Law Times

Page 6 March 26, 2018 • Law TiMes www.lawtimesnews.com COMMENT u EDITORIAL OBITER By Gabrielle Giroday Shrink Convocation I t's pretty clear that the governing body of the Law Society of On- tario must decrease in size. According to a recent report, Convocation is "significantly lar- ger than almost all boards" when compared with 33 other profes- sional organizations from Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. The mere mention that there are currently about 100 members of the regulator's governing body sounds ridiculous, especially when compared with other Canadian jurisdictions. An effectiveness rating — calibrated from among the benchers themselves — is dismal. As Law Times reports, the Law Society of British Columbia has 25 lawyer benchers who are elected and up to six non-lawyers ap- pointed by the lieutenant governor. The Law Society of Alberta has 24 benchers and the Barreau Du Quebec has a 16-member board of directors. "The inclusion on a board of ex officio and honorary directors, as is the case for the Law Society, is unusual," says the report. It also notes that the 12-year term limit for elected benchers "is longer than the term limits in any organization in the comparator group." So, what's next? Bencher Janet Leiper says the task force has not decided on what specific recommendations it will be bringing to Convocation yet but that the group is looking to shrink the size of the board. Key findings suggest that shifts may affect the 36 ex-officio benchers that make up part of Con- vocation's ranks and bencher term limits. Governance reform may not be particularly glamourous, but it is important. Stay tuned. LT ©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. 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Karen Lorimer Managing Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jennifer Brown Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gabrielle Giroday Staff Writer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Alex Robinson Copy Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Patricia Cancilla CaseLaw Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Leah Craven Art Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Phyllis Barone Production Co-ordinator . . . . . Jacqueline D'Souza Electronic Production Specialist . . . Derek Welford Can electoral system withstand threats? BY SUSAN DELACOURT A week may be a lifetime in politics, but 19 months can elapse in a hurr y, especially when it comes to election preparation. That's why the collective attention of the federal political parties is in- creasingly turning to setting the stage for the October 2019 campaign — in- cluding talk of updating Canada's elec- tion laws. Though Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reneged on his promise to change the country's voting system be- fore 2019, his government didn't totally walk away from electoral reform. The new, more current worry for Trudeau's Liberals, in fact, isn't the fair- ness of the existing system — it's whether the system can withstand threats to its integrity. Lawyers might be tempted to see this through the civil-versus-criminal frame. Only a couple of years ago, election reform in Canada was a discussion about civics. But, in 2018, amid talk of Russian election meddling and other types of hacking in cyberspace, elections are in- creasingly a law-and-order concern. One of the more comprehensive pro- posals for better Canadian election laws came earlier this month from the Public Policy Fo- rum think-tank. The suggestions didn't receive as much attention as they should have when they were released — blame bigger distractions, such as Doug Ford's election as On- tario Progressive Conserva- tive leader. But these reform propos- als are such good ideas so you can probably bet we haven't heard the last of them. "Follow the money" is an old adage in investigative reporting and it's a driving principle behind the PPF recommenda- tions, too. Canadians like to believe that elec- tion financing was all cleaned up with the banning of corporate and union donations more than a decade ago at the federal level. But the PPF proposals demonstrate that the job hasn't yet been done. If Canada really wants to tighten up the rules around money's inf luence in Canadian elections, the report says, law- makers should focus their attention on possible foreign inf luence and the role of third parties. These are defined as "individuals and groups that aim to inf luence voting while not registered candidates or parties." Here are some of the rec- ommendations in the PPF report: Make sure that third par- ties are subject to the same donation limits as political parties and candidates, as well as increased transpar- ency around their activities. Right now, the annual limit is $1,575 for each person. Allow only eligible voters (meaning Canadians) to contribute to political parties. Stretch campaign spending limits to begin six months before the fixed elec- tion date. The report argues that the current lack of rules around third parties creates a huge loophole in financing limits — essentially, anyone who wants to spend a ton of money to inf luence an election can simply channel it away from parties, corporations and unions and instead pour it into an interest group. The digital universe — and its ease in getting around national boundaries — also makes it more difficult to keep the political playing field level in Canada and safe from foreign inf luence. The PPF report acknowledges those difficulties, but it still urges that the gov- ernment put some measures in place to regulate that political Wild West. For instance, why not require politi- cal entities to record and register the ads they're putting out in the digital world, just as they do with broadcast ads? In the wake of the PPF report, Liberal government sources were telling some reporters in Ottawa that election-law changes are on the way, quite likely in line with what's suggested in this latest report. And, yes, those proposed changes are intended to be in place before the Octo- ber 2019 election. If that's the case, the lawmakers best get cracking. While it may feel like a lifetime or two since the last federal election, when Trudeau was promising a very different kind of democratic reform, 19 months isn't a long time to get Canada's electoral system protected from 2019-style threats to its fairness and integrity. LT uSusan Delacourt is an Ottawa-based political author and columnist who has been working on Parliament Hill for nearly 30 years. She is a frequent po- litical panelist on national television and author of four books. She can be reached at sdelacourt@bell.net. The Hill Susan Delacourt Susan Delacourt

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