Evidence of meeting #42 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was point.
A recording is available from Parliament.
June 17th, 2008 / 4:55 p.m.
Bloc
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
Mr. Chairman, members who are replacing a colleague or who have missed a meeting should in my opinion read the blues in order to avoid repetition.
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
That wasn't repetitive. I wanted to apologize personally because I had made those references. If you check the blues previously, it's the first opportunity I've had on this particular topic to apologize to Mr. Hubbard, and I have done that. Thank you very much.
The reason that passed--
4:55 p.m.
An hon. member
You have to read it; you don't have to make it.
4:55 p.m.
An hon. member
And he did read it--
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
I'm moving on now.
Mr. Chair, I can't even move on. They keep hassling me. I can't believe it.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Do you think that's something we all should stop?
Order, order.
We only have about a half hour left. Mr. Wallace asked a rhetorical question about whether we should respect everybody and not have interruptions. If the committee is willing, we'll all adopt that as a principle, and nobody is going to interrupt ever again, as Mr. Wallace has suggested.
I see some nodding around, so I'm going to assume that everybody is not going to speak unless they're properly recognized, okay?
Mr. Wallace--
Mr. Ménard, it starts right now. You must restrain yourself. I know it's hard; you're an active member. But we need to hear Mr. Wallace, okay? I want Mr. Wallace to be able to....
Let's everyone listen to the member. He'll finish his turn. We'll hear from another honourable member, I'm sure.
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Yes, that's right. I'm actually coming to the end of the points I wanted to make.
For past elections, the reason this is important...I've covered off the election expenses piece, and I'm not going there. On the ethical piece, the code of conduct has changed from previous years. It became a lot stricter, in my view, for public office-holders in 2006, and I think that's why this subamendment is important.
If we find in our deliberations—if we get there—that we need to look at other activities of public office-holders from previous elections from the ethical code point of view, whether that code applied to them.... And I think it's a great opportunity for us to look at past elections, because they're not that far past—2004 and 2000—and we can see a transition of the parties. Let's look at the ethical code that applied to public office holders in past elections. It's right in the motion: the ethical standards, the ethical practices; there is a definition piece about practices.
Were there any violations, based on the Elections Act of the day? I think we need to look at the Elections Act of the day in 2004 and in 2000, and if this motion happens to pass, we have to look at the ethics code that was put in place.
Let's remind committee that the ethics code at one point, and not that long ago, prior to 2004, was administered by the Office of the Ethics Counsellor, an office that was criticized for not being independent from government; the Prime Minister ran it, basically. Now I think we've done the right thing by setting up an independent office that reports on the code of public office-holders directly to Parliament. And I think that's an important distinction.
We need to look at seeing what happened in previous elections. We don't have to go too far back. I think we can go to 2000. People are still around, I think, from 2000, and maybe 2004. A lot of the public office-holders are still around. Their election expenses are easily accessible on the Elections Canada website, which I have looked for and looked at for previous years.
The code of conduct, which is listed here in the main motion, and the ethical practices—that “the committee will broaden their investigations to include the...ethical practices and make recommendations”.... Let's look at the ethical practices based on the code that was in place in 2004 for public office-holders. Let's look at the code that was in place in 2000 for public office-holders and see whether there is any transition and then see what the transition is in 2006 with the new code that we have brought in, which has more teeth to it.
That's why it's important that we look at these last elections. We can't look at this one election in isolation, because that's not really fair to those brand new public office-holders. We have to look at the history. It's important to look at history, because the history of how things operate is how we got to where we are today. If we don't, as committee members, understand the evolution of the code of conduct, who administered it, how it affected Elections Canada, how it affected the funding of elections, how individual public office-holders participated in the election, how the spending was done, who made those determinations, how much sharing was done with their national parties; if we don't know, I don't think it's fair, as committee members.... If we don't know where we've come from, how do we know what changes we can make in terms of recommendations as a committee?
My issue is—and it's been pointed out by the chair in his interventions—that this isn't just politics. This can get very complicated. I don't mind this committee looking at it for a year, if that's what it takes.
5 p.m.
Liberal
5 p.m.
Conservative
5 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
You repeated that past elections are allowed, that we have to look at the Canada Elections Act, and we have to look at the code and the changes.
5 p.m.
Conservative
5 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
I even introduced you at an event. I don't know why you're picking on me so much about these things. I am clearly talking about issues that affect the decision-making of committee members on why they should or should not support this motion.
5 p.m.
Conservative
5 p.m.
An hon. member
We're falling asleep.
5 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Madame Lavallée--I'll cross my fingers for you--on a point of order.
Is what you're saying relevant, or repetition, or what?
