Elections Canada to recommend tighter nomination rules after foreign influence probe

Elections Canada is set to recommend tighter rules for political parties’ nominations after a federal inquiry referred to the contests as a “gateway” for foreign interference.

Documents published by the Foreign Interference Commission Tuesday afternoon suggest Elections Canada expects to publish the recommendations, including greater transparency measures and stronger enforcement of party rules, by the end of September.

Nominations, where candidates vie for the chance to run under a party’s banner, typically receive less public and media scrutiny than elections or byelections. A significant number of nomination contests for the upcoming general election are already in the books.

But they’ve become a central element of the foreign interference probe after allegations, first reported by Global News in November 2022, that affiliates People’s Republic of China (PRC) intervened in the Liberal Party’s 2019 nomination contest in Toronto’s Don Valley North riding.

The independent elections agency will not, however, take a direct hand in administering party nomination contests.

Stéphane Perrault, Canada’s chief electoral officer, told the commission that there were both operational and policy reasons Elections Canada should not directly administer nomination contests.

“(Elections Canada) does not have the local structures or resources to engage in the ongoing type of operations that would be required to administer nomination and leadership contests across the country,” Perrault told commission lawyers in an earlier interview.

“With respect to policy arguments, Mr. Perrault recalled the importance of party autonomy and the important value of permitting political parties to establish their own rules and procedures for selecting their