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Government leader in the Senate Claude Carignan speaks to the media in the Senate foyer on Parliament Hill on Oct. 24, 2013.Dave Chan/The Globe and Mail

There was what the Senate said, and all that it didn't.

This week, a Tory-dominated Senate committee that had been "pre-studying" the controversial Fair Elections Act, Bill C-23, recommended nine changes to the House of Commons committee that currently has the bill before it. It's an exceptionally unusual situation, raising questions of what will happen if the House ignores the suggestions and then sends its final version of the bill to the Senate for approval.

(What is the Fair Elections Act? Read The Globe and Mail's easy explanation)

It was nonetheless a rare exercise of authority by the embattled Senate on a bill that's been a lightning rod, widely and fiercely opposed by opposition parties and non-partisan critics alike.

However, in making their nine unanimous recommendations, the Senate offered its tacit endorsement to the rest of the bill. "We are certainly OK – I think, as a group – with the bill as-is, with the exception of those nine recommendations," Conservative Senator Donald Plett said.

That's a problem, according to NDP Democratic Reform Critic Craig Scott, who has closely followed the bill. In making the nine recommendations, many of which Mr. Scott sees as very minor or misleading, the Senate may shroud debate about the rest of the bill, he says.

"It's an attempt to make the Senate appear relevant in a way that does them a service, and at the same time dress up a really, really bad bill as salvageable," he said, adding: "It's harmful because it's potentially going to give a sort of cover to the government. I frankly do not welcome it at this stage. I think it was inappropriate."

Here's a shadow list, of sorts – nine proposals in the Fair Elections Act that critics have raised problems with, but that the Senate Tories have no concerns about.

1. Partisans at the polls

The bill would expand the power of political parties to recommend the appointment of certain senior poll officials – meaning there could be more dyed-in-the-wool partisans overseeing a voting station or working in it. The bill also proposes to expand the powers of parties themselves, rather than their candidates, to nominate the individuals. All-told, it gives the parties a longer reach into voting stations. No committee senator, Conservative or Liberal, raised a concern in their reports.

2. A muzzled Chief Electoral Officer

Currently, Elections Canada and its Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) hold a broad range of powers, such as running voter turnout campaigns, partnering on certain research projects and other democratic initiatives. The bill proposes to substantially reduce that, by severely limiting what the CEO can say publicly and what programs can be run.

The Senate committee unanimously suggests restoring some of the CEO's power, by guaranteeing one program's continuation, but stops short of doing away altogether, or even significantly, with the limits on the CEO contained in the bill's extremely restrictive rewrite of Section 18. (The so-called Independent Liberal senators on the committee did call for more of the CEO's powers to be restored, but the Conservatives didn't sign off on that.)

3. Treasury Board approval

The bill proposes to require the Chief Electoral Officer to secure Treasury Board approval to hire and pay outside experts for investigations, such as the one into the robocall affair in the 2011 election. Experts have pushed back against this, suggesting it violates the neutrality of the Chief Electoral Officer's role. Liberal senators agreed, but the Conservatives didn't.

4. Receipts, political parties and tax dollars

Political parties can be reimbursed for part of their costs from Elections Canada – and got $33-million from taxpayers after the 2011 campaign. They don't, however, have to document their expense claims. A House of Commons motion passed two years ago calling for Elections Canada to be able to request documents from parties. But the bill doesn't change that.

In other words, the Tories and their fellow parties can continue to claim taxpayer reimbursement without any evidence of how the money was spent. Neither Liberal nor Conservative senators pushed back on this.

5. A bingo card of voters

Currently, parties can gather a "bingo card," or a list of which registered electors have voted, on a poll-by-poll basis. Gathering them all would be nearly impossible, as it would require an army of volunteers. The bill proposes that all bingo cards be amalgamated, put into a master list of which Canadians voted and which (registered) ones didn't, and handed over to registered parties. This will substantially support parties' efforts to build detailed voter information databases. No senators complained.

6. Requiring witnesses to testify

Some provincial electoral officials can compel witness testimony – in other words, seek out a court order to get people who know details of an investigation to share them. Elections Canada has long sought this power. Without the ability to seek a court order to compel testimony, the current Commissioner of Canada Elections has warned investigations will simply stall. The Tories – who are the subject of or involved in many of those – don't agree. They argue police can't force testimony, so elections officials shouldn't be able to either.

7 .The Commissioner

Bill C-23 moves the Commissioner of Canada Elections from Elections Canada over to the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. Reaction to this has ranged from neutral to critical, and the Senate committee supports the move. Its unanimous recommendations only suggest authorizing "communications" between the CEO and commissioner, but don't say what kind or whether that includes sharing evidence.

The Tory senators signed off on calling for the Commissioner to have the power to "inform the public of problems they uncover in the electoral system," but stopped short of backing a Liberal minority opinion to remove a specific section that will block the Commissioner from releasing information related to an election. That suggests the Tory senators still support some new limits on what the Commissioner can say.

8. The Voter Information Card

Registered electors get these in the mail, telling them where to vote. It can be used in certain cases to corroborate a voter's address so they can vote. Much of the debate over the Fair Elections Act has swirled around voter ID, and the bill basically means a voter will need more ID than he or she did previously – and, in many cases, voters who can prove their identity may have trouble proving their address, which they need to vote. The bill eliminates use of the card. An estimated 400,000 used the card to do so in 2011. Liberal senators asked for the card's use to be continued, but Conservative senators did not.

9. Vouching

This is arguably the most controversial provision in the bill – eliminating the option for a voter to "vouch" for another's identity at the polling station to cast a ballot. The Tories have argued ID should be required – it's been only in the last decade that ID requirements have substantially begun to increase – and in doing so have concentrated much of the debate about the bill around this clause, despite the long list of other controversial proposals.

Several experts have warned vouching is a fail-safe that avoids people being disenfranchised, and warned that doing away with it could violate the Charter. Nonetheless, the Senate Conservatives are happy to see it go.

Josh Wingrove is a parliamentary reporter in Ottawa.

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