Stephen Harper

[Canadian Airlines, November 28th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to follow up on the question from the leader of the Reform Party to the Minister of Labour which the Minister of Labour did not answer.

The Reform Party has offered to facilitate the government's passing amendments immediately and as quickly as possible to extend the provisions of the Canada Labour Code that allow a democratic vote of the workers of Canadian on the offer of the management on the basis of public interest.

There are provisions in the code right now that are too narrow for that but we would certainly be willing to extend them to these circumstances. Would the Minister of Labour be prepared to do that forthwith?

[Canada Elections Act, November 26th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising today at third reading of Bill C-63, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act, the Referendum Act and the Parliament of Canada Act.

In speaking on behalf of the Reform Party, I intend to oppose this bill that imposes changes to the federal elections act without the consent of the opposition parties. These changes are not necessary and they are also dangerous to the operation of Canadian democracy.

I also want to note that, in the case of Quebec, it has been decided not to use the data in Quebec's permanent list of electors to establish the computerized federal register. Instead, a last door to door enumeration will take place next spring in Quebec and elsewhere, according to a decision resulting from unfortunate and costly choices made by the government in this bill.

In laying out the Reform position I would like to note that three major parts, three major changes or major initiatives are undertaken in this legislation. First is the establishment of a permanent register of electors. Second is the establishment of a 36-day calendar rather than the present 47-day calendar for the the holding of federal election campaigns. Both of these changes are to be implemented at the time of the next election by way of a pre-election enumeration. Finally, a clause in this bill staggers voting hours across the country.

All three of these changes have been supported in principle by the Reform Party, the Bloc Quebecois and other political parties. The problem is the method of implementation chosen which particularly in the case of the permanent voters' list and the 36-day campaign will prove to be premature and costly in the way they are being implemented. In the case of staggered voting hours, that is being done in a way that requires much broader consultation and consensus to be acceptable to western Canadians.

I should note, in making this observation, that broadly speaking we would support these initiatives if we could come to some kind of agreement. I note there are a number of issues not covered in this legislation.

The Reform Party has favoured for a number of years initiatives which would result in fixed election dates in the country within the context of a parliamentary system, allowing for the provision of a normal time period for the holding of an election which could be violated in exceptional circumstances but not normally. We have supported initiatives that would remove federal political parties from the various subsidies and tax concessions that they now receive. This would get federal political parties out of the tax trough.

These changes are not incorporated in the bill. Neither are similar concerns which have been raised by the Bloc Quebecois and go in a completely different direction. For years the Bloc Quebecois has favoured the public subsidization of political parties and would like to see various provisions of Quebec electoral law implemented at the federal level. These would control the spending and money raising of political parties. As well, the Bloc Quebecois favours restrictions on third party advertising, or the gag law, which the Reform Party opposes and which has been struck down in court.

As well, both the Reform Party and the Bloc Quebecois differ with the government on fundamental issues of representation. For example, the Bloc Quebecois favours a 25 per cent minimum provision of Commons seats for Quebec. In our case, we support Senate reform, a triple E Senate in particular, and regional representation.

None of those things are found in the bill. Obviously there is no consensus on them. I mention them because they are important items and we would like the government and the procedure and House affairs committee to study them. I also mention them to make it clear that, in spite of our very different approaches and opinions on these very contentious issues, they are not the reason we lack unanimous agreement for the bill.

It would be irresponsible for the Reform Party or the Bloc to hold up positive changes to federal election law because some other things are not in the bill. They did not have all party support. We certainly have not done that and we do not intend to do it.

That is not why we object to this legislation. We object to this legislation because of its substantive contents. In our view the principles in the bill are not being properly or well implemented. Just as important, the process followed in developing the bill has been terribly flawed.

The hon. member for Bellechasse laid out those concerns in great detail and at length, and I support almost all of what he said in that regard. My colleague from the New Democratic Party, the hon. member for Winnipeg Transcona, noted that while we did reach all party agreement on some amendments, it should be noted that these

amendments were introduced not only after report stage, but after the application of time allocation on debate, both at report stage and at third reading.

This bill was presented only a month ago. This is the third day it has been debated in the House. Yet after the first day of full debate after its return from committee, the government implemented time allocation. In my view, the procedure of using time allocation for electoral law, doing it quickly and without the consent of the other political parties, is the kind of dangerous application of electoral practices that we are more likely to find in third world countries.

As I have repeatedly said throughout this discussion, that process was completely unnecessary. Every indication that we have had during the debate, in the committee hearings and in the House, has been that with further discussion we would reach an all party consensus on virtually all of the items in the legislation, yet we have ended up rushing the process. Some positive amendments have been made in the process, but they were made in a very scattered and irregular manner.

The hon. member for Bellechasse also mentioned the fact that before the bill was tabled we found out about it through the media. That was also an irregularity which, in our view, should not have occurred. I will have time to speak to that at greater length later in my speech.

The chief electoral officer consulted the committee on preliminary legislation in April of this year. The government waited from April until October before acting. When it finally acted it presented a bill that was different in some critical ways from the principles which had all party agreement in April. That was completely unnecessary and completely irregular.

I observed something different than the hon. member for Bellechasse. He observed that the government did not follow such a practice in the case of the previous electoral legislation, Bill C-69. I do not entirely agree with him on that count. The government has demonstrated a tendency to act unilaterally on election law before.

Let me disagree with him in this regard. It is true that in the case of Bill C-69, unlike this legislation, we did study that legislation for a substantial period of time. We looked at it intensively and we came to all party agreement on most of the particulars of the legislation.

However, the principal purpose and concern of that bill was the scrapping of the electoral boundaries process so that it would not be in place for the 1997 election. That was our very fundamental objection to that legislation. We would have been perfectly prepared to approve it if it would have gone through after the current redistribution had been completed. We all know that ultimately the bill never passed and the redistribution has been completed. That was the reason we opposed the legislation. It was a part of the bill and virtually all of the opposition parties in both Houses of Parliament opposed it for that reason.

It is important that when the bill ultimately failed, the government never passed the things on which we all agreed. That says a lot. We developed a new process that would have been an improvement. Ninety-five per cent of the bill ultimately could have been passed in the House and in the Senate. Yet once the government failed to get the one thing it did not have all party agreement on it chose not to proceed with the bill at all. This says a lot about its practices on previous election legislation.

I have so far not said what the hon. member for Bellechasse has said. In spite of what has occurred in the past six months-especially this past month-we have worked well with individual members of the government. I acknowledge the work of the chief government whip, the member for Stormont-Dundas, and the hon. member for Fundy-Royal, the chairman of the committee, and other members of the government staff who have worked to try to facilitate discussion and agreement on individual items. We acknowledge the importance of this work.

Nevertheless we have been operating within a terribly constricted timetable, a process that has not allowed us to come to a consensus. It was unnecessary because all of this could have been done months ago.

What remains in this legislation after amendment are two basic substantive problems which I will address. The two major problems with this legislation as it is now being passed are, first, the specific proposal to stagger voting hours for the next federal election, and second, the proposal to implement the new register and shortened electoral period through a spring enumeration which will be very costly.

First, the staggered voting hours were not part of this bill when it went to committee before second reading. That is important to mention. Not only has this bill been rushed, but the provision which the Reform Party now objects to most strenuously was not even included in this bill when it was tabled.

That provision came from private member's Bill C-307, tabled by the hon. member for Vancouver East, which was passed by this House some days after Bill C-63 was sent to the procedure and House affairs committee.

Bill C-307, which dealt with staggered voting hours, was passed by the House by unanimous agreement only on the grounds that the issues in it would be studied and we would arrive at a consensus on the specific proposal to be implemented. It is important to note that

the proposal in Bill C-307 and the proposal in Bill C-63 are not the same proposal.

Two basic reasons were given for wanting to alter periods of voting across the country. First was the problem of western alienation. Westerners see the government being chosen before the polls have actually closed in their ridings. Second was the fact that western Canadians through modern communications techniques, particularly the Internet, may increasingly know about the results before they vote.

On the first question it is important to remind the House that the Reform Party rejects staggered voting hours as a serious solution to the problem of western alienation. It is true, Mr. Speaker, and you know this, that westerners say that the government is elected before our votes are even counted.

However, only an extremely naive person or an easterner would say that changing the order of counting the votes is a solution to this problem. Westerners are smart enough to realize that even if we counted the votes in the completely opposite order, governments could still be chosen without any support whatsoever from western Canada.

That is very fundamental. It will probably happen again in the next election. It will happen not because of the order the votes are counted, it will happen because of the functioning of the parliamentary system. Until the government is prepared to study that issue seriously, we will not arrive at a solution to western alienation or the alienation that exists in other parts of the country.

This is not a solution to that problem. Reform has never suggested it is so we reject it out of hand. However, Reform did accept looking at the problem that people may increasingly know the results in other parts of the country before they vote. This may be dangerous in some way to democracy and alter behaviour or affect the results.

The Reform Party said it was willing to study that issue. It is important to realize, and anybody who looks at the transcripts of the committee will see that no convincing evidence was provided to the committee that this is creating a serious problem in the functioning of our democracy.

Specifically, I asked the various witnesses whether there was any documented evidence or any serious academic study on whether knowing the results in other parts of the country had either of two effects: caused people not to vote or it caused them to vote differently than they would vote otherwise. There is precious little evidence that either of these things are true.

The only evidence that was presented in committee was a remark by the chief electoral officer that some studies in the United States indicate that western Americans, knowing the results already from the east, might not turn out at the voting stations in the western United States, which may diminish voting by about 3 per cent.

Three per cent is not large but it is important to realize that the United States has no legal blackout. Information on electoral results flows freely across the country. That environment is very different from ours where we still have a blackout on mainstream media and have very effective control over the flow of information. I believe the impact would be even less. In the United States, without those things, the impact is only 3 per cent. Here it must be substantially less.

As I say, there is no indication today that this is causing a serious problem in terms of how people vote or whether they vote but it could in the future. This tells us that we should be very cautious before playing around with the rules of the game to fix this problem.

The discussion in committee focused on four different elements of a solution. Only one of them was on staggering hours. Another was delaying the vote count in areas of eastern Canada. Another was eliminating the blackout provision in the Atlantic provinces because obviously Atlantic Canada cannot elect the national government, and possibly allowing the count to proceed in eastern Canada at least a half hour before the close of the polls in the west because of the delay in results coming out even once the counting started. Those were the four elements that the committee studied as a way of finding solutions to the problem.

It is important to note that I felt, and possibly other members of the committee would agree, the committee discussion indicated that some combination of these solutions would be the way to proceed. In fact on three of those items, staggering the hours, delaying the count and eliminating the Atlantic Canada blackout, there seemed to be a fair degree of consensus that these were possibilities. On the fourth issue, allowing the count to actually proceed a half hour earlier in Ontario and Quebec, it should be noted that the member for Vancouver East herself, the sponsor of the bill, rejected that as a possible solution.

The solution proposed by the government without the support of the opposition parties is of a completely different nature than the solution which was discussed during the hearings. The government refused to put in delays to the count, did not eliminate the blackout and in fact did provide for the count to begin a half hour earlier in central Canada.

As well the government provided two other elements that had not previously been raised in our discussions. One was the closure of the polls at 7.30 in the province of Alberta, which is now in this bill. The element that we had the most concern about, the early closure of the polls in British Columbia, is now augmented by the

early closure of the polls in Alberta as well, an option which was never discussed in committee.

Also, it is an anomaly that the closure of the polls and the counting under the government proposal will now proceed even earlier in Atlantic Canada than it would have before. The polls will now close up to two and a half hours earlier in Newfoundland than they will in Quebec and Ontario. This was not part of any solution the committee looked at.

Let me put all of this detail in perspective. The bottom line is that the solution to this problem will be based entirely on staggering the hours. The staggering of the hours will occur in such a way that the polls will close at seven o'clock in British Columbia and at 7.30 in Alberta.

According to the government, the solution to the problem of westerners being alienated and also the vote of westerners somehow being affected or devalued because results are being counted already in the east is to cut out prime voting hours in British Columbia and Alberta. In other words, the west will pay for the solution to the problems of the electoral system. This is not a solution for western Canadians; this is trying to solve the west as a problem rather than the problem itself.

This should not proceed without all-party agreement, not just because we lack consensus but because the vast majority of the members of this House representing British Columbia and Alberta will be the very people opposing this legislation. That should raise suspicions in everyone's mind.

People will be very upset when they realize the implications of this. I will say to them, a little bit tongue and cheek, to make sure the government pays for this decision at the polls, if they can get there, and that is an important if.

Let me move on to our second major concern with this bill. The implementation of the permanent register and the shorter electoral period is to occur through a pre-election enumeration to be held in the spring.

In April when the chief electoral officer came to the committee, he outlined two different scenarios under which we could achieve a 36 day period and a permanent register. One was to simply proceed with the next election in the way we have always proceeded: use the 47 day calendar, have the enumeration and then have the enumeration serve as the basis for the permanent register. That would obviously be the simplest solution in technical terms. Another was to have a pre-election enumeration. However, he said at the time that a pre-election enumeration would require a lead time of one year. He said that in order to implement it for a fall 1997 election, the legislative changes had to be in place by the summer of 1996.

That is easy to work out. We are obviously now implementing these changes six months later than was proposed, to be implemented four months earlier than was proposed. How is it that we can we proceed in that manner? We can proceed by dramatically increasing the costs of the process. In our view, this defeats the entire purpose of the legislation. The entire purpose has been to reduce electoral costs.

The assumption has been that a permanent electoral list and the revision of the list through access to various data sources at the federal and provincial levels will prove to be less costly in the long run than a door to door enumeration. This is not only because a permanent register is less costly, not only because we do not have to create a list every single time, but also because the list can be shared by all levels of government: federal, provincial, regional, municipal, and school boards.

However, what we have done here is to ensure that we create the list in a way that is unnecessarily expensive. Let me be very specific about that. Not only are we doing it outside the electoral period which makes it more expensive, but because we are doing it on an accelerated timetable, we minimize our ability to use lists that have already been created in other parts of the country.

In committee we did make a positive change. We got a change through that would require the chief electoral officer to use lists where an enumeration has been conducted within the past year. That would mean that in the case of Alberta which has 26 federal ridings and Prince Edward Island which has four federal ridings we will not need to do an enumeration.

The chief electoral officer feels that those lists can still be implemented in time for the spring and it will save us money. That is 30 ridings out of 301, or only about 10 per cent. Our hope had been that by further delaying the implementation, we would be able to capture enumerations and permanent voters lists created in other parts of the country.

British Columbia has a permanent voters register and we are told that Quebec's register will be ready by May 1. These are the second and third largest provinces in the country. Were we to capture these two provinces in our efforts, as well as a few others such as the Yukon, we would have been able to forgo a door to door enumeration in one-half of the country. It is important to note that this is the major additional cost we are applying to the next election.

The chief electoral officer believes that by proceeding in this manner we will be able to save $30 million in future elections, not in the one coming up, but in future elections. It is important to note that those savings are as yet unrealized. They are in the future and there could be complications. Frankly I would take those as

maximum figures. Let us assume we have a maximum savings of $30 million. We have already seen in British Columbia that its permanent list has proven to be somewhat more expensive than was thought.

What is certain is that because of the process followed by this government, the next election will cost $41 million more. That cost will occur primarily because we are doing a door to door enumeration virtually across the country, except for Alberta and Prince Edward Island, outside of the campaign period. That is a cost of nearly $80 million.

Making every effort to ensure that we could get Quebec, British Columbia and others into this process before the next federal election or before a door to door enumeration is critical to being able to realize real cost savings immediately. However the government has chosen not to do that.

We tabled an amendment yesterday that would have put back the clock not 12 months as the government had originally indicated, but only four months. We put in an amendment to move the clock back just four months and the government rejected it. The government has tabled a positive amendment that will give us some certainty as to when this can be implemented and that in effect is not until the end of April.

By rejecting an amendment to implement this in the fall and by insisting through time allocation and a rush study of this bill that this be implemented by May 1, we have the unprecedented case of a government showing its electoral timetable to the public. For that I am grateful. It will make it much easier for our party to plan the next election. It is very clear to everybody now that the government has created a situation where, barring some kind of PR catastrophe, it will call an election in early May and will have it in mid-June. That is getting to be a fairly obvious option given what the government has done with this bill.

As I say, the government could have delayed it. In the process of delaying it, the government could have made the entire process less expensive. It is important to add that the government could have shortened the electoral period anyway for the next election even without proceeding in this manner.

The Lortie commission said on page 123 of volume two its report, and this is important: "Shorter federal election campaigns do not necessarily depend on introducing a register of voters. A shorter election campaign is feasible even if the current enumeration process is retained. That said, it is improbable that the campaign could be shortened much beyond 40 days". According to the Lortie commission, we could have shortened the electoral period for the next campaign from 47 to 40 days without doing a pre-election enumeration and without imposing the additional costs on taxpayers that are going to be imposed.

The government is proceeding with this for reasons that are obvious only to itself and which are expensive to the taxpayers and ultimately it perceives as in its own interest. Otherwise the government would have reached an agreement with the opposition parties on how to proceed. That said, I will add that in this specific instance exactly how it is implementing this, the government did make some concessions to the opposition parties that are worth noting.

First, the government did provide through amendment at committee a specific timetable as to when the bill can be implemented. It did say that the enumeration process and most of the sections of the bill would become effective April 1 for a 30 day enumeration campaign, making an election call possible under the new calendar effectively at the end of April. The government did do that. It put time lines on various sections of the bill.

The government and all parties also agreed to a motion this morning. It additionally would provide the opposition parties with a one-time provision of the electoral list as soon as that enumeration is completed and it is feasible to transmit the results of the permanent register to the party.

Those two changes do provide some degree of certainty. We said that this is an important issue, that we already know we are going to be surprised with the date so do not surprise us as well with how the timetable is going to be implemented. The government did do that. That does not change our fundamental objection that this should be done in a way that minimizes costs and sticks to a timetable closer to the original consultations it had with the opposition parties in April. However, as I say, it chose for its own reasons to proceed in a different manner.

Those are our two major objections. There were a number of other areas to which we objected in this legislation. However, in the course of studying the bill, both in committee and in the House, some improvements have been made. Let me complete my remarks by going through some of the other provisions of the legislation which are deficient or which have been improved. As I say, these provisions are less important but not by any means unimportant items.

With respect to byelections, one of the specific concerns which the Reform Party has had with this bill has been the provision to call snap byelections. I have said this repeatedly, but already in this Parliament the government has appointed people to patronage positions or to the Senate in order to open up a safe riding for a snap byelection. In the dead of winter, just after Christmas of last year, that occurred. Our concern was that by shortening the electoral period from 47 days to 36 days this process would be further abused.

We called for the creation of a 30 day cooling off period. In other words, the government could not call a byelection for at least 30 days after a vacancy in the House of Commons occurred. The government has provided today, through an amendment, an 11 day cooling off period, which at least provides us with the status quo. It provides us with, in effect, a minimum 47 day election campaign because there will have to be 11 days before the election is called and then 36 days for the campaign itself. That is an important amendment which was brought in by the government this morning. Perhaps it is not as long a period as we wanted, but we are grateful that we could come to an all party agreement on it.

However, it did not address a second concern which we raised, which could have been addressed at the same time, the problem of byelections simply not being held at all. Under the Parliament of Canada Act the government must call an election with 180 days of the occurrence of a vacancy. It is important to note that the election does not have to be held in any particular time period. It has been common in recent years for governments to put off late term byelections. We know that when we get near the end of a term seats open up for all kinds of reasons, retiring MPs are appointed or seek other work or whatever. We know that seats become vacant. What has happened in the recent past is that governments have decided to leave the seats vacant almost indefinitely, putting the date of a byelection well past the next general election. That could have been addressed in this legislation, but the government chose not to.

I only have a short time left, so I am going to go quickly through some of the other things I wanted to draw to the attention of the House.

The government did remove the automatic publication of gender on voters lists. That is something which we had asked for. That was done today. The government has added the date of birth as a mandatory requirement, collected for the register, as the Bloc Quebecois demanded. That was an item which we also supported. However, the government did not agree to delete the automatic provision of the electoral list to political parties annually, as provided for in this act. That is important. We objected to that and we believe the government should have removed the provision.

I would point out what the privacy commissioner said. We agree with him wholeheartedly: "Annual disclosures of the list appears excessive in light of the list's express purpose of conducting elections or referenda. Given that no jurisdiction conducts annual elections, this frequent a disclosure seems more suited to repeated canvassing by political parties, not to the election itself". As I say, that is a deficiency of the legislation which we had hoped to correct.

There are other points I could go on about, a number of more minor matters where there has been some improvement; for

example, the elimination of revising officers, the decision to shorten time off work that employers must provide from four hours to three hours. There has been a number of other improvements we can point to but in the big picture this legislation remains flawed.

It is flawed because we have followed a process that was rushed, undemocratic and unnecessary. With further discussion we would have reached a bill that not only was agreed to by all parties but that was much better for the people of Canada.

[Canada Elections Act, November 25th, 1996]

moved:

Motion No. 37

That Bill C-63, in Clause 94, be amended by replacing line 4 on page 43 with the following:

"and 52 of this Act come into force on August 1,"

[Canada Elections Act, November 25th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I am rising to speak on the Group No. 6 amendments to Bill C-63. All eight of these motions have been proposed by the Bloc Quebecois.

As the hon. member for Bellechasse has indicated, these motions cover a wide range of subject matter and are obviously of major significance. I would share his concerns about the entire process here. It does seem to be unfortunate that in reviewing elections legislation we are essentially restricted to discussing matters of this scope and importance in only a few minutes before we move on to voting on the bill on a timetable imposed by the Liberal government.

I am very concerned about the partisanship in this. It is something we had hoped to address. As I have said repeatedly in this debate, we had hoped to be able to support this legislation but we are still not in a position where we can do that.

Having said that I do have grave reservations about most of these amendments, the one motion which I believe my party can support is Motion No. 29. Motion No. 29 goes to the heart of this concern about partisanship. This particular motion by the Bloc Quebecois would require the government to consult the House and specifically the opposition parties for future amendments to this act. That has been a practice in the past and I think it is a practice we should continue and in a serious way get back to.

I will reiterate what the member for Bellechasse said on Friday. I think it is ridiculous in a mature and democratic country that elections legislation would be imposed at the end of a Parliament. The rules of the game change by only one player, presumably for its own benefit. That is not the way elections law works in an advanced democratic society.

Nevertheless, I do want to take some time to address some of these other motions. These other motions have to do with a range of subjects but generally speaking, what they attempt to do in my opinion is to impose much of Quebec's electoral legislation and Quebec's election practices on the federal government. This is a much more radical view of federalism than either I or my party would subscribe to.

In this House there are three very different views of Confederation which come out over and over again.

One is the view of the Bloc Quebecois which on a certain level has been not just the view of two founding nations, but a view that this is very much a confederal arrangement and everything that goes on federally is really a creature of the provinces. In effect the

federal government really should only communicate with citizens through the provinces. That is one of the extreme positions.

The other extreme position is the historic position of the Liberal Party which is very much a centralist position. I know in Quebec the Liberals refer to themselves as federalists. This often makes the debate confusing because in fact they are not really federalists. The Liberal Party historically has been a centralist party which views the provinces as little more than units of administration, but not as entities that have sovereignty in their own areas of jurisdiction, which in fact we would maintain is the case under the Constitution.

The Reform Party view is of a federal state where both the provinces and the federal government are entities with clear powers in their own jurisdictions. Both have rights to communicate with their citizens directly.

I will deal with these amendments randomly because I want the House to understand how radical some of them are. For example, Motion No. 32 would amend the referendum act so that the regions would have a veto over a referendum question posed by the federal government. The formula laid out here is the five region formula that was in the government's bill on constitutional referendums, Bill C-110, at the end of the last session.

This goes much further than that. Bill C-110 was a formula for the approval of constitutional amendments. This is not a formula for the approval of a referendum question. We all realize the referendum act at the federal level, as in Quebec, is merely a consultative device. This is an approval process for a question to be asked of the people of Canada by the federal government. I do think this is an extreme position by the Bloc Quebecois. My Bill C-341 challenges the belief that the Government of Quebec can ask a binding question that concerns the future not just of Quebec but of all of Canada in Quebec only and on its own terms.

Yet this particular motion tries to put in the elections act and the referendum act a motion which would proscribe the ability of the federal government to ask a question of Canadians without the prior approval of the Quebec government. I cannot think of a motion that someone could put in here that is more unacceptable to Canadians outside of Quebec. In fact it is unacceptable not just in the case of Quebec; to me, the idea that the Government of Ontario or the Government of British Columbia could veto the wording of a referendum question across the country is absolutely outrageous.

The federal government has referred some of the Quebec government's constitutional agenda to the supreme court. There is a need in the opinion of the Reform Party for the federal government to be able to pose direct questions to the people of Quebec on the issue of sovereignty and separation if we are looking at another referendum down the road.

In the past, the Government of Quebec has not only posed questions which we believe have been fundamentally misleading, but also it has posed questions and has an agenda behind those questions which is clearly illegal and unconstitutional under Canadian law. It is more than appropriate, in fact it is essential in our view, that the federal government not only retain but also exercise its right to consult the people of Quebec directly on their real opinions on things like the issue of separation and on notions like a unilateral declaration of independence. I cannot imagine a proposed amendment to this bill that would be more unacceptable than this one.

Motion No. 35 is similar to Motion No. 32. Motion No. 33, like Motion No. 24, is a motion of wide application. It would effectively impose wide sections of Quebec electoral law upon the federal government, specifically those sections dealing with party financing. It would apply the financing provisions of Quebec's electoral law not just to federal elections but to federal referendums as well.

Let me go over some of the provisions. A lot of them concern matters which are already covered in federal elections law such as the role of auditors and party agents in making financial reports.

Some of these rules have broad sweeping content. For example, these are the rules that restrict fundraising to individuals. Corporate bodies, unions and organizations cannot contribute to political parties. It provides for public financing of political parties directly, based on percentage of vote, and deems what kind of non-financial contributions count as political contributions. It restricts the ability of people to contribute to political parties to no more than $3,000 in a single year.

Some of these notions I could support. I have never had a problem with the concept that only voters should contribute to political parties. However, these amendments are of a wide and sweeping nature and we do not have time to debate them. Suffice it to say there would not be anywhere near consensus in the House on some of these restrictions.

The chief electoral officer of Quebec explained to the committee that there is a history behind the development of some of the electoral practices in Quebec. They were designed to clean up the corruption which we saw, particularly prior to the quiet revolution. There have been great advances made in Quebec, but the fact of the matter is that in our view some of these proposals have problems of their own and would be regressive if applied to the rest of the country. We would be very resistant to some of these ideas, certainly if there were not an opportunity for further discussion.

There is a great deal of material here and further Reform speakers will have a chance to address it.

[Canada Elections Act, November 25th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising to speak on Group No. 5 of the report stage motions relative to Bill C-63. As the hon. member for Bellechasse has noted, there are five motions in this group, three presented by the Reform Party and two by the Bloc Quebecois. They concern three subject matters, two of which I was going to address quickly but I think I will spend a bit of time on the first one, given some of the remarks by the hon. member for Bellechasse.

Motion No. 7 presented by the Bloc Quebecois is a very interesting one. It simply changes the wording in a particular section from "is ordinarily resident" to "is domiciled". As the member explained very well, this is a switch from terminology used in common law to terminology used in the Quebec civil code. At the same time I point to the change away from the terminology that is generally used in the Canada Elections Act, not just in this section but in other sections and also in the general communications of Elections Canada, to terminology more specific to the Quebec elections organization. It is a very interesting proposal and one which on the surface seems fairly trivial. We would tend to oppose it because we believe in keeping the terminology the way it is.

My colleague from the Bloc Quebecois made an interesting observation and I hope that Liberal members were listening to his intervention. He said that the change which he is seeking is consistent with the government's notion of the distinct society clause which was passed through the House late last year. It is important because this motion is really the tip of the iceberg. There are other motions, which I am sure we will have a chance to discuss today, in which the Bloc Quebecois is suggesting that large sections of elections law and the referendum act in Quebec would supersede, or give guidance to or even in the case of the one in question, have veto over federal legislation.

This may well be an accurate interpretation of the wording of the distinct society motion that this Parliament passed, to which the Reform Party was very much opposed. It shows the can of worms that the motion is opening.

Frankly, on a point like this, a reasonable accommodation could be made. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that where notions are virtually identical, in the English version of a federal law we could use common law terminology and in the French version we could use the civil code terminology. As long as the notions are more or less the same that would not create a problem.

However the member for Bellechasse, by proposing this motion and by justifying it the way he has, has raised the broader issue that is raised by the distinct society clause, that is, the idea that there would be a comprehensive special status for Quebec and that it would involve, even on something as important as elections law, a completely different relationship between the Government of Quebec and the Quebec elections office and the Government of Canada and the Canada elections office.

That is instructive because the distinct society clause has potential problems. The clause as passed by this House was very broad in application. It was worded very broadly.

The Reform Party-myself and the leader of the Reform Party-proposed an amendment to that motion which would have made it clear that this particular motion did not give additional powers to the Government of Quebec, did not circumscribe charter rights and did not grant any kind of status to Quebec which would allow it to claim sovereignty under international law. We proposed that in an amendment and it was rejected by the government.

Although I oppose this motion, the hon. member for Bellechasse has made a point which is consistent with the policy of the government. That is why the government should be rethinking its policy. I suspect that some day somebody will take these matters to court to suggest that the distinct society resolution has a wider impact on federal law than the government was previously willing to admit.

Those are my comments on Motion No. 7. I will move on to some of the motions which the Reform Party has proposed.

Motion No. 13 would delete from Bill C-63 the provision which would provide the voters list annually to sitting members of Parliament and registered political parties. We do not believe that is in the interests of voters nor is it necessary. We have said all along that in creating a register it should only have information which is either necessary or highly relevant and it should only be used for the explicit purposes for which it was created. In this case that is the holding of a federal general election or alternatively, the holding of other elections in other parts of the country where there

is co-operation with provincial, municipal and school board elections authorities.

This particular provision in the bill goes entirely against that. This provision basically says that the purpose of a register is not just for elections but for the ongoing political use by registered parties and sitting members of Parliament. It seems to me that is not appropriate. Certainly under the act there are uses for which this list is prescribed, but if there is wide circulation of these lists, I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, that they will be used for all kinds of purposes, both political and non-political.

An additional concern is why should this additional information be provided to incumbents? In several cases when we had discussions in committee-and I will not quote members by name because these were in camera discussions-we repeatedly raised our concerns with several elements of Bill C-63. A number of members repeatedly said that as an incumbent this information was useful to them which seemed to us, in the case of particular MPs and in the case of the government, to be missing the point.

The point is that the purpose of an elections list is not to provide proprietary information or give advantages to incumbents. That is not the purpose. In Reform's view, the provision of a list out of the register to MPs or to registered political parties every year is improper. That is not the purpose of the list.

The permanent register should help to provide lists for the purposes of elections at all levels of government across the country, not to political parties and not to MPs. Sitting MPs and political parties already have some of this data from previous elections and they can get it elsewhere. The purpose of this list is not for their general political marketing activities. It is important to make that point.

As the member for Bellechasse mentioned, both he and I have proposed motions dealing with a very similar subject. Reform Motions No. 8 and No. 12 and Bloc Motion No. 11 would allow the chief electoral officer of Canada to use elections lists from other registers that may exist in the country for the immediate purposes of avoiding a pre-election enumeration across the country which would be very costly.

I could go on at some length on this point. The particular approach in implementing this bill, having a pre-election enumeration before the next election to implement the shortened electoral period, is a quick way to start the register but potentially it is very expensive. The Reform Party has had some concerns about this. We suggested in committee that the government find ways of using recent enumerations or other electoral records as a way of avoiding a coast to coast enumeration.

The government did agree to some amendments in committee which would require the chief electoral officer to use lists where the enumeration has been conducted within the last year. In the case of Alberta and Prince Edward Island we will probably not be having pre-election enumerations in those provinces. There is an enumeration under way in Alberta as we speak. That represents a saving.

However the big provinces that are not captured by that amendment are Quebec and British Columbia. Quebec and British Columbia are developing permanent voters registers. The one in B.C. is in place and the one in Quebec will be in place soon. If they could be used prior to the next election for the purposes of assembling the register, it would obviously save an enormous amount of money. These are the second and third largest provinces. Together we are talking about roughly one-third of all the ridings in the country. It would be a very significant adjustment if this could be made.

All the Reform Party and Bloc amendments would allow would be for the chief electoral officer to have the option of using those lists. That option is not provided in the bill now. It is true, as many on the government side have pointed out, that there are some technical problems with incorporating these lists. It is also true that in the time frame the government has given itself, which is the end of April, it would be impossible to use those lists, certainly in the case of Quebec.

What that tells us is that the government should be rethinking this approach. It should be looking at an approach which at least allows these lists to be used in the first place by the chief electoral officer and then looking at the time line, not bringing this system in until later in the year in a way that would allow the technical obstacles to be overcome. The cost saving would be absolutely enormous.

It would also be far more consistent with the scenarios that were originally laid out before the procedure and House affairs committee when draft legislation on this subject was first reviewed. It is important to point out that when the government originally came to the Reform Party and to the other opposition parties with the proposal for a 36 day campaign, the scenarios it laid out did not foresee the implementation of a 36 day campaign and a permanent register until at least a year after the legislation had been adopted.

The scenario presented to us in this bill came about at the last minute. We only became aware of it after the bill was tabled in the House. The scenario here is very different from the scenario we agreed to.

I understand why the government wants to hurry this process. However, in hurrying this process and with the particular constraints it has provided for itself, the government has created a situation where the implementation will actually be significantly more costly at the outset rather than saving money. We know there are savings in the long run but we can minimize the initial costs by proceeding in a way that captures every province that can be captured. Obviously if we do it in April we will not capture British Columbia or Quebec. If we do it later, we have that option.

In any case, the bill should be amended so that the chief electoral officer at least has the option of considering usage of those lists if circumstances are fortuitous for him.

The Bloc Quebecois amendment differs from our amendment in one respect which I think was already mentioned by the hon. member for Bellechasse. The difference is that the Bloc amendment has a somewhat more constraining tone to it on the chief electoral officer than ours. I believe that to be true.

We understand the constraints of the chief electoral officer. He wants to make sure that we pursue implementation of the register with a minimum of risk to the integrity of the voting process and the integrity of the compilation process. We understand that is the case and we support him in that. Therefore, we want to give him a great deal of latitude on this and the Bloc wants to give a little less. Our position on this is somewhat more moderate and I would say in concluding it is because we are such a moderate party at heart.

[Canada Elections Act, November 25th, 1996]

moved:

Motion No. 12

That Bill C-63 be amended, in Clause 22 a ) by replacing line 32 on page 10 with the following:

"tion," b ) by replacing line 3 on page 11 with the following:

"Electors, or" c ) by adding after line 3 on page 11 the following:

"(iii) contained in an existing permanent voter's Register created according to provincial legislation and that the Chief Electoral Officer considers adequate for the purposes of section 71.011;"

Motion No. 13

That Bill C-63, in Clause 22, be amended by deleting lines 16 to 38 on page 11.

[Canada Elections Act, November 25th, 1996]

moved:

Motion No. 8

That Bill C-63 be amended, in Clause 12, by replacing line 41 on page 4 with the following:

"referred to in subparagraph 71.011(a)(ii) or (iii). The"

[Petitions, November 25th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, it is my duty to present a petition signed by 100 residents of the city of Calgary. These petitioners believe that the 7 per cent GST on reading material is unfair and wrong.

They ask Parliament to zero rate books, magazines and newspapers under the GST and the proposed harmonized sales tax. They ask the Prime Minister to carry out his party's repeated and unequivocal promise to remove federal sales tax from books, magazines and newspapers.

[Translation]

[Canada Elections Act, November 25th, 1996]

moved:

Motion No. 6

That Bill C-63, in Clause 2, be amended by replacing line 28 on page 2 with the following:

"polling day in the case of a general election or the forty- seventh day in the case of a by-election."

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise on Motion No. 6 which stands in my name. The motion concerns the length of a campaign for byelections under the new proposed regime.

Let me reiterate what has been said on the length of the election period. Our party has indicated that we are prepared to support in principle the shortening of an election campaign. I have said that is my preference.

The proposal in this bill is that we move to a 36 day election calendar. That is one of the three main features of Bill C-63. This has been a longstanding proposal in that for a number of years there has been some pressure from the public and from political parties to shorten the election campaign period if possible. In the past, technical difficulties in terms of the ability of Elections Canada to implement a shortened electoral period have prevented the shortening of the period below the current 47 days. Mr. Speaker, you may recall in your political life that the campaign was longer than 47 days.

The Lortie commission heard a lot of submissions on this subject. At that time my party was not particularly supportive of shortening the campaign period although many who made submissions to the commission were. The Lortie commission had suggested it was possible to move to a 40 day election campaign.

What is the origin of the 36 day campaign in this bill? It is the implementation of the computerized register of electors and the ability to implement it prior to the next election by virtue of a pre-election enumeration. Thirty-six days in effect is the shortest campaign that Elections Canada felt could comfortably be executed by the people who run the campaign nationally. It is fair to say that this will cause some problems for some parties. It will certainly be a new experience for most parties but I suspect that most major political parties will be able to adjust.

There are some advantages to the new calendar. However even if one supports a 36 day election campaign there are other problems that are raised by the way it is implemented in this piece of legislation. One was addressed by the hon member for Saanich-Gulf Islands, the expense of running an initial pre-election enumeration to start the register. I will have more to say about that later in this debate.

The government is going about the implementation of this shorter period in a way that in our opinion will actually be much more expensive initially than it needs to be. This is a significant problem. Another significant problem that we raised repeatedly before the bill came to committee and in committee has been the problem of the implementation of a shortened election period for byelection campaigns. That is what this motion addresses.

There have been two kinds of problems with byelections in the past. The first is the problem this motion seeks to address and which we witnessed in this Parliament. That is the sudden calling of a byelection in a riding that was occupied by a sitting member on the government side for which there was no expectation whatsoever of a vacancy but which occurred overnight and then a snap byelection was called to deal with the situation. These have always been in ridings that are very favourable to the government. In the case of this Parliament they have freed up members and freed up ridings to bring in new people and to move other people on to greener pastures, be they appointments, Senate seats or whatever.

There is much to object to in this process. Obviously there is the unnecessary expense, the patronage angle and a number of things that are quite infuriating about this particular practice. It is fair to say that in the case of byelections this does create some considerable difficulty for the opposition parties even under the present calendar.

Last winter byelections were unexpectedly called in safe government ridings. They were also called at a time of the year when nobody was anticipating campaigning, in the dead of winter just at the end of the Christmas period. These situations create serious enough organizational problems as it is without moving to a 36 day campaign.

The other problem with byelections is something the Reform Party has been concerned about for years. It is the opposite problem, that byelections are held off indefinitely and ridings are kept open for extremely long periods of time for other reasons. If the government thinks it will be defeated in a particular riding it does not want to have a byelection and therefore the riding unnecessarily goes unrepresented for months and sometimes for over a year. In the last Parliament the government deliberately called byelections for a date so far into the future that it knew there would be a general election before the byelection ever occurred. There are snap byelections but this is the opposite problem.

The Reform proposal deals only with the problem of a snap byelection and deals with it only in the most peripheral way. What we propose is simply that the new 36 day campaign period would not apply to byelections. Instead the 47 day campaign would remain in effect for byelections.

I should say that our ideal proposal on this particular problem would be quite different. Our ideal proposal would give a a significant period of time between the occurrence of a vacancy and the calling of a byelection on the one hand and on the other hand it would set a maximum period of time within which a byelection must be called.

Frankly the time we have in mind for that would be something in the order of 60 days between the occurrence of a vacancy and the actual holding of a byelection and no more than six months between the occurrence of a vacancy and the holding of a byelection at the other end. The minimum period would provide the opposition parties with some assurance that a byelection will not be

called just to surprise the opposition and return a government supporter. The other provides the reasonable expectation that voters will be represented in Parliament within a reasonable period of time.

The reason we have not proposed it in this amendment is that the actual calling of a byelection as opposed to the campaign period falls under the Parliament of Canada Act rather than the Canada Elections Act. That makes it impossible for us to put forward our ideal proposal in this particular piece of legislation.

It was pointed out during our discussion in committee that technically speaking, because it is in the Parliament of Canada Act, our ideal proposal falls outside the scope of this legislation. It does fall outside the scope of this legislation and the principles of this legislation, but it certainly does not fall outside the subject matter of the legislation because this bill affects the process for byelections in quite an intimate way. However as the legislation is drafted, this falls outside its scope.

I return to the comment I made on Friday which is that this House has not approved this bill in principle. It has only approved it for committee study. The bill went to committee. The purpose of committee study before second reading is supposed to be to examine all aspects of the bill including material that while within the subject matter of the bill may fall outside of its scope.

I am disappointed that this issue was not addressed during the committee hearings. I still hold out some hope that we will consider this issue before we complete our deliberations on this bill here in the House.

I urge the House to support this particular motion which improves the bill in a very small way. It does not force a byelection to be held. It does not even force a byelection to be delayed. It simply says that a byelection campaign should be at least 47 days in length. I put that to the House for its consideration.

[Canadian Volunteer Service Medal For United Nations Peacekeeping Act, November 25th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure and honour to debate Bill C-300, an act respecting the establishment and award of the Canadian volunteer service medal and clasp for United Nations peacekeeping to Canadians serving with the United Nations peacekeeping force. The award as envisaged by the promoter of the bill does not restrict itself merely to those who serve in traditional armed forces capacities but also would include people involved in peacekeeping areas such as policing, local administration, the delivery of aid, medical assistance or even election assistance.

I want to speak to this bill because I strongly support it. The bill is a well thought out initiative that recognizes the realities of the future. We know that the world is changing. We know we are entering a new era. Increasingly we see signs that peacekeeping in the wider sense, not just the traditional sense, will become a more and more important function of our armed forces and many other armed forces in the world.

We have traditionally focused our recognition and awards on traditional combat roles and traditional war theatres. It is time to update some of the recognition and awards. Domestically we are prepared to have medals and recognition that are more appropriate to the future roles that is seen for our armed forces.

In speaking in favour of this bill I would like to pay tribute to the member for Saanich-Gulf Islands very briefly. He has brought this bill forward and is one of my colleagues who is retiring at the end of this Parliament. I want to pay tribute to him for bringing this bill forward. He was a distinguished member of the armed forces who has been a great help to us. It has been a pleasure for all of us on both sides of the House to have him here. He is closing out his career by participating in the ultimate phoney war back and forth across the House of Commons and has been willing to act as our deputy whip, perhaps also to engage in his last peacekeeping assignment.

The bill has an interesting history, as other members have pointed out. For some time voices have been calling for this kind of award.

In the last Parliament this initiative was supported through the introduction of two private members' bills. The House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs called for the establishment of a Canadian volunteer service medal for United Nations peacekeeping. That committee was made up of the Liberal Party, now the present government, the Progressive Conservative Party and the New Democratic Party. Those were commitments which those parties made in a unanimous report. Endorsement for this has come from the Canadian Peacekeeping Veterans Association and the Canadian Association of the United Nations Peacekeeping Chapter.

Other countries already have similar awards: Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland, Ghana and, of course, the United States.

I could go on to mention the various groups that have pressed for this award: many members of the government, all parties, past and present, municipalities and petitioners. I will not dwell too much on that because I have a limited amount of time and I want to speak about other issues.

Mr. Speaker, I have a base in my riding which is being gradually relocated to your city. I am sure that is a coincidence on your part. However, the base is being relocated. During my time as a member of Parliament, having the military in my riding has given me a chance to deal with military personnel on a wide range of issues, including their experiences with peacekeeping assignments.

In my dealings with the military I have always been impressed with their commitment to their various engagements, including their peacekeeping engagements. In that context I want to express my concern about the previous failure to approve this bill. I hope that this time the government will approve it.

Bill C-258 was a non-votable bill when it was introduced by the hon. member for Saanich-Gulf Islands in the last session. As a non-votable bill the official representatives of the ministry spoke against it for what I consider to be the flimsiest of reasons. Basically the excuse was that Government House has a process for this and that process should be followed, that there is a decorations committee which has a process and that the United Nations has a process and we are partly involved in that process. They were all excuses based on these processes.

It amazes me how fast the government is to send people into conflict and how slow it is to recognize their contributions, whether it is in wartime or in peacekeeping missions. Reading over the debates from this session and from the last session when we debated Bill C-258, one is really struck by the glacial speed at which governments make decisions to recognize the contributions of our military.

Dieppe, Hong Kong, the merchant marine: we are talking about coming to terms with the full recognition of some of these activities a full 45 to 50 years after the events. In the case of Somalia, we have dragged our heels both in recognizing the contributions our peacekeepers made and also in finding out exactly what happened during the unfortunate incidents which occurred there. Of course, in that process the reputation of everyone who served has been tainted.

We are tremendously slow in dealing with the real contributions that military people make, yet not only are we quick to send them, we are quick to mobilize the resources of the state to make sure that the contributions of a handful of people are always recognized. The Prime Minister is recognized when he is at the United Nations or when he calls the President of the United States. He is getting the best publicity for his contribution. Our diplomats are being fully recognized. We have had some outstanding generals who have played particular roles in these missions. We make sure that they receive their full recognition and honour here in the House or at Government House or wherever else. However, we have been consistently slow in recognizing the real contribution of our military people. These people go into these situations, often risking their lives. In many cases they are dangerously under-equipped, assuming not just the risk of the mission but additional risks imposed on them by the general mismanagement of our armed forces over the past 20 years.

I have always been impressed by the fact that whenever one of these missions is called or conceived-somebody's brainchild somewhere-at how quickly the military people are to get their bags packed, to come out saying publicly from the general right on down to the private that they are ready to do, they feel confident and they are looking forward to the challenge.

Everyone who deals with the military knows that most of the time these people know that there are no clear rules of engagement. Half the time there is not a clear objective. Almost all the time they are grossly under-equipped, grossly undermanned and in great danger. Privately they will tell you about these concerns and they are always bothered by the fact that these concerns are not taken seriously, but they are good soldiers.

Good soldiers do not complain publicly, they just do it and this should be recognized. It is about time we started to recognize these things. I must admit I am very tired of this attitude, this tendency to praise people at certain levels and then to not recognize fully the people who do the work.

We are coming out of an era finally where it seems to be a noble thing for Liberal politicians to spend other people's money so they could get credit for presumably fixing problems. I am glad we are finally starting to come out of that era and to recognize that money cannot fix everything and furthermore it is not necessarily the government's money to start with.

I see this attitude still with us in military operations and military policy. Somehow it is noble for the Prime Minister or for the government or for others to be willing to put other people's lives at risk in order to solve or deal with military and humanitarian situations around the world. Let us not forget whose lives are at risk and who are making the contributions. It is the men and women on the ground and their leaders and commanders. That is on what this bill is focused.

Let me conclude by saying that rather than hear once again in this debate all about the processes and all about the impediments to getting this approved, the protocol and the fact that Government House should be first, let us just get on with doing on the basis of recognition what we do not hesitate to do whenever the telephone rings from New York or from the United Nations. Let us recognize our peacekeepers.

It about time that the government and the ministry got off their duffs and passed this legislation.