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“You can have an office and staff members, you can have a travel budget that’s all being funded by money from foreign sources to offset costs a third party might otherwise have to pay for, leaving them more money to spend on partisan activities,” points out Frum.

“So the obvious solution to this is to say no foreign funding of third parties period, for any activity, not just partisan activities and not just election activity but any activity. That would close the loophole completely and they chose not to do that,” she says of the federal Liberal government.

As a result, this existing loophole, while slightly smaller than it was during the 2015 federal election — which saw significant foreign interference favouring the Liberal party — will “undoubtedly” be a factor in the upcoming vote, she predicts.

Like Frum, former chief electoral officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley is pleased with many of the changes made to the Elections Act but is puzzled why the foreign funding loophole was not completely choked off.

“It’s a serious loophole and it’s definitely something that we need to be concerned about, and if it’s not a major problem then what’s wrong with blocking it?” wonders Kingsley, who served as Canada’s chief electoral officer for 17 years from 1990 until 2007.

“We should be striving to achieve Canadian elections that are Canadian-only — end of story,” said Kingsley, who was reached at his home in Ottawa on Thursday.

Section 349.02 of the Elections Act states: “No third party shall use funds for a partisan activity, for advertising, for election advertising or for an election survey if the source of the funds is a foreign entity.”