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.

Address in Reply

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by thanking Her Excellency the Governor General for graciously reading the Speech from the Throne. Her delivery once again was superb.

On a personal note, I would like to thank my family: my wife, Sandra, and our three children, Fabian Jr., Mark, and Heather. Their continued love and support during almost 15 years of political life is a never-ending source of strength for me.

I would also like to thank my constituents in the riding of Avalon, in the wonderful province of Newfoundland and Labrador, for giving me their confidence and trust. It is my great honour and privilege to represent them in this honourable House.

Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to the Prime Minister for having asked me to move the government's motion in support of the Speech from the Throne.

It is a visionary document that sets out our agenda not just for the upcoming session of Parliament but for the long term future of Canada. Our agenda is focused on building a stronger, safer, better Canada that works for all of us.

In the first session of Parliament, we delivered on the following commitments, which we made to Canadians in the last federal election.

We passed the Federal Accountability Act, the toughest anti-corruption legislation in Canadian history.

We cut taxes right across the board, including the GST.

We started cracking down on gun, gang and drug crime.

We provided direct benefits to families with the universal child care benefit.

We worked with the provinces and territories to develop patient wait time guarantees.

We took concrete action to protect and improve the environment.

We restored fiscal balance by increasing equalization payments and funding the large social transfers on an equal per capita cash basis.

We revived Canada's traditional leadership role on the international stage.

I think members would agree that this is an impressive list of accomplishments for a minority government, but as today's Speech from the Throne demonstrates, we have only just begin to build a better, safer Canada.

Our government will focus on five core priorities in the upcoming session of Parliament. These priorities will build on the successes we have achieved so far.

First, our government will continue to strengthen Canada's sovereignty and security. Gone are the days of neglecting the Canadian Forces. Gone are the days of ignoring challenges to our sovereignty and of pursuing a weak and indecisive foreign policy.

I have had the privilege of talking to many of our men and women in uniform, especially those from my native Newfoundland and Labrador. I have heard them relate their experiences of how they are indeed making a positive difference throughout the world in places less fortunate than Canada, such as Afghanistan. They are assured of our government's continued support for their efforts to make our world a safer place, for ours is a government that takes these responsibilities seriously.

That is why we will do more to assert and defend our sovereignty in the Arctic, and to ensure that Canada's foreign policy defends our interests and projects the values we hold dear: democracy, freedom, human rights, and the rule of law.

Second, our government will continue to strengthen our federation. Canada, I am pleased to report, is more united today than it has been in four decades, but we need to do more to undo the damage done to federalism by our predecessors.

Our government will work to place formal limits on the use of federal spending for new shared cost programs in areas of exclusive provincial jurisdiction. We will also push ahead with democratizing the Senate by reintroducing legislation that would lower Senate terms from 45 years to 8 years. We will give Canadians a voice in selecting their representatives in the upper chamber.

Third, our government will continue to provide effective economic leadership. Building upon our tax cutting success from the first session, we will bring forward a long term plan of further broad-based tax relief for individuals, businesses and families.

We will also continue supporting Canadian workers in troubled sectors like manufacturing, forestry, agriculture, tourism and fisheries as their industries adjust to evolving international economic conditions.

Fourth, we will continue tackling an issue rankling Canadians from coast to coast to coast: crime. In addition to reintroducing our anti-violent crime measures that were blocked by the opposition in the last session, our government will undertake new initiatives aimed at cracking down on young offenders and property crime.

We will also take action to ensure Canadians are protected from terrorism, the bane of democratic free societies in our modern age.

As the Governor General rightly noted, peace, order and good government are the principles upon which Canada was founded. Our government is going to work hard to ensure that they prevail over those who would wreak havoc in our communities.

Last, but certainly not least, we will continue protecting and improving Canada's most important natural resource, our environment. Canadians have made it clear. They are fed up with lofty words masking inaction. They want policies that make real measurable improvements to the environment. Our government has heard this call and we are acting.

In addition to taking a leading role in the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, our government will bring forward the first ever national air pollution regulations. We will strengthen enforcement to punish those who pollute our water and land.

Our government is intent on building a better Canada through strong leadership. In the weeks and months ahead we are going to continue delivering on the issues that matter most to ordinary Canadians. We urge the opposition parties to support our efforts. Of course, as we are all aware, it is their prerogative not to, but they should consider their choice very carefully. Canadians do not want an election. They want us to govern this country. They want strong leadership and a better, safer Canada.

It is an honour, therefore, to move, seconded by the hon. member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, that the following address be presented to Her Excellency the Governor General of Canada.

To Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, Chancellor and Principal Companion of the Order of Canada, Chancellor and Commander of the Order of Military Merit, Chancellor and Commander of the Order of Merit of the Police Forces, Governor General and Commander-in-Chief of Canada.

May it please Your Excellency:

We, Her Majesty's most loyal and dutiful subjects, the House of Commons of Canada in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Excellency for the gracious speech which Your Excellency has addressed to both Houses of Parliament.

Motions in Amendment

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is with mixed feelings that I rise today to speak to this bill. I say that because we should not have to deal with this kind of inferior legislation, particularly when we are looking at the safety of our citizens, our constituents.

We are entrusted with the responsibility to make public policy and to make legislation that takes into account many different aspects and facets when we look at the bills that have been in front of us recently, be it on trade bills or on voting bills. One of the most important facets in the area of transportation is safety. Protecting the safety of Canadians is one of the key issues that we are here to deal with in this bill.

The reason the NDP has put forward so many amendments and the reason we are standing today to speak to the bill is that if the bill were to go ahead without any changes or amendments it would be a colossal disaster.

It is incumbent upon all of us to foresee, and perhaps it is the unintended consequences of the government, but we need to foresee the consequences of any legislation that passes in this place. On Bill C-6, we need to look at the consequences for air safety.

An issue that has been important in my riding is the integrity of being able to support those men and women who work in our public service to come forward and be protected when they see wrongdoing happening. We know it in the popular term as whistleblowing.

I was proud to work with my colleague from Winnipeg Centre and other colleagues in this place on the committee dealing with the accountability act, Bill C-2, to strengthen whistleblower legislation. We believed it should have gone further but we made some important and positive changes.

When I see this bill, one of the things that stands out that will shock and should appall many Canadians is what the bill does. It takes away that whistleblower protection. We are not talking about maintenance of bicycles, as important as that is. We are talking here about aviation safety. We are talking about very complex mechanisms that most of us would not have the slightest idea of how to get around, whereas with bicycle repair we might.

We need to ensure that those men and women who see wrongdoing are protected. That is a value and a principle that I thought the government believed in. If we listen to the rhetoric, it suggests that it does but then we look at this legislation and we see that it does not seem to be the case.

It was already mentioned by my friend from Hamilton that many people have spoken out. They are not lay people. They are experts in the field. They are telling us that Bill C-6 does not get the job done. They are saying that Bill C-6 opens up, not only the safety of Canadians but the reputation that our country has on the world stage.

My understanding of the bill is that not even our friends to the south, who perhaps have more of a laissez-faire view of things like air safety, would contemplate going this far. It really begs the question as to why we would believe that, in the area of air safety and this idea of changing things to this extent, we would be better off going with less control and oversight than our friends to the south and in other jurisdictions. It really does beg the question of what we believe we know better than others.

I certainly would not submit to the House that we should do things our own way. Our party suggests that the Canadian way is often the better way of going about things. However, when we are talking about aeronautics and aeronautic safety and we look at this industry, and the fact that it is global in proportion and needs to be carefully viewed, we have to look at this bill and ask, “What is it that the government believes it is helping Canadians with?”

Again, I go back to experts in the field and, if I may, cite an article that I believe has already been referenced but is one that I think bears repeating. The headline says it all: “Judge calls for review of 'sliding' air safety”. I think that says a lot about where we are going here.

We know that the 1989 report on the Dryden crash in which 24 people were killed led to many improvements in air safety. We had fears, and I remember that instance very well, that we were in fact backsliding, that we needed to strengthen air safety. We heard from one of the authors of the report who looked at air safety, and the quote is pretty straightforward:

I believe the government is moving away from more vigorous inspection and enforcement strictly as a cost-cutting measure, much as was done in the mid- and late-1980s preceding the Dryden crash.

If that is not a call for oversight and to review more thoroughly this file, I do not what is. What the good judge was saying, and he was given an Order of Canada for his work in this area, was to not repeat the mistakes of the past. When we allow things to be deregulated without the proper oversight, without protection, for instance, as already mentioned for whistleblowers, we are essentially saying that it is okay to allow for further crashes, for further mishaps.

I point to what we have seen in the rail industry as of late. Since we have given over rail maintenance, and it is not regulated to the extent it should have been, we have seen, and we just have to turn on the radio or read the paper, more crashes and derailments, be it passenger or cargo trains.

I want members to think about this because I think it is important. There is a connection between what has happened with rail safety and what is contemplated with aeronautic safety in Bill C-6. It is the following proposition. When we had the tools and the oversight, and we had the regulation involved in rail safety, we were able to be more nimble, to be stronger in our response when we had instances where rail safety was failing. We had citizens and people, be it in unions or in management, et cetera, who were able to cite problems in rail safety, be it at crossings or, and we see this presently, with cargo trains that have too many cars on their load.

We need to do something about it. It used to be that we had the public sector there to respond. Unfortunately, what we did is we gave that up. We gave away the tools to properly respond vis-à-vis rail safety.

What has been the consequence of that? As I said, just turn on the radio, read the paper, and look at the evening news, the consequence is cargo and passenger derailments. There is a lack of confidence. At the very time we need to be more reliant on our rail system, we now have problems with rail safety.

In fact, many of my friends who would like to see our government go further in building the capacity for more rail as a form of transportation see that we have problems because of lack of oversight. So, let us take that lesson from the problems with rail safety and oversight, and the fact we gave that up and gave it away, and let us take a look at—

Canada Elections Act

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

Mr. Speaker, I should also thank the hon. member for all his participation in democratic reform initiatives, including the work that he did on the legislative committee for Bill C-2, the Federal Accountability Act, where he was instrumental in assisting passage of that very bill.

I would point out to the member from Winnipeg that while he referenced the fixed election date, that being the third Monday in October 2009, and he commented that it was unlikely that this minority government would last until then, I can assure him that with the continued support of the NDP we will reach the fixed election date on the third Monday of October 2009.

I am encouraged to hear that the member seems to be willing to support our initiatives for the next two years and that we will in fact see an election fall on the appointed and fixed date.

However, the member's question had to do with whether there should be spending limits between elections and not just in the writ period. I think that is a valid point to make and I think it should be examined. Some of the difficulties, obviously, are what is considered election spending as opposed to government spending? How do we define partisan versus non-partisan?

I think those questions need to be considered. I would have no difficulty whatsoever examining that in committee or elsewhere.

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the debate on Bill C-55 provides the opportunity for us to have a wider debate as well on democratic reform.

However we might support the bill, and I support it very strongly to give greater opportunities for individual electors to get to the polls and vote, there is a difficulty with the government's approach to democratic reform as a whole. This is one other example of issues being brought to the House in both a piecemeal fashion, instead of a comprehensive way, as well as in a way that has involved no consultation with the other parties, the provinces or the public in general.

It is passing strange that we have seen a series of piecemeal bills not dealing comprehensively with either Senate reform, electoral reform or parliamentary reform, but trying to nick them off one at a time. They are done in the name of greater public engagement, when the public, nor Parliament, nor the other parties and provinces are engaged in consultation beforehand to see what might be the best way to move forward to ensure that these various elements of electoral, parliamentary and Senate reform are going ahead in a comprehensive way that makes sense with each other and do not give rise to unintended or, even worse, intended consequences of the government.

Let us look at this approach with respect to other aspects of, in this case, electoral reform. Cooperation and collaboration is immensely important, especially in this complex federation in which are fortunate enough to live. We have many levels of government, constitutional divisions of power and high sensitivities to overlapping powers and impacts that actions and legislation in one level or order of government may have on another. That is why it is so important to have full consultation. Let me speak to a few.

Bill C-56 would attempt to better reflect the constitutional principle of representation by population by adding extra seats to British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario. This sounds like, in constitutional principle, a very valid objective with which to go forward.

It can be said that this is something within the individual competence of the Parliament of Canada with which provincial and territorial governments do not have to give their consent. However, that completely misses the complex nature of our country and the need for collaboration among different levels of government to make things happen in a way that best reflects the interests of the whole country and does not lead to any unintended consequences.

Bill C-56 has been introduced and it sounds good. I am a member of Parliament from British Columbia and British Columbia is to get seven extra seats to bring it up to representation by population, as with the five extra seats in Alberta. However, almost immediately we get a unanimous vote in the motion condemning this by the National Assembly of Quebec. Within a week of that, we get both the Conservative leader in the Ontario legislature plus the Premier of Ontario saying that they are against it and are considering legal action on the basis that this is inappropriate.

Since the bill has been discussed, we have heard in the last two weeks concern expressed from members from the prairie provinces, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. They feel their relative influence in the House may be slipping even though their absolute numbers stay the same. We have also heard from MPs from Atlantic Canada who may be protected in certain ways from having their absolute numbers slip, but are worried about their declining influence in the House.

That is not to say they all have to be completely taken into full account. There may be, and obviously is in this case, some kind of negotiation and collaboration that has to go forward so the range of interests in the House, reflecting the interests of the different regions of the country, is properly protected and balanced. But that requires consultation.

That is why we would like Bill C-56 to go to committee before second reading, so there can be the fullest scope for the consultation to take place and that we in committee, as members of Parliament individually, can consult with the various provinces that have various information on it.

One of the most foundational issues of conflict resolution, and there seems to be conflict in this case, is that we involve everyone in the discussion who is affected by it. They will be interested in it and perhaps have the best information about it, without trying to prejudge that.

I raise that as an issue, as a bit of a paradox of putting forward legislation that is meant to make things more democratic, when in fact it is cutting off a prior consultation that would be effective in making the democracy more effective.

That takes me to issues of the Senate, and they were raised by the government House leader. He raised the issue of Bill S-4, which would limit the terms of senators. Let me take a step back and again reflect that this is piecemeal and without adequate consultation.

There is a complaint that this has been stuck in the Senate for a year. In fact, a very important motion was put before the Senate, which is very much related to this, by former Senator Jack Austin and the sole remaining Progressive Conservative senator, Senator Lowell Murray. It would look to the addition of seats to western Canada in the Senate, to bring some proportionality to the regions of Canada, which was intended by our founding fathers, the Fathers of Confederation.

That raises the issue of distribution again, which makes it very clear why piecemeal approaches to Senate reform, electoral reform and parliamentary reform are so inappropriate. If we look at the Senate, there are three critical areas of the other place that must be respected if we are to have change. I think we all agree, including members of the Senate, that a modern democracy should not have a legislative assembly which is non-elected. It is how we get there that is important. To get there, we have to deal with three things simultaneously in Senate reform.

One is the selection process, and that could be both the terms and the fixed dates that have been suggested in Bill S-4. It also could become the selection process and the consultative elections that have been suggested in Bill C-43. The problem is that this is only one of three categories.

Another category is the mandate of the other place. Is it to be, as it is now, a mirror image of the legislative authority, only altered by convention of this place, that creates the expectation of deference at some stage after full debate in both places, or is there to be something different?

If it exactly the same, and electoral legitimacy is equal by elected senators or consultatively elected senators, however Bill C-43 puts it, then we will risk gridlock and that we must avoid. To deal with that, we must have either different mandates or offset mandates or a dispute resolution clause to deal with problems that might arise between the Houses of Parliament. Therefore, a second stage is neglected in just dealing with Bill S-4 or Bill C-43.

A third area, and perhaps in many ways in terms of the health of our Confederation the most important, is the distribution of Senate seats across the country. I notice in Bill C-56 there is an attempt to arrange for better representation. I say attempt because, as I have mentioned, the government has not done the proper consultation to get the very best answer for that. There is no enthusiasm whatsoever to contemporaneously, in looking for Senate elections or Senate set terms, look at distribution, and most important, the extraordinarily inequitable distribution across the country with respect to western Canada.

It is hard to imagine that members of the government, who represent ridings in western Canada, could possibly be in favour, including the Prime Minister, of trying to give more status, more validity to the other place as a legislative body without first fixing the inequitable distribution across the west. That is passing strange, but it is another example of doing things piecemeal without proper consultation and without dealing with them comprehensively.

Let us look for a moment at electoral reform, because this is immensely important to members of the House. It is part of the old Bill C-55, which attempts to address a small corner of electoral reform.

We have a suggested consultative process by the government, which put out tenders to hire a polling firm and then hire, some would say, a think tank. In fact, it turns out to be Frontier Centre in Winnipeg, which has published works against notions of proportionality to amend, improve and reform our electoral system. It is to hold so-called deliberative, closed door meetings in a few centres in the country, which is somehow some kind of a substitute for a meaningful public discussion on the very desperately needed electoral reform in our country.

It is worse than that, because it is in the face of two other clear opportunities, one is an exercise and another is before us, to do this properly. Again, in reverse order, we do not pretend to consult and then bring in some kind of response to that without going to the people and to the opposition and looking to parliamentary committees and other expert bodies first. This is a jury-rigged, false consultation, which will do nothing for the health of our elective democracy.

Let us look at what the other options are. The Law Commission of Canada is highly respected internationally as one of the foremost law reform bodies in the Commonwealth. Its reports are watched and followed in many other countries. After extensive real public consultation and extensive research here and internationally on electoral reform, in 2004 it published a very thoughtful deliberative piece on a mixed member proportional system. This is an independent statutory body with the responsibility to consult, to do research and to report publicly to Parliament and the Minister of Justice. It reported more than three years ago now and there has been no response, no reflection of any attention being given to that good work.

In 2004 we also had the Speech from the Throne, which was amended in the sense of its application to include electoral reform as a prime objective of the 38th Parliament. Unfortunately and unnecessarily it was interrupted by an election that was commenced in 2005. The work of a special committee to do the proper consultation on behalf of all the House of Commons was cut short.

We should be working with the opposition parties, and I hope with the government, to have a legislative committee, perhaps the procedure and House affairs committee, hold those consultations, rather than the closed door, jury-rigged type of consultation that has been set forward. That is important. Let us have the House involved. Let us look to real public consultation and let us get moving on real electoral reform.

Maybe in the wisdom of that deliberative discussion with Canadians, we can reaffirm the first past the post system we have now, but let us do it when we know there are real strains and real non-representative aspects to it. Let us have that conversation and make it a real deliberative one.

Let me turn to another aspect of democratic reform. This is one about which we have heard so much rhetoric from the government, and that is the Federal Accountability Act, Bill C-2. It is almost Orwellian in the way that aspects of this act, and aspects that certainly this side of the House supported, are actually damaging and non-democratic.

I start with observing that Bill C-2, the accountability act, got royal assent on December 14, 2006. Members will recall that this was following a number of months of very careful deliberations and amendments passed by the Senate and then accepted by the House. I think there were more than 50 of them.

There was constant deriding of the other place for having delayed that important piece of democratic legislation and yet one of the absolutely most important foundational parts of the accountability act was the appointments commission. This would apply the same principles around public service appointments that the Public Service Commission applies: objective criteria, competitive processes, transparence, real accountability. That appointments commission which was part of the act in a form that in fact the NDP put forward, a form that I put forward as an amendment were not accepted. That was five months ago .

I will end with this reflection on non-accountability. After five months, there is no appointments commission and yet every week there are dozens and dozens and dozens of order in council appointments that should have been subject to that merit based, objective, non-partisan appointments commission. What kind of accountability is that? What kind of democratic reform is that?

While I have no difficulty supporting the idea of greater advance opportunities for people to vote to increase voter opportunity and therefore voter turnout, we have to look at the whole picture and, if we are to be taken seriously as a modern democracy, deal with this in a comprehensive way.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Well, in any event that is what we will remember, no matter what the member for Hull—Aylmer may think. It is about the only thing that we recall about Jean Chrétien. He cleaned up the financing of political parties. Despite what the hon. member for Hull—Aylmer says, he must also understand that was the end of secret funds.

They found a new way of operating. The Conservatives tabled a bill that, on the face of it, was rather brilliant, Bill C-2. They proceeded quickly. It was urgent because it was an election promise by the Prime Minister and it was absolutely essential that it be passed quickly. I do not know whether you remember it, Mr. Speaker. Since I am a lawyer, just for fun I took a look at it. It must have been almost as thick as the Income Tax Act, about four inches. It amended nearly 200 federal laws. The concept was enormous. The basic idea was excellent, to clean up financing.

They called it the Accountability Act. It was intended to restrict financing and ensure that no one could ever again get around a law that made it possible to donate large sums of money about which nothing was ever heard. But then something happened. We became aware of something, and I am not the one who says so. Our good Liberal friends found a way to do it. I imagine that the lawyer who found this way of doing it must have been paid a great deal more than we are. They found a good solution: loans. They call it a loan and they do not mention it again.

For those who are watching us on television, here is how it works. Suppose, for example that I am Bob Rae or the honourable member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, who is currently the leader of the opposition. Bob Rae received $705,000 and the honourable member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville received $655,000. How did they proceed during the leadership campaign? By means of loans.

What took place? Someone loaned the money. My name is Joe Blow and I really like a leadership candidate or a candidate for election but I can no longer make a donation of $20,000, or $50,000 or $100,000, as was previously the case with the Liberals and some Conservatives. So, what can I do? I give him a loan. Nobody ensures that the loan will be repaid. So, if the loan is not repaid, what does the loan become? It becomes a donation, but we do not say that. That is how the Liberals have been financed, and how, for the most part, they financed the party’s latest leadership campaign. Obviously, we obtained this information from a source, namely the Ottawa Citizen. There should be no doubt about that. It is not the newspaper that I read every day but I do read it occasionally. We can read right there that considerable sums of money were loaned to them. That is where this Bill C-54 comes into play.

If my name is Bob Rae and I receive a $580,000 loan at a 5% interest rate from someone named John Rae, who, by some unfortunate chance, is a former vice-president of Power Corporation, would I not have a debt toward this individual? The hon. member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville received a sum of money—I asked a question and we did not get the answer—from someone named Stephen Bronfman. He received $50,000 from that man for his leadership campaign. If he has not paid it back, would the hon. member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville not have a debt toward this individual should he become prime minister one day?

This is the message that I am trying to convey to the public and this is the purpose of Bill C-54. I agree with my colleagues from the NDP, and this is something we said during the study of Bill C-2. We said that there was a loophole, because it was possible to circumvent the rules by making a loan. Let us take a look beyond this legislation.

What does the Quebec Election Act say concerning loans? They are not contributions. I will read section 88, and I will try to read it slowly, so my friends opposite and especially my good Liberal friends can understand it. It says: “... are not contributions: volunteer work and the goods or services produced by such work”. Thus, the work of volunteers who are in our offices is not a contribution.

The act also refers to “anonymous donations collected at a meeting or rally held for political purposes”. There is nothing complicated there. After delivering an extraordinary speech, I pass the hat around and I collect $150 or $200. There is no problem, because this is not a contribution under the act—I am talking about the Quebec act.

The act also refers to “a loan granted for political purposes by an elector or a bank, trust company or financial services cooperative at the current market rate of interest at the time it is granted, or a guarantee granted by an elector as surety;”

I now turn to section 105, which reads:

“Every loan shall be evidenced in a writing setting out the name and address of the lender, the date, amount...”

Section 106 is interesting. Again, I am talking about the Quebec Election Act:

“The official representative shall, at least once a year, pay the interest due on the loans he has contracted.”

Therefore, we will support Bill C-54, so that it is reviewed at second reading. This bill is interesting, because we would have liked to know, from our Liberal friends, and of course our Conservative friends, who are getting loans, how the Prime Minister's leadership campaign was funded. According to some data, we are talking here about an amount of $1.1 million. Who provided financial support to the Prime Minister? I imagine that all those who are listening to us would also like to know the answer to that question.

With all due respect to this House, I believe that before going any further we have to stop playing hide-and-seek. Everyone in this House and outside, including those who are listening today, knows that it takes money to run an election campaign. Some ceilings have been set. Now, an election campaign is said to cost $89,000 per riding, depending on its size. How are we going to fund election campaigns?

We must stop playing hide-and-seek by saying “I will get a loan from someone and forget to repay it. Since that someone really likes me, he too will forget about it”. Unfortunately, this is how election campaigns have been funded all too often in the past.

We will have to take a good look at this bill to see how it deals with this. I would like to draw members' attention to a government press release about this bill that reads in part as follows:

Only financial institutions (at commercial rates of interest) and other political entities could make loans beyond that amount. Rules for the treatment of unpaid loans would be tightened to ensure candidates cannot walk away from unpaid loans.

Loans that are not repaid after 18 months would be considered political contributions. In my opinion, this is an important point. We have to clean up politics.

Why do we politicians have such a poor image? Because too often, we conceal things from voters. We do not tell them the whole truth. We do not reveal everything about where the money for an election campaign came from. People still have this idea of the party slush fund, where someone says, “I'll give you $1,000. I expect you to do things for me, and once you're in power, I'll have an in with you and be able to get favours”. This has to stop.

I hope that this bill will help us clean up politics. The Conservatives' idea behind Bill C-54 is good. However, I hope that when the bill goes to committee, protection for whistleblowers can be added and reform of the Access to Information Act discussed.

I will start with the reform of the Access to Information Act. It is thanks to this legislation that we have all the information we have today and that journalists can obtain that information. We often hear that thanks to the Access to Information Act, information has been uncovered or obtained, or that information obtained under the Access to Information Act has revealed something. The Access to Information Act must be reformed so that it can go even further in controlling ethics.

Our good friends, the Conservatives, who boast about how they have cleaned up government, need to do their part as well. They have not done much to protect whistleblowers. When the bill goes to committee, the committee will have to find a way to strengthen that protection. People who work in departments and witness goings-on in political offices that are illicit or illegal or violate current legislation should be protected.

Whistleblowers are entitled to $1,500 for legal costs. Let us add a zero to that. One thousand five hundred dollars is not much, since there is no lawyer who will work for less than $100 an hour. This means that the person would be entitled to 15 hours. We know the whistleblowing procedures, what those who work in political offices or within a department experience, which we must respect when they decide to publicly blow the whistle or send information. They must be protected. I think this $1,500 limit for recourse must absolutely be increased. I strongly suggest that it be increased to $15,000. There would be no problem. We will see how this will be debated in committee, but I think this limit must absolutely be increased.

I hope my Conservative friends who are listening will understand that the public sector integrity commissioner must be given the power to enforce the Public Service Disclosure Protection Act. To ensure that the translation is correct, I will repeat. The public sector integrity commissioner must be given the power to enforce the Public Service Disclosure Protection Act. It is this public sector integrity commissioner who must be in charge of getting things in order and enforcing this act.

I hope my Conservative friends will understand this as well, and that the members of the committee will consider the suggestion to make it impossible for the government to exclude crown corporations and any other entity from the application of the Public Service Disclosure Protection Act. Crown corporations—VIA Rail, Air Canada or any other company under federal jurisdiction—must have access.

I will close by saying that we will be in favour of this bill, the purpose of which is to counter the misappropriation or bypassing of campaign financing rules, because it is very important. We also agree with this bill because it will fix the problem of loans, which helped bypass the political contribution restrictions.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today on this bill and continue in somewhat the same vein as my colleague in the NDP.

In my occupation as a criminal lawyer, it is often said that the judges before whom we stand must not only be impartial but also appear impartial, free of any partisanship and able to listen to the arguments of both opposing lawyers. As we know, in the criminal law there is a crown prosecutor and a defence attorney. The court, presided over by the judge, must therefore be totally impartial.

Why do I digress in this way? Because Bill C-54 is very interesting. It recalls a bit of Quebec’s past, quite a few years ago. Without delving too deeply into history, we should remember the 1970s in Quebec. There were political parties and what was called the famous secret fund of one party.

We had a television series called Duplessis. Here we could see the hon. Donald Martineau getting a cut on all the contracts awarded by the Duplessis government. This helped to replenish the campaign funds. So anyone who wanted a government contract, therefore, had to donate to the campaign fund. The approach that the Union nationale developed in Quebec was to take its cut directly on the contracts that were awarded. We are talking here about 1945, 1950 or 1955. Unfortunately, though, this continued into the 1960s in Quebec. It was not until the Parti Québécois came to power in 1976 that a bill was introduced in 1977 under the hon. René Lévesque to clean up party finances and put an end to secret funds.

Unfortunately, secret funds still exist, or at least still existed until Bill C-2 was passed. Our friends in the Liberal Party took ample advantage of them, as did the Conservative Party. I will return to this in a minute.

What Mr. Jean Chrétien left us when he departed was a new law on party finances. It is probably the only thing that history will retain of Mr. Jean Chrétien’s presence here.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am in support of Bill C-54 and I will outline my reasons and perhaps make a couple of suggestions. I will have the opportunity to formally do that in committee but to get things rolling it is important to put some of those ideas forward in debate.

The one thing we have seen in the history of federal politics in Canada is the problem of big money influencing government, which usually results in the equation of big money plus influencing government equals corruption. We saw the Pacific scandal just after this nation was assembled. The pipeline debate certainly uncovered many problems of the association between government and money. We saw that most recently in Canada with the previous government.

One of the things we need to do is take out not only the fact that this can exist through the rules and that there will be manipulation but the perception by citizens that all of us in this place are running our campaigns fairly and cleanly, and we have not seen that. Canadians have the perception right now that there is a problem between parliamentarians and MPs who run for office and money. This bill would take away people's temptation to access loans from friends who have money to give them an advantage over those of us who do not.

Most of us observed, sadly, the most recent Liberal leadership campaign as an example. We certainly saw it with the member for Eglinton—Lawrence and others who had access to money and loans in ways that most of us would not bother trying to access. What it did was taint the whole process of how we, in the case of the leadership contest, elect leaders.

That was not the first case where this happened. We saw people, because of who they knew, accessing hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans for their leadership. The problem with that, which we have discussed in the House and in committee, is that if I receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in a loan from a friend and decide that I cannot pay it back, there is no recourse. The money is simply a loan that I did not pay back or an IOU that I did not honour.

If one were to explain that, most people would see that as simply a donation. A loan that was not paid back means money in one's pocket from someone else's pocket. That is the direct connection between how funds were raised for leadership contests and that at the end of the day the person responsible for paying back the loan really did not have to.

I recall extremely clearly that during the debate on Bill C-2, the government's accountability act, we presented an amendment because we saw that big money was influencing leadership contests. We saw that it was wrong so we introduced an amendment, which is very similar to what we have in front of us, but that is not a problem. It is something we are willing to share with the government. In fact, we have seen that happen on numerous occasions with the present government and previous governments.

However, it is passing strange that at the time the government did not see the importance of passing such an amendment to the accountability act. We had previously put forward the idea of banning union and corporate donations and thought it made infinite sense to close the loan loophole. At the time the Conservative and Liberal Parties voted against that amendment. We are happy that the government, through this bill, has seen the error of its ways and has provided us with a way to close the loan loophole.

When people have access to money, and in this case loans, there is not a lot of difference between handing that money over in a straightforward manner and doing it through a loophole. We saw this in the most recent leadership contest for the Liberal Party. It is also important to note that this has happened in the past with the Conservative Party.

It is important for us to take a look at what will happen not just in the future in terms of loans, but also to look at what has recently happened. When the Prime Minister ran for the leadership of the Conservative Party, many of us called for full disclosure of his donations. I think Canadians would like to have a gander at that. It is part of the idea of transparency.

When people donate to parties and leadership candidates, taxpayers pay money for that. It is a tax write-off. Most people will know that when a donation like that is written off, be it for the leader of the Conservative Party, or for the Liberal Party, or for the NDP, or any other party, taxpayer money is put down. Most reasonable people would say that should be transparent. Canadians should be able to see who donated money. This is extremely important when a party is nominating someone for prime minister.

I think back to not only the most recent leadership contest, but the previous leadership contest for the Liberal Party. We know there was really only one candidate and that candidate raised over $10 million. It turned out not to be a contest at all. That money did not only come out of the pocket of the leader at the time. It was also donations made on the taxpayers' dime. Why? Because of this rebate.

We have to understand that this tax credit is taxpayer money. This means that taxpayers are participating in the donation scheme. We believe leadership contests, like the last Conservative Party contest, should be transparent. We should see the full list of donors and exact numbers. Hopefully, we can agree to this in committee. The reasonable thing to do is to look at the bill not just from this point forward, but also to look at what has happened in the most recent past.

Democratic reform was one of the centrepieces in our ethics package that my predecessor, Mr. Broadbent, brought forward before the last election. We are delighted to see that the government has seen fit to take on some of those ideas. I think of the scrutiny of lobbying where there is still more to do. I think of access to information. The government has really failed on that. The government brought forward fixed election dates and we support that of course. It was something that we put forward.

Mr. Broadbent brought forward the whole issue of loans in leadership contests and loans in general. We know the member for Mississauga—Streetsville had some problems in the recent election in terms of how he declared the finances for his campaign. This bill would provide Canadians with the opportunity to have a clear and transparent view of how their dollars are being used to support candidates in the election process. That is fair, transparent and just.

Mr. Broadbent made the ethics package debatable. A number of people saw the idea as something that should have happened a long time ago. When I went door to door and talked to people about our ethics package, they were hopeful the whole thing would be adopted.

The fact that we are adopting the idea of covering the loans loophole and shutting it down will be welcomed. Canadians will want to see us go back in time, not only deal with the present and a go forward basis. They will want to see us look back to how money was spent in the most recent Liberal leadership contest, with the most recent election and with the most recent leadership contest with the Conservative Party.

This is simply to ensure, as I mentioned at the beginning of my comments, that not only are the rules fair, but that the perception by citizens of their elected members is clear and pristine, that there is no shadow of a doubt as to where people received money from and that there is 100% integrity in the system. We need to do that. Democratic reform is not only about making every vote count. We believe it is something we can achieve by bringing in proportionality to the system. We also believe there should be a full view of the donations that presently elected members received or someone who participated in a leadership contest received.

The history of election financing was mentioned by one of the Bloc members, who said that this was dealt with in the 1970s in Quebec. Premier Doer of Manitoba followed suit when that province closed all loopholes and ensured that there were no donations from both unions and corporations. That was one of the first things his government did. Manitoba, as well as other jurisdictions, also dealt with the loan issue. This is not cutting edge. We are catching up, and now is the time to do so.

Some things the government can do to further the cause of accountability, when looking at financing, is to ensure that not only will the loan loophole be closed, but ensure that the Chief Electoral Officer has some oversight as well. I think this would be welcomed, particularly in the area of leadership contests.

We only have to think of the recent leadership contests of both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party. There was no transparent view or window into the financing of those leadership contests. We know millions of dollars were raised. I have already mentioned that these dollars were raised not only by individuals, but with the support of taxpayers because of the way funds are credited when people donate.

What the government really needs to do is to ensure that not only is the loan loophole closed, but that the Chief Electoral Officer has oversight to leadership contests as well. This would be another addition that would be welcomed. I know the NDP made very clear who donated to whom. It was transparent and there were no question marks. It can be done and should be done.

For the whole notion of reaffirming confidence in federal politics, this should have been done before. The NDP tried to get an amendment through in Bill C-2.

If the government wants to become accountable with respect to loans in a genuine way, we have to ensure that it allows people the ability to run for office. I know in our party one of the things we have taken on fervently is to ensure that for people who do not have the money to run for a nomination and to run for office, we must be able to support them, people who traditionally have been on the outside of politics and unable to participate.

One thing the NDP has done, particular for women candidates, is provided them with financial support. This is not done outside the party structure. It ensures that women have financial means and it provides support when needed.

We do this because it is not enough to say that we want more women nominated and elected. We have to address where there are gaps. We know historically there has been a gap for women running in politics because of their lack of access to money. This is underlined when there are predominantly male candidates, and we saw this in the leadership contest, who have access to these loans. They have friends who can loan them hundreds of thousands of dollars.

For many women, traditionally, that has not been the case. They have been unable to access money to the degree that men have in terms of the kind of loan loophole we have seen.

We need to do more to address that. We need to see more support for people who have had challenges in terms of being nominated and elected. I think of women and people from ethnocultural communities. I think of our Inuit first nations aboriginal peoples as well. This is one facet, one idea, where the time has come to close a loophole. However, we should also address the barriers that exist for those who have challenges of being nominated. That would be the next step.

In terms of what can be done to further the cause of transparency and accountability in election financing, we need to address not only what loopholes exist, how money is raised and who can donate, but we also have to ensure that all Canadians from coast to coast to coast are aware of this. When someone donates money, part of the public purse donates. We do this because we want to make the process more fair.

The first steps were taken in the seventies in Quebec, followed by the Doer government in Manitoba. This is what we are attempting to do here. I give Mr. Chrétien the credit for starting this federally, and we supported that. However, Canadians need to know that when people donate, there is a tax credit. We need to have all the evidence and information out there, so people know what they are supporting.

For many people, the problem in confidence and perception of politics is they are not fully aware of how the system works, and I do not fault Canadians. We were not as transparent as we should have been. The loan loophole is an excellent example. It is a quiet secret, this parlour conversation that went on for years about not worrying about getting money because something could be done. I think those days are over. We have to be clean, clear and concise with Canadians about how elections are funded. When people make a donation, there is a tax credit.

I know in my campaign that was something we told people so they would donate, but other Canadians who do not donate need to know that is how the system functions. We need to do a public relations exercise to say that we have closed these loopholes and that we have come in with these changes because we want to ensure there is more confidence in the system.

We need to bring the bill forward to committee, make some of the changes the NDP are suggesting, provide Canadians with the information and ensure that absolute transparency is there. We need to look to the recent leadership contests and ensure that all leadership contestants are clear about who lent them money and that this needs to be repaid. Ordinary Canadians need to know, without a doubt, how much money was donated to which candidate and exactly from where that money came. If there were loans, not only will we close those loopholes, but we will ensure it is known who received money from whom and when in the most recent contest.

The NDP supports the bill. In fact, it was our amendment at committee. We are glad to see the government has seen the light and will shine it on the electoral system. I look for the support of the other parties to get behind it as well.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-54, which deals with electoral democracy, one of three such bills introduced by the government.

Electoral democracy is an extremely important issue. However, I must remind members, with sadness, that this is a corrective measure. In fact, had the government listened to the opposition parties, it would not have adopted Bill C-2 with the kind of haste that shows a certain lack of professionalism. During consideration of Bill C-2, representations were made regarding various shortcomings in that bill. One of them dealt with this possible loophole whereby people were using loans to circumvent the $1,100 ceiling on political contributions by individuals and the ban on contributions to political parties or leadership candidates by corporate entities. Candidates to elected office would take out personal loans from friends, from their entourage, which was a form of indirect financing.

Bill C-54 would close that loophole by proposing four objectives that I will share with the House. The bill would put in place a uniform and transparent disclosure system for all loans to political entities, including the compulsory disclosure of loans terms and conditions, and of lenders' and guarantors' names.

Bill C-54 would prevent unions and corporate bodies, with a few exceptions, not only from making political donations according to the Accountability Act, but also from loaning money to individuals.

Third, guaranteed loans for contributions coming from an individual could not exceed $1,000, which is the limit set in the Accountability Act. There is harmonization between what can be donated to a registered political party and the amount individuals can lend to candidates and registered parties.

Fourth, only financial institutions, at commercial interest rates, and other political entities may lend more than $1,000. Rules concerning outstanding loans would be reinforced to avoid candidates escaping their obligations. Loans still outstanding after 18 months would be considered political donations. Riding associations or, where there are none, political parties themselves, would have to reimburse loans not repaid by their candidates.

The bill would correct a loophole, an omission, found in the Accountability Act. The bill on accountability gave us the opportunity to reflect on the whole question of democracy. There can be no real level playing field if there is no control over donations from political parties.

My father was a labourer and I do not have any personal wealth. I must be able to run for office and be elected without any political wealth. No one would like to live with the American model where senators, to be elected to the Congress, must invest several millions of dollars. When, for campaigning, one must have personal wealth or invest several millions of dollars, what does this mean for democracy? It means that one becomes a spokesperson for registered lobbies. Thus, lobbies fund politicians.

The House of Commons, as well as the National Assembly, must be a place where arbitration occurs. Parliamentarians, no matter their political affiliation, must never become prisoners of lobby groups. Oil companies, banks or any other lobby group cannot fund parliamentarians, because, when we have to assess a bill, we must be able to do so without any strings attached. When the price to pay in a democracy requires investing millions of dollars to ensure that we get re-elected, we are not without any strings attached. This is a nice legacy that was given to us by the former prime minister, Jean Chrétien, who followed the model established by Mr. René Lévesque. We will remember René Lévesque—what a great Quebec premier—who was strong, who inspired Jean Chrétien, at least on this issue, of course. Jean Chrétien got his inspiration from René Lévesque, who, very early in his political career, had decided to put an end to slush funds and to regulate and provide a framework for funding from corporations, lobby groups and individuals, to really stick to the notion that, in a democracy, the primary value that must guide us is equal opportunity. That is the first legislation that the Parti Québécois passed in 1976.

Of course, there are great moments in democracy, but there are also painful moments. As I was travelling from Montreal to Ottawa by train yesterday—and I am sure that my colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue will agree with me—I was re-reading the proceedings from a symposium which took place at the Université du Québec à Montréal in 1992 about the democratic referendum process. We know very well that the liberal government led by Jean Chrétien literally stole the referendum from Quebeckers. The rules which should govern any democratic referendum were flouted.

As members will recall, Robert Burns, who was the Minister responsible for the Reform of Democratic Institutions in the René Lévesque government, had the Referendum Act passed. Drawing from the experience in other countries, he had first drafted a green paper and submitted it to a public consultation. There have been few referendums in Quebec and in Canada. There was a referendum on Prohibition, which was won by the yes side, and Prohibition was ended. There were also two other referendums in 1980 and in 1995. Since Pauline Marois will likely become the new leader of the Parti Québécois, a new thinking exercise is about to start among the sovereigntists, and we are quite optimistic. We believe that, in the short term, there could be a referendum on the political future of Quebec. Inviting our fellow citizens to a rendezvous with history is a great moment in democracy.

We all know that the sovereigntist movement in Quebec is deeply rooted in democracy, given that three different leaders founded political parties for Quebeckers to democratically express themselves about this great project of making Quebec a sovereign state. Who are those leaders?

There is, of course, Pierre Bourgault, who was a powerful orator, profound, a very good platform presence. There were people who even compared him to Henri Bourassa. Mr. Speaker, you will surely recall Henri Bourassa not because you knew him, but because you have certainly read his speeches. He was definitely an extremely powerful orator.

There were three sovereignist leaders who founded political parties to enable the citizens of Quebec to consider the sovereignist option. There was Pierre Bourgault, René Lévesque, of whom I spoke earlier, and the third, whom I knew somewhat more intimately because he was the leader of my political party, is none other than Lucien Bouchard.

You will recall that Lucien Bouchard was the leader of the official opposition in 1993. What a wonderful time it was in October 1993, when the voters of Quebec gave the Bloc Québécois the responsibility of serving as the official opposition. I remember that there were 54 members of our party seated at the other end of the House. We had succeeded in electing Osvaldo Nunez in the riding of Bourassa. We had won the riding of Anjou and the riding of Ahuntsic. It was the start of a great movement of national affirmation that has never been interrupted, but which has varied in intensity.

All of that leads me to say that we support Bill C-54, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act regarding limits on loans to candidates. However, I want to remind members that there have been some great moments in Canadian democracy: the legacy of Jean Chrétien limiting the contribution of individuals to $1,100 is certainly a great moment, but there have also been moments that have greatly tarnished democracy. Unfortunately, I feel I must recall that the federal Liberals did not observe the Referendum Act.

I, myself, am writing a text that I hope to see published in coming days, and which concerns some ideas for renewing the sovereigntist movement. I hope that the member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue will do me the honour of reading it for I know he has a keen intellect and that he literally reads everything that comes into his hands. I have asked the Library of Parliament how much the federal government spent during the 1995 referendum. If I were to make a little survey among the many members of this House who are listening to me—and I thank them for doing so— to know how much the federal government spent illegally, because that was not accounted for either on the “Yes” side or the “No” side, what would be the answer?

Mr. Speaker, do you think they spent $5 million? That was the ceiling allowed under the Referendum Act. Do you think they spent $10 million or even $15 million? Well, they spent $31 million: $16 million during the referendum campaign and $12 million on promoting Canadian unity. Obviously they have the right to be federalists. Remember what Lucien Bouchard said at the Dorval airport the day after the referendum was lost to the yes side in 1995. He said that no is no, but when the day comes that it is yes, it will be yes.

The sad part about the example I am giving you of this anti-democratic bungle, this shameful behaviour by the federal Liberals by which they did not respect Quebec's referendum legislation, is that they invested heavily in propaganda and these expenses were not accounted for. They achieved this in a number of ways. How can we forget Chuck Guité. I even wonder if the name “Chuck Guité” is parliamentary since there is so much disgrace associated with his name. If ever this name becomes synonymous with disgust and becomes unparliamentary, do let me know, Mr. Speaker.

Chuck Guité was the one who broke every accounting rule imaginable and who rented every available billboard in Quebec. At the time the Clerk of the Privy Council told Prime Minister Jean Chrétien that he could not allow the national unity reserve to go unchecked.

All that to say that among the unfortunate experiences of anti-democratic bungles, there was the non respect of the 1995 referendum when three major misdeeds and abuses of democracy occurred.

First, Chuck Guité rented billboards. Then, the investigations indicate that the electoral body was unduly and artificially inflated by allowing people to vote who, if normal administrative channels had been followed, would not have had the right to vote. People were naturalized, of course. The problem is not that they were naturalized—we want to allow everyone to exercise their right to vote—but that normal administrative channels were not followed.

The Referendum Act has great democratic value.

We had the yes side and the no side. The government informed the National Assembly of the question to be debated for 35 hours. The president of the National Assembly apportioned the speaking time among the parties, the time allocated to the government and to the opposition being proportionate to the number of seats held by each.

At the time, Rodrigue Biron from the Union nationale sat at the National Assembly, as did socreds, although they were no longer called that, and their leader was Fabien Roy. The debate went on for 35 hours.

While the government has the prerogative to announce the question to be voted on at the time of a referendum, it is not allowed to spend more than those opposing its option. There lies the strength of Quebec's referendum democracy.

The yes side and the no side had equal opportunities. Both sides could speak at the National Assembly, and the public funding available to them was distributed fairly.

I am having a hard time getting over this stolen referendum in 1995. It eventually led to the sponsorship scandal. As we know, the Liberals in Quebec were all but decimated. I think there are more Bengal tigers at the Biodome, in my neighbourhood, than there are Liberals in Quebec. This goes to show the magnitude of public chastisement. It does not take anything away from the merit of the individuals involved, but it means that, next time the National Assembly decides to hold a referendum, the rules of the game will have to be adhered to.

In this Parliament, we have three bills in support of referendum democracy: one—Bill C-54—concerns loans to individuals; another concerns the selection of senators at the other place; and yet another, which we in the Bloc Québécois also support, concerns fixed election dates, something that already exists in a number of provinces. That shields us from all the scenarios of partisan vagaries, where the Prime Minister tends to call an election when his party is ahead in the polls.

I will conclude on that and I will gladly answer any questions.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in response to the question by the hon. member from the Liberal Party, I would say I agree that this should be made retroactive. I have denounced the fact that the governments, whether Liberal or Conservative, try to be squeaky clean during the election campaign, but once in power the same thing always happens.

The Bloc Québécois is in favour of Bill C-54 because it will put an end to certain practices, which will allow greater transparency. What I have denounced are the flaws in the accountability act, Bill C-2. There are major shortcomings that need to be corrected.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

It is my pleasure to speak on behalf of the Bloc Québécois about Bill C-54, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (accountability with respect to loans). Basically, this bill seeks to prevent individuals from bypassing campaign financing rules. Naturally, the Bloc Québécois will support it.

The bill would also correct another problem with the government accountability act, also known as Bill C-2. Why another problem? Because unfortunately, during the study of Bill C-2, it became clear that the Conservative government was more interested in passing the bill quickly than in really fixing ethical problems, even though it presented the bill as its key piece of legislation to clean up campaign financing and governance. Sadly, the hasty treatment made for a very incomplete key piece of legislation.

At the time, the opposition parties, the media and Democracy Watch pointed the problem out, but the government refused to act. As a result, there were huge gaps in terms of ethics, and now we have to fill those gaps. For example, it provides little protection for whistleblowers and does nothing to improve the Access to Information Act. I will come back to that later on.

Bill C-54 will fix the problem of loans that allowed individuals to bypass political contribution restrictions. When the Conservatives introduced the bill, they pointed out that during the most recent Liberal leadership race, several candidates had taken out big loans to bypass financing restrictions. It may be that several Liberal candidates did this, but let us not forget that the Prime Minister himself has not disclosed all of the contributions he received during the 2002 leadership race.

By way of explanation, I would like to remind the members that Bill C-2, which addresses government accountability, introduced new restrictions on campaign contributions, limiting any individual's annual contribution to a registered party or candidate to $1,100. Furthermore, Bill C-2 reduced the amount a union or business could contribute annually to a registered party or candidate to $0. Basically, contributions from unions and businesses are no longer allowed.

Unfortunately, it was still possible to circumvent these restrictions by taking out personal loans. As I have already mentioned, we saw this when several candidates in the recent Liberal Party of Canada leadership race took out sizeable loans from individuals and financial institutions. La Presse even reported the amounts of the loans, which totalled hundreds of thousands of dollars, obtained by the current leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, the current deputy leader of the party, and by Bob Rae and Gerard Kennedy. I would like to remind the House of those amounts. Bob Rae, who was defeated by the current leader of the official opposition, owes $580,000 to John Rae, the vice-president of Power Corporation. The current leader of the opposition borrowed $430,000. The current deputy leader of the Liberal Party borrowed $170,000, and Gerard Kennedy borrowed $201,000.

The subterfuge of using loans gave candidates access to enormous sums of money. This bill would correct such issues. As I was saying earlier, however, the accountability act fails to address a number of ethical problems. For example, the whistleblower protection issue has not been resolved. Several Conservative election promises concerning whistleblower protection did not make their way into the Accountability Act. As we all know, during the January 2006 election, the Conservatives made a number of election promises regarding this issue.

First of all, they wanted to ensure that whistleblowers would have access to adequate legal counsel. However, former Bill C-2, the Federal Accountability Act, imposes a $1,500 limit on legal costs, which is incredibly low. Thus, under the Conservative government, whistleblowers must be able to pay for their own legal counsel if they want to disclose wrongdoing.

Second, they wanted to give the public sector integrity commissioner the power to enforce the whistleblower legislation. This was not in the bill.

They wanted to guarantee protection to anyone who reports wrongdoing within the government, not just to public servants. This is not in the Federal Accountability Act.

They wanted to take away the government's ability to exempt crown corporations and other entities from the application of the whistleblower legislation. This is not in the accountability act either.

Another problem that the Federal Accountability Act has not solved is the reform of the Access to Information Act.

On April 5, 2005, the Liberal government released a discussion paper on reforming access to information. This document met with general criticism, even from the Conservatives. In addition to doubling the minimum administrative fees charged to the public, the proposal by the former Liberal Prime Minister, the member for LaSalle—Émard, maintained all the exceptions provided for in the legislation.

In fact, in 13 years, the Liberal Party never managed to introduce a valid reform of the Access to Information Act. For its part, the Conservative Party promised during the election campaign to reform the Access to Information Act. To quote the Conservatives' election platform, “A Conservative government will implement the Information Commissioner's recommendations for reform of the Access to Information Act”.

We are still waiting for this reform. When will the government decide to carry out this reform, as promised?

The truth is that now that they are in power, the Conservatives, like the Liberals before them, are in less of a hurry to reform this legislation. Moreover, the Information Commissioner recently noted that this is a general trend. He said, “The reason that action, not more study, is required is that governments continue to distrust and resist the Access to Information Act and the oversight of the Information Commissioner”.

Despite the shortcomings of former Bill C-2 on accountability, Bill C-54, which is before us today, proposes four types of changes.

First, the bill establishes a system of uniform, transparent reports on all loans to political entities and provides for mandatory disclosure of the terms of those loans and the identity of the lenders and guarantors.

Second, the bill would prohibit unions and corporations not only from making contributions, in accordance with the Federal Accountability Act, but also from lending money.

Moreover, loans, loan guarantees and contributions from individuals could not exceed the limit set out in the Federal Accountability Act, which is $1,100 for 2007.

Lastly, only financial institutions, at market interest rates, or other political entities would be able to lend money exceeding that amount. The rules for unpaid loans would be tightened so that candidates could not default on their obligations. Riding associations would be held responsible for their candidate's unpaid loan.

Despite this bill, which we are in favour of, in a few short months the Conservative party has built up a track record that shows a lack of political will to obey the rules and put an end to the culture of entitlement.

Denouncing the sponsorship scandal that took place when the Liberal Party was in power, Mr. Justice Gomery said that it was time to do away with the mentality behind the culture of entitlement and the attitude people in government have that they can do anything they want and are accountable to no one. This is not how things should be. This is certainly not what Quebeckers and Canadians want. To avoid this attitude, there must be open and transparent management of public funds and taxpayers' money. The Conservatives have unfortunately not set a good example.

In December 2006, the Conservative Party admitted that it had failed to disclose the receipt of hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Chief Electoral Officer. The money was registration fees collected from Conservative delegates attending the Conservative Party's May 2005 convention. The report said that in being forced to treat convention registration fees as donations, the Conservative Party discovered that three delegates, including the Prime Minister, had exceeded their annual contribution limits of $5,400. The Conservative Party was forced to reimburse $456 to the Prime Minister and to two other delegates.

Here is another example: a closer look makes it clear that this government is being influenced. The Prime Minister, when in opposition, reprimanded the Liberals for the comings and goings between political offices and lobbying firms. Yet, since taking power he has appointed a former lobbyist as the head of National Defence. This party denounced the lobbyist culture associated with the running of the Liberal Party. At that time we agreed with our Conservative colleagues. You could say that power changes political parties and makes anything possible.

We can see what the appointment of a lobbyist has done to National Defence. We can see that the Prime Minister now has a serious credibility problem with regard to his lobbyist minister. It is true that this appointment has paid off for companies that sell military equipment. We believe that the Minister of National Defence should have considered the taxpayers, who clearly want more humanitarian action than war.

The Prime Minister did not stop there with his partisan appointments. He also appointed Sandra Buckler as his director of communications. We should remember that the Conservative government decided to maintain the contract with Royal Lepage relocation services, in spite of a devastating report by the Auditor General. In 2005, this company hired Ms. Buckler to meet with the members of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, which had serious doubts about the spending of public money by Royal LePage and which was examining the possibility of referring this matter to the Auditor General. It is likely that Ms. Buckler was not paid by Royal LePage to convince the members to refer the matter to the Auditor General. In this case, whose interests came first, Ms. Buckler's or the taxpayers'? To compensate her, the Prime Minister appointed her director of communications of his cabinet.

In April 2006, the Prime Minister tried to appoint Gwyn Morgan, a Conservative Party fundraiser, to the position of chairman of the new public appointments commission. This appointment was blocked by a parliamentary committee dominated by opposition members.

I have another example of how this government is maintaining the culture of entitlement. It awards contracts to Conservative friends. This government awarded a communications contract to Marie-Josée Lapointe, a former member of the Prime Minister's transition team. This contract goes against the spirit of the accountability act, former Bill C-2, since political staff are not allowed to receive contracts from the government in place for 12 months after they have left. The contract was cancelled half way through.

This government also uses public funds for partisan purposes.

In March 2006, the Conservative government awarded an $85,000 contract to gauge public support for the Conservative Party's five electoral priorities. In July 2006, the Conservative Party awarded a contract to Strategic Counsel in order to poll public opinion on various political issues. The very partisan report identified the environment as a very important issue for the government's re-election. It should be noted that Strategic Counsel is run by Allan Gregg, who was the Conservative Party's official pollster under Brian Mulroney and Kim Campbell.

What is more, the Prime Minister has made dozens of partisan appointments within the machinery of government. When the Conservatives were in opposition they denounced such practices. Now that they are in power, why are they doing the exact same thing? Do they believe it is their turn to do whatever they want? The Conservative Party should be accountable to the public for its actions.

In closing, I want to reiterate that the Bloc Québécois is in favour of Bill C-54, but it finds it regrettable that the other problems I have just mentioned have not been resolved by the Conservative government.

Taxpayers deserve to have a government that is above reproach. Neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives have lived up to these expectations. That is why most people in Quebec vote for the Bloc Québécois. Our party is the only one that is not negatively influenced by power. Our only goal is to defend the interests of Quebeckers and they realize that. They can be assured of our full commitment to that goal.

When all the parties represented in this House understand the importance of integrity and transparency, our democracy will only get better. Quebec and Canadian taxpayers deserve that; let us govern accordingly.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I should begin my comments on Bill C-54 by recognizing and paying tribute to the former leader of the New Democratic Party who most recently sat in the riding of Ottawa Centre, because it was he who blew the whistle on the fact that the political donation regime in this country left a loophole that was so outrageous it was bound to be exploited and abused.

Mr. Broadbent had the sense to recognize that even though the amounts of money that can be donated to a political campaign or to a political party had been reduced, by allowing these huge loans, which never really have to be paid back, it was obvious that somebody with a lack of ethical standards would take advantage of that loophole and would begin to act as if there were no financial limitations. I recognize Mr. Broadbent for raising this issue for us in his ethics package.

I am gratified that today we are dealing with a bill in the House of Commons that will close this last remaining loophole, one of the most serious loopholes in our election financing laws, because we start with the basic premise that nobody should be able to buy an election in this country, or a politician, for that matter. When we are dealing with such massive amounts of money, the point that was made by the House leader of the government was that a politician or a political party is going to owe somebody a great deal. They are going to owe somebody an obligation, a debt, and it is not healthy for the interests of democracy to have some corporate sponsor pulling the strings of politicians through this enormous debt of gratitude that is owed. That is the fundamental principle here. That is the direction in which we believed we needed to go.

These loans were a loophole that simply had to be plugged. The most egregious example, I suppose, and what really caught the public's imagination, was during the Liberal leadership campaign. Even though businesses and unions were not allowed to donate a single dollar, they could loan tens of thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and individuals could loan far in excess of what they were allowed to donate.

Then, through the very loosey-goosey standards and rules that exist in terms of the repayment of those loans, if the loan was not paid back within 18 months it was deemed to be a donation, albeit an illegal donation. We allowed this contradiction to exist in our election finance regime. Some would say it was by design that the rules put in place by the previous government to put limits on election financing left this convenient loophole there, with it knowing full well their people would stumble upon it, seize on it and use it.

The other example that turned people's heads and simply sounded the alarm that this had to be addressed was the member for Mississauga—Streetsville. Even though a business is not allowed to donate anything and a union is not allowed to donate anything, his business loaned the Mississauga--Streetsville riding association $176,000 in one loan, I believe it was, and another $60,000 in another loan.

How can that be? It is a contradiction that we have allowed to evolve, because if that loan is not paid back within the 18 months, it is deemed to be a donation, and then we will have allowed a business to make a donation, which it is not allowed to at all, and a donation in the amount of a quarter of a million dollars, which is clearly in excess of anything contemplated when we set the donation limits for individuals at $1,100 per year.

This had to be done. I do take some recognition of the fact that we played a role in bringing this about. It was the NDP that moved this as an amendment during the Federal Accountability Act debates, but I also caution that we perhaps have not gone as far as we could. There are two things in the bill that worry me somewhat.

Even though we cannot pass legislation retroactively to give us some satisfaction on the debacle of the Liberal leadership loans or the loan of the member for Mississauga—Streetsville, we can have legislation that is retrospective in nature. We can look at ways to address these loans that drew the public's attention to this issue to make sure there is some compliance with at least the existing regime.

The second thing that we find fault with regarding this legislation is we cannot understand for the life of us why the date of implementation will be six months after the bill receives royal assent. My colleague, the government House leader, suggested that perhaps there is a way we could speak to the Chief Electoral Officer and garner support for the idea of a more rapid implementation date. I would urge the government to do so, because as the bill is currently drafted, it is possible we could have another federal election under the current set of rules which allow these political loans.

Now that it is common knowledge that there is no law against lending someone $100,000, even though the donation limit is only $1,100, a lot more people will be doing it if it is allowed. It would be morally and ethically wrong to allow another federal election to take place under the current set of rules. Therefore, I would urge members when the bill gets to committee, to look favourably on the idea of an amendment, which we would be happy to put forward, that the date of implementation should be when the bill receives royal assent.

This is much in the same spirit that we looked at the Federal Accountability Act. We did not see any reason to delay the implementation of the election financing rules associated with the accountability act, even though the Liberal Party urged us strenuously to delay and delay and delay because the Liberals wanted to get their leadership convention out of the way. That is certainly one of the things we would like to see.

I heard my colleague from the Liberal Party try to make arguments against this bill. Even though I do not take this remark seriously, I do give him credit for at least having the courage to try to be creative to find some reason why this bill is a bad idea.

I do have to counter one of the arguments he made which was completely spurious. He suggested that by banning these loans or putting severe limits on these loans, it would actually act as a barrier to those who do not have access to friends with money from entering into politics. It is like arguing night is day, because that is absolutely 180 degrees the polar opposite of what any cursory reading of the bill would tell us. In actual fact, the idea is to take big money out of politics and to take away the unfair competitive advantage that people who are well connected currently enjoy. The idea is to level the playing field.

That was the purpose of Bill C-24, which the Liberals introduced when they first put limits on donations. The idea was to get big money out of politics so that nobody could buy influence. That was certainly the argument put forward under Bill C-2 when we further reduced the donation limits to $1,100.

It is courageous to argue that this is actually the inverse. It takes a lot of guts to stand there and try to make that argument, but we cannot let that go unchallenged. If anything, this is an enabling measure that does level the playing field so that all of us, if we need to borrow money to get our campaign started, have to go to a recognized lending institution. No single person would be able to underwrite or co-sign a loan to an extent greater than the person would be allowed to donate in that year. It is eminently sensible because if there is a default on that loan and the loan becomes deemed to be a donation later on, then the donation would not be in excess of what the person would have been allowed to donate. It seems common sense to me.

A further innovation and protection here is that we do not want the precedent set by Paul Hellyer and the Canadian Action Party to set the tone. In that case, he simply wrote off the $800,000 debt to the Canadian Action Party. We do not want to see John Rae writing off the debt to Bob Rae. We do not want to see Mr. Mamdouh Stephanos writing off the $200,000 debt which was loaned to the leader of the official opposition. That would be fundamentally wrong because then those guys would have made a $200,000 loan which became a donation which they then forgave. Talk about buying influence in a campaign. What about the $100,000 that Marc de la Bruyere loaned to the leader of the official opposition?

We have every reason to believe that the leader of the official opposition will probably pay back those debts because he will have the ability to fundraise within the $1,000 limit and because he is in a fishbowl and everybody is watching what he is going to do with his campaign debts.

What about the losers in that race? For instance, I used the example of John Rae, a senior executive with Power Corporation, being able to simply write off and forgive the $840,000 that he loaned to his brother, Bob, to run in that campaign. That would be a travesty. That would be an absolute abuse of the election financing laws as we know them today.

With this bill, it is deemed that if the loan is not paid back in an acceptable period of time, or the time frame negotiated between the lender, a bank, and the borrower, or 18 months, whichever comes first, it would be the riding association and the political party of the riding association that would have to assume that debt. That would make sense. In fact it would help from an equity point of view for the person borrowing the money, because the person is actually borrowing the money with the guarantor of the political party that the person belongs to. The financial institution would have some comfort. The person would not have to find a financial backer to co-sign that loan; in fact, the person would not be allowed to.

If, as I have done, one needed to borrow $20,000 to get the campaign started, one would need to find 20 guarantors at $1,000 each. No one person could co-sign the loan. That is the way it should be. If the person cannot find 20 people to sponsor his or her entry into politics, perhaps that person should rethink whether he or she should be going into politics or not because the person is not going to get very far anyway.

I think this is eminently fair. It has covered the three conditions that the NDP raised during the debate on the Federal Accountability Act. I completely reject the Liberals' argument that there could be perverse consequences which would limit entry into politics.

Again my colleague from Vancouver Quadra very cleverly planted the idea that perhaps Equal Voice would be disappointed with this initiative, as if this would somehow be a barrier for more women to enter politics. I would argue that the absolute inverse would be true, because this will level the playing field so that well-connected people with corporate sponsorship, like we saw in the Liberal leadership race, will not have a competitive advantage over a woman without those connections. Again it levels the playing field. We have not had any indication how Equal Voice would react to this bill, but from what I know of the people in that organization, I think they would support this idea.

I wish we would not reform the election financing regime in such a piecemeal fashion. There are a number of other things that the NDP has been calling for. One I will speak to briefly is that now that Bill C-16 has passed very quietly and without fanfare over in the other place, it is now law and we have fixed election dates, I believe we should have year-round spending limits. Now that we know elections will be held every four years on a fixed date in the month of October, there should be some regulation on the amount parties can spend on advertising not just during the writ period but outside the writ period as well. That is a necessary natural consequence of having fixed election dates. I would look forward to some movement from the government in that regard.

I also wish we had done something about the age of political donors. I am very critical of the idea that we can actually launder money through our children's bank accounts in a way to exceed the donation limits allowed by law. That seems to be acceptable in that when it happened in the Liberal leadership race and we filed complaints with the elections commissioner, nothing came of it.

I guess if an 11 year old wants to donate $5,000 to a political candidate, nobody thinks twice. When it is twins and they both decide to donate $5,400 each to the same candidate, nobody thinks twice. Throughout the whole country Canadians shook their heads when they saw that. I would like to see us have the courage to move forward and say that this is simply wrong.

It is wrong to launder money through anybody's bank account if the purpose is to defraud the system and exceed the donation limits allowed by law, whether it is one's mother-in-law or brother. A person is not allowed to donate the maximum himself or herself and then sneak a cheque under the table to his or her buddy and say, “Send this along to the Liberal Party for me too”. It is against the law to conspire to defraud the system. We are silent on that and even when we file complaints on that, the elections commissioner seems to be silent on it.

The NDP tried to move an amendment to Bill C-2 which said that underage people could donate money, but if they did, it would be deducted from the total amount their legal guardian was allowed to donate. In other words, if a 14 year old felt strongly enough about politics and wanted to donate $100 of the money he or she earned at the burger joint, more power to him or her, but that meant the child's parents or legal guardians would donate $100 less that year. If people get a tax advantage from being children's legal guardians, they have to be legal guardians in this era of politics unless and until the children reach legal age as well. That would have been a courageous move and would have cleaned up one of those embarrassing situations that we allow in our system currently.

Let me speak briefly about the outstanding issue that we are all worried about, which is the issue of the member for Mississauga—Streetsville, who is not a Liberal any more, but when the loans took place he was. Now he is a Tory.

I do not know how we are going to address this, but we should remind everybody, and maybe through this speech we will serve notice, that no one's sweetheart can bail out somebody like that. If someone borrows $50,000, as many of the people did in the Liberal leadership campaign, and it is not paid back quickly, the candidate cannot pay it off because he or she would be exceeding the limit. The candidate cannot have a guardian angel donor show up out of nowhere and bail him or her out. The money has to be paid back within the donation limits.

The money was raised within the donation limits of the act, which is $1,100 per year. I do not see how some of these candidates are going to do so. The burden of proof is on them to pay it back in compliance with the law. Some of these failed leadership candidates are now raising money for the next federal election and they are still asking people for money to pay off the debt they incurred.

As I say, it is not that tough for the winner to pay off the debt. It is a lot tougher for the losers, the ones who did not win. It has to be the $1,000 limit. We are watching. These people are in a fishbowl and we will be filing complaints. If they do not pay it back at all and it is deemed to be a donation, then what? I will tell the House what.

Under the current election laws, and this should be fixed too, they can take out another loan to pay off the first loan and buy themselves another 18 months. Then the debt gets lost in the sands of time and we will have been complicit with somebody conspiring to defraud the election system. Those are the people on this list that I have right here.

Some of the people in the Liberal leadership campaign might find themselves in that situation. It would be wrong, but they may be leaning that way and our Elections Act is not tough enough to stop that from happening. I was disappointed, in fact I was shocked to learn that would be allowed, that they could take out a second loan to pay off the first loan and buy themselves another 18 months. Who is going to be around to police whether the second loan gets paid off three or five years down the road? This is really not satisfactory.

If we are serious about levelling the playing field, about taking big money out of politics and about making sure that nobody can buy an election in this country, we have to go all the way. We should put together an election financing regime that we can all be proud of. We could be an international centre of excellence. That would make me proud.

I take some pride, as I said at the beginning of my remarks, that it was the former leader of our party, the hon. Ed Broadbent, who brought this issue to light and said, more or less, that no further federal elections should take place until we clean up the election financing regime in this country. The NDP tried to do it during the debate on the Federal Accountability Act. It seemed to take a little longer than we thought to resonate with the ruling party, but it seemed to have at least accepted the need for this now.

We are critical that there will be a six month wait after the bill receives royal assent. We expect this to get a rough ride from the Liberal Party. I am not trying to state the obvious, but if one cannot raise or borrow money, one is not going to be in any hurry to pass this bill.

We hope the Liberals do not stall it unnecessarily, but I think the government should act quickly to take that six month proviso out of the way, implement it as soon as we can, and get it through the House, so that the next federal election can be run with equal opportunity for everybody and that no unfair competitive advantage go to those who might enjoy a corporate sponsor or guardian angel donor.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as I began, I stated that the Bloc Québécois is in favour of the principle of this bill. However, I would like to tell my hon. colleague that this government's approach to ethics and transparency is like an unfinished symphony. They can pat themselves on the back and say that they got this, that and the other thing done, and that they made some corrections thanks to Bill C-2. They can say such things, but I would like to enlighten my colleague. I say it is an unfinished symphony because it still has some major shortcomings, particularly concerning whistleblower protection. Allan Cutler said so himself. He was a candidate for the Conservative Party. He was a whistleblower. He was the first to see the problem and stand up. We would expect this government to include provisions for whistleblower protection as well as real reforms to access to information, as called for by the Information Commissioner.

I can repeat it again for the member. Yes, the Bloc Québécois is in favour of the principle of Bill C-54 concerning loans. Yes, we agree that there were some improprieties during the last Liberal Party leadership race. Yes, we agree, but we think the Conservatives must also take a closer look at themselves. Perhaps things have happened in the past on their side.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to Bill C-54, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act, which specifically addresses accountability with respect to loans. The Bloc Québécois supports this bill, which seeks to prevent individuals from bypassing campaign financing rules.

As we all know, this bill seeks to correct and clarify a few things that Bill C-2 left out. Members may recall that Bill C-2, which the government touted as its key piece of legislation, as the foundation for cleaning up campaign financing and governance, had a number of shortcomings that had to be rectified. Among other things, Bill C-2 introduced new restrictions on campaign contributions, limiting any individual's annual contribution to a registered party or candidate to $1,100 and prohibiting contributions from unions and businesses.

As unbelievable as it might seem, individuals could still get around these restrictions by taking personal loans. For example, several candidates in the recent Liberal Party of Canada leadership race took out big loans from individuals and financial institutions. Bob Rae, who was defeated by the current leader of the official opposition, owes $580,000 to John Rae, the vice-president of Power Corporation. The current leader of the opposition borrowed $430,000. The current deputy leader of the Liberal Party borrowed $170,000, and Gerard Kennedy borrowed $201,000. The cunning, discreet use of loans gave candidates access to enormous sums of money.

Some may be tempted to question the figures I just mentioned, so I will reveal my source, which was a table printed in La Presse on November 18, 2006.

This bill will also rectify another problem with Bill C-2 on government accountability. During the study of Bill C-2, it became clear that the Conservative government was much more interested in passing the bill quickly than in correcting the kind of ethical problems that have plagued both this government and its predecessors.

I would remind the House that, at the time, the opposition parties, the media and the Democracy Watch group raised the issue and the government refused to act. This bill corrects the problem of loans that circumvent limits on political contributions. I will probably not have enough time to cover both points in great detail, but I would like to emphasize that we are not satisfied with what the Conservatives have done about protecting whistleblowers and in terms of reforming the Access to Information Act.

As for protecting whistleblowers, as we all know, during the last election in January 2006, the Conservatives made a number of election promises dealing with this issue.

These aspects were not included in the accountability act. Allan Cutler, one of the whistleblowers originally involved in the disclosure of the sponsorship scandal and a former candidate for the Conservative Party during the election, was somewhat critical of Bill C-2. Yet, Allan Cutler was an ally of the Conservatives. He maintained that Bill C-2 was far from perfect and had some problems that needed fixing, especially with respect to the provisions for protecting whistleblowers.

Bill C-2 has another flaw that has to do with the Access to Information Act. I would remind the House that, on April 5, 2005, the Liberal government presented a discussion paper on access to information reform. That paper was criticized by all observers, including the Conservative Party. In addition to doubling the minimum administrative fees required of the public, the bill introduced by the former Prime Minister, the hon. member for LaSalle—Émard, maintained all the exceptions included in the act. The Liberal Party never managed to bring about a viable reform of access to information, despite its 13 years in power.

The Conservative government promised during the last election campaign—we remember the holier than thou promises of this government—to reform the Access to Information Act. This is what was said at the time:

A Conservative government will:

Implement the Information Commissioner’s recommendations for reform of the Access to Information Act.

We are still waiting for this reform. The truth is—in this case and so many others—that once in power, the Liberals and the Conservatives are one and the same. When they are in the opposition, the Conservatives criticize the Liberals and make a big fuss about ethics and governance. Once in power, the Conservatives use pork barrel politics and put both hands in the cookie jar, as my grandmother used to say.

The information commissioner recently observed that this is a common trait in all governments. He also said that the reason we need to take action instead of conducting more studies is that governments continue to distrust and resist the Access to Information Act and the oversight of the Information Commissioner.

The proposed changes are fourfold. First, the bill would establish a uniform and transparent reporting regime for all loans to political parties, including mandatory disclosure of terms and the identity of all lenders and loan guarantors.

The second change proposed by this bill is that unions and corporations would now be banned not just from making contributions as set out in the Federal Accountability Act, but also from making loans.

Third, total loan guarantees and contributions by individuals could not exceed the annual contribution limit for individuals established in the Federal Accountability Act, namely $1,100 in 2007.

Only financial institutions, at commercial rates of interest, and other political entities could make loans beyond that amount. Rules for the treatment of unpaid loans would be tightened to ensure candidates cannot walk away from unpaid loans: riding associations will be held responsible for unpaid loans taken out by their candidates.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I have to say that the Conservative Party is not a bastion of transparency, even though it is the party you belong to. You sit in that chair as the guardian of democracy and the person who makes sure debates are conducted properly. I look in your eyes, and I know that you cannot corroborate what I am saying and that, as deputy speaker, you cannot openly support what I am saying. But since you are a responsible member, I am certain that you would agree with me that the Conservative Party is not a bastion of transparency.

In a few short months, this party has built up a track record that shows a lack of political will to obey the rules and put an end to what Mr. Justice Gomery called the culture of entitlement. Besotted and obsessed with power, we come to believe that the money entrusted to us belongs to us personally. It is as though we were running our own business.

I am sorry, but that money is entrusted to us as managers, custodians of the taxes Canadians pay, and it belongs to the taxpayers, who are sick and tired of paying taxes.

In Quebec, we had to file our federal and provincial income tax returns by May 1. I am sure that most of the people who are watching are tired of paying taxes and feel that they pay far too much for the services they get in return.

Public money, taxpayers' money, must be managed openly and transparently. Denouncing the sponsorship scandal that involved the Liberal Party, Mr. Justice Gomery said that it was time to do away with the mentality behind the culture of entitlement and the attitude people in government have that they can do anything they want and they do not care about the people. This is not the way things should be.

There is a proverb that says that he who lives in a glass house should not throw stones. I would like to point out that the current Prime Minister, leader of the Conservative Party, admitted, in December 2006, that he omitted to disclose to the Chief Electoral Officer the collection of hundreds of thousands of dollars because he believed they represented registration fees paid by Conservative delegates attending the party convention in May 2005. The party was forced to record the registration fees for the convention as donations. The report states that the party then discovered that three delegates, including the Prime Minister, had exceeded their annual limit of $5,400 in contributions to the party. Consequently, the Conservative Party was forced to return $456 to the Prime Minister and two other delegates.

There is something else. This government denounced the lobbyist culture associated with the running of the Liberal Party. In and of itself that is a good thing. However, we must recognize that when the Conservative Party was in opposition with us, it denounced this culture that sought to enrich lobbies and the fact that the Liberal Party paid more attention to lobbies than to citizens. We agreed with our colleagues from the Conservative Party when they were in opposition.

However, once in power, they did the same thing. I will provide two small examples. With regard to the current Minister of National Defence, I do not know what happened but, after the opposition asked questions about Afghanistan and the mistreated and tortured Taliban prisoners, he lost his voice. We know that a good dose of laryngitis lasts a few days.

There are great medications for this, and eventually the laryngitis goes away. The Minister of National Defence lost his voice three weeks ago. This is worrisome. What is going on with the Minister of National Defence? Why does he not want to answer our questions? If he is no longer able to do his job, the Prime Minister should seriously consider replacing him. He is a completely useless minister. We have to wonder about the wisdom of the Prime Minister's decision to appoint a former lobbyist as head of the Department of National Defence.

Let us remember that when he was a lobbyist with Hill and Knowlton, he spent a decade working for the largest military equipment, arms and weapons dealers. His clients included BAE systems, Raytheon Canada and General Dynamics. He is now responsible for awarding military contracts worth about $20 billion. Let us remember the tour taken last year when Parliament was not in session. They went to Fredericton and announced the purchase of aircraft. They went to Valcartier and announced the purchase of jeeps. They went to Ontario to make other announcements. They went to Alberta or Manitoba, I cannot remember which, and made even more announcements.

They did all of their shopping without engaging the House of Commons in debate. It just so happened that they waited until the House adjourned for the summer to go on a big tour making military spending announcements. The chief lobbyist is also the Minister of National Defence, who awarded over $20 billion in military contracts.

Can we be sure that the Minister of National Defence, who has remained silent on the subject, is working in the best interest of taxpayers rather than in the best interest of his former clients? The question is a good one, and the answer is obvious.

What is more, the current Prime Minister made Sandra Buckler his director of communications. The auditor general produced a devastating report about the Royal Lepage relocation services saga. Apparently, in 2005, Ms. Buckler, a lobbyist, met with members of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, who had serious doubts about how Royal Lepage was using public funds. As a reward, the Prime Minister made her his director of communications. One might well wonder whose interests were being served in the Royal Lepage relocation services file: Ms. Buckler's or those of taxpayers?

One might also question contracts awarded to political friends. The Conservative government awarded a communications contract to Marie-Josée Lapointe, who was part of the current Prime Minister's transition team. One might also wonder about partisan appointments and appointing judges and immigration commissioners on the basis of their political beliefs. Much could be said on the topic.

Unfortunately, I have only about a minute left. I will have to wrap things up unless I have the unanimous consent of the House to speak until it is time to vote. I would be happy to do so, but I believe it is my NDP colleague's turn to address the House.

In conclusion, the Bloc Québécois supports this bill. I think that the government should seriously consider doing something about certain major loopholes that are still around despite Bill C-2.

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today on behalf of the Liberal opposition and address Bill C-54. I must say at the outset that the government House leader was not able or willing to answer my earlier question about the disclosure of the Prime Minister's leadership funders in 2002.

He did not address that topic, but I think this House needs to know that, particularly in relation to the comments that the government House leader made about the open disclosure of all loans, of all lenders and all amounts by the Liberal leadership contenders last year. Clearly they were acting beyond what the Canada Elections Act required, in good faith and with full disclosure. Everybody knows both what is going on there and the rules that apply to it.

As for the Prime Minister bringing forth this legislation, I think the government House leader suggests that he is somehow on the road to Damascus, leading this House in some epiphany in terms of loans and the way they are treated. Perhaps he was waylaid, misled or turned around and is actually on the road to perdition, because this bill of course has a perverse consequence. It is a non-accountability act. Again, it is Orwellian in many of the impacts that it will have. I will take some time to explain exactly why this will make democracy weaker in many ways in our country if it goes ahead as it is written, without amendment.

The Liberal Party is certainly very much in favour of transparency and accountability and will be looking toward a bill that properly and effectively tightens up the application and the use of loans in political financing in this country wherever it might be necessary. However, we certainly will also want to ensure that as the bill goes forward the proper amendments are made so that it does not, whether consciously or unconsciously, create a barrier to entry to the political process for those who do not have access to funds or friends who have access to funds, or to financial institutions that reflect their willingness to give loans because they realize that these people already have money, or they have people who will sign for them and back them up with money. We have to be very careful that this is not a barrier.

Let me go back to January 2004, when the former Liberal government brought in the most dramatic changes to electoral financing in this country's history with Bill C-24, and indeed perhaps the most dramatic change than had happened in any democratic jurisdiction in the world, which of course reduced the union and corporation donation limits per year to a mere $1,000. That is almost meaningless when we are talking about a nation this size. To suggest that a $1,000 donation by a corporation could buy favour across this country in an electoral process is beyond imagination. In any case, we effectively took that out and left the donations at a $5,000 level for individual members of the public, who are of course the basic building block and the basic unit of democracy. That is where it should be. That was an extremely important step. It was a dramatic step in the political history of this country.

Bill C-24 also did some other things. It introduced an aspect of proportional representation. I know that many members in the House in all parties are interested in seeing us proceed with consultations and consideration of that. However, when the private money was taken out to such a dramatic degree, Bill C-24 provided for public funding of electoral processes by providing $1.75 for every vote that any party received in the general election nationwide.

That allowed for a proportionality that corrected some of the difficulties with the first past the post process, where often the number of seats in this House achieved by parties bears very little relation to the proportion of the vote they get. As an example, the Green Party got 600,000 votes in the last election. Under that provision, it received over $1 million, which allows its members to express the views of the people who voted for them through the financing of their political activity, although not yet representation, across the country. That is a first tentative but important step. It was part of that groundbreaking electoral financing legislation.

Let me correct a perception that the government House leader gave, which was incorrect. He suggested there were no rules now covering loans and the disclosure of loans. In fact, the current statutory provisions require the disclosure of all loans. They require the disclosure of the lenders and the guarantors of those loans.

Another misconception is that there are no consequences if these loans can be written off. In fact, there are consequences. Those loans must be repaid within an 18 month period or they fall under the political contribution rules, which are very strict.

It is not a way to have money given. It is money loaned for a period during an electoral process, either a leadership process, as was involved last year with the Liberal leadership, or perhaps a nomination process where someone does not have access to party funds or riding association funds. If people were unable to take a loan, that might well be a barrier to entry into the political process for people who were not of independent means. There are consequences. Those must be converted and that is an important aspect to it.

Who owns the Prime Minister? The government House leader raised the issue of the Liberal leadership candidates and the influence of big money, but we still have not had an answer about who financed the leadership bid of the Prime Minister in 2002.

Why do we want to know that? We want to know that for the very reason the government suggests we need the bill. We already have provisions in the Canada Elections Act that cover both disclosure of loans and repayment of loans and consequence if we do not. In any event, why do we want to know? It is an immensely important question. Is it U.S. gun lobby? Is it big oil? Who made those contributions to the Prime Minister's leadership race in 2002? We will come back to that until we get a proper answer, until the Canadian people get a proper answer. These are important issues.

Let me talk about the name of the act, the accountability with respect to loans act. It could be called the new Conservative bank of Canada act. It is big money that would get more influence because of the way the act is written currently. We will seek amendments to ensure it does not simply limit the influence that can be exerted to those with money or have access to big money. Let me tell members why.

Financial institutions are the only ones that can make big loans to individuals. If people are maybe from a disadvantaged group or an under-represented group who have not been in politics before, who seek a nomination in a riding, those people do not have independent wealth, they do not have a riding association yet to loan them funds, as is allowable under this bill, and they do not have, perhaps, credit worthiness to go to a bank. What does that person do? The individual is left out. They simply cannot, effectively. With the limits under this, there is a barrier to entry into the nomination process.

If we look at the Liberal leadership process that went for nine months of fulsome discussion and debate across the country, presenting 11 candidates for scrutiny by the public in a highly open and democratic process, those were expensive. We cannot do that in a country the size of Canada without having some funds to expend for it.

Those should be under rules, and there are rules. There may be some tightening up that the bill can do, and that is fine. However, to say that people taking out loans so they can exercise their right to take part in the democratic electoral process for leadership, for nomination, is going down the wrong road.

In fact, the bill, as written, does not, as Bill C-24 previously did, take out corporate money and put in public money that was properly and evenly distributed according to the proportion of the vote achieved by each party that ran candidates. This cuts out the public and brings in the big money.

Who can get a loan from a bank, from a financial institution? It is someone with a lot of money or property to put up as collateral, or someone to co-sign or support the loan. Those are people of influence and money. This is letting the money in. It is not keeping the money out. That is what we will have to see. I look forward to working with members of the Bloc, the NDP and the government to see if we can get some amendments so we do not create a barrier to entry for people who have no means and are not yet part of the political process. That transparency is immensely important.

We have an organization called Equal Voice. All members of the House will be well aware of and knowledgeable about it. The organization seeks to encourage women to enter the political process so we can rise above the deplorable disproportion of men to women in the House of Commons, with 20% representation by women.

The leader of the official opposition, the leader of the Liberal Party, has pledged that in the next election one-third of the Liberal candidates will be women. We are well on the way in the nomination process to achieving that. This is a demonstrative move to try to get a proper proportion of gender equity into the House.

If this goes to committee, I am sure Equal Voice, representing all parties and all people across the political spectrum, will be very interested to come to talk the committee and to give evidence, as will many other groups who represent disadvantaged or under-represented sectors of this society. They will want to come and give their evidence on it. I hope we will take instruction from them as to how, perhaps unintentionally, the unavoidable consequence of this will be, to exert more power, not less, in those who have access to large amounts of funds.

This new Conservative bank of Canada act is interesting. It may tighten up the rules a little. It is not so that the Canada Elections Act now does not require loans to be repaid or be converted into contributions under the very restrictive rules. It is not so that contributors, lenders or co-signers do not have to be disclosed for political loans. They do have to be.

I am as anxious as anyone else in the House to see that this process is not abused, and if we can tighten it up, all the better. However, we have to ensure there are no unintended consequences of creating barriers to disadvantaged and under-represented groups.

The government House leader took some time to describe a number of what were called democratic reform bills, or statutes, in the House as brought forward by the Conservative government, and it is worth talking about a few of those.

One is Bill C-2, the Federal Accountability Act. Members of the House and the committee of the House spent a great deal of time on this as did members of the Senate. In fact, unencumbered by a set deadline that was forced on the House committee in the House, the Senate put forward dozens of amendments through its careful review of that act, even under the constant shrill criticism of the government that it was slowing things down.

Regarding slowing things down, royal assent was given to the Federal Accountability Act on December 15, 2006. Here we are, almost five months later, and one of the central parts of that act was the appointments commission. Amendments by the NDP sharpened that up. We had two choices. The Liberal opposition put forward amendments. The NDP put forward amendments. All of them would have been effective, and will be effective, as it was finally passed, but all these months later, all of these appointments later, dozens of them, and we still do not have the appointments commission. This was one of the key things that was said by the government to be so important about the Federal Accountability Act. We do not even have a commission.

We continue without the proper controls. We had suggested that the Public Service Commission take over this role, that there be amendments to its mandate to apply the same rules, competitive process and objective criteria used in the public service for any order in council appointments, but we still do not have that.

I would be very interested to hear from the government when it is going to proceed with that important part of Bill C-2. There were so many complaints about it being delayed when in fact there were a very large number of responsible, thoughtful and careful amendments suggested by the Senate, and actually passed into law.

Bill C-16 deals with fixed dates. We supported that on this side of the House. There was no delay. There was careful consideration in the Senate. There was a thoughtful amendment put forward. It was brought back to the House with that amendment. We on this side offered the government, before the Easter recess, to pass the bill through all processes in the House, back to the Senate, hopefully, for royal assent in the day before we broke. That was rejected. We would have needed unanimous consent, but we did not get it from the government.

Bill C-43 was mentioned by the government House leader. It is not a Senate elections act; it is a consultation act, with provincial elections. It is being put forward as a great democratic reform. I think all members of the House believe, as do probably all members of the other place, that the Senate needs reform in becoming a fully democratic legislative chamber, and we should all work toward that. This is going at it piecemeal. We get criticisms of trying to block the incremental reform of the Senate, but the fact is it all fits together and it must be dealt with at once.

There are three critical aspects of the Senate that have to be considered together.

One aspect is the selection process, which could include elections or involve terms. The term limit is suggested in Bill S-4.

Another aspect is the mandate. In the future how does the mandate relate to the mandate of the House of Commons? Will it be a mirror legislative body with the same electoral validity that will then lead to gridlock. We have to do to deal with that area of comprehensive reform is to have some kind of dispute resolution mechanism whenever the legislative powers mirror each other in the House and the other place.

Then we have the distribution. We cannot do anything else with the Senate until we work out the distribution. It is amazing that the Prime Minister, and all members of the government, would consider doing something to give a greater validity, greater power to the Senate without fixing the very unfair, inequitable distribution of seats to western Canada, particularly to British Columbia and Alberta.

For all of us from British Columbia and Alberta, it is extraordinary that we might think of increasing the power of that body without fixing the horrible lack of fair distribution to western Canada.

Bert Brown has been mentioned in the House by the Prime Minister as being the senator in waiting, to be appointed sometime this summer. He has played a very important role in the political life of Canada. He did not play that role by plowing one E into his barley field or a wheat field. He plowed three E's into it. To try to deal with just one E at once in a piecemeal incremental way, as the Prime Minister says, is not in the favour of Alberta, from where that fine gentleman comes. Nor is it responsible reform in the comprehensive way to properly bring the Senate into the modern age of a democratic legislative chamber. We have to work together to do that.

We often hear about the ghosts of Meech Lake and the ghosts of Charlottetown. We also hear that we cannot go near the Constitution because, my goodness, we might all get distracted and not be able to do anything else in this country and we will never get anywhere. Thank goodness the Fathers of Confederation were not so shy about dealing with the Constitution. We should take on that responsibility ourselves.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to my hon. colleague across the floor. I think we have heard some very valid points. In my opinion, the government should take them into consideration during second reading.

I was part of the legal community for the past 25 years. The Conservatives were in a hurry and wanted Bill C-2 to pass quickly. Another bill is being introduced today in this House, one that amends the first bill, because a few small things were overlooked. I would like to talk about some of those little items that were overlooked. The accountability act provides for whistleblowers to have access to adequate legal counsel, but they are given a limit of $1,500. I hope the government realizes that, with a $1,500 limit, the individual could enjoy the services of a lawyer—and with all due respect for my colleagues of the bar—for only 10 hours of work. Moreover, whistleblowing files are extremely complex and often involve considerable ramifications.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague if we should not think about this now and perhaps add a zero to the $1,500. Personally, I think $15,000 would be a more appropriate figure under the circumstances.