Scott Reid

[Agriculture, March 14th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, according to the main estimates for the 2001-02 fiscal year, the department of agriculture's budget has been reduced by $470 million from last year. Two days after these numbers were released, the minister of agriculture announced $500 million in conditional disaster relief.

Unless we use the Liberal new math, the additional money was only $30 million. When I count on my fingers and toes what I get is that it is only 6% of the money the minister claims to be giving. Does the minister of agriculture think that Canadian farmers cannot add?

[Canada Elections Act, February 22nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. It is my understanding that the member for North Vancouver did not in fact introduce the 50 number that is being used for all important rights under this law.

[Canada Elections Act, February 22nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, as my hon. friend just noted, I will be dividing my time with the beautiful hon. member for Edmonton North.

Tony Blair's speech today reminded us of the link between Britain and Canada. To listen to our Prime Minister one might have been forgiven for thinking that the chief link between Canada and Britain was that it was our number two investor, as if this place were not named after the House of Commons at Westminster, as if Canada and Britain did not share a head of state in Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, and as if we had not based our own constitution upon that of the United Kingdom.

The preamble to the British North America Act, our constitution, reads as follows:

Whereas the Provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have expressed their Desire to be federally united into One Dominion under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom:

This then went on and dealt with substantive items.

The idea at the time was that we would benefit as Canadians from the liberties and ancient freedoms that Englishmen had enjoyed and that the unwritten British constitution guaranteed.

In 1868 the classic statement of those liberties was given in Walter Bagehot's famous book The English Constitution , a classic which is still read today by those who seek to understand both the British constitution and the unwritten aspects of our own constitution, many of which are still in place today.

Walter Bagehot stated something very interesting, which is of relevance to the debate today, on the legislation before the House. He stated that the United Kingdom, although nominally a kingdom, was not a tyranny like the monarchies of the European continent but rather that it was, in hidden or veiled form, a republic. He meant that it was a country with a mixed system of government; that is to say, with a monarch, with an aristocratic element in the form of the House of Lords and with a democratic element in the form of the House of Commons.

That was the ideal represented by Great Britain at the time. It was also the ideal that we had hoped to gel in Canada when we created our constitution. We wanted to set as our principle the goal of being, as much as we could be, a mirror image and a transcript of that country which was the freest country in all the world and a model for all the world. That was the ideal our laws were meant to represent up to the present day.

Sadly, Bill C-9 does not reflect any of that. It reflects instead our degraded constitutional status. I am speaking of the unwritten constitution in which the Queen and the Governor General are no longer permitted to bear the true pomp and dignity of their office. Much of that role has been taken over by an increasingly self-important and pompous prime ministerial office. The Senate is no longer the natural aristocracy it was meant to be but has become a body full of appointed political hacks.

Unfortunately, and the greatest tragedy of all, the Commons, the democratic wing of government, is no longer a parliamentary body but an electoral college in perpetual session whose role is to perpetually reaffirm the status of the Prime Minister as the elected monarch of the country. Canada is an elected monarchy today, and this is a great degradation from the original model that was set up and understood by the Fathers of Confederation.

The lone remaining aspect of our original republican constitution, republican in the original form, is the electoral process that takes place and allows this electoral college to be elected every four or five years or, in the case of this government, every three and a half years. That part of our constitution does still function somewhat.

However, I am afraid to say that a series of initiatives, culminating in this pernicious bill, seek to deprive us of the full measure of freedom our electoral system is meant to guarantee. The bill does this, regrettably, by depriving small parties of the full right to participate in elections on the same terms as major parties, such as the Liberal Party, my own party and all the parties represented in the House. It also deprives independent candidates of that equivalent right.

It is simply something that has no place in a democratic society, or in a society that seeks to be democratic and in which the people of the country seek to have at least a democratic element in their constitution.

It does this in the following manner. It seeks to do so by being part of a concerted strategy of squeezing the freedom out of free elections. We see the government taking action over and over again to put restrictions on third party advertising as its laws are struck down by the courts.

Laws are passed restricting third party advertising. They are taken to court, struck down, re-enacted with minor variations and will be struck down again. In the meantime third party advertising cannot take place. That is something of which we should all be ashamed.

In another matter related to the bill we saw the federal government's failure in June 1995 to permit the mandated review by law of the referendum act. We now see restrictions being placed on the rights of minor parties to participate on an equivalent or equal footing with the larger parties in federal elections.

I want to give a bit of historical background to explain exactly how the present situation has evolved. In May 1993 the previous Progressive Conservative government with all party support, except for the support of the hon. member for Beaver River who is now the member for Edmonton North, passed a law stating that any party which failed to field 50 candidates in a federal election would have its assets confiscated. There would be a process by which the assets would be sold off. Its debts would be cleared and any remaining money would be turned over to the Receiver General for Canada or, more correctly, to the chief electoral officer.

As a result of the law being passed and the fact that the Communist Party of Canada failed to field 50 candidates in the 1993 election, the Communist Party of Canada was ordered to close up shop in the manner prescribed by the law. The Communist Party did so, but the leader of the Communist Party, Mr. Miguel Figueroa, took the electoral law to court and argued that the 50 candidate rule was unconstitutional.

It took a long time for him to work his way through the court system, but in a ruling on March 10, 1999, Madam Justice Anne Marie Malloy of the Ontario Court, General Division, ruled that the Canada Elections Act violated the charter of rights in a number of important ways and that therefore substantial chunks of the law would be struck down.

I will quote from Madam Justice Malloy's decision in order to make the point. She wrote the following:

Only parties which nominate at least 50 candidates in a federal election are entitled to be registered under the Act. This provision violates s. 3 of the Charter because it provides an advantage to candidates of larger parties while denying it to others—Further, the fifty-candidate threshold is not rationally connected to stated objectives of ensuring that only “serious” parties or parties with a broad base of support be entitled to register—There is a rational basis for restricting registration to parties which have at least two candidates as the act of running a slate of candidates under one party banner is the hallmark of a political party.

That is to distinguish parties from independents.

The appropriate remedy is to read into the relevant provisions the requirement of at least two candidates for registered status, rather than the current 50-candidate threshold.

She continued to say that the defendant, the government, conceded that the provision that only candidates of registered parties are entitled to have their party affiliation appear on the ballot infringes on freedom of expression contrary to subsection 2(b) of the charter. The government itself admitted that. She continued:

It also infringes the s. 3 rights of those candidates because the use of a party identifier is a benefit which should not be extended to any candidates if it is not extended on an equal basis to all.

She went on to say the following. The provision for automatic deletion from the register of a party which fails to nominate at least 50 candidates in any federal election, the effect of which is that the party is required to sell all of its assets, pay its debts and remit any positive balance to the government, has a devastating financial effect on political parties, as well as on voters, and limits the ability of a party to continue its support of its candidate. It violates the section 3 rights of both. Since the supporters of the party are less able in association with each other through their chosen party to express their political views to the public, the provision also infringes their right to freedom of expression and freedom of association contrary to sections 2(b) and 2(d) of the charter.

During this part of the speech, the minister has been offering some commentary about how parts of this decision were overruled by the Ontario court of appeal. He is quite correct as to the facts; there was some overruling of some parts of the bill. What he does not mention is that the court of appeal's ruling is itself at this point being appealed by Mr. Figueroa and we do not yet know whether those parts will be reinstated.

It would be my interpretation that in fact Madam Justice Malloy's interpretation was correct and the government lawyers were in fact quite unreasonable in their understanding of the relevant parts of the constitution.

In dealing with responding to the court's ruling, the court of appeal instructed the government to produce legislation to deal with the unconstitutionality of parts of the law within six months. It in fact complied, shy one day of six months, by producing this law, Bill C-9, which gives the narrowest conceivable interpretation to the court's decision and to the rights protected by the court.

As well, the government appears to have put in a number of very vindictive provisions designed to ensure that small parties—not its party, not my party, not the Bloc Quebecois or the NDP or the Progressive Conservatives, but small parties and independents—will not have access to certain rights that are or should be extended to all parties on an equal footing.

I am thinking here of allowing the issuance of tax receipts between elections. I am thinking here of the right to a final voters list as opposed to merely a preliminary voters list, and that is a significant factor for a party contesting an election, for example, in my own riding, which is growing rapidly and where the preliminary voters list has unfortunately a very limited correspondence to reality by the time of an election.

I should also mention that free time political advertising is restricted for these small parties.

The government has reinstated, as best it can, the unconstitutional 50 candidate rule, which will of course be struck down on appeal eventually after a number of years go by, at great expense to these small parties and these private citizens. It will accomplish that temporarily. It will deprive these parties of their rights to freely contest elections. It will deprive people who want to get together in smaller groupings, for whatever reason, or who do not have the resources to create large groupings, such as the communists and some of the other small parties, some of whom contested the election in my riding against me.

I may not agree with them ideologically, but I think they have the right to run against me. If they can convince the voters that they are better representatives of voter interests than I am, that is fair. I should not have an extra advantage. I certainly do not think that the 172 or 173 members on that side of the House, whatever the number is, should have any extra advantage over these small parties either.

If I had been told that one day I would be making common cause with the communists against Her Majesty's government, I do not think I would have believed it, but here we are. Today I am making common cause with members of all small parties in defence of an equal, equitable playing field, of fairness for all independents and for all people who wish to contest elections, and in defence of our constitutional rights.

I have only a paraphrase here, but Voltaire, speaking to someone with whom he disagreed profoundly, said “I disagree with everything you say but I would defend to the death your right to say it”.

However, the government and this minister unfortunately seem to be saying something that is just about the opposite. It is saying it might actually agree with what one is saying, maybe even with most of it, but it will happily violate the constitution in any way it can think of in order to restrict one's right to say it. That is a shame. It should be stopped.

I will be opposing the bill. I encourage all members of all parties, including those who enjoy the benefits of this law, to fight against it and to ensure that it does not go through.

[Supply, February 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I know that the hon. member does do the best he can for his own constituents and I respect him for that.

However, when we face a situation in which some members, and I use my own example, are elected with pluralities that are far lower than an absolute majority of constituents—in my case 38% of the vote and in the case of one of my colleagues on this side of the House when he was initially elected less than 30% of the vote—it is hard to say that we have a system that is genuinely representative of the well-being of all of the constituents, no matter how hard that member tries to do his or her best on behalf of those constituents.

This leads to curious cases. In one riding I know of, in 1993, a riding moving from the New Democrats to the Reform Party, as it then was, based on a very small shift in votes in what was essentially a four way race, there was not a dramatic ideological shift from left to right among constituents.

There is one way to overcome this that I think might address some of the concerns the hon. gentleman raised and I wonder if he would consider this as a possibility. It is to use the model of the single transferable vote. I do not think that falls outside the suggestions made by the New Democrats. It has been used successfully in a number of jurisdictions. Again, I cite my own experience in Australia watching elections being held on this basis.

When there is a transferable ballot, one member per district, voters have the opportunity to cast their ballot for their preferred choice as candidate and then for a second and third and so on down the list. If they have someone they particularly dislike and think is inappropriate, they can mark that person at the bottom of the list.

The consensus candidate tends to emerge, so that in a very real sense everybody except those who absolutely put that candidate last can say that to some degree he or she is being represented by that member and that member has the obligation to do so. Indeed, if he or she wants to get elected he or she must respect that breadth of wishes. A more consensual candidate tends to get elected.

Would that kind of proposal perhaps accomplish some of the goals that the hon. member has brought up in some of his concerns?

[Supply, February 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. It is my understanding that the rules of the House require that all speakers actually address the question at hand, and I can see absolutely no connection between what the member is saying and the matter at hand. It is a partisan rant.

[Supply, February 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with just about everything that the hon. member has said. I personally think there should be a somewhat broader scope for referenda, particularly for citizen initiated referenda.

He would probably agree with me that the system used in Switzerland and Australia, whereby the people have to approve any form of constitutional amendment, has been profitable in those countries and might likewise be profitable here.

I think we disagree a little over the Senate, but I think hearts are in the right place in his party when they say that there really needs to be change to that dysfunctional institution.

[Supply, February 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question. I am not exactly sure how the hon. gentleman feels that having one's headquarters in Calgary constitutes support for western separatism.

If that were the case, surely when the federal government made the decision in the 1970s to cast its own votes as a partial shareholder in Sun Life, in favour of Sun Life keeping its headquarters in Montreal, that was in fact hidden support for separatists in Quebec. I cannot give any other interpretation to that bizarre assertion.

Having widespread representation for members of all parties in all parts of the country, unless the party is completely unacceptable to voters, is something that is profitable. Almost any system other than the current one does a better job at that.

Again I look at the example of Ontario. We know that in 1998 Ontarians did not vote 97% in favour of the Liberal Party but in fact 100 of 103 members came from Ontario. That block then dominated the House. Under the leadership of the Prime Minister it had 100% control of all legislation that came out here. There is spectacular insensitivity to the regional concerns of many regions, the west being one.

We see perpetual lack of concern about the interests of Quebec, which is the reason Quebec separatism over 30 years of almost perpetual Liberal administration has risen from being a fractional concern to being a movement that almost split apart the country under the watch of the Prime Minister. We see Premier Hamm of Nova Scotia being essentially told to hit the road when he comes forward with very intelligent proposals for equalization changes.

I just cannot see how anything the hon. member has said adds to the debate. It is just typical of the kind of arrogance we see from some members of the Ontario caucus of the government. That is most disappointing.

[Supply, February 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take the opportunity to read the motion once more.

That this House strike a special all-party committee to examine the merits of various models of proportional representation and other electoral reforms, with a view to recommending reforms that would combat the increasing regionalization of Canadian politics, and the declining turnout of Canadians in federal elections.

As I address this question I will talk about not only proportional representation but electoral reforms of other sorts as well, and some of the issues that go along with those considerations.

I will start by making the objection that the system in Canada really is broken at this point. We saw that in 1997 a 38% vote of the Canadian people gave the Liberal Party a majority government. In 1993 a 41% vote gave the Liberals 60% of the seats in this place, whereas the Tories got 16% of the vote and less than 1% of the seats.

In Ontario 2.3 million votes in the 2000 election gave the Liberals 100 seats. By contrast, one million votes gave my party, the Alliance, two seats, one of which I hold. While I am honoured at the thought that I represent 500,000 Ontarians, I think it is an incorrect assumption to look at the results and think it is an acceptable system when 98% of the seats go to a party that had only about half the vote.

This is about democracy. As we talk about democracy and democratic reform we must think as well about other related issues of importance which tie in with the question of electoral reform.

I want to run through some of these by way of suggesting that we have a problem that goes far beyond the mere problem of an inadequate electoral system. We have a serious problem, as my hon. colleague from the New Democrats pointed out, with the Senate. He proposes abolishing the Senate. That is certainly an alternative.

My own party has proposed a triple E model for the Senate. We have suggested an elected Senate as opposed to an appointed Senate and a Senate that is equal in representation, at least more equitable in representation and a great deal fairer than what we have right now.

I cite as examples of countries with pure triple E senate models, Australia and the United States. Switzerland has something close to a pure model. Some of the smallest cantons are referred to as half cantons and get half representation, but otherwise there is full equality. It provides for some kind of representation for those more peripheral areas of the country and prevents the kind of inner Canada, outer Canada phenomenon that we see here occurring there.

At the very least one would think that there would be some form of regional equity which would ensure that British Columbia, for example, would have a substantially larger number of senators than New Brunswick. This would make sense given that British Columbia has a much larger population.

It is in the spirit of our original plans for the Senate, going back to 1867, that there should be some form of regional equity. In 1867 there was equal representation for the maritime region, which consisted of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and for Ontario and Quebec. Those were the three regions of Canada at that time. That was a good system and we favour some kind of return to it.

Reforms should also take place for the rules that govern this place. This House was intended to be a legislature in a country which was, while nominally a monarchy, a republic in the Aristotelian sense of the term; that is, a country which had an equal balance of the democratic, oligarchic or aristocratic and monarchical elements in its constitution.

In practise, what has happened is that the Prime Minister has become our real monarch and the House sits, not as a legislature, but as an electoral college in perpetual session and required periodically, frequently in fact, to give its assent once more to the king continuing to sit in his place reigning over us all.

This form of elected dictatorship is completely unsuitable and needs to be reformed. There are many reforms that could take place, but I will simply mention one or two.

First, secret ballots for the election of committee chairs just as secret ballots are used for the election of the Speaker.

Second, more free votes, and a simple change to the rules of the House would accomplish this goal. Many other proposals have been made by a number of scholars, commissions and committees.

Reforms to the Election Act would also make a substantial difference. I cite, as an example of us going in the wrong direction, clause 11 of the government's proposed act to amend the Canada Elections Act, which has the effect of depriving small parties of access to the voters list. This is a very undemocratic move in the wrong direction and something that needs to be stopped in order to ensure that we continue to be democratic in our elections, elections that bring people here, even if we cannot function democratically in how we act within this place.

I note as well that clause 17 of that proposed act would deprive independents and small parties of access to free broadcast time in order to spread their message and educate the public, which after all is the function that these parties see for themselves, small parties like the Green Party, the Canadian Action Party and so on, as well as many independents. Many of these parties and independents who realize they will not be elected, see the election as an opportunity to spread what they believe to be important truths. It is also the only time when they have the public eye and they deserve that.

Recall is another measure that could accomplish a great deal. If members of a constituency had the right to petition for their members to be forced into a byelection situation, a number of very undemocratic and unpopular measures could never have made it through the House. The GST, the Meech Lake accord and many other measures would not have been approved. Many members would have considered very carefully whether they could continue to support the kind of action that occurred the other day when the government voted against its own 1993 red book promise.

Electronic voting could take place. Citizen initiated referendum is another possibility that would do substantial things to change the way in which Canada operates as a democracy.

I turn now to the question of proportional representation and to the question of what type of proportional representation is most appropriate.

I take it from the language of the motion that the New Democratic sponsor of it feels that democratic reforms to the electoral system, other than actual changes to the manner in which individual members are chosen, is something the New Democratic Party would support.

Fixed election dates as something that would perhaps be beneficial and that they would perhaps support as we do on this side of the House. That would prevent the sort of nonsense that goes on where the Prime Minister consults the polls and tries to arrange to hold an election when the governing party is in fact at the top of the polls. This has been unconstitutional in the United States for two centuries and something that other countries, which have a system similar to our own such as Australia, have tried to restrict by having shorter periods between elections.

I note that there are several different proportional representation models and in the remaining time I will go through them very quickly. Our party does not favour any particular model. We think that the first past the post system is broken and is probably not acceptable to most Canadians. We also think the decision on whether the system should be replaced is one that should be made by the Canadian people by means of a referendum.

We have turned to our friends in New Zealand and would like to follow its model. They held a referendum on whether in fact they should abandon their first past the post system. The people advised them that they wanted change. Then a commission travelled across the country, consulted widely, proposed several models, and the people selected the multi-member proportional system which is not the only system that could have been chosen. It is the one that appears to have made New Zealanders happy.

I am not sure that model would work here. I am not sure it is my business to say it is the model that would work. I cite as another possible example the pure list system. I am not a particular fan of that system but it is used in Israel and has been used in Italy. In addition to New Zealand a somewhat different version of the mixed member proportional system has been used in Germany. In Australia, which is my former home, I observed that there are several different systems at work at different levels of that country's government.

The house of representatives, as I mentioned when questioning another member earlier, uses a single member system but a transferable ballot so that a more consensual process goes on in selecting a member in an individual district. Its senate uses a 12 member system. Each state chooses its members at large and each voter can choose their 12 top choices from a list.

Tasmania uses yet another system for its house. It has a system whereby there are districts with five or six members. The Australian capital territory has selected yet another system which I think would not be appropriate for Canada but reflects the fact the particular jurisdiction has an evenly spread highly homogeneous population. They had the danger of perpetually electing all members of one party over and over, and so they had to choose some other method to assure that there would be some form of genuine democracy, opposition and debate within their own legislature. This has been very successfully accomplished there.

I therefore put before the House the suggestion that what ought to happen in this country is that there should be a vigorous debate as our friends in the New Democratic Party are suggesting and that in the end the people be the ones to make the decision on what is in fact the best approach.

[Supply, February 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the member made a minor factual error when he cited the number of countries of large geographical size in the world that have the first past the post system. He mentioned two of the top three. Russia and China are both larger than the United States. Therefore, strictly speaking, it is two of the top four.

Leaving that aside, he also made the observation that it is difficult to maintain the unity of a continent sized country, such as Canada or the United States, without a first past the post system. I would dispute that and then invite his comments upon the observation.

Australia, where I lived for several years, does not have a first past the post system. It has a single transferable ballot at the level of the house of representatives, its equivalent to our House of Commons. The Australian system has not created any form of disunity.

At the level of its senate, Australia has a system in which each of its six states has 12 senators. The senators are elected through a form of multiple voting in which each elector gets to choose 12 candidates from a list which can have, depending upon the state, as many as 100 or more candidates for office.

Some problems can be pointed out in the Australian system, which I will return to later in the debate, but it causes no national unity problem.

The first past the post system has had splendid success in other countries. However, we should consider our unity problems, the current ones, as well as the more spectacular conflicts of the late 1970s and the early 1980s when there were only two Liberal members west of the Ontario-Manitoba boundary and only two Conservative members between 1979 and 1980 in Quebec. We see therefore that the first past the post system has served our national unity very poorly indeed.

The United States is one of the most spectacular failures of national unity in the world. Its first past the post system ensured that the democrats would dominate the south prior to the civil war and that a variety of parties, first the whigs and then the republicans, would dominate the north. That was one of the primary reasons for the tremendous split in the U.S. congress, and particularly in its senate, which was one of the fundamental reasons for its civil war.

In looking at the spectacular record of failure, would the member be willing to consider the possibility that there are alternatives that perhaps create a superior sense of national unity in large, ethnically diverse and geographically dispersed countries such as Canada, Australia or the United States?

[Intergovernmental Affairs, February 19th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. Deputy Prime Minister for that spectacularly irrelevant response.

During the election Alice Farness, a Liberal candidate, threatened Saskatchewan farmers that they would get no help from Ottawa if they did not vote Liberal. So far, the government has done a spectacularly good job at following through on this election promise.

For example, last week the intergovernmental affairs minister went all the way west to the University of Toronto Law School to remind western Canadians that the policy of tough love is still in effect.

The minister has not even hinted at repudiating Mrs. Farness' comments. Will he do so now or does he think they are legitimate? Are they policy?