Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-29, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (accountability with respect to loans).
Over the last number of years since 2003, we have seen a series of pieces of legislation and amendments to legislation dealing with the whole issue of election funding and financing. These pieces of legislation have attempted to provide transparency in our electoral process and prevent undue influence. Those are the two component parts.
Both parts are extremely important. Not only should the democratic process be transparent, but it also has to be a process that does not allow undue influence.
I wish to clarify where the differentiation is between those two elements. For instance, we have been watching the presidential electoral process in the United States. We have heard that this process is going to be the first billion dollar presidential election.
There are many pieces of legislation and many regulations that deal with the issue of transparency, but when the people of the United States, along with many people in other countries who look to the democracies with hope, see a system that appears to be almost a “dollarocracy”, it is worrisome.
Thus, it is quite important that these pieces of legislation which we have been enacting address both of those issues so that they in fact strengthen our Canadian democracy.
Are undue influence and lack of transparency an issue, or have they been an issue, here in Canada? I would have liked to believe that these sorts of things would not happen in Canada, but in fact just this past winter and spring we saw the spectacle of the unfortunate Schreiber-Mulroney relationship.
One of the aspects that perhaps was not given enough attention was a former leadership convention, which provided Mr. Schreiber, because of a lack of transparency, with the opportunity to influence an historic outcome for this country. Offshore moneys were used to influence the outcome of a leadership campaign in one of Canada's major parties.
Quite clearly, that one example demonstrates that we need to have a transparent process. In fact, we could use another example that is a little closer in time, because at this point neither Mr. Clark nor Mr. Mulroney are in this House. They no longer occupy the political positions of power that they have in the past. However, in 2002, the current Prime Minister underwent a leadership process that was not transparent.
I would like to believe that there was no undue influence. I believe that all of us want to assume and believe that, but now, with the example of Mulroney and Schreiber, as I have said, we see that these things have happened in the past.
It begs the question of why the Prime Minister would not want to address that particular issue. I know he is not required to by law, but there is the very fact that he does not wish to come clean.
There is a higher standard that we expect of our elected officials. To have responsible government, we must have confidence in our ministers and especially in our Prime Minister, our first minister. Quite clearly, it is necessary to have laws that provide this sort of transparency.
Then there is the whole issue of undue influence. As we know, electoral processes culminate with election day when collectively we as a people gather, travel to the vote locations and cast our ballots. At the end of the day and the end of the process, the people have decided.
People decide, based upon a campaign during which they have had the opportunity to listen and to examine party platforms, whether a party leader inspires with a vision for the future and whether locally the candidates speak to the hopes, dreams and principles upon which the local communities are built and believe in.
However, we know that to communicate one's vision is not an inexpensive process. There is a cost to communicating with the public and if we are unable to communicate with the public then we undermine the democratic process.
We need the money and the resources to get out there, to meet with people and to give people a sense of who we are, where we stand as a party and where the leader wishes to take the country.
It would be tremendously unfortunate if single individuals or corporations had the ability, through donations or loans, to influence potential candidates or parties because of their ability to provide large sums of money for their campaigns. Therefore, I think there is a clear case of why we need this sort of legislation, and Canada seems to be at the forefront. It is encouraging that we have been working on this process.
However, we now need to ask whether this most recent legislation addresses those issues. Have we perhaps gone a step too far, to the point where it acts as a brake on our democratic processes, prevents individuals from putting themselves forward as candidates or as leadership candidates or prevents people who perhaps have a point of view that better fits with one of the smaller parties, such as the Green Party or other parties that are out there?
Does the legislation act in a way that is conducive to the democratic process or are we at the point where, inadvertently, or perhaps, as some would say cynically, advertently, we have begun undermining the very process?
Let us take a look at what, in this legislation, are some of the unintended consequences may be.
We are in an era right now of minority governments and, although politics are unpredictable, we can assume that over the next period of time we may be in a situation of minority governments.
When it comes to actual fundraising, we do not necessarily face a campaign every four years, providing enough time to raise, whether it is locally, the $70,000 approximately that is required for a campaign, we have a series of sequential elections in much shorter timeframes.
With a limit of $1,100 per donation, it has made it incredibly difficult for many people to step forward as candidates. For many people it has now become a barrier that prevents them from putting themselves forward. There is the question of whether $1,100 is the barrier that we should put in place or should it be $2,500, especially when it comes to leadership campaigns. It is difficult to make the argument that $1,100 is the perfect amount.
We are in a world of minority governments. We have set the barrier very high with this very low limit of $1,100, so we have forced candidates into the situation of having to go out and look for loans. This legislation proposes to put limits on where and how one could go about doing this. Unfortunately, it has a series of unintended consequences that are corrosive to the democratic process.
Each one of us here have a group of volunteers in our riding associations, tremendous people who believe in their candidates, their parties, their platforms and want to be part of the process. This legislation would entail a requirement that they provide loan guarantees to banks for loans that are necessary for election campaigns.
Many of these volunteers are not people of modest means. They are people of conviction. It would be a terrible situation if we limited the ability, not just of candidates, but the ability of people to engage in a formal manner in political parties unless they were people of modest means and willing to take on this sort of guarantee risk with financial institutions.
Probably some of the most wonderful volunteers over the years with whom I have dealt were not people of modest means but they were people of principle and character. These are the people this type of legislation would now prevent from taking part in the process. We have almost come full circle.
By wanting to ensure that big money would not have undue influence so the average Canadian, a person of conviction, could take part in the process, we are now preventing those individuals from taking part in the process. We then take the unfortunate step of saying that it is only big money, the banks, that can provide the financial loans for electoral campaigns. That is truly an undesirable consequence.
I heard my NDP colleague from Winnipeg Centre state that, from a position of principle, he supports this because it would prevent unions from providing loans, just as it would prevent corporations. It is to be lauded that he approaches this with that mind frame. However, the legislation would prevent unions and most corporations from providing loans but not banks. I am sure many members in this House have over the years been lobbied by unions. As he stated, it is an uncomfortable situation because if a union has provided members with a loan then, at some point, as legislators they would need to sit through a union presentation on particular issues of interest.
Why would we want to provide banks, which lobby in very sophisticated ways and sometimes not very transparent ways, with that additional clout?
I can imagine how difficult it might be in certain ridings where there are not a lot of bank branches, especially some of our northern ridings where perhaps someone lives in one small particular community how it would feel for a candidate to have to go to the local bank branch manager and talk about a loan. If we truly intended to address the issue of undue influence of those who would provide loans, we would have spent a little more time, instead of trying to rush this legislation, thinking it through. Perhaps we need an arm's length body whose sole purpose would be to provide loans to campaigns and not not lobby members of Parliament. It would prevent undue influence.
I have just thrown that idea out and it is something we should perhaps look at in the future. However, as I have just referenced, this seems to have moved very quickly and not truly been thought through in a collective manner where all the parties sat down, discussed it and tried to go about this in a way in which we truly could have addressed the issues of transparency and undue influence.
Unfortunately, besides the inadvertent consequences, perhaps there were some cynical reasons for this legislation. It does not inspire confidence when we see some of the past tactics that have been used by the Conservative government when it comes to this whole issue of finance. I reference the disappointing situation of not being provided with open books on the 2002 leadership campaign of the current Prime Minister. It would be tremendous if he set an example but, unfortunately, that is not forthcoming. Therefore, we take it with a grain of salt when there is such tremendous interest to pass this legislation.
We also note that the Conservative Party truly is the party of big money now because its coffers are overflowing. We should note that the parties have the ability to provide loans to their various candidates. We often talk about democratic deficit in this House and how members of Parliament have been diminished in their role because of the strength of the central party apparatus, the so-called party backroom boys, and this has just provided another lever to ensuring there is limited independence of thought.
What we note here is that there are parties which virtually do not have an ability to provide that sort of financing. I mentioned the Green Party earlier. It does not have the same sort of resources and there are other parties, other points of view. I can imagine how difficult it would be for those particular candidates, from those parties, when it came time to get their executive together, to walk over to the local bank branch manager and to convince him or her that at some point in time they would have the ability to repay the loans required to run a $70,000 campaign.
There appears to be even more cynicism in this because we see and have heard on tape the Prime Minister reference how two high-powered backroom operators within the Conservative Party approached a potential candidate with financial considerations. It does not inspire confidence in this particular piece of legislation brought forward by a government whose party's head office potentially engages in those sorts of activities and a Prime Minister who is not willing to come forward with his own leadership campaign details.
Many have insinuated that big oil and gas perhaps provided financing for that particular campaign. I just cannot imagine why the Prime Minister would not want to put to rest those sorts of insinuations, a Prime Minister who talks about accountability so often would want to be transparent to set an example.
People say that was in the past and that these cannot be done retroactively. Of course, but he could also set an example, show true leadership, especially on these issues and especially in this era when we have heard of things that we could never have imagined half a year ago. Once again, I would like to reference how Mr. Mulroney's relationship with Mr. Schreiber and the leadership convention undermined our electoral processes here in the country.
In conclusion, there are tremendously negative and corrosive inadvertent consequences to this particular piece of legislation and it does the exact opposite of its stated intention.
