Canada. Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing : The Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing (Lortie Commission) was formally established in 1989 (P.C. 2290, 15 November 1989, appointed under Part I of the Inquiries Act, R.S.C., 1985, c.I-11. Subsequent Orders in Council relating to the inquiry are as follows: P.C. 2418 and P.C. 2424, 7 December 1989, P.C. 2167, 3 October 1990, P.C. 102, 17 January 1991 and P.C. 321, 20 February 1992. The Commission was chaired by Pierre Lortie, who was assisted by Lucie Pépin, Donald H. Oliver, Elwood Lorrie Cowley, and Pierre Fortier as commissioners. Oliver and Cowley resigned and were replaced by Robert Thomas Gabor and William Knight (P.C. 2167, 3 Oct 1990). The executive secretary was Guy Goulard. In his annual report to Parliament in 1989, the Chief Electoral Officer, Jean-Marc Hamel, said that the voting system was in a state of crisis and strongly urged that the Canada Elections Act be reformed. Many of his demands for changes to the Act and to the Election Expenses Act which limited and defined election expenses, had been made by Hamel in earlier reports. In June 1986, the Government of Canada had presented a White Paper on Electional Reform to Parliament (tabled in the House of Commons on 26 June 1986, Sessional Paper 331-4/153) which was based, in part, on recommendations of the Chief Electoral Officer. It proposed to extend the vote to more Canadians, to make voting processes more convenient and to modernize the administration of elections. It also recommended that government advertising during election campaigns be controlled and that more information accompany opinion poll results. However, in 1988, Parliament was dissolved before reforms contained in bill C-79 (the electoral changes proposed in the White Paper) were enacted. It soon became apparent that reforms were needed all the more because court challenges under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms were resulting in decisions that altered electoral laws. The Chief Electoral Officer wanted Parliament to make changes to the electoral system, not the courts. In the Speech to the Throne of 3 April 1989, the Government of Canada promised to investigate the electoral system and in November 1989, it appointed a royal commission for that purpose (see Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing: Reforming Electoral Democracy, Volume 1, pp. 2 and 3; Ottawa Citizen, 18 April 1989 and Hill Times, Ottawa, 11 Jan 1990).
The mandate of the Commission as stated in the Order in Council of 15 November 1989, referred to above, was to look at the means by which political parties are funded, the provisions and use of funds, the limits of funding, the qualifications of voters and the way in which the voters list is compiled. The report of the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing was published in 1992 in the four volumes: Reforming Electoral Democracy (contains a history of the electoral system); Reforming Electoral Democracy (which explains how the principles and goals enunciated in volume one can be put into practice); Reforming Electoral Democracy: Proposed Legislation; and Reforming Electoral Democracy: What Canadians Told Us.
