This is the sixth article in a series examining recent government bills or laws that experts say deserved more scrutiny.
A new law that aims to prevent foreign interference in federal elections passed June 18, creating new restrictions on voter data usage, fundraising and leadership races.
Experts say Bill C-25 touches on many important issues in Canadian elections, but also does not do enough to address foreign interference concerns.
“In almost every respect, the bill could have gone farther,” said Lori Turnbull, a professor of political science at Dalhousie University who specializes in electoral systems.
“It ended up being … low-hanging fruit … these were things that a lot of the parties could agree to.”
Vulnerabilities
Concerns over Canada’s election processes have been mounting for years.
In April, millions of Albertans’ personal information was leaked online by the Centurion Project, a group pushing for the province to separate from Canada.
Turnbull says the incident was a major wake-up call for legislators.
“There tends to be a kind of healthy level of trust in what people’s data is going to be used for … on a voters list,” she said. “To realize that that can be used for the wrong purposes, it’s shocking to people.”
Allegations of irregularities at party nomination contests have also raised concerns about a lack of oversight in internal party races.
Last year, the Hogue inquiry into foreign election interference released its final report, which recommended Elections Canada be more involved in elections and that party nomination and leadership contests be more standardized.
Bill C-25 responds to some of these concerns.
The new law requires federal parties to adopt safeguards to protect voters’ personal information, such as their names, phone numbers and addresses. It also requires parties to notify the public of significant data breaches, and prohibits them from selling voters’ personal information.
It bans parties from accepting or offering bribes for votes. And it bans deepfakes — the use of AI to mimic a person’s appearance or voice — which can be used to mislead voters.
Andrea Lawlor, a professor of political science and public policy at McMaster University, views this measure as a positive first step, but notes legislation will always be behind technological advances.
“It’s kind of like … a game of whack-a-mole,” she said. “When you close one loophole … other ones will pop open, especially with the rapid rise of AI technologies and the accessibility for anyone to use AI in order to influence election outcomes.”
BIll C-25 also prohibits voters from signing more than one candidate nomination form per election. Previously, voters could back an unlimited number of candidates, which had led to some ridings fielding an unwieldy number of candidates.
In the 2025 general election, for example, 91 candidates were on the ballot in Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievere’s Carleton riding to protest Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system. The new rules would make such an outcome unlikely.
Anecdotal incidents
Turnbull, of Dalhousie University, says Bill C-25 was so wide-ranging it was a kind of “omnibus” bill for election interference.
And yet, she and others say Bill C-25 still falls short.
Sources noted one of the key challenges is that political parties continue to govern themselves — and lack the incentive to impose more rigorous controls on their own processes.
“They don’t want Elections Canada to be coming in with their clipboards and … running nomination processes and leadership processes,” Turnbull said.
Charles Burton, a senior fellow at Sinopsis, a Prague-based think tank, says there should be standardized regulations for party nomination processes, in part to ensure only Canadians can vote in nomination races.
“There’s too many anecdotal incidents that suggest that the process is not being run in a way which maintains Canadian values of transparency and integrity,” Burton said.
Lawlor says more could be done to protect voter data.
“I don’t think most voters know that [so much] information exists on them,” she said. “Voters have no way to request this information.”
Mass data collection — of voters’ marriage status, occupations and children’s age, for example — enables parties to create “avatars” of voters that make them easy targets for political messaging, she says.
“[The parties] know exactly who to target,” she said. “So they know how to get on the right Facebook feeds of people who are going to be particularly susceptible to certain kinds of ads.”
Lawlor points to the EU’s data protection model — which allows individuals to see and remove personal information held by organizations and political parties — as a framework Canada should be looking to emulate.
Major threats
Burton says the new legislation also fails to introduce material safeguards to prevent interference by countries such as China, Russia and India.
“I don’t think the legislation is sufficient to address [evidence of foreign interference],” he said.
Burton chooses to work at Sinopsis, in Prague, because he is not confident Canadian think tanks even have sufficient controls in place to avoid being influenced by China.
Turnbull says the Alberta separatist campaign — where separatist leaders claim to have been in contact with members of the Trump administration — highlight that interference from south of the border is also a possibility.
“We know that there is American interest in what’s going on in Canadian politics,” she said. “We need to be concerned about the flow of money from the United States and other places into Canadian campaigns.”
Insufficient responses
Burton has spoken frequently at committee meetings, including one that studied Bill C-25 before it passed. In his view, the government is not taking these meetings as seriously as it should.
“I find that I get treated very politely at committees. But I’m not sure that my words are actually being heard by them.”
House and Senate committees are able to request comprehensive responses to their reports from the government, which have to be submitted 120 days after being requested.
Burton feels the government’s responses to committee reports — which he says used to be meticulous — have lacked substance in recent years, with government responses often looking like a press release.
“The current government — and I think also under Trudeau to some extent — have not been taking the committees as seriously as our democratic process or traditions suggest,” he said.
“What’s the point of the thousands and thousands of hours of investigation and research done by parliament, if the committees are not being taken seriously and turned into government policy?”
