and acting as an accessory after the fact subject to enforcement under the act.

These changes recognize a simple reality: Those who seek to undermine democratic processes often operate in the shadows, orchestrating misconduct rather than carrying it out directly. The law should be capable of addressing those who facilitate, encourage, organize or enable misconduct, not merely those who carry it out.

Therefore, the bill significantly increases maximum administrative monetary penalties from $1,500 to $25,000 for individuals and from $10,000 to $100,000 for entities, thereby strongly enhancing the deterrent value of our enforcement regime.

I have heard the question of whether all violations should carry the same maximums. It is a fair question, and the answer lies in the essential role of our independent officials. It is true that not all conduct creates the same degree of harm. Not all violations threaten electoral integrity to the same extent.

This bill does not impose a rigid, one-size-fits-all solution; instead, it provides the Commissioner of Canada Elections with the tools, flexibility and necessary range to exercise expert judgment.

Our independent officials are the gatekeepers of our democracy; they are uniquely positioned to distinguish between genuine administrative oversights, like accidentally signing two nomination papers, and conduct that deliberately attempts to undermine electoral integrity, such as the organized counselling of multiple signatures. By expanding these AMP limits, we are not mandating uniform punishment; we are empowering the commissioner to ensure that the penalties remain proportionate, fair and calibrated to the severity of the conduct. This is how we ensure that enforcement is both firm in its deterrent effect and precise in its application.

Honourable senators, Bill C-25 also strengthens political financing rules. Canadians deserve absolute confidence that electoral outcomes are not being influenced by anonymous, foreign or untraceable capital. To that end, Bill C-25 prohibits the use of crypto-assets, money orders, prepaid credit cards, gift cards and other similar instruments. These instruments are often exploited to obscure the origin of funds. By modernizing these rules, we are closing loopholes, enhancing transparency and ensuring that every dollar of political funding can be identified, verified and held to account.

While third parties will generally be required to fund regulated electoral activities through contributions from Canadian citizens and permanent residents, we also recognize that many legitimate organizations are not structured around political donations. Entities such as labour unions, industry associations and professional groups generate revenue through standardized activities like membership fees and dues. We believe these voices are vital to democratic life and should not be excluded.

Following on the recommendation of the Chief Electoral Officer, third parties whose contributions represent 10% or less of their annual revenue may utilize their own existing funds to support regulated activities. This ensures we maintain the integrity of our political financing system while protecting the ability of diverse voices to participate in public debate. This strikes an essential balance between the transparency we demand and the participation we all encourage.

I want to speak a little bit about personal security and well‑being. Unfortunately, the deteriorating tone of our political discourse is no longer just a matter of debate; it has become a direct threat to the safety of those who participate in our democracy.

Malignant actors are increasingly resorting to harassment, intimidation and targeted threats against candidates, party staff and the election workers who serve at the heart of our polling stations. These tactics of fear have no place in our society, yet they are creating a climate where the physical security of those involved in our elections is being actively compromised.

In 2025, for the first time in a Canadian federal election, the government was compelled to offer private security services to protect candidates — 22 of them — facing abuse, threats of harm and intimidation. I must stress that this is entirely separate from the standard police protection provided to party leaders and cabinet members.

Bill C-25 takes necessary, concrete steps to confront this alarming trend by prioritizing the safety of every participant in our democratic process. The bill provides tangible security enhancements, including a modest increase in the reimbursement available for personal security expenses for candidates, ensuring they have the resources to protect themselves against credible threats.

Furthermore, it institutes vital privacy protections for election workers, such as removing the home addresses of returning officers from the Canada Gazette and implementing new security measures for advertising and reporting on regulated fundraising events to prevent the exposure of event locations to malicious actors.

Colleagues, these provisions are not about shielding government activity from public oversight or creating a veil of secrecy; they are a direct response to the urgent need to keep people safe from illegitimate scrutiny and physical harm. By adopting these measures, we are choosing to protect the well‑being of the individuals who sustain our democratic institutions, ensuring that intimidation and the threat of violence do not become the new cost of public service.

Bill C-25 includes a series of technical amendments to rename 19 electoral districts across the country. It is important to clarify that these changes are not an initiative of the government; rather, they are the direct result of requests made by the sitting members of Parliament who represent those specific ridings.

Because riding names are enshrined in the Canada Elections Act, any amendment to them requires the approval of Parliament, which is why these changes have been included within this legislation.

I note that the bill comes to us from the other place amended. As part of the scrutiny by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, through detailed clause-by-clause review, a series of technical, non-substantive amendments were adopted that refined the bill’s administrative mechanics, improving precision in areas such as electoral district naming, ballot box security and fundraising transparency. These changes corrected drafting issues, clarified operational provisions and harmonized new measures within the existing Canada Elections Act framework. As a result, we received a strengthened bill, with clear safeguards against foreign interference and electoral mismanagement both effective and workable.

Honourable senators, as we continue this vital debate, it is worth remembering that the greatest threats to democracy rarely arrive with a roar; more often, they arrive in a whisper — gradual, incremental and insidious — for example, as a misleading video, a coordinated disinformation campaign, a foreign influence operation, a privacy breach, an opaque source of funding or a fabricated story that reaches millions before the truth has a chance to catch up. Individually, each may appear manageable. Collectively, they corrode the foundation of public trust. And trust is the oxygen of democracy. Without trust, every result becomes suspect, every institution becomes vulnerable, and every election becomes a target.

Bill C-25 is ultimately about protecting that trust — trust that elections are fair, trust that voters are informed by fact rather than synthetic deception, trust that personal information is secured, trust that foreign actors cannot manipulate our outcomes and trust that democratic participation remains open, secure and accessible to every Canadian.

The architecture of Bill C-25 follows a clear, necessary framework: It strengthens protections against foreign interference. It modernizes our response to disinformation and deceptive “deepfakes.” It creates stronger privacy obligations and accountability measures for political parties. It addresses abuses associated with unduly long ballots. It expands enforcement powers and strengthens penalties. And it enhances transparency in political financing, while reducing the risk of anonymous, foreign or otherwise untraceable money influencing democratic outcomes.

None of these measures on their own will guarantee the future integrity of Canadian elections. No legislation can do that. But together, they make our system more resilient, more transparent and more responsive to the realities of the 21st century. And, importantly, they do so while preserving the freedoms that lie at the heart of democratic participation.

As I conclude, I want to emphasize that this bill did not emerge in a vacuum. It is the product of extensive consultation and expert analysis. It reflects the considered recommendations of the Chief Electoral Officer, the Commissioner of Canada Elections and the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference.

Bill C-25 incorporates those critical, expert-driven consensus recommendations that can be actioned pragmatically and directly in the Canada Elections Act. Furthermore, this legislation comes to us after extensive study and debate in the other place, where amendments were considered and the bill was passed without division.

The timeline we are working on is not a matter of haste, but a response to the urgent necessity of the challenges we face. The question before us is not whether this framework is perfect. The question is whether it meets the moment. Measured against that standard, it is hard to argue that the answer is anything other than “yes.”

Bill C-25 makes Canada’s electoral system stronger. It makes it more resilient against foreign interference. It makes it better equipped to address modern disinformation. It provides greater accountability for personal information. And it increases public confidence that elections remain free, fair and secure.

Strong democracies do not wait for failure before making repairs. They strengthen the foundation while the structure is still standing. I believe Bill C-25 meets this moment. For those reasons, I encourage all honourable senators to support this legislation.

Thank you, meegwetch, shukran.

Senator Mohamed, will you take a question?

With pleasure.

Thank you, Senator Saint-Germain.

The government did consider the recommendations of the Chief Electoral Officer with respect to this issue, and it’s important to emphasize that Bill C-25 is already a strong response to the dangers posed by AI. Specifically, the bill introduces a new, comprehensive offence of digital impersonation and strengthens the prohibitions against the misuse of computers to interfere with an election.

While transparency markers remain a topic of interest — and this was his recommendation — they involve complex technical and administrative questions that intersect with broad digital policy and platform regulation.

Senator, the government chose to prioritize the elements of this bill that provide immediate, tangible safeguards for electoral integrity — safeguards that can be enforced the moment this bill receives Royal Assent. I have no doubt that the government may choose to move further in the days, weeks, months and years to come as we learn more about AI and “deepfakes.” Thank you for the question.

Will Senator Mohamed take some questions?

With pleasure.

First of all, the Chief Electoral Officer also provided several proposed amendments to our committee which were not included in the bill, and we didn’t have time to properly study them, which was noted in our report.

But my question is about the unduly long ballot issue. You’re right; it is an important part of Bill C-25. Thank you for the explanatory part you included in that because that was a very confusing part of our pre-study during our committee. First of all, we had the Chief Electoral Officer — who I believe is a lawyer — actually proactively mention that there is this new offence of conspiring or counselling somebody to potentially sign a large number of these nomination papers to create these long ballots. And there is also the offence of somebody signing more than one nomination paper.

The Chief Electoral Officer proactively pointed out that while there were two different offences, the maximum penalty was the same for both. I don’t know if it was that he misspoke or what have you — and it tweaked my interest because I was so surprised about it — but he said that it was a maximum $1,000 fine for both of those offences, no matter if you had potentially counselled someone to sign 1,000 different nomination papers or if you had mistakenly signed a few yourself.

Given that, we then had Minister Steven MacKinnon come to our Legal Committee right after that panel. I asked him about that, and he confirmed that that was the case. He also confirmed that, yes, they were two different offences, but the same maximum penalty of $1,000.

He is a very experienced politician, and I was surprised to hear that. So it actually then took the government, I think, 10 days to send a short memo by email from officials to our committee briefly attempting to explain this issue and to provide some of the same explanations that you provided today. It wasn’t the minister. It wasn’t the Chief Electoral Officer. It was these officials.

Now this bill will have a very short, truncated study that we’re going to be doing potentially tomorrow on this, with no witnesses who have actually even accepted to come to our committee — so I don’t know what kind of a study it’s going to be despite our pre-study comment — but why were both the Chief Electoral Officer and the minister so wrong about that? How did that kind of miscommunication happen? What was the explanation as to why there was such a difference between what you’re explaining today and what they said that day?

Thank you, Senator Batters. First of all, I’m pleased that you got the information. I think that’s the most important part when looking at a bill under consideration.

Second, I’m not in a position to speak for either the Chief Electoral Officer or the minister. What I can tell you is that the minimums don’t change. But the reason there is a maximum is to give the Commissioner of Canada Elections the latitude to use her expertise to say that if it’s a minor thing, we should take that into consideration. If there is a major breach, then that means that the maximum penalty should be considered.

So I would say three things. First, there is absolute clarity that it’s $1,500 to $25,000 for individuals. It’s $10,000 to $100,000 for entities.

Second, the commissioner has the expertise to refer and ask for information to decide what would be an appropriate penalty. That’s on a sliding scale.

Third, when considering things like a long ballot, we’re in a different space now. We’re learning more things, and it’s important to create space for people like the commissioner to use their discretion, expertise and new powers to make sure that, whatever offence occurs, there is a proportionate response.

Thank you.

First, luckily, our committee did receive a brief email — I believe it was maybe a few paragraphs — explaining this, but that was something that just went to our committee. If you hadn’t mentioned it in your speech, those things would have gone unchallenged. They received a fair bit of play during the committee debate on that important issue, where we’re trying to limit these unduly long ballots because they really hamper democracy. We need to make sure we get this right.

As far as you saying you can’t speak for this person or the minister, since you’re the government bill’s sponsor, unfortunately, you have to speak for the government because we have not heard a speech from the government or received any answers about this bill. When the minister comes to committee and gets something so wrong, it’s legitimate to say that we need to know why. That is especially so because we’re not going to have the chance to hear from the minister tomorrow as part of our committee study. I won’t be able to ask him, as I would like to, why he got this so wrong; he is an experienced parliamentarian, as I said.

It would be helpful if you could perhaps find that out from the government and have that answer for when we potentially meet tomorrow.

Senator Batters, the most important thing is that you have the information now. That’s absolutely key for you when considering this bill. Thank you.

Would Senator Mohamed take a question?

With pleasure.

I know that this bill introduces a number of improvements regarding how political parties protect personal information.

However, you know as well as I do, since you were there during the committee’s work, that several experts, including Philippe Dufresne, the Privacy Commissioner, and Thierry Chiasson, a political science professor from Université Laval, were very critical of the fact that political parties are not meeting what is considered to be the minimum standard for privacy protection, as set out in, for example, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, or PIPEDA.

What’s your view on this? When it comes to something as simple as seeking permission to collect personal information, as we were told, political parties generally rely heavily on social media to gather information on voters. How do you justify the fact that political parties are still not reaching the minimum threshold deemed acceptable by privacy experts?

Senator Miville-Dechêne and Senator Mohamed, I just want to let you know that the allotted time has expired. Are you asking for more time to answer the question?

If the chamber agrees, yes, please.

Is leave granted, honourable senators?

For one question, it is agreed.

Thank you very much for the question.

The issue of privacy and political parties is absolutely key. I asked the same question, and I feel very comfortable now saying that the understanding is that it’s the functionality of the political party. PIPEDA applies in one instance; the Privacy Act applies in another. However, as I said in my speech, it’s incredibly important that parties have the latitude to conduct their work.

With this new legislation, there are so many new things that the parties will now have to adhere to regarding the way they store, collect and protect. This extends to the third parties they work with. They will now have to meet on an annual basis with the Chief Electoral Officer.

PIPEDA and the Privacy Act will not be the right fit for what political parties absolutely need to do, which is why it’s important that they have this regime and that the measures as to how they protect privacy are amped up. For that reason, this is a solid way forward.

I have no doubt that we will continue to look at this. Information is collected in different ways, and it’s incumbent on parties to make sure they are providing the information to the Chief Electoral Officer. I remind you that there are penalties if they fail to do so.

Honourable senators, I am also rising to speak at second reading of Bill C-25, the Strong and Free Elections Act.

First, thank you, Senator Mohamed, for your excellent speech. I took a few notes. Trust is the oxygen of democracy. I think trust is very much the oxygen that feeds any organization that is dealing with data. Political parties are engines of our democracy. Our system must be resilient, accountable and ready for new challenges, absolutely. We need to identify vulnerabilities before they become crises.

Regarding all of these pieces, I think you’re right on the money.

As might be expected, this stand-alone bill includes comprehensive reforms to the Canada Elections Act, including many amendments that have been long recommended by the Chief Electoral Officer and the Commissioner of Elections. There are also changes to privacy and security measures that federal political parties must follow when collecting, using, retaining, disclosing and disposing of the personal information of identifiable electors.

By now, you may have noticed that I’m passionate about data rights and privacy. Having been the CEO of two different businesses in my past life, I know the responsible management of this very issue was critical to our securing international customers. As a senator, I was honoured to be asked to be the Senate sponsor of the last two legislative efforts to update PIPEDA, for Bill C-11 in 2019 and Bill C-27 in 2021. Unfortunately, neither made it past the partisan wall in the House.

In short, though, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and worrying about data and privacy rights.

I commend Minister Solomon for his announcement of what appears to be a real strengthening of consumer privacy in Bill C-36 — many of you saw that announcement yesterday — with the important inclusion of advancements like the ability to ask for your personal important information to be deleted, enhanced transparency regarding how your personal information is used, data protections relating to minors and the power to combat surveillance pricing.

However, I must note that none of these advancements are included in Bill C-25, the Strong and Free Elections Act.

Regarding Bill C-36, as a total aside, I look forward to learning and understanding more about the shift away from privacy and data rights being managed by an officer of Parliament and the development of a new regulatory authority.

To return to Bill C-25, it includes amendments that focus specifically on the use of the personal information of identifiable electors, being those Canadians adults who are registered to vote and minors who are 14 years of age and older. Importantly, as compared to previous legislative efforts, Bill C-25 is not an omnibus bill. This is very important because the previous changes were included in the Budget Implementation Act, 2023, and then in the Making Life More Affordable for Canadians Act, which were omnibus bills. Those bills resulted in two changes to the Canada Elections Act, the first being:

. . . to provide for a national, uniform, exclusive and complete regime applicable to registered parties and eligible parties respecting their activities in relation to personal information, including the collection, use, disclosure, retention and disposal of personal information.

The second was to retroactively shield federal political parties from accountability for their collection and use of the personal information of identifiable electors who have had the right to vote over the past 25 years.

If I’ve learned anything over the past three years, it’s that political machines are incredibly powerful forces, especially when three of them find an issue that they all agree on. Regardless, here we are, and we’re on the clock as a result of the government’s programming motion. Third reading of Bill C-25 is scheduled for Thursday. In this speech, I’m going to do my best to help you understand the implications of clause 36 on pages 19 to 21 of Bill C-25.

Colleagues, we all know that Canada faces a series of overlapping crises. Our increasingly dangerous and divided world is full of geopolitical risks, not only in the form of trade pressure, stagflation, military posturing or critical mineral competition but also in a much quieter and less visible form: the ability of foreign actors to access, exploit and weaponize personal information.

We also increasingly understand that we rely on data to make everything in our lives work during every minute of every day and that the majority of infrastructure that holds the data of Canadians is owned or controlled outside our borders and subject to foreign legal regimes that can compel disclosure, regardless of where data physically resides.

Large data sets, like voter files, donor records, canvassing notes and behavioural profiles, are exactly the kinds of assets that a hostile or even nominally friendly foreign power can use to run targeted influence operations, tailor disinformation to specific communities or simply embarrass and coerce individuals.

Our own intelligence services have flagged this repeatedly.

This infrastructure challenge is an inevitable reality due to two American laws: the CLOUD Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. These laws give U.S. government agencies the power to compel cloud service providers to hand over data, even when it isn’t actually stored in the U.S. Servers based in Vancouver, Calgary or Montreal all fall under U.S. government authority when they are owned by the subsidiary of a U.S. company.

Unfortunately, until very recently, storing Canadian data in Canada on Canadian-controlled servers has not been a priority. But even when data resides on a sovereign, Canadian-owned server, there remains a 75% chance that data will still transit through a foreign jurisdiction when communicating with another sovereign, Canadian-owned server.

For those who believe the problem of foreign legislative control is purely hypothetical, a recent example suggests otherwise. Last weekend, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick issued an export control directive that prevents Anthropic from allowing foreign nationals to use its most advanced models.

That’s a broad description of the landscape of risk that Canada is dealing with at this time. Now let’s focus on a subset of that landscape, and that’s the personal information of identifiable electors held by Canada’s federal political parties and the proposed legislation in clauses 31 and 36 of the strong and free elections act.

First, why is political party data different?

It’s tempting to think of political party data as just another category of consumer data, comparable to what a bank, a telecom or a retailer holds. It’s not. In many respects, it’s more sensitive and, as we now know, the accountability structure around it is weaker.

Consider what these databases actually contain. Beyond name, address and contact information, party databases hold voter preference scores, donation history, volunteer activity and, as stated by Professor Andrea Lawlor of McMaster University during her testimony to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, information on religion, the number and age of their children and personal economic data.

This is not incidental information. This is precisely the kind of profile that tells a foreign actor not just who someone is and where they live but also what message would move them, what fear or desire could be exploited and what relationship could be disrupted.

Yet federal political parties remain almost entirely exempt from the privacy laws that protect citizens from having their data used without their consent and in ways citizens would not knowingly condone. With the implementation of Bill C-25, political parties will continue to self-govern the collection, retention, use and sharing of electors’ personal information without their consent. This is because they will continue to be exempt from the basic privacy protections that apply to virtually every other institution in Canada, including small businesses.

Political parties are also not subject to provincial law, due to previous legislation included in Budget 2023 and in Bill C-4 several months ago. Instead, they must comply with a self-governance regime and thin disclosure requirements under the Canada Elections Act, requirements that, as I will explain, Bill C-25 does far too little to strengthen.

This is not a hypothetical concern. Colleagues will recall the recent data breach in Alberta, where the personal information of nearly 3 million Albertans was made available in an online, searchable database. Professor Lawlor highlighted that this demonstrates the extent to which internal party mechanisms are not sufficient and that the public has little recourse when things go wrong. In the technical briefing, which Senator Senior and I attended and was hosted by Senator Mohamed, officials confirmed that each of the 14 registered federal political parties currently has access to the entire national list of electors.

Please, for a moment, consider the young mother who has travelled the terrifying path required to flee an abusive relationship or a new Canadian working to avoid the retribution of the state from which they fled and now speak against or a Canadian politician who is speaking against aggressive and often unidentifiable separatist voices. Imagine the fear that this Alberta voter data breach has instilled in these vulnerable individuals as they realize that their home address and personal contact information, which they have fought to keep private, are now public.

Second, what was Bill C-25 supposed to fix, and why does it fall short again on privacy issues?

This chamber debated many of these issues at length during consideration of Budget 2023 during that spring and Part 4 of Bill C-4 last winter. The Senate debate on Bill C-4 resulted in an amendment that sunsetted the provisions after three years, giving the government ample time to bring forward more tenable, privacy-protective legislation. This amendment was rejected by the government, saying that the Senate had no business meddling in the Canada Elections Act, implying that it should be the House’s sole jurisdiction.

To its credit, the government introduced Bill C-25 just two weeks after Bill C-4 received Royal Assent. It’s a fulsome, stand‑alone bill, no doubt, and it addresses a wide range of issues that genuinely needed fixing.

But on the question of privacy and the collection, use, retention and sharing of data on electors, it falls profoundly short. I’m concerned about the process as much as the substance. The government again chose to expedite study of this bill. There were only three meetings at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, where the Privacy Commissioner was explicitly not invited to testify. At the end of this short study, one amendment to clause 36 was proposed by MP Michael Cooper. It was to add the word “knowingly” to the prohibition on parties providing false or misleading information and would further weaken the bill. I found it interesting that, at the end of the study, the effort was to actually weaken privacy protections, not strengthen them.

Here in the Senate, we’ve only been able to conduct a partial and rushed pre-study at the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, and now there’s a mandated deadline to vote on this bill on Thursday, in two days. We received it yesterday, and we have to vote on it in two days.

Colleagues, even I’m feeling fatigued on this issue, but fatigue is not a reason to wave through legislation that leaves Canadians’ most sensitive political data inadequately protected.

Three, what do clauses 31 and 36 actually do?

Clause 31 would amend paragraph 385(2)(k) of the Canada Elections Act to say, “the party’s policy for the protection of personal information . . . .”

Clause 36 is where much of the meat is. It would require parties to protect personal information through physical, organizational and technological security safeguards; take certain steps in the case of loss of, unauthorized access to or unauthorized disclosure of information resulting from a breach, including informing affected individuals if there is a real risk of significant harm, which are both defined terms; ensure that any third party receiving personal information from a party provides an equivalent level of protection, not the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, or PIPEDA, for example, but protection equivalent to the political party’s privacy policy; have the party’s privacy officer attend at least one meeting per year on the protection of personal information held by the Chief Electoral Officer, who is not an expert in privacy or cybersecurity; refrain from providing false or misleading information about why a party collects personal information; refrain from selling personal information; and refrain from disclosing personal information to the public for the purpose of causing harm.

Clause 36 defines what constitutes “significant harm” for the purposes of breach notification, stating that it would include bodily harm, humiliation, damage to reputation or relationships, loss of employment or business opportunities, financial loss, identity theft and damage to or loss of property.

On their face, many of these items look like steps forward, and, in fairness, they are steps forward from the status quo. But, colleagues, when you place these provisions alongside the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, or PIPEDA, and what ordinary small and large businesses are required to do or — more importantly — alongside what the Commissioner of Canada Elections, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and outside experts have told us is actually needed, the gaps are large and unmistakable.

Fourth, why is this particular form of self-regulation a problem? Here is the heart of my concern: These minimum standards are not, in fact, standards set out in statute or applied uniformly. They are requirements that parties adopt their own privacy policies, which must address certain topics. However, the content and rigour of these policies remain entirely within each party’s absolute discretion. Enforcement, as a result, depends on a party breaching its own self-adopted policy and not on violating clear overarching statutory obligations that apply equally to all parties.

What does that mean in practice? Well, if Party A adopts a robust privacy policy and Party B adopts a minimal one, both are in compliance with the law, even though Canadians whose data sits with Party B have meaningfully weaker protections.

Additionally, these differing policies represent a significant enforcement challenge according to Elections Canada and the Commissioner of Canada Elections. First, these are non-expert bodies in the field of data rights and privacy. Second, they are being asked to enforce as many as 14 different privacy policies. And third, each of these political parties is free to determine, without any consultation, whether an infraction has actually occurred.

The Commissioner of Canada Elections, Madam Caroline Simard, told the committee directly that a single set of rules set out in the act and applicable to all parties equally would be far preferable to enforcing a patchwork of party-specific policies. Their recommendation aligns with the simple governing statement affirmed twice in legislation that there be a:

. . . uniform, national, exclusive and complete regulatory regime governing federal political parties’ collection, use, disclosure and disposal of personal information.

That phrase has been said in this chamber many times over the last three years, and that’s what the government committed to. It is not what we are seeing delivered.

Fifth, what is the gap in breach reporting? Bill C-25 requires parties to notify individuals in the event of a breach that poses a real risk of significant harm. That is a positive step, but it is incomplete in three crucial ways.

First, there is no requirement to report breaches to any independent third party — not the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and not even the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada. The Commissioner of Canada Elections raised this repeatedly during examination in the House of Commons and during pre-study in the Senate. Her request was straightforward: that her office be notified of breaches so that she could determine whether an investigation is warranted. Simply, how would her office obtain the evidence needed to investigate if she is unaware of a breach, especially if there is no mandatory retention period for related documentation to be held by parties, candidates and electoral district associations?

Second, the timing of notification is vague — it is as soon as possible — without a defined outer limit.

Third — and perhaps most troubling — is the threshold, and that is a real risk of significant harm. It is a threshold assessed by the political party itself — the party that is responsible for the breach. The party that experienced the breach is the same party deciding whether it rises to the level of requiring disclosure.

As was plainly noted during the technical briefing on Bill C-25, this creates an incentive for political parties to both draft a weaker policy at the outset and to under-report based on a looser interpretation of the self-imposed policy. The absence of consistent standards, transparency and regulatory awareness compounds the true scale of the risk that Canadians face if this legislation becomes law.

Sixth, what are the consent and data-sharing loopholes? First, under Bill C-25, parties may share personal data with third parties without obtaining consent from the individuals concerned, which is a significant departure from the norms that apply under PIPEDA. While the bill prohibits the outright sale of personal information, it does not restrict the type of entity that may receive data nor — as the Privy Council Office officials confirmed during the technical briefing — does it prevent those data from being traded or exchanged for non-monetary benefit.

Second, nothing in the bill prevents a federal party from sharing voter data with a provincial party or any other affiliated political actors, as we recently saw happen in the Conservative leadership race in British Columbia.

Third, when the data are shared — be it with an organization that is foreign or domestically controlled — the receiving party is only subject to the political party’s privacy policy, not PIPEDA.

I think it’s important to acknowledge the perspective offered by Minister MacKinnon at the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs on May 27. He argued that political parties are already, in his words, “. . . the most heavily regulated sector in Canada . . . .” He also spoke from his own personal experience as national director of the Liberal Party, stating that:

The use of elector data — and this was 20 years ago — was considered something next to sacrosanct in our party, and we had a clear awareness that it would be a serious offence to misuse that information, so we set up serious protocols, even then, about its use, its sharing and how we fence it off so that no one ever gets a complete picture.

I believe the minister, but as legislators, should we rely on the goodwill of all 14 federal political parties? I think doing so would be profoundly naive and would jeopardize the personal information of millions of electors across Canada.

The minister also raised a point about consent in the context of door-to-door canvassing: The relationship between a candidate and a constituent is not the same as a commercial transaction — and Senator Mohamed already spoke to that extremely well — and a rigid consent requirement could create a real barrier to the kind of direct democratic contact that we should be encouraging.

I agree with the minister when he said, specifically, “. . . that we need customized tools and provisions.”

There is a legitimate question about how consent frameworks designed for commercial relationships translate into the political sphere, but acknowledging that the form of consent may need to differ is not the same as concluding that there should be no enforceable standard.

It’s also worth noting that a 2020 poll conducted by McMaster University found that 71% of respondents said that a political party’s stance on privacy would affect their willingness to speak to campaign staff. In fact, the solution proposed in Bill C-25 may make the problem worse.

Seventh, how do the provisions in Bill C-25 reduce the risk of foreign interference? Colleagues, we cannot discuss this bill without returning to the broader context I opened with. Minister MacKinnon explained to our committee that Bill C-25 draws on the recommendations from the Chief Electoral Officer, the Commissioner of Canada Elections and the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions.

Yet when it comes to the specific intersection of data privacy and foreign interference, the bill’s approach is indirect at best. It does not explicitly integrate cyber and data breach risk considerations into its provisions in any binding way. Instead, it relies on parties to acknowledge “technical threats” within their self-authorized privacy policies.

Given everything we know, the Commissioner of Canada Elections noted that political parties hold highly identifiable data and that any hack or leak, legal or not, “. . . can have devastating impacts on individuals, and potentially give foreign adversaries capacity to tailor election interference.”

This indirect approach is simply not commensurate with the recommendations to government or the stakes in terms of individual and collective sovereignty.

Finally, what does the public actually want?

I conclude by speaking about where Canadians themselves stand on the question. A 2019 poll commissioned by the Centre for Digital Rights found that only 9% of Canadians knew that political parties were exempt from federal privacy laws. I found that in my own personal experience when I asked Canadians, friends and neighbours, “Do you realize there are virtually no restrictions on political parties and how they manage your personal data?” People are shocked; they have no idea. I don’t know what you found in conversations with people, but they are absolutely shocked.

Upon learning this, 88% agreed that political parties should be subject to the same privacy laws as other organizations.

That’s the big question here. Is it PIPEDA or nothing, or PIPEDA and something that is designed in a collaborative way to meet the needs of individuals and distinct needs of political parties? I think it’s the something in between that we are still not getting.

This result was echoed in a recent 2026 Ipsos poll that found that only 10% of Canadians support the current model of party self-regulation. In another Ipsos poll earlier this month, following the Alberta data breach, at least four in five Albertans agreed that the privacy law applying to businesses should also apply to political parties.

Canadians are saying there needs to be something they can count on. There needs to be transparency and strength in an act like this.

Colleagues, the leaders of all three major parties have publicly affirmed the importance of Canadians’ data rights and privacy, of protecting our privacy and our data, and that it’s part of building a stronger, safer and more sovereign country — the leaders of each of the parties that have led this initiative.

On the Alberta data breach, Prime Minister Carney stated, “We must be constantly vigilant to protect the rights of Canadians and the integrity of our democratic processes.” During the pre-study, Minister MacKinnon said that protecting the privacy of electors’ personal information is sacrosanct. But there is a gap — and it’s a wide one — between those public commitments and what their party officials have actually negotiated into this bill.

Again, in this light, remember that the Privacy Commissioner — the officer of Parliament with the institutional expertise in privacy law, breach assessment and enforcement — was purposely not consulted in the development or review of clause 36.

Consequently, Canadians do not have legal rights that are basic features of privacy regimes in the EU, the U.K., New Zealand and, indeed, in Quebec and British Columbia for provincial parties.

Trust is a foundational element of a strong democracy. In a digital world, our trust in every organization and institution is grounded in how they use our information to meet our needs, not theirs.

In the past, voters would choose their political party. Today, our political parties can use Canadians’ personal information to choose their voters by identifying those with whom a particular message will resonate most. It’s called “microtargeting.” It’s a long-established data-driven marketing and advertising strategy that uses and analyzes identifiable personal information to segment audiences into extremely small groups.

Microtargeting is what enables surveillance pricing, something that we’ve been hearing a lot about recently. It is the enabling technology and process. It is also how parties achieve active political engagement. You and your 10 neighbours may all vote for the same party, but you may be doing it for very different reasons. Those who don’t agree with a given message won’t even see it. This is how political coalitions are built.

Microtargeting is enabled by weak privacy laws, and I believe it is a polarizing force. It has created a polarizing climate where, as Senator Mohamed pointed out, the physical security of many of our politicians is being compromised. It is also the opposite of what Canadians seem to be looking for right now and responding to over the past year: a strong and positive message that unites our collective efforts around one common goal. When I see how the 2025 election unfolded in my province, it was that one common positive message that had the greatest effect, not microtargeting.

Colleagues, I realize the clock is ticking — on my speech and our processing of this bill — as a consequence of the government’s closure motion. There is a stated deadline for third reading of 12 p.m. on Thursday. There is fatigue, real fatigue, especially after the long debates on Bill C-4. I also recognize that Bill C-25 contains genuine improvements from the extremely low standard of the status quo.

It strengthens investigative powers for the Commissioner of Canada Elections; it increases funding for enforcement; it creates a new administrative monetary penalty regime with public disclosure requirements; and tighter rules on access to preliminary elector lists will be in place in the future.

But on the specific question of what matters most to our long‑term democratic resilience and our sovereignty in an increasingly hostile digital world, this bill leaves serious gaps unaddressed as it relates to the protection of the identifiable personal information that political parties hold on millions of Canadians.

This is why all three officers of Parliament with responsibilities related to clause 36 — the Privacy Commissioner, the Chief Electoral Officer and the Commissioner of Canada Elections — have recommended that Bill C-25 be amended.

Before we send this bill forward, or before we conclude our study of it, I believe this chamber owes Canadians answers to five questions.

First, why does Bill C-25 continue to rely on party-authored privacy policies rather than establish a single statutory set of minimum codified privacy rules that apply uniformly — as is promised in what we passed in previous legislation — to all federal political parties, as recommended by the Commissioner of Canada Elections?

Second, why does the bill require breach notification to affected individuals but not to the Commissioner of Canada Elections or the Privacy Commissioner, given the commissioner’s stated concern that this gap would hinder her ability to investigate foreign interference?

Third, how do the parties justify the fact that they actively avoided engagement with the Privacy Commissioner of Canada — the parliamentary officer with the most relevant expertise — at every stage in the development of this bill?

Fourth, why does the bill permit parties to share Canadians’ personal information with third parties, including provincial parties and affiliated entities, without consent and without restriction on the type of recipient, when 84% of Albertans just polled believe that parties should be held to the same privacy standards as private-sector organizations?

Fifth, given that the government has cited the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference as a key input to this bill, why does Bill C-25 not explicitly and directly integrate cybersecurity and data-breach risk into its core privacy and security provisions, rather than leaving this to be addressed indirectly through party‑drafted policies?

Time is beyond short. I doubt that any of these questions can be addressed to the satisfaction of this chamber over the next 48 hours because we received this bill yesterday, and we have to vote on it Thursday afternoon.

Each of us will have to decide by then whether we are comfortable defending the privacy provisions currently included in Bill C-25, the strong and free elections act, to our families, friends, neighbours and other Canadians.

Data privacy rights are foundational to our individual and collective prosperity and sovereignty. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t challenge the state of privacy rights in Bill C-25. I believe I would lose the credibility I have earned throughout my career in the private sector and in the Senate working on these issues if I didn’t challenge the weakness of the privacy protections in this bill. Colleagues, I ask: What are you prepared to do? Thank you.

Honourable senators, I rise today to speak very briefly to Bill C-25. I support this bill with one significant reservation, which I will address first.

I welcome the political party privacy provisions contained in the bill, as I see them as improvements on the provisions of Bill C-4, Part 4, which this chamber debated vigorously just a few weeks ago. These improvements, however, do not go nearly far enough, in my view. In his brief to the House Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, Professor Michael Geist states that Bill C-25’s framework:

. . . in its current form, leaves federal political parties subject to weaker privacy obligations than virtually any other organization in Canada. . . .

This translates into significant inadequate protection for Canadians. Political parties directly generate some of the information they hold; other information comes from third-party providers. Much of this information from both sources is extremely sensitive.

The government and Parliament need to find a way to bring political party privacy provisions into line with the protection that Canadians deserve.

Senator Colin Deacon, you have given us the entire framework for us to study and move forward whenever that is. I conclude with regret, however, that this will not be accomplished via Bill C-25 and will likely have to be tackled in other ways at another time, unless, of course, there are amendments in the process over the next few days, which I would welcome and support.

I serve on the Standing Senate Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs. I am a member of the Canadian NATO Parliamentary Association, and I am actively engaged in monitoring Russia’s illegal war against Ukraine. Everything I have learned in these fora convinces me that we need to move quickly and as fully as we can to protect Canada’s electoral system through the other provisions that are included in Bill C-25.

Canada’s awareness about foreign interference has come at us rather quickly if we think about the three years between The Globe and Mail breaking the story, in early 2023, about foreign interference in the 2021 election and now the implications of the leaked or sold voters lists in Alberta in the last few weeks. It is about the use, or abuse, of information and relationships, power and influence. So much is at stake.

As you may know, on April 30, 2026, the Standing Senate Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs released a report entitled Russia’s Disinformation: Understanding the Challenge, Strengthening Canada’s Response. In the conclusion to its report, the committee stated:

. . . the committee is convinced that Russia’s disinformation poses an urgent threat to Canada’s national security, democratic institutions and social cohesion.

. . . the extent of Russia’s disinformation exceeds Canada’s current capacity to address it effectively. . . .

In the context of Bill C-25, there also was evidence on Chinese activities in Canada that came from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, and other sources. But we can no longer assume that threats come only from non-democracies or from state-adjacent players in non-democracies. Players and platforms also exist in democracies, which are being used against Canada and Canadians. Compounding this is that Canada, like most democracies, does not have technological sovereignty.

I urge the Senate to consider Recommendation 7 of the Russia’s Disinformation report that there should be an expert panel review of Canada’s approach to addressing disinformation, including in relation to online platforms and artificial intelligence, which must also consider the structure of the businesses behind these operations.

It is for all these reasons that I also support amendments 5 and 6 tabled by the Chief Electoral Officer before both parliamentary committees that have studied Bill C-25 to date. He proposed to the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs on May 27, 2026, that the provisions on unauthorized use of a computer and false statements also apply where the intent is “. . . undermining the legitimacy of an election or its results.”

These would address:

. . . the deliberate dissemination of inaccurate information about the electoral process with the intent to erode confidence in an election or its outcome. Examples include manipulated videos falsely suggesting that ballots have been tampered with to support the narrative that the election has been rigged or stolen. . . . While any offence in this area should, therefore, be carefully defined, I do believe it is necessary to establish clear limits to guard against deliberate attempts to undermine electoral democracy through disinformation.

In my view, it is fully foreseeable that we will see such activities in Canada accelerate in the near future.

Colleagues, I also wish to endorse Recommendation 3, on transparency on the existence of disinformation, and Recommendation 5, regarding public education on disinformation, in the Russia’s Disinformation report.

Professor Lori Turnbull said to the House Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs on May 7, 2026:

Democracies — Canada and elsewhere — are facing a very serious array of threats to the health of democracy. I don’t think we can regulate or legislate our way out of all those things.

. . . The health of democracy is going to relate to things like civic literacy, voter engagement and voter trust in processes . . . .

I support the seventh recommendation of the Chief Electoral Officer with respect to transparency markers, a topic that came up just a few minutes ago. The intention is to require clear labelling of communications that have been generated or manipulated by AI where the communication is intended to influence how a person votes. This would be a good start to improving transparency and public education.

I urge senators and Senate leadership to find ways to contribute to overdue and essential measures to support Canadians to cope with disinformation in our democracy.

Finally, I urge Senate leadership and senators to ensure that Parliament regularly hears from the Chief Electoral Officer and the Commissioner of Canada Elections on their reports to Parliament. These officers are our experts. They are also a central aspect of our early warning system with respect to the health of our democracy. For various reasons, we have not been using this early warning system effectively, and we must remedy that.

As many initiatives in this Parliament, including Bill C-25, make clear, there is much hard work to be done to support our electoral system to be “. . . free, fair, independent and secure,” as Minister MacKinnon has described it.

For me, “fair” includes being representative of our population in all of its diversities, as I have argued with respect to my bill, Bill S-213. Political parties are the single most important link bridge between citizens and the choices made about how they are governed.

In my view, the Senate should never be a rubber stamp to the other place for matters relating to elections and the Canada Elections Act, a view that I have heard expressed a number of times in this chamber. In fact, the opposite, I believe, is true — the opposite.

I have deep respect for the House of Commons. I have been trying for over 30 years to get more women elected to that chamber, so I have deep respect for the House of Commons. However, because of the inherent conflicts of the other place, which we have seen most visibly in the privacy provisions brought forward in this and previous bills, and which do not serve Canadians well, we, in the Senate, must take on enhanced scrutiny of these bills. We must not be deferential. We must not have enhanced deference; we must have enhanced scrutiny from this chamber. We must move in the opposite direction — to enhanced scrutiny. New and troubling issues such as disinformation and foreign influence demand our full attention.

Colleagues, my final statement is this: This chamber has a critical, independent and enhanced role to play in ensuring the health of our democracy as we go forward. Thank you. Meegwetch.

Honourable senators, I rise today at second reading of Bill C-25. This legislation proposes a series of reforms aimed at strengthening election administration, improving transparency and addressing vulnerabilities within Canada’s electoral framework.

Colleagues, elections are the foundation of a democratic society. They are the process through which citizens hold governments to account, transfer power and collectively determine the direction of their country. If that process is to retain its legitimacy, the rules that govern it must evolve as quickly as the threats that seek to undermine it.

Bill C-25 is being considered at a time when confidence in democratic institutions is increasingly being tested. Reports from Elections Canada, studies by parliamentary committees, assessments by our national security agencies and, most recently, the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions have all highlighted vulnerabilities within Canada’s electoral framework and the need to strengthen public confidence in democratic institutions.

The Hogue Commission confirmed that foreign states sought to interfere in the 2019 and 2021 general elections. While those efforts did not alter the overall outcome of either election, the greater danger lies in the erosion of public confidence. Democratic institutions depend not only on secure elections but on citizens believing those elections are free from improper influence.

At the same time, the rapid emergence of artificial intelligence has introduced entirely new challenges for democratic societies. Technology now makes it possible to create highly convincing images, audio recordings and videos that can be weaponized and disseminated at an unprecedented speed, particularly during the compressed timeframe of a general election campaign.

Even where such content is ultimately disproven, it can poison the information environment, mislead voters and deepen public uncertainty at precisely the moment in which democratic clarity matters the most. It is against this backdrop that Bill C-25 must be considered. The bill represents Parliament’s latest efforts to modernize the Canada Elections Act in response to vulnerabilities identified through recent elections, recommendations from Elections Canada and concerns raised through the Hogue Commission.

More broadly, much of Bill C-25 focuses on modernizing the administration of elections and addressing specific operational vulnerabilities within the Canada Elections Act.

On a practical level, Bill C-25 addresses several vulnerabilities that should have been addressed years ago, including the use of financial instruments that may obscure the source of political contributions. By prohibiting contributions made through crypto‑currencies, money orders and prepaid payment products, the bill reinforces a basic principle of democratic accountability: Canadians should know who is financing political activity in Canada.

The bill also responds to the problem of excessively long ballots in certain ridings, a tactic that can create confusion for voters and impose serious administrative strain on election workers. Protecting the integrity of elections means not only guarding against foreign states but also refusing to tolerate deliberate efforts to undermine clarity, order and confidence in the voting process itself.

At the same time, broader concerns remain. The Foreign Influence Transparency Registry, long presented as a key component of Canada’s response to foreign interference, has yet to become fully operational. That reality serves as a reminder that strengthening democratic resilience requires more than amendments to the Canada Elections Act alone. It requires sustained attention to the broader ecosystem in which foreign influence occurs.

Beyond these measures, Bill C-25 contains a range of administrative reforms affecting the operation of the Canada Elections Act, including additional authorities for the Chief Electoral Officer, changes to electoral district names and various amendments relating to election administration and political financing.

While differing in scope and significance, these measures all concern the framework through which members of the House of Commons are elected and held accountable. It is with that perspective in mind that legislation governing elections occupies a unique place within our parliamentary system.

Unlike most legislation that comes before us, electoral law concerns the process through which Canadians choose members of the other place. It concerns the rules by which democratic mandates are obtained. For that reason, while the Senate unquestionably has a constitutional responsibility to review and scrutinize electoral legislation, we must also recognize that members of the House of Commons possess a particular democratic legitimacy in determining the framework under which they are elected. Senators do not face the electorate. Members of the House of Commons do.

While that distinction may allow the Senate to provide independent scrutiny, it also requires us to recognize the democratic legitimacy of those who must ultimately defend their decisions to Canadian voters.

Election laws are different from ordinary legislation. They do not simply establish public policy. They establish the rules under which Canadians choose those who exercise democratic power through our political parties and processes on their behalf.

When Parliament considers legislation affecting the electoral process, it’s considering the framework through which democratic accountability itself is exercised. Electoral laws are not simply another area of public policy. They establish the rules by which members of the House of Commons obtain their democratic mandate. For that reason, senators should exercise particular caution before frustrating the expressed will of the elected chamber on these matters.

That does not mean senators should abandon their duty of review, nor does it mean that amendments should never be proposed. Rather, it means recognizing that the Senate’s role is a very different one. Our role is not to determine the broad direction of electoral reform for political parties. Our role is to ensure that legislation is carefully examined, that unintended consequences are identified and that Parliament benefits from a second perspective before laws are enacted.

However, restraint is a recognition of the distinct role assigned to this chamber. The Senate must be prepared to insist when fundamental constitutional principles, regional interests or minority rights are at stake. But where the elected house has spoken on legislation governing its own electoral framework and the political process of parties in Canada, repeated efforts to frustrate it will risk weakening the very legitimacy that allows the Senate to perform its constitutional role of sober second thought.

Senators should scrutinize legislation thoroughly, question assumptions, hear witnesses and place concerns on the public record. That’s our job. However, where the elected house has debated and adopted legislation governing its own electoral framework, the Senate should be reluctant to become an obstacle to that democratic decision without a compelling concern.

One of the greatest prime ministers in Canada once told me that the Senate does have the constitutional right to gut bills. We have the constitutional right to defeat legislation that comes from the other house. But he also underlined that you’d better be damned sure that you have the unequivocal will of the public. I think Senator Tannas laughed because he knows who that great prime minister was, and he would say that on a number of occasions.

In conclusion, Bill C-25 is one step in the ongoing effort to adapt our electoral framework to new realities. While it addresses important vulnerabilities within our electoral system, it cannot be the final word on protecting Canadian democracy.

Members of the House of Commons are directly accountable to voters for the rules they adopt. They must defend those decisions to their constituents and ultimately accept the judgment of Canadians at the ballot box. In exercising our role, we should remain mindful that electoral legislation touches directly on the democratic mandate of those who ultimately answer to the electorate.

I heard Senator Deacon say that his neighbour was shocked and outraged that political parties are self-governing, don’t have more transparency or aren’t accountable like other organizations. Let me tell you, Senator Deacon, I have a neighbour as well, and he has been following proceedings and debates in the Senate over the past few months. He was particularly shocked when I pointed out that this place is self-governing and absolutely isn’t accountable to anyone but itself. I had to explain that unique political reality regarding what a parliament is.

I can tell you something, though, Senator Deacon: With this legislation, the members on the other side are accountable to my neighbour and yours. My neighbour only wished that the Senate would be as remotely accountable as the House is to them, but we are not. That is a reality, Senator Dalphond, that we have to accept. That’s why we’ve always accepted that our role in this institution is to engage in tempered, sober second thought and to always acquiesce to the democratic process.

I also find it a little bit rich that senators, while well within their rights, profess the importance of independence and being at arm’s length from political parties and the political process yet are so zealous to, at the first opportunity, dictate and integrate themselves into how the political process should operate.

Frankly, I cannot find any compatibility of a chamber that professes the importance of being at arm’s length from the political process because of a desire to be less partisan yet simultaneously feels compelled to jump into the partisan fray and set guidelines for how our political parties in the democratic system can operate.

For those reasons, the Senate’s contribution should be one of rigorous scrutiny, careful judgment and institutional restraint. We are not a place of confidence. That is how we best fulfill both our constitutional responsibilities and, more importantly, the democratic expectations of Canadians.

Thank you.

Will Senator Housakos take a question?

Absolutely.

Thank you, Senator Housakos. I didn’t say my neighbour. I said I have not yet met anybody who realizes that their data held by political parties has absolutely no restrictions on it at this time.

Have you seen the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics report from 2018 entitled Democracy under threat: risks and solutions in the era of disinformation and data monopoly? Have you had a chance to review it?

It was a unanimous report from elected MPs — not senators or party officials — during a study of the Facebook Cambridge Analytica affair. It very much said there needed to be the application of PIPEDA to political parties, among many other recommendations.

I don’t know if you have had a chance to review that report, Senator Housakos.

Not in detail, but I know full well the report you’re talking about. I can assure you the House has reviewed it. It’s an opinion that I totally disagree with.

Political parties must not be accountable to anybody but the electorate. It’s a fundamental principle of the democratic process. It has worked really well in creating one of the best constitutional democracies in the world in this country, so why are we trying to fix something that isn’t broken?

In an era when people are sharing their personal data on a daily basis and to such a wide extent on Facebook, TikTok and so on, the data that you and I share on these platforms is far more intrusive than the data political parties collect in order to carry out the democratic political process. For those reasons, I disagree.

Those who equate this with the data regulations and laws in this country for private agencies, financial institutions and others are drawing the wrong parallels.

Political parties, in my opinion — as someone who has been engaged in this for 43 years — go above and beyond in being careful with the data they collect and what they do with it, because we know what the repercussions are.

Recently, in British Columbia, we saw what happened to a political party when there were allegations they were free and loose with data. We saw repercussions in Alberta recently.

We would all agree that the arena of public opinion — when it comes to scolding, going after and holding to account political parties — is far more rigorous and effective than any piece of legislation or regulation I’ve seen.

Do you not think there should be any restrictions at all?

Are you supportive of the restrictions in Bill C-25? The reality is we’re trying to find something in between what is governing political parties, which is nothing right now, and what is governing other institutions in this country, like the federal government and commercial organizations.

You must be against Bill C-25 because it’s actually moving away from self-governance.

There are elements of Bill C-25 that we don’t support, but you have to walk a very fine line.

If you feel it doesn’t go far enough, there is a problem there from our perspective.

I hold sacred the importance of democracy. I hold sacred the importance of political parties being at the core of that democracy. You have a different view, Senator C. Deacon.

You believe that we need to have more bureaucratic controls over our political process and parties. I don’t. Bureaucrats have their place, but it’s not in the political arena.

Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?

Some Hon. Senators: Agreed.

An Hon. Senator: On division.

(Motion agreed to and bill read second time, on division.)