Canadian Lawyer - sample

w w w . c a n a d i a n l a w y e r m a g . c o m M A R C H 2 0 1 9 29 in the wake of the Somalia Inquiry, which made sweeping recommendations for changes in the military justice system. The inquiry followed a scandal where mem- bers of the armed forces on a peacekeeping mission tortured and killed a Somali teenager. After a stint at the Privy Council Office, working in part on election reform, Côté became ombudsman for the Department of National Defence — a job that took him briefly to Afghanistan where he got to visit young men and women not much older than his own children and see the medical toll of the mission firsthand. "It was really an eye opener. I spent a week there, talking to them and exchang- ing with them in areas where there were no senior people." In 2008, Côté returned to the justice department as associate deputy minister of justice for more than four years under former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government — a job he says "was challenging in many, many different ways." Côté traded one challenge for another in 2012 when he became commissioner of Canada elections in the middle of the investigation into what became known as the Robocalls Scandal — automated phone calls in the riding of Guelph, Ont. that directed voters, many of them unlikely to vote for the Conservative Party, to the wrong polling station. One person was convicted — Conservative campaign worker Michael Sona. Côté says he knows there was at least one other person involved, but he lacked the legal tools necessary to get the evidence and charge them. "We knocked on every person's door and nobody would talk to us. So that was very frustrating because [if there was] any issue in the last 10 years or so that created such a huge amount of uncertainty on the part of Canadians in terms of the health of our democratic process, that was robocalls. We were simply not able [to get] to the bottom of it because of that." Now, with Bill C-76, the new election reform bill adopted just before Christmas, Côté will have new powers to compel witnesses to talk. P errault's path to the challenges he now faces was also circuitous. Now 51, he was raised in the leafy, upper-middle-class Montreal sub- urb of the Town of Mount Royal. The son of a federal public works manager who supervised build- ings such as Montreal's Guy- Favreau Complex, Perrault attended Collège Jean-de- Brébeuf, the same exclusive private school Prime Minis- ter Justin Trudeau attended a few years later. Perrault took advantage of Quebec's system that allows students to go straight from CEGEP to law school without having to complete a bachelor's degree, graduat- ing from Université de Mon- tréal's law school at age 22. "I really enjoyed law school, but after law school, I was at a bit of a loss to find what I was going to do. I did my bar, I articled. Private practice wasn't particularly appealing to me at that time and I was quite young, too." Perrault returned to the Université de Montréal, finishing with a doctorate in constitutional law. He then clerked in 1997 for former Supreme Court Justice Claire l'Heureux-Dubé, but he still wasn't sure of his direction. B ill C-76, adopted in December, contains several changes to the way Canada's next election will be held and gives officials more powers to deal with any attempts to disrupt the election campaign or the vote. Here are some of them: • The commissioner of Canada Elections will have the power to apply to a court to issue an order compelling a witness to answer his questions or provide a written return during an investigation. • The commissioner of Canada Elections will have the power to levy administrative monetary penalties for breaches of certain sections of the elections law. Up until now, the commissioner's options were to charge someone in court or negotiate a compliance agreement. • The commissioner of Canada Elections will have the power to lay charges for violations to the elections law without having to go through the director of Public Prosecutions. • Bill C-76 makes it an offence to make a false statement during the election period alleging that a candidate, a political leader or a political party has broken a law or is under investigation for committing an offence. It is also an offence to make false statements about things such as their citizenship, place of birth, education, professional qualifications or membership in a group. • Bill C-76 prohibits third parties from using money from outside Canada to pay for partisan or election campaign activities. They will also now have to report on money spent in areas such as election surveys and partisan activities, not just the amount spent on advertising. • Undue foreign influence such as committing a crime or incurring expenses to promote or oppose a candidate or party is prohibited. Media and social media companies can't sell election advertisements to foreign entities such as individuals, companies, trade unions or a foreign political party or government. • Social media companies and websites that sell election or partisan advertising will have to maintain a registry of political ads. • Trying to affect the results of an election by hacking into a computer system, damaging one or trying to destroy data is prohibited. THE GOVERNMENT'S RESPONSE Stéphane Perrault

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