Letter to the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs on Bill C-25, the Strong and Free Elections Act

The Honourable David M. Arnot, Senator
Chair, Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs
The Senate of Canada
Ottawa, ON  K1A 0A4

I am writing in follow-up to my appearance before the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs on May 28, 2026, in relation to your pre-study of Bill C-25, the Strong and Free Elections Act.

I was asked to comment on the amendments to the Canada Elections Act that would add criteria that a political party will need to meet in order to obtain access to preliminary lists of electors when the writ is dropped (clause 5, s.93(1.1) CEA).

In its current form, s.93(1.1) states that the Chief Electoral Officer will make the lists available to any “registered party or eligible party” that requests them. The amended subsection would limit sharing of the lists to parties that met at least one of three new criteria. Pursuant to the proposed requirements in Bill C-25, a party would have to have:

While the Chief Electoral Officer would be better placed to express a view on the merits of adding these specific criteria when determining which parties should have access to the preliminary lists of electors, these criteria appear to add controls or limits on the distribution of such lists. Since the lists themselves contain personal information, the addition of criteria governing access would, in principle, be a privacy-protective measure.