Law Times

Page 6 OctOber 22, 2018 • Law times www.lawtimesnews.com A slow-motion legislative car wreck BY KADY O'MALLEY W hen it comes to contend- ing with the complexi- ties and complications of Canada's election laws, it's difficult to imagine a decision-making entity as aggressively ill-suited to deal with such questions than 330-odd MPs whose parties have already started the one-year countdown to the next federal election. A quick catch-up for those joining this slow-motion legislative car wreck in progress: After tabling and almost immediately abandoning a series of proposed tweaks to the electoral rule- book, Team Trudeau finally seemed to remember its promise to "restore integ- rity" to the democratic process. Last spring, Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Gould brought in an omnibus bid to "modernize" the Elec- tions Act that incorporated the core proposals from the earlier bills along with new provisions to roll back much of the previous Conservative government's self-styled Fair Elections Act, including restoring — and even boosting — the federal electoral agency's capacity to in- vestigate and enforce the law and end- ing the ban on using voter information cards as identification at the polls. The new legislation also included new restrictions on how much parties — and third-party advertisers — could spend after June 30 in a year in which a fixed-date election is scheduled to be held. Like virtually all legisla- tion, it sparked immediate grumbling that it didn't go far enough. Those new rules on priva- cy disclosure will simply require parties to submit their privacy policies as part of the registration process and make them available on the party website. They still wouldn't be legally required to comply with federal privacy laws. Meanwhile, the restrictions on third-party advertis- ing groups that get funding from outside Canada fell far short of the outright ban for which some — including the Conser- vatives — had hoped. Overall, though — and measuring against the curve set by the Liberals dur- ing their three years and counting in office — it wasn't a bad bill at all, and it even garnered the preliminary support of the New Democrats in the House. But that's where the heartwarming story of cross-aisle collegiality ends. Shortly after the bill hit Committee, it became en- snarled in partisan-laced controversy, courtesy, for the most part, of the Conserva- tives, who saw the move to limit pre-writ spending as a direct attack on their party's superior fundraising skills and overstuffed campaign coffers — and, what's more, the conspicuous absence of a similar rule limiting the outlay of public funds for government advertising to be proof that the Liberals were trying to rig the rules to serve their own advantage. Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition also expressed deep suspicion over com- ments from Elections Canada officials that, they claimed, suggested that the agency was already readying the ma- chinery to make the changes prescribed by the bill, even though it hadn't even made it through the Commons. The resulting standoff lasted for several weeks, and it likely would have gone longer had the Liberals not had one increasingly harried eye on the clock, which was rapidly ticking down to what most experts saw as the deadline for bringing in any new laws in time for the next election, and cut a deal with the Tories. In exchange for dropping the proce- dural blockades, the government agreed to change the bill to address some of the Conservatives' chief concerns — most notably, by raising the pre-writ spending limit to much more than $1 million, as well as barring third-party groups from using any foreign funding to oppose or support a candidate at any time. It's also not like the government had any other option to get the bill back on track, short of using its majority to over- rule the objections of its political adver- saries and ram the bill through the re- maining stages in the House. Still, given the ongoing erosion of pub- lic confidence in both our democratic institutions and those elected to fill them, it's disheartening that, in attempting to update the rules for future elections, the MPs charged with overseeing the process would give us a preview of the hyperpar- tisan dynamics that will dominate the electoral battlefield in 2019. LT uKady O'Malley is a member of the parliamentary press gallery in Ottawa and writes about politics, procedure and process for iPolitics. She also appears regularly on CBC television and radio. COMMENT u EDITORIAL OBITER By Gabrielle Giroday ©2018 Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted or stored in a retrieval system without written per- mission. The opinions expressed in articles are not necessarily those of the publisher. Information presented is compiled from sources believed to be accurate, however, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions. 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Karen Lorimer Managing Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jennifer Brown Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gabrielle Giroday Staff Writer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anita Balakrishnan Copy Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Patricia Cancilla CaseLaw Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Leah Craven Art Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Phyllis Barone Production Co-ordinator . . . . . Jacqueline D'Souza Electronic Production Specialist . . . Derek Welford Changing norms T he legal use of recreational cannabis is one indicator of changing norms. One day, it is likely that the one-time crimi- nalization of cannabis will seem antiquated. In the meantime, media coverage around cannabis is increasing. Thomson Reuters has recently launched The Canna- bis Channel, where stories that cover different business elements of marijuana will be explored, from everything from legal approaches to occupational health and safety insights. It's accessible at TheCan- nabisChannel.ca, and it's an excellent source of centralized informa- tion on a complex topic. But is the law shifting in other areas when it comes to ref lecting changing social beliefs? In this issue of Law Times, the area of trusts and estates law is explored. Lawyers say Canadians need to ensure that a changing family structure is accounted for, as they draft their wills, particularly for people who are divorced and separated (and potentially living with a new partner). There's also the focus on planning around what hap- pens to a person's digital assets after death. "I haven't seen it addressed all that much yet and I think it's some- thing that's going to become a much bigger issue than it already is in the coming years just because of the prevalence of digital assets," says Matthew Urback. Another piece explores if legislation aimed at stop- ping cyberbullying is effective due to a decision in a sexual assault trial regarding FaceTime. The story reports that Justice Kelly Byrne found that since FaceTime video is live streaming and not automatically preserved, it is not a "visual record- ing" as required under the Criminal Code. These stories and others raise the spectre of changing norms in different areas of our lives and the need for the law to keep pace. If not, it risks be- ing irrelevant. LT The Hill Kady O'Malley Kady O'Malley

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