Text of the Letter Presented to the CEO of Elections Canada

07 Dec 2021

Greetings to the Chief Electoral Officer & our colleagues among the other parties,

These meetings are an important part of maintaining Canada’s election laws. Here concerns,observations, and new ideas can be shared freely with those charged with enforcing Canada’s election laws and the representatives of the parties who have to live by those rules and, at times, legislate them. It is in the interest of fairness and an acknowledgement that political fortunes can change quickly that has, for many years, led all registered political parties to receive invitations to attend these meetings.

However, an important group has been conspicuously absent. Independent candidates. Independent candidates are also affected by political finance laws but have no advocates here. They are a voice that is not heard. Perhaps this is why that while political parties have created many ways to raise and store vast campaign war chests independent candidates have only those methods first available to all candidates in 1867 to make use of. While it may be tempting to think of independent candidates as irrelevant this is largely because we, collectively, have made them so.

In the 2011 Federal Election I counted 61 independent candidates who got their names on the ballot. Some did quite well. In fact, after the Green Party of Canada independent candidates are arguably the most important political grouping. This, in the face of systematic disadvantages.

The Pirate Party believes that an effort must be made to include a voice for independent candidates at these meetings. We call on Elections Canada to work towards including a representative from a group whose insight is sorely missed.

While including independent candidates in future meetings will bring a necessary voice to the table it will not immediately change the cumulative disadvantages that independent candidates face.

A number of months ago the Pirate Party proposed possible solutions to the problem of independent candidate financing rules.[1] We argue there needs to be limited means for independent candidates to raise money before an election to adequately compete with party candidates who receive transfers from riding associations who have been raising funds for years before the election. There also needs to be a way for independent candidates to have their hard-earned donations carry over from election to election. To have their fundraising efforts reduced to nothing at the end of each election while party candidates can transfer their money back to the association further widens the gap between independent & party candidates.

We welcome questions about the implementation of our ideas but we firmly believe that this is a paramount issue in party financing rules in need of addressing. Canadians have spoken often and loudly about the need for candidates who are not beholden to party interest. Let’s make it a viable option again. Thank you for your time.

With respect,

James Wilson

Leader

Pirate Party of Canada

 

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[1] https://policy.pirateparty.ca/fairness-for-independents/

-We propose allowing independent candidates to raise funds in the two months leading up to a scheduled general election provided the candidate submits the names of their official agent and their auditor to Elections Canada beforehand. Should the independent candidate receive a party’s nomination, they must hand over all money raised during this period to Elections Canada. All funds will be subject to the same reporting rules as those raised during the election itself.

-Additionally, we propose a new system by which money raised by independent candidates before the end of an election will instead be held in trust by Elections Canada until the next Federal election. If the person runs again as an independent candidate, the money that is held in trust will be returned to them for use in their campaign. If the person decides not to run at all or runs as a candidate under a party banner, the money held in trust will be forfeited to Elections Canada in whole. All interest accrued from money held by Elections Canada in this manner will belong to Elections Canada.

 

Prohibit Cross-domain tracking

19 Nov 2021

Cross-domain tracking , multi-site tracking or tracking outside the tracker’s own domain will require user’s active acknowledgement (opt-in), notwithstanding any privacy policy posted on the website. A similar form of acknowledgement is required if collected information are passed to third party, with the list of the third parties recipients provided to the user.

The following policies have been approved by the Political Council and will be sent to the membership to be voted on:

**The pirate party considers metadata to be Personally Identifiable Information (PII) when taken in aggregate over time, even when anonymous, given it allows to build user profiles that are possible to correlate to specific people. Any usage of data and metadata can considered to be private when a first or a third party could use it to build user profiles.

 

For First Parties:

 

-Data submitted by the user passed in to a third party providing website functionality (comments, logging, backups, payments, and other similar services) must be explicitly listed as being shared with said party, with the information being easy to find, before the data can be submitted by the user.

 

-Personally Identifiable Information submitted by the user to a website cannot be passed to a third party for functions unrelated to website features (selling the information, analytics) without explicit user acknowledgement (opt-in), notwithstanding any privacy policy posted on the website.

 

For Third Parties:

 

-Advertising networks and third party advertisers taking part into online advertising must respect commonly-used privacy mechanisms (such as Do Not Track headers), whether or not these mechanisms were enabled by users or were a default setting of their browsing device.

 

-Evercookies and other similar practices aiming to circumvent the users’ ability to preserve their anonimity will be forbidden by any party without explicit user consent (opt-in).

 

-Third parties cannot insert themselves into a communication between one or more users in order to gather personally identifiable information without their consent.

Updating the Spirit of Privacy Law in Face of New Technology

05 Nov 2021

We will update the Criminal Code to ensure that use of newer and/or untested technological means to accomplish something that would be a privacy violation if a person physically did it themselves is also illegal (such as using a drone to commit voyeurism). An act that would have otherwise been legal or illegal using more conventional methods will be treated accordingly as having accomplished the act with conventional means.

The following policies have been approved by the Political Council and will be sent to the membership to be voted on:

-We will update the Criminal Code to ensure that use of newer and/or untested technological means cannot be used to circumvent the spirit of privacy laws. For example, voyeurism assisted by a drone would be treated the same as if done in person.

 

-An act that would have been legal or illegal using modern methods will be treated accordingly as if it were accomplished with conventional means.

Crown Copyright

28 Aug 2022

The following policies have been approved by the Political Council and will be sent to the membership to be voted on:

-All government copyright (“crown copyright”) will be released under a Creative Commons Non-commercial licence.

Establish Compulsory Licences for all Copyright and Patents

28 Aug 2022

The following policies have been approved by the Political Council and will be sent to the membership to be voted on:

-We will establish a system of automatic licences for copyright and patents. Innovators will be able to pay a flat fee for the right to use works of intellectual property held by another. This is similar to the provisions made for ‘cover songs’ in the music industry.

 

-As the intellectual property holders will not be able to reject an automatic licence request we will set the royalties received from sales of products using their intellectual property at a level above the market rate as a means of compensation.

 

-Licence fees for intellectual property whose owner is not known (known as ‘orphaned works’ in copyright) will be paid to the government. The government will hold onto the payment until the intellectual property holder is identified.