I voted NO to Trudeau’s Elections Bill: My 3rd Reading Speech

Senator Denise Batters delivers her 3rd Reading Speech in the Senate Chamber on the Trudeau Government’s Elections Bill C-76. She explains some of the many reasons this is a highly flawed piece of legislation, which leaves Canada’s next election vulnerable to manipulation and abuse through foreign interference.

All newscasts for two years have been consumed with possible Russian interference in the last U.S. election. Maybe you wondered: Could this happen in Canada? It DID happen here. PM Trudeau recently stated that “not much” Russian interference occurred in the 2015 Canadian federal election.

Yet, despite the Prime Minister’s alarming statement, the Trudeau government brought forward an elections bill which contains massive foreign interference loopholes which will permit significant foreign involvement in Canada’s federal election next year. They could have shut the door, but instead, they left it wide open.

In mid-December, the Trudeau Government forced this highly flawed Bill C-76 through Parliament. Given the major problems with this bill, it was an easy decision for me to stand with my Conservative Senate colleagues and vote NO. Not one “Independent”, Liberal or Trudeau Government senator voted against it.

The amendment I proposed at the end of my 3rd Reading speech sought to require that a non-resident Canadian must have lived in Canada for at least five years to be able to vote in a Canadian federal election. (Bill C-76 contains no minimum requirement, and as such, a non-resident Canadian voter in our next election could have lived in Canada for only one month.) My common-sense amendment was defeated 49-31.

Click here to listen.

(December 10, 2018)