Bill C-2 (Historical)

Federal Accountability Act

An Act providing for conflict of interest rules, restrictions on election financing and measures respecting administrative transparency, oversight and accountability

Part 1 enacts the Conflict of Interest Act and makes consequential amendments in furtherance of that Act. That Act sets out substantive prohibitions governing public office holders. Compliance with the Act is a deemed term and condition of a public office holder’s appointment or employment. The Act also sets out a detailed regime of compliance measures to ensure conformity with the substantive prohibitions, certain of which apply to all public office holders and others of which apply to reporting public office holders. The Act also provides for a regime of detailed post-employment rules. Finally, the Act establishes a complaints regime, sets out the powers of investigation of the Commissioner and provides for public reporting as well as a regime of administrative monetary penalties.
Amongst other matters, the consequential amendments to the Parliament of Canada Act provide for the appointment and office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner along with his or her tenure, expenses, duties and other administrative matters.
Part 1 also amends the Canada Elections Act to
(a) reduce to $1,000 the amount that an individual may contribute annually to a registered party, and create a distinct $1,000 annual limit on contributions to the registered associations, the nomination contestants and the candidates of a registered party;
(b) reduce to $1,000 the amount that an individual may contribute to an independent candidate or to a leadership contestant;
(c) reduce to $1,000 the amount that a nomination contestant, a candidate or a leadership contestant may contribute to his or her own campaign in addition to the $1,000 limit on individual contributions;
(d) totally ban contributions by corporations, trade unions and associations by repealing the exception that allows them to make an annual contribution of $1,000 to the registered associations, the candidates and the nomination contestants of a registered party and a contribution of $1,000 to an independent candidate during an election period;
(e) ban cash donations of more than $20, and reduce to $20 the amount that may be contributed before a receipt must be issued or, in the case of anonymous contributions following a general solicitation at a meeting, before certain record-keeping requirements must be met; and
(f) increase to 5 years after the day on which the Commissioner of Canada Elections became aware of the facts giving rise to a prosecution, and to 10 years following the commission of an offence, the period within which a prosecution may be instituted.
Other amendments to the Canada Elections Act prohibit candidates from accepting gifts that could reasonably be seen to have been given to influence the candidate in the performance of his or her duties and functions as a member, if elected. The wilful contravention of this prohibition is considered to be a corrupt practice. A new disclosure requirement is introduced to require candidates to report to the Chief Electoral Officer any gifts received with a total value exceeding $500. Exceptions are provided for gifts received from relatives, as well as gifts of courtesy or of protocol. The amendments also prohibit registered parties and registered associations from transferring money to candidates directly from a trust fund.
The amendments to the Lobbyists Registration Act rename the Act and provide for the appointment by the Governor in Council of a Commissioner of Lobbying after approval by resolution of both Houses of Parliament. They broaden the scope for investigations by the Commissioner, extend to 10 years the period in respect of which contraventions may be investigated and prosecuted, and increase the penalties for an offence under the Act. In addition, they empower the Commissioner to prohibit someone who has committed an offence from lobbying for a period of up to two years, prohibit the acceptance and payment of contingency fees and prohibit certain public office holders from lobbying for a period of five years after leaving office. They require lobbyists to report their lobbying activities involving certain public office holders and permit the Commissioner to request those office holders to confirm or correct the information reported by lobbyists.
Amendments to the Parliament of Canada Act prohibit members of the House of Commons from accepting benefits or income from certain trusts and require them to disclose all trusts to the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. The amendments also authorize the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner to issue orders requiring members to terminate most trusts and prohibiting them from using the proceeds from their termination for political purposes. In cases where the trusts are not required to be terminated, the amendments authorize the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner to make orders prohibiting members from using the trusts for political purposes. An offence is created for members who do not comply with such orders. The amendments also provide that, in the event of a prosecution, a committee of the House of Commons may issue an opinion that is to be provided to the judge before whom the proceedings are held.
Finally, Part 1 amends the Public Service Employment Act to remove the right of employees in ministers’ offices to be appointed without competition to positions in the public service for which the Public Service Commission considers them qualified.
Part 2 harmonizes the appointment and removal provisions relating to certain officers.
Amendments to the Parliament of Canada Act establish within the Library of Parliament a position to be known as the Parliamentary Budget Officer, whose mandate is to provide objective analysis to the Senate and House of Commons about the estimates of the government, the state of the nation’s finances and trends in the national economy, to undertake research into those things when requested to do so by certain Parliamentary committees, and to provide estimates of the costs of proposals contained in Bills introduced by members of Parliament other than in their capacity as ministers of the Crown. The amendments also provide the Parliamentary Budget Officer with a right of access to data that are necessary for the performance of his or her mandate.
Part 3 enacts the Director of Public Prosecutions Act which provides for the appointment of the Director of Public Prosecutions and one or more Deputy Directors. That Act gives the Director the authority to initiate and conduct criminal prosecutions on behalf of the Crown that are under the jurisdiction of the Attorney General of Canada. That Act also provides that the Director has the power to make binding and final decisions as to whether to prosecute, unless the Attorney General of Canada directs otherwise, and that such directives must be in writing and published in the Canada Gazette. The Director holds office for a non-renewable term of seven years during good behaviour and is the Deputy Attorney General of Canada for the purposes of carrying out the work of the office. The Director is given responsibility, in place of the Commissioner of Canada Elections, for prosecutions of offences under the Canada Elections Act.
Part 3 also amends the Access to Information Act to ensure that all parent Crown corporations, and their wholly-owned subsidiaries, within the meaning of section 83 of the Financial Administration Act are encompassed by the definition “government institution” in section 3 of the Access to Information Act and to add five officers, five foundations and the Canadian Wheat Board to Schedule I of that Act. It adjusts some of the exemption provisions accordingly and includes new exemptions or exclusions relating to the added officers and the Crown corporations. It empowers the Governor in Council to prescribe criteria for adding a body or an office to Schedule I and requires Ministers to publish annual reports of all expenses incurred by their offices and paid out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund. It adds any of those same officers and foundations that are not already included in the schedule to the Privacy Act to that schedule, ensures that all of those parent Crown corporations and subsidiaries are encompassed by the definition “government institution” in section 3 of that Act, and makes other consequential amendments to that Act. It amends the Export Development Act to include a provision for the confidentiality of information. It revises certain procedures relating to the processing of requests and handling of complaints and allows for increases to the number of investigators the Information Commissioner may designate to examine records related to defence and national security.
Amendments to the Library and Archives of Canada Act provide for an obligation to send final reports on government public opinion research to the Library and Archives of Canada.
Finally, Part 3 amends the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act to
(a) establish the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Tribunal and empower it to make remedial orders in favour of victims of reprisal and to order disciplinary action against the person or persons who took the reprisal;
(b) provide for the protection of all Canadians, not only public servants, who report government wrongdoings to the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner;
(c) remove the Governor in Council’s ability to delete the name of Crown corporations and other public bodies from the schedule to the Act;
(d) require the prompt public reporting by chief executives and the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner of cases of wrongdoing; and
(e) permit the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner to provide access to legal advice relating to the Act.
Part 4 amends the Financial Administration Act to create a new schedule that identifies and designates certain officials as accounting officers and, within the framework of their appropriate minister’s responsibilities and accountability to Parliament, sets out the matters for which they are accountable before the appropriate committees of Parliament. A regime for the resolution of issues related to the interpretation or application of a policy, directive or standard issued by the Treasury Board is established along with a requirement that the Treasury Board provide a copy of its decision to the Auditor General of Canada.
Part 4 also amends the Financial Administration Act and the Criminal Code to create indictable offences for fraud with respect to public money or money of a Crown corporation, and makes persons convicted of those offences ineligible to be employed by the Crown or the corporation or to otherwise contract with the Crown.
Other amendments to the Financial Administration Act clarify the authority of the Treasury Board to act on behalf of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada on matters related to internal audit in the federal public administration. They also set out the deputy head’s responsibility for ensuring that there is an internal audit capacity appropriate to the needs of the department and requires them, subject to directives of the Treasury Board, to establish an audit committee. The Financial Administration Act, the Farm Credit Canada Act and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board Act are amended to require Crown corporations to establish audit committees composed of members who are not officers or employees of the corporation. Other amendments to the Financial Administration Act require, subject to directions of the Treasury Board, that all grant and contribution programs be reviewed at least every five years to ensure their relevance and effectiveness.
Amendments made to the Financial Administration Act and to the constituent legislation of a number of Crown corporations provide for appointments of directors for up to four years from a current maximum of three years.
Part 4 also amends the Canadian Dairy Commission Act, the Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation Act and the National Capital Act to require different individuals to perform the duties of chair of the Board of Directors and chief executive officer of the corporation.
Part 5 amends the Auditor General Act by expanding the class of recipients of grants, contributions and loans into which the Auditor General of Canada may inquire as to the use of funds, whether received from Her Majesty in right of Canada or a Crown corporation. Other amendments provide certain immunities to the Auditor General.
Amendments to the Department of Public Works and Government Services Act provide for the appointment and mandate of a Procurement Auditor.
Part 5 also amends the Financial Administration Act to provide for a government commitment to fairness, openness and transparency in government contract bidding, and a regulation-making power to deem certain clauses to be set out in government contracts in relation to prohibiting the payment of contingency fees and respecting corruption and collusion in the bidding process for procurement contracts, declarations by bidders in respect of specific criminal offences, and the provision of information to the Auditor General of Canada by recipients under funding agreements.

Bank Act

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-37. I found it very difficult to deal with the bill. First, the bill in itself is probably one of the larger bills I have ever seen in this place. It is some 237 pages long.

It is an omnibus bill of sorts, which means it provides a variety of amendments, technical and otherwise, to a wide range of bills. When people read the bill, they cannot understand what the provisions in it mean unless they have the bill to be amended beside them so they can see the provisions that are already in place and understand the context in which they relate to that bill.

I know the members know, but Canadians should know that when we get bills such as this, members, who are involved in the finance committee, have to rely on the work and due diligence of others to make absolutely sure the provisions are there. In fact, it is probably the most extreme example that I could cite.

I have a problem with the bill because it covers so many things. I suspect that if any government ever wanted to do anything to amend certain acts, this certainly would be the way to do it, to put through a bill in excess of some 230 pages, which affects maybe 20 or 30 different existing pieces of legislation.

In order to give people an idea, the summary to Bill C-37 indicates that it is an enactment that amends a number of acts governing financial institutions. At least it is in a pocket that we understand.

The bill also amends legislation related to the regulation of financial institutions. This place has been seized over the years with legislation related to financial institutions, particularly as it relates to bank mergers and the lines of business banks can get into. I must admit it conjures up some memories of clichés that some members would use in their speeches during some of the debates about banks being terribly bad. However, most people would say that their bank branches are pretty good.

The notable pieces of legislation that are being amended are the Bank Act, the Cooperative Credit Associations Act, the Insurance Companies Act and the Trust and Loan Companies Act. All of the amendments are aimed at achieving three objectives: first, enhancing the interests of consumers; second, increasing legislative and regulatory efficiency; and third, adapting those acts to new developments. These sound a little comprehensive, but they are envelopes under which these particular amendments could be placed. There are also amendments to the Bills of Exchange Act to provide for the introduction of electronic cheque imaging.

There are also technical amendments, which cover a broad range of acts: the Bank Act, the Cooperative Credit Associations Act, the Insurance Companies Act, and I could go on. There are at least 20 of them.

I think maybe I have made my point, that ordinary members of Parliament, who are not involved in the finance committee and maybe do not have some of the background and training, will have a very difficult time. A number of votes are taken on bills like this, whether it be at second reading, committee stage amendments, report stage, third reading. I think Canadians will ask themselves this. If this is so cumbersome, if there are 230-some odd pages, if there are virtually hundreds and hundreds of amendments to dozens of acts, how can a member of Parliament, with all the responsibilities, make an informed decision and cast a vote reflective of the due diligence that has been done?

How that happens here is probably the same way it happens in real life.

I can recall being the vice-chairman of the board of the Mississauga Hospital. Under the Ontario hospitals act, the board of directors is responsible for every aspect of the administration and operation of the hospital.

I remember giving a seminar on trustees of hospitals. As I recall, the title was “Hospital Trustee: Mission Impossible”. It is impossible because we can not possibly expect volunteer members of a board of directors to be fully informed about the day to day activities of the hospital, to take full responsibilities for what the doctors, nurses and administrative people do and, if anything goes wrong, to be personally responsible for those.

What happens is the responsibilities of the board are seconded or delegated to other persons. Therefore, for the board's responsibilities, as is the case for members of Parliament, there is a delegation or a secondment of those responsibilities to others who specifically spend their time on them. They perhaps have the specific expertise and the support personnel, either within their offices or from parliamentary offices, to do the necessary due diligence, to do the checking, to ask the questions, to hear witnesses and to make some ascertainment as to the propriety of the amendments being made.

We have in this chamber always the presumption of honesty. We certainly have that as well in our committees as we bring witnesses forward. It is a process which the members of Parliament rely on their best judgment to ascertain that witnesses who appear before the committee are appropriate witnesses, that they cover the necessary areas and that they get the proper representations from the departmental officials who are responsible for having drafted this.

We also have the support of the Library of Parliament, which does some excellent legislative summaries to the extent that it can. In this regard, I suspect the legislative summary for a bill this size might very well be five times larger, maybe about 1,000 pages, but we have the resources available to us of the Library of Parliament to assist us in specific areas.

It is an onerous task. I do not purport to be fully knowledgeable and able to come here and argue the case of why members should vote for a particular clause in a particular bill that is to be amended, whether it be technical or otherwise. However, the job does get done and it gets done through a process of secondment, provided the committee is doing its work and provided the officials have done their work.

I must admit Canadians should be assured, and I wish they would get a better chance to see it, that the work done in committee is probably the most productive work that members of Parliament do. The work in committees is excellent. The quality and level of questioning of witnesses is excellent in terms of discharging the responsibility of due diligence or doing the detail with regard to the legislation before this place.

Being a legislator is an important responsibility. One of the things that I note in the bill is right at the very end. It is coincidental, but I just gave a speech a couple of days ago on a private member's bill that had to do with repealing acts that had received royal assent. They had gone through the entire legislative process of being tabled at first reading, debated at second, went to committee, committee stage amendments, report stage amendments back to the House, third reading, passed on to the other place and then went through an almost identical process and then received royal assent.

The public would think that when the bill receives royal asset it is law. It is not law until it is proclaimed. It must be in force.

The private member's bill I referred to was started in the Senate by Senator Tommy Banks. It was the third iteration of a bill that has been around since about 2002. It has to do with repealing legislation that has received royal assent but has not been proclaimed and put into force, and therefore is not active law in Canada.

I note the final provision of the bill found on page 237 entitled, “Order in Council” under the subtitle of “Coming Into Force”. It reads:

The provisions of this Act, or the provisions of any Act enacted by this Act, come into force on a day or days to be fixed by order of the Governor in Council.

This appears from time to time in bills. It means there is no set date as to when the provisions of this bill will be put into place. Often that happens because other things must occur before the provisions of the amendments within the bill could be operative. It is almost like once we pass this, before we put it in force, certain other things have to happen. Once they have happened, then the governor in council, which is basically the cabinet, sets a date fixing that certain provisions of this act would come into force.

As an aside, in most of the cases bills would generally say that the act would come into force on the date on which it received royal assent. That is fairly straightforward. There are others which have provisos that the in force date will be on a specified date, for instance, January 1, 2007.

In the reproductive technologies bill, I believe there two key areas. One is called prohibited acts under the bill. The other is controlled activities. The prohibited acts were all in force on royal assent. The controlled activities were subject to being in force by a date set by order in council. The reason for that was the controlled activities required the establishment of a board of management that would do certain things. Until that was set up, the provisions of that could not go forward.

Another example is Bill C-11 from the last Parliament, the whistleblower legislation. This legislation received royal assent in November of last year. The legislation provides protection to civil servants who have allegations of wrongdoing within the public service or anybody who is within the definition of a public servant. The bill is not in force yet.

In this Parliament we have Bill C-2, and this can get complicated in non-financial bills. Bill C-2 prescribes amendments to Bill C-11.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Yes, and we require people, legally speaking, to fill out the census. I would like you to turn your attention to it--and you already have--because I personally believe that in terms of this bill, the first thing we need to do is make sure we tighten up the enumeration. I know you have been working on that in your directorate, but we need to provide resources. We have two bills in front of us that will touch you. They are Bill C-2, in terms of people being appointed based on merit, and Bill C-16, on fixed-date elections. That will hopefully give you more structure to get to that ultimate goal of universal enumeration.

There is also technology and ways of doing that. I believe everyone should have to be enumerated. We shouldn't assume anything, even if they live in a suburban middle-class neighbourhood, in terms of universality of the most fundamental aspect of our democracy, the right to vote and the access to the vote. Every citizen should be treated the same; we should have a universal enumeration, and it should be done, while certainly acknowledging that we have different ways of doing it--the census component or their experience.

On technology, I know people who work in this town. We are ahead of any country, any jurisdiction, in terms of using technology and secure e-mails and that kind of thing. There are ways to do it for people in areas where you know there is not a lot of movement; you establish who they are and where they are.

I will just lead to the point where you mentioned the census data. That's important.

You said “perceived instances of fraud”. Do we have voter fraud in our country right now, as far as you know, in federal elections?

Statutes Repeal Act

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by saying that we support the principle underlying this bill. As my colleague said earlier, 57 bills gathering dust is a lot.

I would like to go back to Bill C-11, The Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act. As you may recall, during our study of Bill C-2, the Bloc Québécois asked that Bill C-11 be withdrawn immediately. If the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act had been enacted and implemented while we were studying Bill C-2, we would have been able to take the time we needed to study it thoroughly. If Bill C-11 had been passed before, we could have been certain that that much at least had been done rather than wait for Bill C-2 to be passed.

Bill C-2 is currently before the Senate. We do not know when it will be returned to the House of Commons. The Christmas break is approaching and we will not resume until January. It is unlikely that Bill C-2 will be adopted or withdrawn before that, and we will still have the problem of Bill C-11, which is ready and has received royal assent, but is not yet enacted. It is just one of many bills that are gathering dust on the shelf.

On the other hand, we will probably have to revise some bills, because they have been left on the shelf too long. Amendments may be needed. There will also likely be jurisdiction issues, because certain provinces, such as Quebec, have already established measures concerning some bills. We must therefore ensure that there is no duplication and that our jurisdictions are respected. Certain important changes may have already been made, which could undermine or duplicate existing legislation.

As I said, we support this bill. However, we would like to see it go to committee. We believe three amendments are important, and I will list them. We think that they will strengthen Bill S-202.

First of all, we think that the discretionary period for enacting a bill passed by Parliament could be shortened from ten years to five years. We would like to see this amended because we find ten years simply too long. We see this when we are studying a bill in committee. Indeed, most of our existing legislation is revised every five or ten years anyway. As we all know, if this measure is not in place, this could lead to some major changes. Things change with time. We must review our legislation, make it better and more modern. Furthermore, things happen outside this House. Other legislative assemblies, including the National Assembly in Quebec and other parliaments, all carry out their own measures, which could lead to amendments to one of our 57 bills.

We would also like to require the government to explain to Parliament the reasons why it does not intend to implement legislation that has received royal assent. This is unimaginable, when witnesses have been called to appear and people have worked on a bill, sometimes for as much as two years. I remember that when we revised the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, it took us two and a half years. It would make no sense to wait 10 years before looking at it again. The government therefore should report to Parliament and explain why it has decided to give royal assent to legislation but then has opted to shelve it instead of implementing it.

This also does not reflect well on parliamentarians. People say that we pass legislation but then shelve it. They find the system very cumbersome, very slow and very long. When legislation receives royal assent, the government has to be able to implement it as soon as possible.

It starts in Parliament, then is referred to a committee, where it is amended before going to the Senate, where more witnesses are called. It goes through all the steps needed to receive royal assent, then it is shelved. This makes no sense to us.

The third amendment we would like to make pertains to clause 3 and reflects the fact that members of the Senate are not elected. We therefore propose to amend clause 3, which reads as follows:

3. Every Act or provision listed in the annual report is repealed on December 31 of the year in which the report is laid unless it comes into force on or before that December 31 or during that year either House of Parliament adopts a resolution that the Act or provision not be repealed.

We would like to replace this clause with the following:

3. Every Act or provision listed in the annual report is repealed on December 31 of the year in which the report is laid unless it comes into force on or before that December 31 or during that year the House of Commons adopts a resolution that the Act or provision not be repealed.

These are amendments that the committee could discuss. It could look at whether it is possible to find common ground.

In general, Bill S-202 is good because these changes are needed. We cannot allow very important bills to be shelved.

I find that Bill C-11 was extremely important and there are currently people who will not disclose any wrongdoing as long as we have not resolved the problem with Bill C-2. Repealing Bill C-11 would not have taken any effort. The legislation was ready. We could have just continued with Bill C-2. The one was not in competition with the other. They were based on each other, in any event. I still do not understand why the government refused to implement Bill C-11, which was shelved.

I also wonder what becomes of these bills afterward. Bill C-2 will likely be passed eventually. I imagine it will come back from the Senate and we will pass it. However, what will become of Bill C-11? What happens to bills that are shelved? Will Bill C-11 become obsolete and have to be repealed? We have to ask these questions.

We will therefore support Bill S-202, but the reservations I expressed must be taken into account. I think that five years is better than 10 years. When we study some acts after 10 years, there are so many changes and amendments to make that it can take two or three years to go through committee. I saw it happen with the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. I also saw it happen with Part II of the Canada Labour Code. We spent months and months amending Part II, which had not been reviewed for 15 years. We have to set limits so that, as we asked with Bill C-2, the act can be reviewed every five years to assess its effectiveness. We will strike a committee to determine whether it is working well. If it is not, we need the power to amend it quickly and ensure it does work well.

The Bloc Québécois supports sending Bill S-202 to committee, where members will discuss its application with witnesses.

[Louise Thibault, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

If people do not have faith in the system and do not buy into it, enacting C-2 will not change anything. The work has to be done on the inside; we have to look at values and how we can make people feel like an essential part of our larger whole.

My last question is as follows: are internal audits still carried out in the majority of agencies and departments?

[Louise Thibault, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Fraser, I fully understand why you made an effort to reassure the public in your report. You said that there were some disappointing incidents—I agree that some of the problems make for disheartening reading. However, it is quite another matter to blame more than 300,000 people.

Chapter 11 reads like a horror story. I do not want to dishearten anybody, but regardless of the management system—be it physical assets such as cars, human resources or money—problems arise. He was not the only one involved—other people filled in documents and must have realized that they did not have the requisite proof or that the register needed redoing or that they were being asked to do something inappropriate. However, whether we like it or not, as in the army, people often say that they have to follow orders from their superiors. And that brings us to the matter of ethics.

I wondered if you had any comments you would like to make. We are waiting for Bill C-2. Irrespective of that vote, I wonder whether the situation would have been different had the Public Service Disclosure Protection Act, or another such act, been implemented?

The reason that I ask you this question, Ms. Fraser, is that during the last Parliament many senior officials and directors of organizations told this committee that the problem the bill supposedly addressed did not actually exist; they told us that the current system works well and that values and ethics were well understood. However, whenever such serious incidents arise, Canadians are left wondering what's happened to ethics in the federal government. That is of great concern to us, regardless of the size of the service.

Would the implementation of such legislation have allowed us to avoid this situation? Could it help us avoid a repetition in the future, or am I mistaken?

Government Accountability

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Wascana, SK]

Mr. Speaker, the Information Commissioner; Democracy Watch; the most experienced public servant, Arthur Kroeger; Conservatives like Perrin Beatty and Derek Burney; and every serious legal expert in the country, all say that the government's draft of Bill C-2 was a mess.

The Prime Minister gave the Senate a big job to do, which was to fix it. He also entrusted the huge Department of Public Works to the unelected Senate. When he had to go to the media to explain his definition of Québécois, whom did he send? He sent an unelected senator.

Are those the reasons the President of the Treasury Board moved the motion last night to give the Senate $53 million?

Concurrence in Vote 10--Department of Natural Resources

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I, too, hope we get around to the second motion we put forward today which I will speak to very briefly and explain. I perhaps am one of the only members of the New Democratic Party who does not believe we should abolish the Senate, or at least I did not until the last couple of months. I have had many arguments with my colleagues about our long-standing policy within the New Democratic Party that the unelected, undemocratic Senate should be scrapped and abolished. Until my frustrating experience with Bill C-2, the federal accountability act, I was a defender of the Senate to some degree.

I have now put forward this notice of opposition to the Senate. I think we should scrap the whole kit and caboodle after my experience, frankly. I have come around four-square with my colleagues of the New Democratic Party. It is a waste of money, a waste of resources. It is an obstacle and a barrier to democracy. I am furious with that other house, the other chamber.

I put forward a motion that does not scrap the Senate completely because the building itself is beautiful. My motion says that we should eliminate all the salaries, all the office budgets, all of the expenses and certainly the travel budgets of every senator. We might still have a Senate--we would not need a constitutional change for this--the senators just would not be able to do any harm any more because they would not have a budget to screw up what we do.

Federal Accountability Act

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the problem is that kind of bluster from the President of the Treasury Board is not going to clean up the Liberal leadership loans.

If the minister were serious about getting big money out of politics, he would have supported the amendments to Bill C-2 that the NDP put in to try to stop the corruption. Instead, he introduced his own new loopholes to try and backfill the reading of convention fees.

Would the minister agree that these huge Liberal leadership loans are just big money buying influence in Canadian politics, an abuse of the system? Will he promise to take steps to eliminate them, so they will not be around the next time we have a leadership race?

Treasury Board

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General has told us that the Treasury Board, whose minister is responsible for the Access to Information Act, has refused to give her access to some strategic documents necessary to her investigation, going against a practice established since 1985.

How can the President of the Treasury Board, the sponsor of Bill C-2, the Federal Accountability Act, brag about being transparent and claim to allow broad access to the government’s books and, at the same time, demonstrate such pettiness towards the Auditor General by challenging a practice that goes back to 1985?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Were your recommendations followed in Bill C-2?

[Maria Barrados]

The way we work is to look at specific appointments and we make the corrections. These two cases came to us as cases asking about a priority system. They came to our attention, we investigated them, we corrected them, and we did the revocations. And I made recommendations about how the system could better deal with this, because it is totally unmonitored; it's a total policy vacuum. I made several recommendations, first to the Treasury Board and then in the context of Bill C-2.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Okay. When you refer to the accountability principle, are you talking about Bill C-2?

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Earlier, in response to Mr. Lukiwski's criticisms of the Senate with regard to Bill C-2 and their holding it up, you made some comments that you would hope the Senate would not do the same thing with this piece of legislation once it gets through the House and gets to the Senate.

I'm curious, because the work the Senate did on Bill C-2 was in large part as a result of requests of witnesses who had appeared before the legislative committee of the House of Commons. They felt they had not been given sufficient time to fully expose their point of view and recommendations they wished to make and felt the committee itself had not been given sufficient time to deal with some of the very grey and complex issues. Therefore, they went to the Senate and basically got the full hearing they wanted to have. I don't think one should be bashing the head of the Senate for having taken the time that the legislative committee of the House did not.

In this case, as you very well know, there is consensus. This committee put forward a report with recommendations. We were taken by surprise by the government coming out with a piece of legislation as part of its response immediately, because, as my colleague Monsieur Godin pointed out, our meetings were basically in camera. Therefore, ordinary people, organizations, etc., did not have an opportunity to bring forth their views prior to the committee developing a report with recommendations to the government.

I'm not going to criticize the government for acting very quickly. We now have the opportunity, because we do have this legislation, to bring forth witnesses, to hear from Canadians and interested stakeholders. I'm very pleased to hear that you agree that should we receive requests from representatives of organizations or ordinary Canadians and that this committee should in fact hear from them.

That's the only statement I wish to make. I believe I've done it within the three minutes you asked for. I wish to thank the minister for his openness to having this committee hear from ordinary Canadians who request to be before us.

Thank you.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Excuse me for interrupting, Minister, but I guess one point that I wanted your comments or observations on had to do with the speed of this.

I know, Marlene, I'm out of a job now; this is my own minister.

As everyone here knows, just because it passes committee, goes into the House, and passes the House, that doesn't mean it's going to be law. We have to go through the other place, the other house, the Senate. We saw with Bill C-2--that was not dealt with by this committee but by a special legislative committee--how long it took, and we're still not finished that process. The Senate took an extraordinarily long time, in my view, to bring it back to the House, with a lot of amendments. I would hate to think that this bill would be stalled in the Senate and then not be in effect before the next federal election.

I'd just like your comments on that.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairperson.

Thanks to everyone for coming today. I trust that you will be giving serious consideration to an ongoing relationship with our committee, since we are interested in, and passed a motion to ensure that we have, some independent forecasting advice until such time as the mechanism in Bill C-2 kicks in. We hope this is the start of a regular appearance before the committee.

The main reason we need you here today is that the minister gives his economic update this afternoon, and we're in the middle of finalizing our report based on pre-budget consultations. We're trying to get a lay of the land that's as accurate as possible, starting with the surplus dollars available.

I'd like just a quick go-round on that again. Ellen has given us an indication not to expect more than $4.2 billion surplus for this year, and for next year a forecast of $5.3 billion. That is way lower than any of us expected. That's been a real eye-opener for me and I'm sure for others.

If I go back to the reports that you gave us all last October, I know that we're all in the neighbourhood. Global, for example, was thinking more in the line of $8 billion or $9 billion flexibility. I think that was the same for everybody across the board. So things have changed.

Since Ellen is the only one who has given us a specific number, does everyone here concur with that number, in a ballpark way? Are we looking at roughly $4 billion in surplus for this year?

Dale.