I've compiled a list of quotes from articles assessing Harper's attempt to rig the elections process in his favour. I've started with what I believe to be the most important element, the fact the bill is going to get rammed through no matter what, and then posted quotes showing exactly what is being rammed through parliament as quickly as possible so that Canadians don't know how their democracy is being undermined.
Definitely worth sharing, especially worth copying and pasting to friends who may not follow politics closely, but would find this shocking.
So without further ado...
What has been said about the so-called Fair Elections Act:
---- McMaher (as they have become known), Post Media
The governing Conservatives moved Wednesday to cut short debate on a new election bill that critics say helps the Tories and weakens oversight by Elections Canada.
House Leader Peter Van Loan gave notice Wednesday afternoon, a day after the 242-page bill was tabled, that the government will vote to send the bill to committee on Thursday, a move that seemed to signal the government plans to push the bill through the legislative process without changes.
---- Chantal Hébert, Toronto Star
That starts with Elections Canada. The agency was kept out of the loop of the drafting of the legislation by the government and it has yet to deliver a full analysis of the result.
But one does not need to read between the lines of the bill to come to the conclusion that the Harper government is more inclined to see a higher voter turnout as a threat than as an ideal outcome.
At a time when most comparable jurisdictions are looking for ways to reverse a decline in turnout the legislation put forward on Tuesday nudges Canada in the opposite direction.
In the same spirit more than a few countries are looking to remove some of the practical constraints that are said to be keeping voters away by adopting alternative voting methods. One increasingly considered option is electronic voting. The bill shortens Elections Canada’s leash on that score.
It would require that both houses of Parliament — and not just the committees that usually deal with election-related matters — give the green light to any pilot project that involved electronic voting.
That means for instance that even if — after the 2015 election — a possible Liberal or a New Democrat government agreed that Elections Canada should road test electronic voting it could not do so without the permission of a Conservative Senate majority.
Finally the bill tightens up voter identification rules — making it harder for a number of not usually Conservative-friendly constituencies to vote. The latter include younger voters.
---- From the Ottawa Citizen:
This is because the Bill would prohibit the Chief Electoral Officer from blowing the whistle on voter fraud, as he did in March 2013. Section 18 of the Bill strips the Chief Electoral Officer of his right to use “the media or other means” to “provide the public … with information relating to Canada’s electoral process, the democratic right to vote and how to be a candidate.” The Chief Electoral Officer would be explicitly precluded from speaking of such matters.
By muzzling the Chief Electoral Officer, the government is seeking to keep key information about voter fraud from electors. This will make it far less likely that a government will have to contend with a timely judicial inquiry into voter fraud, thus obviating the need to again engage in “trench warfare” to prevent such a case from being heard in court.
Moreover to ensure that no-one learns of any such investigation, the Bill precludes the Commissioner from revealing that any investigation is underway without the consent of all involved, including the person or political party under investigation.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, nothing in the Bill would hold a political party to account for the unauthorized use of its database by those who have access to it. That is precisely what the “Pierre Poutines” (yes, likely more than one) did in 2011. Until such accountability is established, voter fraud will likely remain a feature of the Canadian electoral process.
But don’t worry; you’ll probably never hear about it.
---- Steve Maher, one of the key journalists covering the robocall investigation wrote:
Mayrand, whom Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed in 2007, has repeatedly been the public face of disciplinary action against the Conservatives for various electoral misdeeds, and this week the Tories sought to even the score.
The bill would remove the jewel from Mayrand’s bureaucratic empire — Elections Canada’s investigative branch — and limit his power.
Pierre Poilievre, Harper’s minister of state for democratic reform, justified these moves by saying “the referee should not be wearing a team jersey.”
The act limits the authority of Mayrand in several ways. I like the idea of requiring him to post interpretations of rules, but the act appears designed to muzzle him, forbidding him from speaking to the public about anything except the location of voting booths.
This is either a drafting error or an unacceptably authoritarian move. It must be reversed.
The same clause that forbids Mayrand from speaking would stop Elections Canada’s efforts to promote turnout. No more ad campaigns to encourage voting among groups with low turnout — like young people and aboriginals — groups that — what a coincidence! — don’t vote Tory.
The bill fails to give Elections Canada the authority to inspect the books of parties or riding associations. Since post-Watergate reforms in the United States, Americans have been able to see how parties spend money. Canadians have absolutely no idea.
---- Andrew Coyne, National Post:
Take the battery of provisions aimed — that seems the appropriate word — at Elections Canada, the government agency responsible for running elections and enforcing their rules. Frustrated by the slow progress of the investigation into the robocalls scandal the chief electoral officer had asked for greater powers, notably to compel evidence from witnesses: a draconian measure, but not unknown in similar circumstances.
The act gives him none of these, responding instead by hemming in the powers of investigators on all sides. For example, they would be required to notify subjects that they were being investigated: an unusual provision, to say the least, even if an exception is made where this would compromise the investigation. Even more remarkably, the whole of Elections Canada’s enforcement operations, under the commissioner of Canada elections, would be removed from it and transferred to the director of public prosecutions, within the Justice department. This would make it accountable, not to Parliament as it is now, but to the government.
Whether this would make any practical difference to how election irregularities are investigated is an open question. What’s of interest here is what it reveals of Tory thinking. That is, the problem it was intended to solve would seem to be that the elections investigator was too powerful, too dogged, too independent.
A third element of the bill is even more curious. Among the other constraints imposed on Elections Canada, the agency would be forbidden from running campaigns encouraging people to vote: Its communications with the public would be restricted to providing information on the location of polling stations and the like. Again, the efficacy of previous such campaigns is open to debate. But why go so far as to legislate against it? What is the problem this is intended to solve? Apparently, that turnout is too high.
It’s a bizarre bill. But the government is plainly proud of it: so proud that it refused to consult with the chief electoral officer on its contents; so proud that it is now being rushed through Parliament with a bare minimum of debate, using the government’s power of time allocation. And what problem was that intended to solve?
http://o.canada.com/news/tories-move-to-cut-short-debate-on-new-elections-act/
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/02/05/election_bill_reveals_conservatives_view_on_voter_turnout_hbert.html
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/touch/story.html?id=9472219
http://www.canada.com/news/national/Conservatives+election+bill+important+rammed+through/9483005/story.html
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/02/07/andrew-coyne-what-problems-are-the-conservatives-really-trying-to-solve-with-bizarre-fair-elections-act/
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