Elections Canada Chief Says Proposed Bill Does Not Fully Address Misinformation Undermining Voter Trust

The head of Elections Canada has told MPs that the federal government's proposed electoral reform legislation does not go far enough to address the spread of misinformation aimed at undermining public confidence in elections. He said he is generally supportive of Bill C-25 but believes it should be amended to cover situations where inaccurate information about the electoral process is published specifically to erode trust in the election or its outcome.

"What is not addressed by this bill is a situation where inaccurate information about the electoral process is published with the goal of undermining trust in the election or its results," Perrault said Thursday. Bill C-25 was tabled in Parliament in late March.

It includes measures to counter foreign and domestic political interference, including foreign donations, bribery, disinformation and AI-generated deepfakes of candidates. The legislation would make it an explicit offence to publish false information about the electoral process with the goal of tampering with the vote.

Perrault noted that provisions in Canada's existing election laws already prohibit the spread of such disinformation and that they have been used in the past. He said the new bill should be changed to explicitly include the spread of misinformation aimed at undermining faith in the electoral process itself.

"If someone is deliberately spreading falsehood to undermine trust in the result of an election, or trust in the election itself ... there needs to be a mechanism in the act to address this," he said.

Commissioner of Canada Elections Caroline Simard also appeared before the committee. She faced questions about a recent leak of a voters list in Alberta that is under investigation by Elections Alberta and the Alberta RCMP. An Alberta separatist group known as the Centurion Project posted a database online that was built using information from the June 2025 electors list.

The list contains personal information of individuals registered and eligible to vote in provincial elections in Alberta at that time. Elections Alberta has determined that the voter data used by the group came from information that was legitimately obtained by the Republican Party of Alberta.

The provincial election body obtained a court injunction last week ordering the group to remove the online database. A spokesperson for Elections Alberta said in an email last week that the Election Finances and Contributions Disclosure Act, passed last year, requires the agency to have reasonable grounds to believe an offence has occurred before starting an investigation.

During the committee hearing, Simard said she could only speak to the Alberta case based on publicly available information. She stated that under the federal Elections Act she can launch an investigation on her own initiative and that a similar possibility would exist if the case occurred at the federal level.