OTTAWA–The government’s proposed new elections rules will be in place for the 2019 election according to the man tapped to be the next chief electoral officer, despite a tight timeline and limited parliamentary debate on those proposals.

Stéphane Perrault told MPs Tuesday that even though Bill C-76 has yet to face serious scrutiny in Parliament, Elections Canada is working on plans and contingencies to make sure the agency can apply the changes once approved.

Perrault acknowledged that it was “unusual” situation, but required by the short time he has to prepare for the massive undertaking of running a federal election.

“We do have a bill, and what we are doing which is somewhat unusual is we will start preparation for its implementation … anticipating its passage and adjusting as required,” Perrault said, who has served as acting CEO since 2016.

“Because I cannot take for granted that … it will pass or … that it will pass in the exact state that it was introduced.”

Bill C-76 passage through the House of Commons is not seriously in doubt given the Liberals’ majority. But because Elections Canada needs a long lead time to adopt new electoral rules — the agency has said they need more than a year — the timeline is tight.

And despite the Liberals majority government, significant changes to the bill are possible — including in the Senate, which has not been shy in altering the Liberal legislation in the past.

While serving as acting CEO, Perrault told the House of Commons procedure committee adopting new election rules in time for October 2019 would involve “compromises.” On Tuesday, as the likely future CEO, Perrault clarified the agency will prioritize what’s mandated under C-76, rather than some of the discretionary powers granted to him under the legislation.

“We will implement this law,” Perrault assured the committee.

Bill C-76 makes significant changes to how federal elections are run, including introducing new rules for pressure and advocacy groups, and creates a “pre-writ” period that limits how much parties can spend on advertising in the lead up to an election.

It also requires political parties to create privacy policies for how they collect and use Canadians data — although it provides few limits and no independent oversight for those policies.

Some of the changes — reinstating a system of vouching and voter ID cards to establish voters’ identities, for instance — can be adopted fairly easily, Perrault said. Others, like changes to the political financing regime, will take more work.

Questions were also raised on Tuesday about how long the Liberals are committing to debate C-76. The government gave notice that it may invoke “time allocation” — a parliamentary tactic that limits the amount of time a bill can be debated. Liberal House Leader Bardish Chagger said the government is not invoking time allocation “right now.”

“Hopefully all parties can come together to figure out how much time is needed. For me we always want to have a meaningful amount of debate,” Chagger told reporters.

“It’s important legislation but I also need to advance legislation through the House. It has to go back to committee.”

Nathan Cullen, the New Democrats’ democratic reform critic, accused the Liberals of threatening to limit debate on significant changes to elections rules — something, the NDP pointed out, the Liberals did when Stephen Harper’s Conservative government did the same in 2014.

“Our elections are the very foundation of our democracy, and laws that govern them were not forced through by any government without support and proper debate,” Cullen said in the House of Commons.

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