§05 — The strongest case for it

Now build the government’s case at its strongest, because the honest version of this reading has to survive it. First: the bill’s main thrust on third parties is a tightening, not a loosening — it bars foreign money by requiring that regulated activity be funded only by Canadian citizens and permanent residents, through a dedicated account, and it bans hard-to-trace contributions such as cryptocurrency. The 10-per-cent provision is the carve-out to that tightening, meant so small groups using their own modest revenue are not forced into full donor accounting. Second: the threshold is not the government’s invention — it is the Chief Electoral Officer’s own recommendation. His post-2019/2021 report Meeting New Challenges proposed exactly this rule (Recommendation 2.3.1): a third party wishing to use its own funds must show that no more than 10 per cent of its prior-year revenue came from contributions — proposed expressly “to achieve improved transparency and help prevent foreign funding of third parties,” by stopping groups from co-mingling contributions (foreign money included) into untraceable “own funds.”primary The Act as a whole implements recommendations from the Chief Electoral Officer, the Commissioner of Canada Elections, and the public inquiry into foreign interference. Third: the fundraiser rollback has a real justification — hosts’ home addresses were being published in advance, and people were harassed; the government frames after-the-fact disclosure as protecting participation while preserving a record.

Grant all of it — and note that the Chief Electoral Officer’s aim was to increase disclosure, pulling contribution-funded groups into the named, Canadian-only regime. None of it touches the structural claim; it sharpens it. The trouble is that the threshold keys on a ratio and the clock on a date — so what still slips is the large domestic single source routed through a big enough group, or parked before the window. If the purpose is to keep foreign and untraceable money out while sparing small groups, the remedy the structure argues for is to close exactly those two gaps: cap the single-source amount that can ride under the exemption, and reach money parked before the window. A privacy concern about fundraiser hosts argues for protecting the host’s address, not for hiding which donors and lobbyists shared a room with the leader. The strongest case for the bill is a case for a better-aimed safeguard — which is exactly what a safeguard pointed the wrong way is not.

Counter: “an expert recommended it” settles authorship, not effect. The question a recommendation cannot answer for you is the one this case asks: after the clause is in, does the largest secret money get named, or not?