Bill C-24 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Income Tax Act (political financing)

Canada Elections Act

[Odina Desrochers, Bloc, Lotbinière—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to take part in this historic debate. I never thought I would see the day federal Liberal MPs would sing the praises of René Lévesque.

That is why I call this a historic debate, a bit late in coming, but better late than never, as they say. It is all part of the process of cleaning up politics.

What inspired the Prime Minister, at the end of his mandate, to finally decide to remedy the numerous shortcomings that existed in the way Canada's political parties were funded? It is not up to me to answer that question, but I am really glad to see that, at long last, the Canadian Parliament is taking action to make politics more democratic.

There is still much to be done, but at least this is a significant first step. That same step was taken in Quebec back in 1977. From that time on, MNAs had a free hand, because the voters of Quebec are the ones who decide what party they want to support. This is a free choice, with known rules and standards.

For a long time now, the Bloc Quebecois has been rising in this House to speak out against the major shortcomings in political party financing. Today I am delighted to hear the other side referring to René Lévesque as the one who changed the rules of democracy. I am proud to hear that, but I would point out that there a lot of time went by between 1977 and 2003. And we are only at this stage now.

When the whole business of the sponsorship scandal was raised, with all the media coverage it got, and the denunciations in this very chamber, with all the talk of Groupaction, the Prime Minister and all the Liberals knew very well that this situation arose because of the way the legislation stood at that time. But we still had to wait for changes.

Now there are some changes. Why did the federal government wait so long, why did it tolerate such major scandals as we have had here since the 2000 election?

I trust that the changes proposed by the government today are the start of a process of democratization in this House. First comes changes to political party financing. Next there will have to be some work on lessening pressure on parliamentarians, that is trying to democratize life in Parliament. We will have to discuss such things as the matter of voting along party lines, the matter of decisions being made without consulting the elected representatives of the people.

So that is democracy. The current Prime Minister—who will leave God knows when, officially at least in 2004, but in politics anything can happen—should not get to leave saying “I have made the most significant historical contribution in changing the party financing legislation”. There are other things that could be done. He could say, “I have waited so long to amend it; this must not be allowed to go on”. Above all, on the eve of a leadership race, it is important that those who will come after him uphold these changes.

Personally, I get the impression that the hon. member for LaSalle—Émard will be very tempted to revert to the old way of doing things. To talk about cleaning up the financing of political parties is one thing, but it is not so easy to address the issue of how candidates go about collecting money to fund their leadership campaigns. Having again benefited greatly from contributions from corporations, companies and friends of the party, they may well be tempted to revert to their old ways to pay them back.

I hope that in our debates in the next few weeks we will hear from these people and that they will make firm commitments to ensure that the historical step taken in this House with Bill C-24 does not disappear with the change in prime ministers.

In addition, all opposition parties, including the Canadian Alliance, should find more convincing alternatives than the one before us. The debate is far from over; it has only just begun.

I think that the people of my riding and all Quebeckers are proud today to see that the government is finally acting, the Bloc Quebecois having raised this critical issue of party financing countless times. Like the other parties of the National Assembly did when the PQ was defeated, the Liberal Party of Quebec respected the major changes made to the system. The people from my riding and from around Quebec expect that the future leader, the man or woman who will lead the Liberal Party of Canada, will uphold these changes. We must not backtrack, we must continue to move forward.

I think that the current debate needs to focus on the changes awaiting the Liberal Party of Canada, because that is the party in power. I invite all federal Liberals, especially those from Quebec, to make a public commitment to the voters, to say that they will uphold these changes. I invite them to promise to avoid going back, regardless of the political pressure that may be brought to bear on them during the leadership campaign.

In Quebec, the political parties remained faithful to what René Lévesque accomplished. I dare to hope that those who continue to make history in this House will remain faithful to these changes and that they will continue to speak highly of René Lévesque.

As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, I never thought that I would rise in the House to thank everyone here for recognizing the work of René Lévesque. Maybe, someday, members will say, “You know, in the end, sovereignty-association for Quebec is a good thing. It would put an end to east-west tensions. Perhaps it is the way of the future to redefine a historic framework agreement”.

I hope that these historic changes being made will be upheld, and that the appreciation for René Lévesque's work will embrace more than simply the issue of party financing. That, too, is part of the evolution. That, too, is part of history.

In closing, once again, I am proud of the changes proposed in Bill C-24, but these changes must remain in place, regardless of who becomes the next Prime Minister.

This historic step must not be undone. We must uphold this change for the sake of all Quebeckers and Canadians.

[Rick Casson, Canadian Alliance, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is good to speak to Bill C-24, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Income Tax Act (political financing). The two are closely tied together.

It was interesting the other day when the Prime Minister introduced the bill in the House. He stands here day after day, and defends himself and his government against scandal after scandal. He says over and over that everything is fine, everything is above board, and there is nothing going on that should not be and it is squeaky clean. On the other hand he brings in a piece of legislation and promotes it by saying it would clean up influence peddling. If there is not any, what is the problem here? I think an assumption we all must make is that there is a problem.

He indicated that this would make things more open and democratic. One of the members from the Liberal side talked earlier about being nominated. In some constituencies there is no nomination meeting. The Prime Minister parachutes a candidate and says it is the person he wants to run in that riding and that is who it is. In the governing party the Prime Minister has the right to not sign nomination papers. That is not democratic. It is certainly different from the way our party works.

If hon. members want to talk about fighting for democratic change, I do not think they should look across the House. They should look right here. That is something on which this party has based its policies and platform. There needs to be more democracy here in the House and throughout the system under which we operate. Time after time we have brought forward recommendations that could have been implemented. We have looked at all aspects of governance to see what could be done to make it more democratic and make Canadians feel that they have more of a say in what happens in governing the country.

However we have been turned aside. There were simple things like working with private members' business to make more bills votable allowing individual members the opportunity to have more of a say and to bring up issues that they were hearing from their constituents to put into law. However that is fought at every turn.

I believe the bill is proposing to take away from Canadians the opportunity to support who they think best represents their policies or what they feel is right for Canada and the Government of Canada. I have always maintained in my campaigns and in the campaigns of our party that if a person wants to donate, then that is great. People donate because they believe in the policies and platforms of a party and they believe in the candidate. If people donate because they expect to get something back in return they will be very disappointed. If people are donating to a political party because they think it will bring back some personal or corporate benefit to them, then indeed we do have a huge problem.

I will always remember that in the last campaign I received a cheque from an elderly widowed lady for a small amount. It was sent with an attaching note saying that this was all she had. She said it was all she could afford, but she wanted me to have it to use it to promote what my party and I believed in. That is what this is all about. If we take that away, if we make people donate through the tax system and contribute to parties in which they do not believe, that gets away from the whole aspect of what is right and what needs to be done in our political system.

I wish to do a recap on what the bill entails. The intention appears to be to compensate parties for the removal of corporate and union donations which are largely made at the party level rather than to individual candidates or constituency associations. The way the bill is constructed, there would be many ways to get around that. The amount of individual contributions is high. I am sure that if a union or a corporation were to funnel some money into a party, then that would be able to be done, even under the new rules with the $10,000 for personal contribution. When we think about that, the maximum tax credit people could receive is for a donation of $1,275, so if they are donating over that, then it certainly is not to get a tax benefit.

Political parties are at the heart of a modern political and electoral system and are essential to a vibrant and viable democratic system. It is so important that different parties come forward to represent different views and represent different aspects of society.

Whether this should entail public funding, directly or indirectly and, if so, at what level or what level is appropriate is the debate today. At present, registered political parties are publicly funded through the tax system, deductions for contributions, and through the partial reimbursement of election expenses. I will get into that a little later.

Candidates are also reimbursed for a proportion of their election expenses, while contributors can take advantage of the favourable tax treatment of political donations. There is a compounding factor that I will mention. The bill proposes to enhance and extend that regime.

Currently, registered parties can be reimbursed for 22.5% of their election period expenses. Anything that is spent during the writ period, the federal party or the national party gets 22.5% of that back. The rate of reimbursement of electoral expenses for candidates is currently 50%. In our local campaigns we get back 50% of everything we spend during the writ period from the taxpayer.

If people donate $400 under the new proposal, they get a 75% tax deduction for that. When we as candidates put that forward, we get 50% of that back. This has a compounding effect and the taxpayer continually pays for campaigns.

With respect to individual candidates, the bill proposes that the percentage of votes a candidate must obtain in his or her riding to qualify for reimbursement of electoral expenses be lowered to 10% from 15%. That 15% has always been a platform where we want to try to keep our opposition or the people who we run against us underneath that because they do not get the rebate. It is an additional challenge when campaigning. Now that has been lowered to 10%.

The proposed bill provides for an annual allowance. I want people to understand that this is an annual allowance to registered parties in the amount of $1.50 per vote received by the party in the previous general election, provided the party has received in the last election either 2% of the valid votes cast nationally or 5% of the votes in the ridings where the party ran candidates. Every year between elections that $1.50 will come to political parties. This figure is apparently based on replacing what would be lost to corporate donations. I believe there are other reasons for that.

Let us look at what happened in 1993. In the previous election in 1988 the Progressive Conservative government had a majority. That majority was reduced from roughly 170 seats to 2 seats. Over that period of time the support for the party had dropped right through the floor. It had come down to about 2% of what it used to be. However during the period of time between elections it would have continued to receive $1.50 for everybody who cast a ballot for it in the last election. In the meantime its support had absolutely evaporated. Therefore, in the last couple of years before an election things can change dramatically. People who had voted for the party but no longer supported it would still be giving $1.50 per year.

As an incentive to encourage contributions by individuals, the bill also introduces amendments to the Income Tax Act to double the amount of an individual's political donation, which is eligible for a 75% tax credit from $200 to $400, and to increase accordingly each other bracket of the tax credit to a maximum tax credit of $650 for political donations of $1,275 or more. The Income Tax Act amendments in the bill will apply to the 2003 tax year and beyond.

If we raise the eligible tax credit to 75%, I know one gentleman at home who will be completely torn apart by this issue. He wants to donate to the Canadian Cancer Society, the Kidney Foundation of Canada, Child Find or others and he wants to get the same credit for that as he does for a political donation but he cannot.

In wrapping up, we cannot support the bill because it puts the onus of funding political parties on the taxpayer in general, instead of a person having the ability to support the party that he or she wants.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-24, the details of which members have laid out in a number of ways, has to do with an important principle. It has to do with the principle of the appearance of government. Members will know that if it appears that something is so, that is almost as bad as if it were so.

We live in a society in which bashing politicians has become a national pastime. It is much like with the banks. I hate banks, but boy I love my bank. The job of a member of the opposition is to be critical and to try to slant the facts in a way which would discredit the government. Words such as “corruption” and “cronyism” continue to be thrown around to say that corporations are buying government favours and getting all kinds of work because they have somehow given money to a party.

The member is quite right. The perception of Canadians is that large corporate contributions have an influence on members of Parliament, on cabinet ministers, on bureaucrats and on government as a whole. Bill C-24 came forward to address the negative appearance of undue influence of corporations and unions on the Government of Canada and all those who are involved.

Canadians may not know as well as we do the kind of political bureaucracy that has been established which sustains the parliamentary democracy that we enjoy in Canada today. It is unlike that in the United States where there are virtually no limits on the amount of money that can play in politics. A congressman could spend anywhere from $1 million to $4 million on a campaign alone. People may ask themselves why someone would spend $1 million to $4 million to get a job that pays $200,000. It makes absolutely no sense. If we looked at the average net worth of a congressman, we would find that it is basically an elitist profession in the United States. It is the rich of the country who are governing a country of all economic walks of life and socio-economic diversity.

Canada enjoys a parliamentary democracy. People should understand it is important that there be political parties. It is important that those parties be vibrant.

Through the provincial and territorial wings of a party's offices, through the riding associations which are located in each of the 301 constituencies across the country, the members of those constituencies participate in the democratic process. They develop policy issues for their respective party. They continue to update, renew and review their positions on the important policy issues of the day. Virtually every policy issue is well researched and well articulated so that Canadians can understand not only what is the party's philosophy but also what is its platform, what is its vision for Canada and what that party believes Canadians want to see in their country in the decades to come.

Politics is about making decisions and making choices. This extensive process of political infrastructure operations requires funding. To protect that process and to ensure in particular that all Canadians have an opportunity to participate fully in our democratic political process, the Canada Elections Act and related rules guide us in how much can be spent on political contributions and expenses in elections.

Those rules are there so that every Canadian could become a member of Parliament. It is not a matter of money. The principle of a partially publicly funded system of political financing allows people to raise enough money, with the support of all Canadians through the tax credit system, to present their views and present their candidacy for a particular political party or as an independent.

The cross-section of the House today is much different from what people would imagine. We are not all lawyers. We are not all retired businessmen who have made our fortunes and we are now doing this. In this place there are teachers and farmers. There are academics. There are lawyers and medical doctors. I am a chartered accountant. There are ranchers, truckers and chiropractors. There are former municipal and provincial politicians. When I look around I see a microcosm of Canada in this place.

Canadians should know that when all Canadians have an opportunity to participate in the democratic parliamentary process and all Canadians have an opportunity to run for public office and become members of Parliament, that is a good thing. One of the reasons the publicly financed political system has been widely accepted as appropriate for Canada is it promotes our democracy.

One part of the bill suggests that we need to make it a little easier for certain people, whether they be women, minorities, people of a certain culture or religion, to participate.

I am not sure whether tinkering around with the amount of money that someone can spend on a nomination campaign will really matter to whether someone has an opportunity to become a nominated candidate. Let me share the way I think it goes, in terms of if someone wants to be a member of Parliament.

I think an analysis of this place would find that about 80% of the people have very impressive community service records. Over a long period of time they have made significant contributions to their communities, whether it be through a charitable organization, coaching ball or hockey, or being on hospital boards. I was on the board of a shelter for battered women and a rent geared to income housing organization. I spent nine years on a hospital board and coached hockey and ball as well.

In time I got around to realizing that what I really liked to do was to be with people and talk to people. I liked to help them with their problems and I enjoyed the satisfaction of getting things done. For those reasons, people got to know who I was.

When the time came and the opportunity was right, I put my name forward. I was involved with the Liberal Party. It was my party of choice based on my knowledge of the history and the background of the Liberal Party. I became a nominated candidate for the Liberal Party because I was able to go to the people whom I had served in my community and say, “I would like to do this. I need your help. Will you join the party? Will you support me in becoming your candidate in the next election?”

People do not get elected because they have money any more. I think they get elected for what they have done, not for what they promise to do.

The bill goes a long way in raising the importance of re-instilling some respect and some honour for our profession. This is a very honourable profession and I know members value it very much. Part of the process is to deal with the perception that there is undue influence of large contributors and that the rules are not quite right, to ensure that no one would somehow conclude that money was controlling the destiny of legislation in Canada.

The bill is an important instrument for us to deal with. There are many technical aspects to it. I think we can get it right. However, the macro objective is to correct the appearance of government as it will help to improve the democracy of Canada.

[Gurmant Grewal, Canadian Alliance, Surrey Central, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the constituents of Surrey Central to participate in the debate on Bill C-24, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Income Tax Act, political financing.

The purpose of Bill C-24 is: (a) to restrict the amount of contributions allowed to political parties, riding associations and candidates, including candidates for nomination for party leadership; (b) to compensate the political parties for the anticipated loss in revenue from large corporate and union donations by way of direct public financing; and (c) to extend the regulatory aspects of the Canada Elections Act in terms of registration and financial accounting to riding associations as well as nomination and leadership candidates.

The bill is yet another instance of the Liberals realizing their past mistakes, taking a good idea and turning it into a bad law. A candidate with money has a campaign, whereas without money has a cause.

It may be true that money is the mother's milk of politics but I believe political fundraising has contributed to the growing cynicism about public life.

Right or wrong, Canadians believe that money buys influence, and we cannot blame them. A recent study revealed that of the top 25 federal government contractors, 17 are major donors to the federal Liberal Party. Moreover these companies donate to the Liberal Party, versus all other parties, at a ratio of 6:1. At the candidate level the ratio is 30:1.

Major donors are not at all representative of the Canadian economy. Rather almost uniformly they tend to be government contractors, regulated industries and companies seeking changes from the government.

When I was the official opposition's critic for CIDA in 2000, I found out that Tecsult, a Quebec firm which had been getting repeat contracts from CIDA, was awarded contracts since 1993 worth $134 million and the same conglomerate gave to the Liberal Party and its candidates donations worth $137,000 since 1995. Since we first raised this matter in 1997, Tecsult and its affiliates were called Geratec. That firm was dissolved shortly thereafter but CIDA kept paying out millions of taxpayer dollars to the same principals.

Why was the CIDA minister allowed to siphon off taxpayer funds to these firms in exchange for Liberal donations? There are many examples like this.

The Prime Minister is determined to pass Bill C-24 even having gone so far as to threaten an election over the bill. Why after 10 years as the head of the government has he finally become so passionate over campaign finance reform? That is the big question. It seems it took the Prime Minister until he was just about to leave the tunnel to finally see the light at the end of it. Maybe the Prime Minister wants to take care of his good political friend, the former finance minister, whose mind he can read and whom he is so obviously determined to assist in any way possible.

The Prime Minister's sudden conversion probably has everything to do with cleaning up the image of the government which has been for so long plagued with scandal after scandal, corruption, cronyism with every suggestion that it has been helping Liberal friends. The Prime Minister should be restoring transparency and accountability to the political process. This bill is too little too late.

My major objection to Bill C-24 is that it removes the incentive to go out to ordinary Canadians and raise money from individual donors. In fact discourages and thus limits individual participation in the political process.

Rather than being dependent upon donations, parties and politicians will become dependent upon the public treasury. That seems like a very Liberal idea.

The public should contribute to parties voluntarily, not by law. The government acknowledges that under this legislation political parties and candidates would be 90% on the public take, up from 60% today.

The bill would double the amount that can be claimed against the full 75% tax credit for political contributions, versus the 16% credit for contributions to other deserving causes such as curing cancer, from $200 to $400. For example, if the party received a $400 donation, the contributor would only pay $100. The tax man would pay the remaining $300. This measure could add approximately $15 million in taxpayer subsidies to the parties in a non-election year and approximately $40 million in an election year.

That is not all. Under the legislation a party would be reimbursed 50% of its election expenses, up from 22% under the current law. This change means that, using the same previously mentioned $400 contribution, when spent, the party would receive another $200 from the taxpayer. Of the original $400 in sum, the taxpayer would be on the hook for $500. For larger donations the credit would be proportionately smaller. It gets even worse.

Under the proposed legislation, political parties would be permitted an annual allowance based upon the number of votes received in the previous election provided the party received either 2% of the votes cast nationally or 5% of the votes in the riding where it ran candidates. For every vote received, a party would get $1.50 per year. Even those who agree with public financing, which I do not, should find $1.50 per vote excessive.

Let us use the results of the last federal election as a benchmark, but it should be kept in mind that election witnessed the lowest voter turnout in recent history so the numbers could easily be higher in future elections. This would have amounted to a public subsidy of more than $20 million to the parties each year.

First the Liberals pass a law against so-called third party advertising forbidding Canadians to spend their own money on a cause they believe in. Now they are forcing the same Canadians to spend their money on a cause they may not believe in.

The Canadian Alliance believes that political parties should be more dependent upon financial support from grassroots members of political parties. People will give money to a party that provides them with a voice and an opportunity to bring about real change in the way the country is governed. That is why we have had such success in attracting individual donations. In 2001 the Canadian Alliance had 49,000 different contributors whereas the Liberals had only 6,500.

This would also put independent candidates and the small and new fringe parties at a disadvantage. They would not have an equal and fair chance during an election. The governing party, the largest party in the House, would continue to enjoy an advantage in the cycle for a long time to come.

The government has long believed it can spend Canadians' money more wisely than Canadians themselves can. That attitude needs to change. Canadians can decide for themselves to whom they want to give their money. They do not need the government to decide for them.

There are many other weaknesses I could point out. Recently it has come to my attention that some members have accumulated large trust funds containing hundreds of thousands of dollars. That is not fair. The provision is impossible to meaningfully enforce so that there could be some accountability.

I will oppose the bill as it increases taxpayer funded subsidies to political parties. I can support in principle limitations on corporate, union and individual donations. I rigorously condemn the enhanced public funding of political parties, especially where it is unrelated to actual financial contributions from a party's supporters.

We are prepared to accept the current reimbursement formula for candidates and parties for direct election expenses. We will seek amendments in committee to tighten up an attempt to prevent indirect contributions through trust funds to make the provisions of the bill fairer to smaller parties and non-incumbents and to limit taxpayer contributions to parties they do not support.

Therefore I will oppose the bill.

[Jacques Saada, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I speak to Bill C-24.

This is really a very bold initiative, comparable to René Lévesque's when he was Premier of Quebec in 1977, in terms of cultural changes to political party financing.

The reason I find it to be such a bold reform, which basically deserves substantial support, is that, politically, it makes it possible to achieve, at the federal level, an uheard of degree of transparency, in terms of the financing of federal political parties.

We in Quebec are used to that, to seeing such principles spread across the country. I find it to be an extremely encouraging and promising approach to politics, one which bodes well in terms of exercising democracy.

This bill provides for limits on the amount of contributions by individuals and corporations. Individuals may contribute up to $10,000. Corporations may contribute up to $1,000, but only in electoral districts, that is to say to electoral district associations as opposed to directly to political parties.

This bill imposes spending limits on nomination campaigns. Hon. members know as I do that two or three of us who are aspiring to become candidates, for the Liberal Party for example, in a given riding, are put to the test of a vote by members. To that end, we campaign to be designated official candidates for that riding.

For the first time, statutory limits will be imposed; I say statutory because some limits are imposed in an ad hoc fashion.

This bill provides for the public financing of political activities. This is not new in itself, since there is already a public contribution, through tax credits and the partial refund of election expenses. We know that there is already a public contribution to political activity.

Now, an amount will be paid for each vote obtained by the party in the previous election, to ensure full transparency of political party financing.

When we talk about democracy, I think that we must not forget that the best exercise in democracy is for the public to take control of political activity.

How can this be accomplished? First, when a political party or a riding association is required not only to provide audited books showing income and expenditures, but also to indicate the source of all income and the allocation of expenditures, and to make these figures public, I think that enormous progress has been achieved in terms of transparency.

This bill is fundamental and, as I said earlier, it will change Canada's political culture.

It is not perfect. I believe that there are numerous questions that need to be answered. For example, the bill is supposed to come into force on the later of January 1, 2004, and the day that is six months after the day it is assented to.

We know that federal electoral boundaries are being readjusted. The process has begun. The new map of electoral boundaries will come into force only for elections after June 2004.

In other words, if Bill C-24, now before us, was effective as of January 1, 2004, with certain ridings having to file reports after six months, everything would have to be changed again to take into consideration the new ridings.

Why do things twice? Maybe there is a way to improve things in this respect. I am using the electoral map as one example, but there are others.

For example, in the Liberal Party there are provincial wings and a federal wing. There are also provinces where some of the rules of the Liberal Party of Canada and the provincial Liberal Party are the same and some are not. It is essential to take the time to sort this out as efficiently as possible.

We are talking about ceilings. As far as I am concerned, and I have said it before, the notion of capping financial contributions from business, like contributions from individuals, is fundamental to this bill. If the ceiling is $1,000 and it is spent in one single riding, will this not be an advantage for urban ridings, since that is where businesses have their head office, compared to rural ridings where there are fewer head offices? I think that it is worth sorting out this problem in a manner consistent with the substance of the bill, on which we all agree.

What happens when there is a nomination and an electoral campaign in the same year? The same company could not contribute twice; it is limited to a contribution of $1,000 a year. Perhaps there is a way to arrange it so that a nomination contestant keeps this $1,000, so that the candidate who actually runs for the party in the election that follows no longer has access to it.

There are all sorts of problems of this nature that—I repeat—are not fundamental problems, but enforcement problems. Some political parties, as I said earlier, have provincial wings. If the financing base for the ridings of these provincial wings is reduced, and if refunds go to the wing or at least party headquarters, how will these provincial wings be able to finance themselves when they do not have the right to receive funds from companies directly? There are many problems of this kind that we must address.

Nevertheless, I really do not want us to lose sight of the fact that this bill is absolutely essential. All of us here know the procedure. I would like to remind the House that a bill exists once it has been introduced; this is called first reading. Then there is a debate—during which I am speaking today—which is second reading. This is concluded by a vote in this House. The purpose of this vote is to determine if there is support for the principle of the bill.

I will vote without hesitation for the principle of this bill. Then, in the normal flow of things, the bill will be sent to committee, to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs in this case, for detailed consideration. That is when the issues and concerns I have raised are looked at in detail, not only to make this bill excellent, but so that it can be enforced in a consistent, harmonious and effective manner.

I look forward to the day when, with these well-thought out, well-worked, well-researched changes—and in fact with the hope that all the political parties will support them—we will be able to give Canada, thanks to this initiative taken by our leader and Prime Minister, new legislation and new provisions that will govern the transparency of political parties and their operations in Canada. I will be extremely proud to have a final vote on this.

[Yves Rocheleau, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to speak to Bill C-24 regarding political financing. I would first like to correct, as it were, the comments made by the member for Okanagan—Coquihalla, former leader of the Canadian Alliance, former leader of the Reform Party, at the end of his speech, when he suggested, in response to the remarks by the former Minister of Finance, that it would be wrong and probably shameful for Canadian democracy to finance the Bloc Quebecois, a party which promotes Quebec sovereignty, as you know.

This may seem annoying, but such is the price of democracy. These people should understand that. If Canadian democracy is held up as such a wonderful model, then we should be only too glad to take it to its full and logical conclusion.

We could make the same complaints in Quebec, as sovereignists. We know that the legislation in Quebec, which I am going to talk to you about shortly, allows for opposition parties in Quebec to receive funding, just as does the Parti Quebecois.

However, these parties, both the Liberal Party of Quebec and the Action démocratique du Québec want to consign the people of Quebec to the provincial category once and for all; they want to “provincialize” Quebec forever.

We, as sovereignists, tolerate that. We allow these people to receive public financing. They want to place limits on Quebec. And we allow them to receive this funding. The complaints of the former Minister of Finance, like those of the former leader of the Alliance, are either entirely founded—and allow us to make the same complaint to the Liberal Party of Quebec and the Action démocratique—or completely ridiculous.

I am going with the latter. These remarks, especially when they pop so spontaneously out of the mouth of the former Minister of Finance, can be described as simplistic, not to say crude, in the context of democracy.

I am now getting to the main thrust of my remarks. It is with great pride and even emotion that I welcome this opportunity this morning to speak on the federal bill on more appropriate and sounder political party financing. We know that, thanks to René Lévesque and thanks to the Parti Quebecois, Quebec is one step ahead, one very long step ahead, not only of Canada but also of all political parties in the western world or almost all, with the possible exception of a few I may not know about.

This is very advanced legislation providing that only—and this is the fundamental intent of the law—voters, those individuals who have the right to vote, may make contributions to political parties—this is a major aspect—subject to an annual limit of $3,000 per voter.

In practical terms, this means that, through this kind of sound financing, a Quebec government of any stripe belongs to everyone and no one. The latest study shows that, out of four or five million voters, 58,000 made contributions, and 82% of these contributions were under $200.

This shows how democratic this financing is and how the Government of Quebec, regardless of who is in office, belongs to everyone and no one. And the Parti Quebecois in particular, which was behind this bill and introduced it, is reflected in it.

All this to say that, as everyone knows, Quebec society is therefore a very advanced society which can truly be an inspiration to other governments, and that is what has happened with the Government of Canada. It took some time. As we know, distance can make communications difficult, and Ottawa is far away from Quebec City. There are bureaucrats and technocrats everywhere. There may also be preconceived ideas to the effect that anything coming from Quebec is as good.

At any rate, they woke up. Before moving on, the Prime Minister and member for Saint-Maurice saw fit, and this was wise of him, to introduce this bill which, if enforced properly, will bring about—this is something we must realize—a complete overhaul of electoral procedures in this country.

We know that historically it is the oil and gas companies, the banks, the timber companies, the arms producers, the pulp and paper companies, the steel producers who had the government's ear and privileged access to influencing this government's policies, thanks to the secret campaign fund that existed in this country. All you had to do was to call the right person, at the right time, and say that the bill under consideration was not well regarded by such and such an industry and that it would be appreciated if the government could remedy the situation.

It was understood that things worked this way, and things will continue to work this way until the bill passes. Furthermore, the Minister of Canadian Heritage made a somewhat naive admission when she recently said that, in fact, she had witnessed government policies or bills being amended in some cases in response to pressure from people who had made large contributions to the party. They could not afford to ignore it during a given debate or when a certain political will became apparent. It was essential to listen to the wishes and concerns of these people who had been so generous over the past few months or years.

Not only is Canada involved, so is the U.S.A., and we all know how much influence they have on us. According to my knowledge of the situation, and to what I have heard from others, the situation is worse in the United States. A person cannot be a candidate unless he or she is a millionaire to begin with, and also has the support of a specific industry, be it oil, sugar, forestry, lumber, highway construction or whatever. Anyone wanting to get into politics as a senator or member of the House of Representatives in the United States needs to have backing. That is the way things are now in that country. A person needs a whole lot of money to get into politics, to run for office successfully in the United States.

It is not just a matter of money, but also of the way it affects democracy. This is a totally negative situation. The more private sector financing there is, and the more hidden that financing is, the more negative the effect on democracy. There is no such thing as a free lunch, as they say. The greater the effect on democracy, the more the government serves private interests rather than collective ones. That is what we have tried to avoid in Quebec. I believe we have been more successful than other governments that are rather close to us geographically.

If he wants to use Quebec as a model, then the Prime Minister and member for Saint-Maurice should have gone further, and based the bill on Quebec's referendum legislation. He should have announced that he was going to abide by the spirit of that legislation, even if he does not have such legislation himself.

There is the issue of the financing of political parties, but there are also public consultations. There are elections, but there are also public consultations, in Quebec in particular.

In Quebec, there is legislation that covers such consultations. There is the referendum bill, which, as we know, was completely ignored and flouted by the rest of Canada. In the dying days of the 1995 referendum campaign, Quebeckers were treated to a love-in, and told how much Canadians wanted them to stay. We know that the federal government spent money freely then. It gave its employees the day off. It helped the cause, even if it was in violation of the spirit of Quebec's legislation. The law was ignored, was flouted. Companies such as Air Canada, Via Rail and others contributed what they could. The same thing for private sector companies, which, in some cases, sent out threatening letters to employees, to vote no under the threat of reprimands. They all should have abided by the spirit of Quebec's forward-thinking legislation.

A major asset that we have in Quebec in terms of democracy is the way returning officers are appointed. Again, in Canada, we are behind the times. The Liberal Party of Canada has been in power for 69 years over the last century. It is very tentacular. If you are not a Liberal, a former riding association president, a former defeated candidate, and so on, you have no chance of being appointed a returning officer. In Quebec, this is done through the most calculated and scientific competition possible. People are appointed based on their qualifications. Canada should also adopt this practice.

Canada would benefit and this would meet the recommendation of the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada to depoliticize the system. It would allow him to fire anyone who does not do a good job on election day. Since he did not appoint them, he cannot fire them, at present. This too is very serious for democracy and taints the electoral process.

Our complaints are rather legitimate and I have already said as much to the Chief Electoral Officer here, in Ottawa. There is a negative bias; there is an adversary among us, before us. I hope Canada will learn from this.

[Guy St-Julien, Liberal, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik, QC]

I must point out here that the applause from the Bloc Quebecois is because they know what an excellent financing bill there is in Quebec.

Various countries such as the United States and France are also imposing ceilings on political contributions. Bill C-24, which would limit contributions, follows up on the commitment to ensure clear and full reporting of contributions and expenses.

Canadians have the right to be informed and to have access to this information, just as Canadians and Quebeckers are learning today how members of this House have been spending public moneys for their office and on travel to the House of Commons and around Canada and Quebec for many years.

The government must show leadership in order to restore the foundations of our democratic government. The government intends to exercise this leadership.

As legislators, we have an interest in tackling this issue head on, not only for the good of our government, but also for the good of future governments, no matter what their political stripe.

Many people have said that the Prime Minister has taken up where René Lévesque left off; that is true. For the first time, Ottawa is limiting donations to political parties. Big business no longer has the right to give a dime to political parties, and contributions from individuals will be capped. Ottawa has finally decided to follow the lead of Quebec and Manitoba in developing a framework for financing the electoral process.

Individuals will have to limit their donations to $10,000 per year. Business and unions are almost totally cut out of the system. They will be entitled to make contributions of only $1,000 per year and only to individual canditates or riding associations. They can no longer make direct contributions to a political party. The $1,000 limit will apply to all subsidiaries of a company or locals of a union.

The idea is to discourage big business from financing elections, while allowing small local merchants, corner stores or your brother-in-law's drycleaning business to encourage their member of Parliament.

The Prime Minister and the government House leader clearly explained it. The minister responsible stated:

It is a small amount for big business. Say I represent Imperial Lord and there are 301 candidates in Canada. What difference would it make if I send $12 to each of them? It is a small amount, but at the same time it allows the corner store owner, who is incorporated, to buy two tickets to the member's annual dinner.

For those of you who are using the increasingly frequent examples of people circumventing the Quebec law to prove that such limits do not work, Ottawa's answer to you is that it has perfected René Lévesque's model.

We looked at what happened in Quebec in 1977. The limit was $3,000. In real dollars, that represents about $10,000. Some say this is a mistake, but in the end, it is not because if we consider indexation, it represents about $10,000 today.

The bill contains measures to discourage circumventing the law. The penalty will be a fine of up to $5,000 or five years in prison. This seems steep when we know that the average donation was $591 in 2001 for both corporate and individual donations.

There is also increased transparency. The bill seeks to plug the infamous black hole so often denounced by the Chief Electoral Officer, Mr. Jean-Pierre Kingsley.

The limits will also apply to nominations and party leadership races. Riding associations, until now exempt from having to report their sources of revenue outside of election campaigns, will now be required to report all of this information.

I agree with this. In our riding association, there will have to be yearly reports to the Chief Electoral Officer as to how money from contributions is spent.

In these three cases, yearly reporting is required to the Chief Electoral Officer. All of the money that goes directly or indirectly towards elections will be accounted for publicly.

Our most important principle is complete disclosure. The bill puts an end to black holes and money given under the table. The government leader in the House referred to this. He gave an example of a numbered company, ABC1234 Inc. making an election contribution. “How is that transparent?”, he asked, in reference to contributions from numbered companies.

To offset these limits, the state will increase its funding for political parties. Public financing currently costs Canadians $39 million. That figure will increase by $23 million per year, and by $40 million during election years.

Candidates will need to receive 10% of the votes, instead of 15%, in order to qualify for a refund of half of their election spending. As well, political parties will receive a 50% reimbursement on their election spending, compared to the current 22.5%. This is a complete overhaul at the federal level.

If a political party receives over 2% of valid votes cast, it will receive $1.50 for each vote obtained every year after the next federal election.

[Keith Martin, Canadian Alliance, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak today on Bill C-24, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act.

On the surface, it is a bill that professes to end influence peddling in Canada and I could support it, as could any member in the House. However, the fact of the matter is that this is not what the bill is about. The bill has some serious deficits of which the Canadian public should be well aware because it is their money that will be used to fund us as political parties, instead of in other ways.

The first aspect of the bill deals with corporate and individual donations to parties and candidates. The bill limits funding to political parties by corporations to $1,000 a year and by individuals to $10,000 a year. I do not have any problem with that at all. In fact, putting limits on individual and corporate donations is a good thing. But where does influence peddling take place? It takes place underneath the table. The big chunks of money that we find from organizations like Groupaction and others come in under the table and amount to the tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars that are given to political parties in Canada today. Therein lies the challenge.

Producing transparency in the manner in which individual corporations are able to provide moneys to political parties will remove the ability to have influence peddling. I would suggest that what the government could do is adopt what the European Union has done, and that is the “publish what you pay principle”. Not only would I say publish what you pay, I would say “publish what is received”. If we could do both of them, influence peddling would be severely limited in Canada. That is a good way to end it.

To register constituency associations and to put more transparencies in place are good parts of the bill, but where I have serious problems is in using public moneys to fund political parties, and really, if this part of the bill were removed I would stand up and support the government on its bill.

In our system today, after an election parties are refunded from the public coffers 22.5% of the amount of money that they have actually spent. In the bill the government proposes to increase that to 50%.

Second, the government also proposes to increase the tax credit from 50% to 75% of donations. When individual organizations like the Canadian Cancer Society, the Heart and Stroke Foundation and so many others are starving for money and indeed when there is more reliance placed on them to raise their own funds, would it not be right for the government to increase the amount of money that it allows individual charitable organizations, regardless of what they happen to be, so that they would have the same charitable deduction as political parties? Why not do that? That would be a very good and progressive move on the part of the government: to make individual charitable deductions the same whether one donates to a political party or to a charitable organization.

The other aspect that we take umbrage at is the annual allowance. What I think the Canadian public will find very interesting is that in the bill the government proposes to allow the taxpayer to give political parties $1.50 for every vote they have received in the last election, for every single year. Let us look at the facts in the last election. For the Liberal Party, that would mean $8 million every year. My party would receive $4.9 million and the Bloc Québécois $2 million per year of taxpayers' money. In total, almost $19.3 million of the taxpayers' money would be going to us as political parties every single year.

These days when there is so much competition for moneys for health care, defence and a whole host of issues that help the people of our country, surely the government would take it upon itself to say we should not be funding Canadian political parties with taxpayers' money. A better use of the people's money is to put it into health care so people can get their health care when they need it, or to put it into social programs for the poor and underprivileged when they need it, or into housing or aboriginal affairs, or a host of issues that affect the poorest of the poor, because $19.3 million of the taxpayers' money is nothing to sneeze at.

I would support the bill if the government removed the public financing of political parties and took it upon itself to be innovative. I would ask the Minister of National Revenue to please give charitable organizations the same tax write-off as would be given to political parties. It is the right thing to do.

On the issue of a vibrant democracy, it is sad to say that a justifiably cynical public is moving away from political structures and into alternative structures to try to get what they want. That has happened because there has been a defanging of the country's political institutions.

MPs cannot represent the public who sent them here in the manner in which they should be. We need the power to represent our constituents and to do what they want. It is sad that in 2003 that is not the case and as time passes, it is becoming worse. Politics has become a cynical game fuelled by the taxpayers' dollar. The problems of the nation are merely the backdrop upon which the game is played for the maintenance or acquisition of power. That has to change.

Whoever sits in the prime minister's seat and chooses to do this, chooses to democratize Canada, chooses to democratize this House, will have a legacy that will live far beyond that person's years. Whichever leader chooses to do that will have put something in the history books that he or she can be proud of and that will serve the Canadian people very well for years to come.

There are things such as empowering MPs and changing private members' business. The rules are crafted by this House, by your office, Mr. Speaker, to go into the standing orders. In the waning days of December before the winter break, the government chose to renege on its promise. It chose to end the hard work of changing private members' business, that small island of opportunity where MPs can innovate. It chose to kill it and it has gone back to the dark days of private members' business being a farce. That has to change.

With respect to committees, the public and others who have been involved in committees must sigh and shake their heads at how disappointing the experience has been. Committees could be a vibrant place where members from all parties could put forth their individual expertise to deal with issues and offer solutions to help the government to better our country.

Committees are basically a make work project for MPs. We study issues. We often study the studies and then we go back and study them again. Legislation is reviewed which is a good thing.

However, there is a dominance of the party in power. The parliamentary secretaries sit on the committees. The government controls the committees with an iron fist. The original intent of committees as a place where MPs could actually have a vibrant discourse with each other and come up with something good, productive and effective is absent.

Many committees do good work. Even when that good work is done, the committees put together documents that get a day of interest in the media and then they are tossed on a shelf to collect dust. I am sure that somewhere in Ottawa there is a large warehouse where those studies are collecting dust.

We do not need more studies. We need action. We are not lacking in solutions. We are lacking in the political will to implement solutions. We need to deal with issues. We need to put people to work, to shorten waiting lists, to give people health care when they need it, to clean our environment, to help aboriginal people, the most dispossessed people in our country. That is what we need to do. We do not need to root around for more solutions.

There are numerous people outside and inside the House with umpteen constructive solutions that only need to be applied. The government does not need to apply them on a national scale. If the ministers applied them as pilot projects, imagine what we would see. We would see success and sometimes we would see failure, but surely where there was success we could share it with people from coast to coast and adopt that for the betterment of all Canadians.

I close by saying that the government has a grand opportunity to reform our system to make it more transparent and to democratize the House for the betterment of all Canadians.

[Gerry Ritz, Canadian Alliance, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Mr. Speaker, this is another interesting debate today. It is a bit of a change of pace. Everybody came rushing back to this place this morning all intent on a closure motion that was to have been brought down on Bill C-10, the bill coming back from the Senate on firearms and cruelty to animals.

The government threw us a curve and pulled that one off because it was having trouble lining up the backbenchers on that side, not just the opposition but its own backbenchers, who were saying that they would not support that. It is a bit of an unprecedented thing when we see a closure motion rescinded. It was a bittersweet victory that brought us to Bill C-24 today, the election financing bill.

I watched with some interest as the government House leader threw the curveball, the knuckleball, the Nerfball, the spitball, or whatever it was today, that got us over to this bill. Then he stood up and did a tirade, reminiscent of the old rat pack, of how it was everybody's fault but his. The last time I checked he is the leader of the government that has a majority. He controls the agenda totally and completely. It is at his beck and call, and the cabinet that he serves.

How in any way could it possibly be the opposition shanghaiing this place or withholding this or doing that? How could that possibly be? Yet he stood there sanctimonious as anyone could believe, as hypocritical as anyone could believe--and I see you chuckling, Mr. Speaker. You saw the same act I did.

It would have been a great act to have at a circus. He would have had people coming in and paying money to see that. Without a tear in his eye he was able to do that; without a smile on his face. I guess that is a great attribute that he has after all these years in this place. But it is certainly nothing to do with the opposition.

This particular bill, whether it gets shanghaied or not, has more to do with what backbench members do or not do over on that side and the leadership contests, and problems that they have at this time.

Having said that, I look at the bill and think, here we go again. Regarding the last number of bills that I have spoken to in this place, the direction might be right but the focus is off, this might be right but this is missing, and there are all these loopholes. I see that again in Bill C-24. I see the public disengaged. There is a huge disconnect now between what government says and does in this place, and what the taxpayers who are paying the bills and for whom we are doing this are actually asking for.

We are asking taxpayers to totally fund the political system in this country. They do to a great extent now, somewhere in the neighbourhood of 40% to 50% with tax rebates and different things that go on. However, we are looking to take that to an unprecedented level with this bill. If taxpayers had a disconnected appetite for politics before, they certainly will have a larger disconnect once they start to analyze what the bill is all about.

This is all about public money, taxpayers' money, paying for the political habits of parties. We are seeing things in the bill that are not covered under allowable expenses at this point. I wish to mention one thing that is inappropriate.

Candidates who ran in an election, and I will use my riding as an example from the 2000 election, who received 15% of the popular vote received their deposit back. It was basically called that. A candidate received half of the allowable expenses as a rebate from the taxpayers. We have all been through that, Mr. Speaker, and you have too. However I see the threshold being lowered to 10%. I think it should go the other way; it should go to 20%. We are talking about public money here. Someone who cannot get 20% of the popular vote in a riding is missing out.

I know the House leader made a comment that none of the Liberals missed by more than 10% so it would not affect them at all. However, in reality, the Liberal candidate got 17% in my riding because 3% belonged to the aboriginal vote. There were aboriginal folks with whom I had become very friendly with who phoned me and said that there was a problem. The polling booths had my picture up with a big X through it along with signs saying “Don't vote Canadian Alliance” and all these wonderful things, which are not allowed but it was done. That is what gave the Liberal candidate the 3% to get above the 15%. It is a dirty way to get it. He will need that money a lot more than I will next time around if he decides to run again because he is fighting an uphill battle with gun control and all sorts of different things that have helped us out in that part of the country.

However, the bill does not in any way address the fundamental problem with political contributions.

There is an unappetizing flavour in the electorate that we are corrupt. We saw that through the HRD scandals, and the advertising and sponsorship fiasco that is still under investigation. There is hardly a file that public works has touched in the last two or three years that is not before the RCMP or that the Auditor General will not have a look at. Everything is suspect. The bill does not address any of that.

We saw polls at the height of the fiasco last spring that two-thirds of Canadians thought that government was corrupt. They labelled us all together and that was unfortunate. We are all here doing a job at, of course, different levels of our capability, but we are still doing a job on behalf of our constituents. We answer to them, not to the public purse, but to our constituents. I do not see the bill addressing that type of fine tuning.

It is all about corruption and kickbacks that we saw throughout the whole sponsorship fiasco. The bill in no way would stop that. It may stop the numbers at times, but it would not limit it and it would not halt it in any way.

We have a majority government that is having a real problem with a corruption label, and an unethical conduct label for some of the frontbench folks. They have the discretionary money and hundreds of millions of dollars that they can put into their pet projects and say that is what government will do because that is what people want, and so on, because it has done some polling. Even the polling would be covered under the bill. We saw the polling cut out of sponsorships and rightly so, and here it is put back into the bill.

We have a backdoor deal going on to put that polling cost into the bill because it is a significant factor. There is no doubt about it. Good polling costs good money. It is being slipped back in at public expense because the government can no longer do it under the sponsorship file because people are looking over its shoulder. There is a bit of sleight of hand which is part of that circus act that the government House leader was doing before.

I cannot see anything but more apathy and low voter turnouts continuing because people are feeling disconnected and asking, how relevant is this place?

There are many days when I have that same concern. I sat in on a committee meeting this morning and I wondered what the heck we were doing. It is just busy work. We get a few people in behind closed doors and let them listen to this, that or whatever. We are not here to be entertained. We are here to do a decent job and I do not need that busy work. I have constituents that I need to call and work on their files because they are having a tough time with Revenue Canada, the GST, or things like that. I do not need that busy work.

There is a member screaming over there to let legislation go through the House. I say to that member to bring forward something worth voting on and we will do it. The Liberals have a majority. They ram legislation through using closure. This is not legislation; this is ripping off the public. It is all about money. It is all about cashflow for political parties. That is what it is all about: $1.50 per vote. I would do very well because I get lots of votes.

It is all about paying off party debt, bringing it forward, and letting the public pay for it. I do not think Canadians want to do that. They are very critical of bills like that.

There are things that are roadblocks to good legislation coming through the House, but not very often are they caused by the opposition parties. A lot of it is the result of the government not being able to get its own house in order. It has very little to do with us. There are so few tools that we have at our discretion to slow things down from the runway that happens here all the time.

The Senate is not sitting right now. The member says it is because we are halting legislation. We did not pull Bill C-13. The government House leader did. We did not pull Bill C-10 today. The government House leader did. Bill C-20, the child protection bill, has been shanghaied for a little while.

We have seen a long term calendar that might go a week into the future and it is subject to change. Let us see some good legislation that we can put through. Let us see a schedule that the government sticks to. Let us see some dates that are locked down so we know what we are working toward, and we can get in here and speak to that legislation.

We spend so much time, two steps ahead and three steps back, and then we get legislation like this that is so full of holes that Canadians do not understand it. They are concerned about big business and unions taking over the political parties. Good and rightly so, but this bill does not address that in any way at all. It would limit the numbers, but it would change them around and would put them in from a different way.

It is more smoke and mirrors. It is legislation that I certainly cannot support and I know my folks at home would expect me to stand up and say this is not good.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Solicitor General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by saying what an honour it is for me to take part in this debate on Bill C-24. This is a bill that has been long awaited, at least within my association and my riding.

Moreover, my association had drafted a resolution calling for a ban to be placed on financial contributions to political parties by companies and corporations rather than individuals.

That resolution was debated during last November's biennial convention of the Liberal Party of Canada by the Quebec wing. Unfortunately, an amendment was proposed, and won out, to instead propose a limit on contributions from corporations, labour unions and associations, rather than the out and out prohibition sought by my association.

I must tell you, Mr. Speaker, that once the bill was introduced and I had an opportunity to examine it, I was pleased with what I saw. I shall explain.

I have already been involved with a code of ethics for law enforcement. My close to 10 years of experience has led me to the conclusion that the best protection for any institution within a democracy is a system based on a number of principles, among them accountability, transparency, good governance or effective control, and independence.

Transparency is included in the legislation, as was mentioned earlier by one of my colleagues from Winnipeg. This legislation calls for clear accounting on the part of riding associations, provincial wings of federal parties, and federal parties themselves at the national level, in terms not only of the donations that are received, but also in terms of the actual disbursements that are made by these various entities.

This legislation calls for transparency and accountability in the area of nomination and leadership contests. That is quite a good thing. It would go a long ways to restoring some of the confidence that ordinary Canadians have in their politicians and in our democratic parliamentary system here. Why do I say that? I will give the House a few facts.

Voter turnout dropped to below 55% of eligible voters during the last election. Many people attribute this voter apathy, in part at least, to the widespread idea that politicians are subject to undue influence from those who give them money.

Some parliamentarians would say that the contributions they receive are philanthropic in nature, and that the money comes without conditions. Others would say that it is impossible to prove that politicians are influenced by the money they receive.

However, there is cause to wonder, like many citizens do, why corporations, non-profit organizations or unions would contribute to a political party or candidate if they do not expect anything in return.

Is what they expect necessarily in the interest of Canadians? It is cynicism, pure and simple. I do not believe that elected officials are corrupt. I belive that the vast majority of elected officials, at every level, whether it be municipal, provincial or federal, are honest and act with integrity.

However, this is not what Canadians seem to think. According to polls, the vast majority believe that they are unduly influenced by corporations, companies, unions and non-profit associations. Whether this is true or not, that is the perception.

When I was the assistant commissioner for police ethics for the province of Quebec, I learned one thing. Public perceptions, particularly when they are false, need to be disproved by the state.

Take the example of police. We know that the vast majority of police officers are honest and go their jobs properly. They are polite, they do not abuse authority, power or use excessive force. However, in some communities, in some provinces and cities, there is a perception that the police are corrupt, abusive and so on.

In every Canadian province, the federal government has implemented monitoring, governance and accountability systems for police forces. It goes without saying that the same should be done for elected political representatives.

There are other facts to consider. In a 2001 poll conducted by the Canadian Democracy and Corporate Accountability Commission, 56% of respondents were in favour of barring business or union contributions to political parties; 33% were against prohibiting business contributions; 35% were against barring union contributions.

I think that this speaks loud and clear. In fact, certain business leaders had already expressed some reservations about the current laissez-faire attitude, which leaves too many doubts about political contributions by corporations, business and unions.

The current system also has the inconvenience, it must be said, of putting businesses in a difficult position, in that some people expect that companies will be good citizens and make donations to charities and to political parties, while others consider these same acts a shameful attempt to manipulate the political process.

Some companies have decided to give up making political contributions. I think that BP, Alcan and Rio Tinto are among them.

Moreover, some people fear that companies will get around the rules and illegally write off political contributions by claiming them as expenses. I will not comment on this.

However, I do want to comment on two things in this bill. There is accountability and transparence, effective government and independence. I think that the Chief Electoral Officer is independent and he has a good track record.

As for the penalities for people or companies that want to get around the provisions of this legislation with regard to contribution methods and ceilings, I believe the penalities are too low.

A maximum penalty of $2,000 or six months in prison is truly too low for any attempt to subvert our Parliament and our democracy. I feel these penalties should be reviewed by the government and should be much stricter.

I would simply like to thank the Prime Minister and the governing Liberal Party for this bill. It is a big step in the right direction.

[Jean-Yves Roy, Bloc, Matapédia—Matane, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-24, recently introduced in this House and dealing with political party financing in particular.

From the outset, I must recognize that we, in the Bloc Quebecois, agree with the bill in principle. I will elaborate on this in my remarks, even if I have only 10 minutes. Ten minutes may seem like a long time to some, but it is a very short time for others.

I want to point out that the purpose of the bill is to clean up our political system. The idea is to do things the way they are done elsewhere. Naturally, Quebec was mentioned. In Quebec, legislation was passed 26 years ago. If memory serves, it was passed in 1977. But we must look at what was going on before then to understand that the purpose of the bill is truly to clean up politics. This bill has a number of flaws, and I will come back to that. Still, it is unfortunate that such a bill was so long in coming at the federal level.

[Ken Epp, Canadian Alliance, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I too am happy for the opportunity to address Bill C-24. I think the bill is an opportunistic opportunity for the Prime Minister to take some of the heat off the ethical breakdown in government.

We have been literally hammered over the last couple of years with boondoggles, cost overruns, misuse of taxpayer money and all sorts of accusations regarding whether or not there was proper accountability and whether or not ministers properly fulfilled their duties.

The Prime Minister made a big speech saying that he would be making some changes, one of them being, of course, the proposed code of conduct for MPs. Even though none of these scandals involved backbench MPs on the Liberal side or opposition MPs, they have become part of the focus, moving away from the accountability of ministers, who the Prime Minister was quite happy to promote during the election of 1993 where he said that when he became Prime Minister those ministers would be held accountable. We frankly have not seen that.

In any event, now we have, as part of the package, electoral reform. We find that it is an interesting approach that the government is taking. It is interesting because of the fact that it has decided to change the way political parties and candidates are financed.

A couple of times in the debate today it has been mentioned that the Canadian Alliance would probably accept this money. I want to make it very clear that we are opposed to the bill because we believe that some of the measures in it are just plain wrong. However I want to make it very clear that we will obey and abide by the law that is passed.

The Prime Minister has announced that he will force the bill through by making it a confidence vote. In other words, if members of Parliament choose to vote against the bill it would show a lack of confidence in the government. The government's own members are being browbeaten into voting for this whether they agree with it or not. I think that is unconscionable. It is a breach in the democratic process.

At any rate, the Prime Minister has brought this forward and will jam it through and, with that, we will have some notable changes in the way that political parties and candidates are financed.

I would like to be on record as saying that some of the measures in the bill are laudable. I certainly agree with at least the word “accountability”. The Liberals tend to use the word a lot but they do not often produce the results that we are looking for. However I do believe in accountability and openness.There is nothing wrong with having true accountability.

However there is one thing that I have come to understand, one can refuse to be open and accountable in two ways: first, by giving no information; and second, by giving so much that it gets lost in the shuffle. I had that experience not too long ago when I asked for information. Several crates of documents were delivered to my office. All of that information can be called accountability. I looked at it and noticed that a lot of it was simply photocopies of photocopies of the same thing over and over again. It was just a way of trying to snow me. I received the stuff I asked for and I could no longer say I did not get it. However the usefulness of it was minimized because of the fact that the volume was so great. I think this is one of the features of the current rules.

We have rules about publicly disclosing the donations of people who give $200 or more to a party or to a candidate. Frankly, I think that is part of the overkill. I guess there is nothing wrong with knowing who donated to whom. Sometimes people join a party, not because they believe in that party, but because they want to become operatives in the party for spying reasons. I have heard of that happening. I suppose it does happen from time to time. Would it not be interesting if some of the labour unions knew to which parties their bosses belonged in order to get on the mailing list or other things like that?

I think it is redundant to ask for public disclosure of small donations. It is the larger ones that could be open to questioning because they could be used to influence the party at different times.

The philosophical question is how political parties should be financed. We all accept that there are political parties in this country and that hey should have enough money to operate. It is unfortunate that from time to time political parties go into debt. That ought not to be.

I remember with pride being part of the Reform Party in 1993 where one of our campaign slogans was that the party would run its election campaign the way Canada should be run, debt free. We did that for a number of years during several elections. I as an individual candidate did not spend money I did not have in order to avoid going into debt. I think that is a laudable goal. We need to make sure there is a solid base for the financing of political parties.

I strongly believe that it should be voluntary and not coerced. Frankly, if a member of the Liberal Party came to my door and asked if I would help the party raise money for the next election by buying some tickets to its fundraising dinner I would decline the offer. I do not believe the Liberal government is doing a good job of governing the country. I think it needs to be replaced. To ask me to finance its next election campaign would be an affront.

I know people will say that the bill would not take money away, except in proportion. If people vote for them that is how they get their money. It is based on the votes.

I understand that part but in my riding of Elk Island where, I would venture to say, two-thirds of the people would support the Canadian Alliance and about 20%, one in five, would support a Liberal--those are numbers based on the last election--it would be an affront to take all those taxpayer dollars out of my riding and say “That part of your tax dollars which goes to support political parties will be divvied up 50% to the Liberals and 20% to the Canadian Alliance”. Right away there is an anomaly when we bring in that kind of a scheme.

I think it is anti-democratic. I believe democracy is served when individuals are free, when they are given the freedom to support the organization or the political party of their choice, not because it is brought in.

I remember how upset I was, as a forced union member, to watch the union give $100,000 to the NDP. I am diametrically opposed to the principles of the New Democratic Party, as it probably is opposed to many of the things in which we believe. However to force me to pay my dues and then watch the money go to the New Democratic Party was a personal affront to me. It was a violation of my personal freedoms.

That same principle applies when we are taking taxation dollars and giving them to political parties. That will increase cynicism toward political parties and not decrease it.

In order to strengthen the amendment that we proposed, I would like to propose a subamendment. I move:

That the amendment be amended by inserting after the word “state” the words “, an increase from approximately 40% to over 70%,”

For explanation, there are also some commas included in there but I did not read the commas because they are symbols and not words.

[Carol Skelton, Canadian Alliance, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to contribute to this important debate on Bill C-24. The bill is supposed to bring much needed reform to Canada's campaign financing legislation but I think the legislation has failed to achieve almost all of its intended goals. I will explain this in more detail, but I think most Canadians do not understand how most campaign financing is currently done in Canada.

The Liberals would like Canadians to think that this piece of legislation is the magic wand that will restore openness, accountability and honesty to the Canadian political process. It will not. Money for political parties generally comes from two sources: private individuals and organizations such as businesses, unions and advocacy groups.

Some parties rely mostly on union donations and others rely mostly on donations from large corporations. I am proud to say that the Canadian Alliance relies on small donations from individual Canadians.

I think it is something when the opposition is funded mostly by average Canadians and the governing party is not. The Canadian Alliance receives 61% of its funding from individuals and the Liberals receive just 19% of their funding from individuals.

It takes a great deal of effort for politicians and their parties to solicit moneys in small amounts from any person. It takes humility and genuine sincerity to go door to door. It takes pride in one's work to ask for a piece of someone's paycheque based on one's performance. It requires that we remain connected with those who vote for us.

It takes a lot for an individual to sit, write a cheque, buy a stamp and mail it to a political party. It is no wonder large corporate donations appeal to well connected politicians. There is no need to go to the voters. There is no need to listen to their concerns. There is no need to put them at the top of the political agenda as shortcuts to a ballot box.

While corporate donations have a place in the political process, all parties would do well to focus on individuals too. Nonetheless, I would prefer that corporations voluntarily donated to political parties rather than force taxpayers to fund political parties.

As one of the few women in the House, I would like to address one of the largest myths surrounding the proposed legislation. Those in favour of the legislation have said that the bill would make it easier for women to enter politics and the House of Commons. I do not believe this is the case, nor do I think it would attract the kind of candidate Canadians deserve. I can tell anyone, male or female, that political life is very challenging, even more so than I first imagined. It is not a place for those who are insecure, weak or timid. Candidates usually get elected on their merits alone. That is what makes our democracy strong.

We have shown in the past that those who have wanted to get here and have been qualified have succeeded many times. This House has women who carry both themselves and their parties. The member for Edmonton North and the member for Saint John are just two examples of the women I speak of. These strong women detest the insulting strategies of the Liberals. They got here because they earned it themselves, not because someone held their hands and fought their battles for them. They deserve to be proud of their efforts and their constituents are proud.

The women in the Canadian Alliance all got here on their merits. There were no special deals. There were no parachute candidates and no quotas. I am proud to be one of those women who earned her seat. My constituents were given a fair choice. If I may say so myself, I think they made the right choice. I got here because I earned my constituents' respect. I did not get here because my leader rigged the nomination process in my favour.

Some women in the Liberal Party got here with a helping hand, which subverted the democratic process. I think this can only serve to taint their accomplishments. Would it not be nicer if they all knew they got here because they deserved to do so, not because someone more powerful did? Unfortunately the gender equality they sought to achieve and represent was only possible because of the gender equality they engaged to get here.

The Liberals want to slide a campaign financing bill through the House of Commons under the shady excuse that it will help women get elected. How shameful. Women make up the majority of the population and increasingly detest their treatment as a special interest group. If this bill is not good enough for Canadians as a whole, it definitely is not good enough for women.

If for a moment I could accept the arguments of the proponents of this bill, I still cannot understand why the taxpayer has to pay for political parties they do not support. If voter apathy is growing and political involvement is dropping, the Liberals must address these problems up front. If Canadians cannot be persuaded to willingly support political parties, they should not be forced to do so through their taxes.

It is interesting that the bill does not address falling voter participation in any way. Canadians are becoming increasingly disenfranchised by the current political system. One voter in my riding said in a fit of frustration that it does not matter who one votes for, the government still gets in. If anything, the bill would encourage voter turnout to continue to drop.

If parties are not forced to involve Canadians for their financing, they are likely to avoid involving them at all. When their income is taken straight off the paycheques of all Canadians, where is the incentive to go door to door? If Canadians think that they do not see enough of their elected representatives currently, just wait and see what happens if this bill gets passed.

I truly feel there is no better way to increase voter turnout and participation in our democracy than to allow Canadians to contribute as they see fit. What could be more frustrating than being forced to donate to a party a person does not support?

The Prime Minister and the Liberals just do not understand what Canadians hate, yes, hate: being forced to pay for things they do not support. Look how upset Canadians got when they were forced to pay for cable channels they did not support. A channel that may have been accepted by the majority was rejected because of the resentment of being forced to pay for it. Let us not do the same thing to our democratic process.

I must question the timing of this initiative. The Prime Minister and the former finance minister have had almost a decade to bring forward this campaign finance reform. They never did. What have they done instead? Instead they have sucked every dollar from the taxpayers' pockets at every turn. Now it seems that personal vendettas, oversized egos and fear of political revenge by average Canadians are the motivation for campaign finance reform.

The bill takes one step forward and two steps backward. For many years union members complained that they had no choice in how much money they donated to what party. They detested their lack of input into political party donations. They often had to support a political party of their executive's choice, not of their choice. It appears the government set out to address this legitimate concern. It is proposing to limit the union contributions so significantly that they play no significant role in a particular party's financing.

On one hand, the government wants Canadians to have control of how their money is used politically and on the other hand the government moves in the opposite direction. Now it is proposing that taxpayers be forced to contribute to political parties involuntarily through their taxes. Why is there a double standard?

Honestly, I think the bill is a pre-emptive strike by the Liberals to replace forced taxpayer funding for what must be diminishing corporate donations. I cannot imagine the Canadian business community is donating to the Liberals like it used to. Broken promises, fraud investigations, billion dollar boondoggles, a lack of legislative agenda, failed trade talks, limitless spending and other reasons come to mind.

Many think the corporate and union donation ban will hurt the former finance minister's leadership bid. I do not think so. What could be more of a favour to the Prime Minister's replacement than to put in place a guaranteed income. This is a small guy from Shawinigan plan to steal millions from taxpayers to fund another campaign for a party that has lost touch with Canadians and their priorities. This was the guy who was supposed to bring democracy back to the House of Commons but instead earned the title of the friendly dictator. What a double standard.

In summary, I must say that I do not agree that the bill will bring more women to the House of Commons.

[Gerald Keddy, Progressive Conservative, South Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise to speak to Bill C-24. The member for Brandon—Souris was to speak on this bill, but it is my understanding that his plane is late so I will speak on his behalf.

This is a bill that has been much discussed among members of our caucus, our colleagues in this place, our peers, and certainly one that will continue to be discussed. In particular, the bill would address a number of issues to do with campaign and party financing relating to the electoral system we have in Canada. Probably most importantly, it would address the issues of how we actually report the funding of political campaigns.

The bill would require electoral district associations along with leadership and nomination contestants to disclose to the Chief Electoral Officer the amounts and names of everyone donating more than $200. They would also be required to disclose all expenses incurred. Currently only candidates and political parties are required to disclose donations received. The bill sets out the rules governing such reporting. It looks from the road as though we would have a more reliable system, hopefully a more accountable system and, one would assume, a more transparent system.

I am not the critic for this particular piece of legislation, however there is one question that I have been asking for which I have not received an answer from anyone. If there is someone on the government side with the answer to this question when I am finished my remarks and comments I would appreciate hearing it. My question is, how much of the system is financed by government already? That would include, of course, the amount that is given back by the government, the cost of auditing all the disparate accounts of the 301 members of Parliament in this place, the cost of running individual campaigns, the cost of auditing the books, and the actual amount of money that is given back.

We may be surprised if we had that information. I would have thought, in a fair, accurate and accountable system, that would have been the point that the Prime Minister would have made when he introduced this piece of legislation. There seems to be no willingness on the government to tell us how much is actually being paid now, although we would expect that if we had that information we would be better able to make a decision that we will have to make about this particular piece of legislation. It may be higher than we suspect; it may be lower than we suspect.

There are a couple of other issues. Aaron Freeman, in the Hill Times , writes about the campaign fundraising bill by the numbers. He says, “The sleeper issue is how it will increase the power of parties and not the power of members of Parliament”. I would think most of us in this place would want to have a finished product at the end of the day that actually gives more power to individual members of Parliament. Along with more power we would also expect more accountability and transparency.

Aaron Freeman makes a number of points, but two in particular are worth repeating. He writes:

Based on the 2000 election, the government calculates this will result in payments of $18.9 million a year. However, this figure ignores that our population increases each year. More importantly, it does not take into account that the last election's voter turnout of approximately 57% was a record low. If voter participation returns to the levels of the pre-Liberal era, and our population continues to expand at the current rate, we can expect to pay an additional $5 million to $10 million in public funds for parties in the coming years.

Some would say, and maybe correctly, that this is the price of democracy. I do not have an argument with that, but I do have a word of caution. If it is the price of democracy then we should know that up front during the debate. We should know the final cost at the end of the day and the full projections of where public funding for political campaigns is headed.

Freeman goes on to say that Bill C-24 would allow the donor to claim 75% of the first $400 instead of the current $200, determining the cost to taxpayers of the credit would be very complicated. The finance department would have difficulty figuring out the current credit costs and it would be hard to know how many donors would adjust their donation pattern in response to the new reforms.

The government estimates the added price tag at $3 million in non-election years and $6 million in election years. Quite a gap between $3 million and $6 million, of course, but again my question and point to my colleagues is that we really have some estimates that are based on record low voter turnouts. We do not know in any way, shape or form the actual cost of this piece of legislation to Canadian taxpayers at the end of the day.

I find that problematic. The idea that the taxpayers of Canada should finance political campaigns may be the right way to go. I am not saying it is not. I am saying I would like to see more information and accurate information laid on the table. All parliamentarians deserve that.

This bill would deal mainly with expenses and reporting of those expenses, nomination spending limits, surpluses and donation limits. The surplus and donation limits are worth going over again.

Currently, candidates for election must return any surplus to either their riding association or their party. Bill C-24 would require that surpluses incurred by leadership candidates also be transferred to the party or to a riding association. I think the horse is already out of the barn on that one because we have a number of leadership candidates out there, and maybe this is good judgment on behalf of the government, who are reported to have raised in excess of millions of dollars and no one knows where those leadership funds are. There are a number of them who are now ministers of the Crown and former ministers of the Crown who have left politics.

It would seem to me that either the government is speaking from knowledge that this was wrong to begin with and refused to change it, or it thinks that now it has had a number of plums and payouts to party faithful and that now all of a sudden it can change it for anyone else in the future, as it should never have been there to begin with, I might add.

Regarding donation limits, individuals would be banned from contributing more than $10,000 per year in total to a registered party and its electoral district associations, candidates and nomination contestants. I have listened to some of the questions being asked on this piece of legislation and this one seems to raise most of the issues. Perhaps this will get settled in committee; perhaps not. Perhaps we will say that although someone can only contribute up to $10,000 per year, if there are six members in a family, each of them could contribute $10,000 and therefore, although the family might be classified as one entity, it would actually be contributing six times the total allowable amount for a single person or a single entity as in the legal definition of the word.

Individuals would also be banned from contributing more than $10,000 to leadership contestants. Corporations, unions and associations would be banned from donating to any registered party or leadership contestant. However they would be able to contribute up to $1,000 in total per year to a party's candidates, nomination contestants and electoral district associations.

When I look at that, it begs a greater question that somehow corporations, unions and associations would be banned from donating to any registered party or leadership contestant, yet individuals would be able to donate up to $10,000. This question was raised by the member for Windsor--St.Clair. Why is a union or union office limited to a set amount? Whereas a corporation, which could pay bonuses to its employees and funnel the funds to leadership candidates or to a political party, are not? Maybe these issues are being addressed the same as the cost of this.

Exactly what is the cost to Canadian taxpayers now and what is the cost after the voter turnout is factored in, which was an alltime record low in the last election at 57%? If population increases at a scheduled rate and if voters start to turn out in numbers closer to what we could expect, at around the 70% mark, then that skews the figures on which this legislation is based.

The legislation also deals with reimbursement of election expenses. The annual allowance to political parties would be equal to roughly $1.50 per vote received by the party in the previous general election. To qualify, the party must have received either 2% of the votes cast nationally or 5% of the votes cast in the riding where the party ran a candidate. In the past that amount was 15% of the total votes received for the party to receive its share of its election expenses.

The point remains, we have changed the numbers and I do not see an accurate accounting of everything being factored onto one page. This should be a fairly simple operation. We should get a two page handout showing the cost of the last campaign, the cost of the next campaign and how it affects the riding associations and individual members of Parliament.

There seems to be a number of areas in the legislation where it spends as much time explaining a few simplistic things and as it does avoiding some difficult issues like trust funds and what happens to cabinet ministers in the Liberal government who run for the leadership and amass $2.5 million or $2.6 million in some of the trust accounts. Quite frankly we do not know where they are. One would expect that some of those accounts would be promissory notes, so if they run for leader they will receive $10,000 now and $50,000 later or $5,000 now and $10,000 coming later.

We do know a number of leadership hopefuls from the Liberal benches are no longer leadership hopefuls and they have not passed in their trust accounts. I assume many of them must have them in their pockets. The only way we can know differently is to have them tell us. No one is certainly offering that information. We can only assume that the individual leadership hopefuls still have the bulk of those funds in their own accounts.

Certainly, if this type of legislation does anything to prevent that type of abuse by public officials, then I absolutely support this part of the bill. This is the type of legislation at which we should be looking.

I really wish I had better faith in the government's managerial skills. I do not think we could discuss a single issue in the House, whether it is the upcoming budget tomorrow, if there is anything left in the budget that has not been leaked. We will find that out in 24 hours or less. Let us take a look at the track record. We are not certain this eliminates the trust funds and the ability to fundraise the way the leadership contestants have in the past.

We have not seen any issue that the government has handled with fiduciary responsibility to the Canadian citizens and taxpayers. We have not seen those issues come back to us with proper accounting. We have five million SIN cards, social insurance numbers, that are unaccounted. We have an $800 million cost overrun in a long gun registry and there is no guarantee it will work.

[Andy Scott, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to build on what my colleague from Windsor said, which was the fact that the Alliance Party would accrue quite a bit of money in this new regime. I want to make one point very clear.

Given the fact that we have always had public contribution by virtue of the tax credit on $100, $200 and $300 donations that essentially means that the Alliance Party is prepared to take public funds on the basis of its ability to raise money but not on its ability to get votes. That is very revealing.

I do support Bill C-24. One of the elements that has not been discussed too much is the accounting, the reporting around nominations, leaderships and so on. These things are long overdue and I am pleased we will be raising the bar in terms of keeping Canadians abreast of what is happening and where party finances come from and where they go.

I have always supported some kind of limit on corporations, including bans, because I do believe, although I do not think there is any truth in it, that Canadians link donations with work for the government and so on. In my case, if someone in my constituency were to give me a $3,000 donation and that person received a contract at CFB Gagetown it would all be honest and legitimate. Donations are encouraged by the system and contracts are heavily scrutinized by the crown construction agency, nevertheless a story would appear in the paper indicating that somebody gave me $3,000 and received a contract for it. It would be unfair to the vendor, unfair to national defence and, frankly, it would be unfair to me. We need to take this problem seriously. However, we do not want to replace corporate donations with stacked individual donations. That is a concern and it should be looked at.

I do support the bill but I believe the individual donation level is perhaps a little high. The corporation limits might be broadened to two or three ridings instead of just one but I do not feel all that strongly about that. I support the limits. I also support the ban on corporation donations to the centre and I support public funding of political parties as being democratic.

When the Prime Minister spoke on this issue earlier he said that there could be some unintended consequences. I would like to speak to a couple of them.

First, in Atlantic Canada most associations are federal and provincial at the same time. Unfortunately, in my province there is limiting legislation, and it is $6,000 individual and corporate. That means that the Liberal Party of New Brunswick could get a $6,000 donation and the Liberal Party of Canada could not take that. That means that eventually there would be a great deal of pressure to divide parties. From an operational point of view, that would be bad for the process, bad for my region and bad for those areas where there is no critical mass if we had to divide simply by virtue of the fact that the province could receive money that the feds could not receive. That would taint the money to some extent. That is an important feature. New Brunswick has this legislation. I was executive director of the Liberal Party at the time we negotiated it the other way. It is something we have to look it. We can fix it but it will take some work and it needs to be brought to the attention of the House.

I also think we need more time than the six months identified in the legislation in order to do this right. We are trying to make a transition from political parties that are supported by companies or unions to one that is fundamentally supported by individuals. That is the intent of the legislation. That will take some time and I am not sure six months is long enough. In our experience in New Brunswick, the transition was made over a couple of years.

I also believe that the provisions in the bill for nominations perhaps are too high. It is 50% of the allowable amount in an election and it should be 25% at a maximum.

I also would like to see the legislation speak to the question of third party advertising as has been mentioned.

To respond to the issue of public funds, which has been brought up by many members, I would like the House to know that in the province of New Brunswick we have received public funds since 1977-78. In fact, at its height we received $2.18 a vote, much more than the $1.50 proposed in the legislation. It is not unprecedented. We have had the rebates that were mentioned earlier and tax credits on donations in the past.

When Mr. Hatfield left office in New Brunswick in 1987, all of the pundits across the political spectrum, all of the editorialists, and all of the people observing the political process, when asked what was the most important thing Mr. Hatfield did for the province of New Brunswick, they all turned to political process financing with public funds.

At the end of the day this is a very important exercise in democracy and over time the taxpayers of Canada will come to see it that way, just as they have in my province of New Brunswick.

I would like to thank the government for introducing this important and overdue legislation. I would also like to thank those people in other parties who would find a way to support this. It is important for the country and the political process.