Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to the Group No. 3 amendment to Bill C-24. This is the first opportunity I have had to address this bill. There has been a lot of excitement on both sides of the House pertaining to this legislation. I wish it were more favourable. I wish the government had put more teeth into the legislation and had actually carried through with some of the things that unfortunately are missing from the bill. Within my discourse I will try to address some of the bill's failures.
One thing that is astounding in discussing this bill is the timing of the bill being in the House and the priorities of the government. The government is trying to rush through legislation which, in its opinion, is very important especially at a time when there are crises going on across the country. As members know, SARS is causing problems for many people around the Toronto area and there is the problem of mad cow disease out west and its effect on the livelihoods of cattle producers in that part of the country. We have faced other problems and challenges across the country over the last number of months, and on the eve of the last week of Parliament we are discussing a bill that is strictly in the interests of this particular government.
Bill C-24 has been brought forward because the government wants to address, possibly even corruption, in political financing. It is the same government that has been in power for the last 10 years. There is some sort of ironic logic that comes with this bill if the government is trying to address issues of influence peddling or corruption or whatever it might be or even if it is trying to mask these issues because the government will in fact benefit from the changes in this legislation by receiving more public money in the case of subsidization.
The reason we have this legislation is that the government has been incompetent in dealing with many issues pertaining to transparency and accountability. The government has been incompetent in dealing with all the things that Canadians want to see from their government. The Liberal government has been lacking on those issues and it has to bring in legislation to mask the problem. It is trying to deal with the fact that it has managed things so poorly over the last number of years it has been in power and now we are debating this legislation at this period in time. Bill C-24 contains only half measures when it comes to what Canadians would like to see with regard to having financing legislation in place that would in fact bring in the things the government talks about.
I would like to address for a moment Motion No. 12 which is an NDP motion. We feel there is a lot missing in Bill C-24. We in the Alliance will oppose this motion. We feel the motion would actually work against riding associations across the country. The motion put forward by our colleague from Winnipeg Centre requires a registered association of a political party to provide all information with regard to contributions. Where it becomes problematic is if an association misses its reporting deadline, it could be convicted of a criminal offence and could face up to $5,000 worth of fines.
It seems that this sort of amendment is unnecessary. The bill already contains provisions for associations to do this. I am curious as to why the NDP feels that we need to punish some of the riding associations. If they made an honest mistake, why would we want to punish them in this way?
I do not think we necessarily need this amendment. However our colleagues from the NDP feel it is something that needs to be dealt with. I think it is a short-sighted amendment and one which may not necessarily work in the interests of riding associations. If anything, I think it would work against them. The Canadian Alliance will be voting against Motion No. 12.
I would like to address some of the failures in Bill C-24, and there is no shortage of failures unfortunately. An hon. member across the way is encouraging me to carry on with my discourse. I know he wants to learn about these failures and maybe he will try to amend the legislation.
What does Bill C-24 fail to do? It fails to fix the underlying problem of awarding government grants, contracts and loans to supporters of the party in power. If anything, Bill C-24 would make it more difficult to detect and expose such behaviour.
What is interesting, and this is what I was talking about earlier as I opened my discourse, is the fact that we have this legislation being brought forward by a government that obviously has had one problem after the other when it comes to issues of contracts, scandals, loans, all these particular things that may in fact control the influence of these contracts, how money is spent and how it is awarded. This government has been in power for the last 10 years and now puts forward legislation to deal with these problems that have unfortunately only become worse under this government, yet it fails to address all the particular problems for which it has actually been accused of abuse.
Bill C-24 fails to correct the 50 candidate rule, which was struck down by the courts. I will just address this issue very quickly. In 1999, an Ontario court struck down the sections of the elections act which required a party to run 50 candidates in an election to remain on the register and to have its candidates listed with party affiliation on the ballot. The court indicated that two candidates should be sufficient to be recognized as a party.
During the revision of the elections act in 2000, the Liberals reinstated the 50 candidate rule even though the case is still under appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. The government says it is protecting voters from frivolous parties, but it is actually trying to limit competition on the ballot. Voters in countries that have other types of proportional representation systems often make their selections from up to 35 parties on the ballot. They have shown that they are capable of distinguishing between frivolous and serious candidates.
Are the Liberals trying to tell us that Canadian voters are not capable of making the same type of distinctions? I would only expect it from this government. It does not seem to want to allow Canadians to at least make decisions about who they want to represent them. Instead, it is trying to restrict more involvement from other political parties.
I would like to focus specifically on where Bill C-24 fails to end the patronage appointments to positions in Elections Canada. That is something I touched on briefly, but let us just follow up on this problem, where this legislation could have made such a huge impact on changing the way that patronage currently takes place.
Bill C-24 fails to end the practice of the governor in council making patronage appointments to fill returning officer positions at Elections Canada. Returning officers are presently political appointees of the Prime Minister. This is outrageous, considering that Elections Canada is supposed to a non-partisan electoral organization. The voters of Canada should not have to put up with the Prime Minister appointing Liberal Party hacks to prime positions as returning officers within Elections Canada. That works against an open and democratic system. The Chief Electoral Officer has repeatedly stated during committee hearings that it is critical he be given the power to hire returning officers based on merit.
He has also repeatedly stated that ideally he would like to adopt the provisions contained in a private member's bill put forward by one of the Canadian Alliance members, the member for North Vancouver, who also has done an incredible job in researching and working on this bill on behalf of our caucus. I would like to congratulate him for that. He put forward a private member's bill with respect to this. That bill would have eliminated the patronage at all levels of Elections Canada.
During the revisions of the Canada Elections Act a few years ago, the Chief Electoral Officer made it clear that he would not recommend adoption of the Canada Elections Act to a third world country or an emerging democracy. His exact words were:
...obviously when I go out on the international scene I do not recommend that the Canadian system be emulated where it comes to the appointment of returning officers. I clearly indicate, as I do in Canada, that the appointment of returning officers under the present system is an anachronism.
It is archaic. Elections Canada has repeatedly asked the government to release it from the system of patronage and allow it to hire its own staff for elections by advertising and interviewing like any other independent organization.
These are just a couple of the failures of this legislation. I could go on for a while, and I know that the hon. House leader of the government would love me to do so. Unfortunately, in the limited time we have I will have to conclude quite quickly, but hopefully the government will take heed some of the suggestions being made by my colleagues here in the official opposition and improve the legislation in the interest of Canadians, because Canadians deserve it.