Bill C-54 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (accountability with respect to loans)

This enactment amends the Canada Elections Act to enact rules concerning loans, guarantees and suretyships with respect to registered parties, registered associations, candidates, leadership contestants and nomination contestants.

Canada Elections Act

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, that is a very good point in that we may have another perverse consequence that someone would be getting a tax break by taking part in this whole charade which undermines the integrity of the Elections Act.

An even further perverse consequence is if one did not pay back the loan should one have to put it down as income the next time one files taxes. Perhaps Bob Rae would have to declare another $800,000 worth of income if he does not pay back the $800,000 to his brother. It is loaded with problems.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I believe my time is quite limited, but I will try to summarize my views on Bill C-54 in which I am very pleased to participate today.

I guess I come at this particular issue from the point of view of transparency. I think as members of Parliament we should disclose the sources of any funding, the sources of any loans, but I am not particularly excited about the limits.

We introduced in our mandate Bill C-24, the elections financing act. In fact, I was the only member of the Liberal caucus at the time that voted against the bill at report stage. I felt that it was wrong-footed. I understood that the time the need to restrict corporate donations and in fact a group of us tried to work out a compromise and limit corporate donations to $10,000, but that was not to be.

I have in my riding companies that have branch plants and operations across the country. Under the previous regime of Bill C-24, they could donate $1,000 and now they cannot even do that. If they have branch plants they might want to support the political process and give $250 to the MP or the candidate in a certain riding. I think it is unfortunate that we have brought in these limits for unions and business. I do not think it is appropriate.

In 1998 the Canadian banks wanted to merge. They were very anxious to do that. The banks, it is well known, used to provide huge donations to all the political parties and what good did it do them?

I think the idea that corporate donations buy influence is vastly overstated. I totally believe in transparency, but my problem with this particular bill is that it tends to have some unintended consequences in the sense that it might preclude people who do not have access to cash to get involved in the political process and take out a loan.

The current provisions of the legislation already call for them to repay the loans and they have to do it within the context of the loan limits, of the donation limits, so they cannot avoid the donation rules through loans. Therefore, I am not sure what this new bill is all about, other than restating what is already on the books.

The member for Winnipeg Centre talked about the laundering of money. I think that is a pretty strong statement. I know our country has brought in one of the strongest anti-money laundering regimes in the world. If this was a money laundering operation, I would certainly object to it, but I know my colleague from Vancouver Quadra is the expert on this. I know he will be trying to improve the bill at committee.

I certainly hope, when the bill comes back to the House, it will be new and improved and then I will be happy to have a look at it.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

Order, please. I think I will end the member's speech there. Of course, he will have more time remaining. When the House returns to this particular bill, he will have 16 minutes left to give us the benefit of his views.

The House resumed from May 9 consideration of the motion that Bill C-54, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (accountability with respect to loans), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to complete my remarks this morning on Bill C-54.

I should also say at the outset that I will be sharing my time with the member for Churchill.

Members of Parliament are honest people. Unfortunately, we have been tarred, I think unjustly at times, by the public. Most people in the chamber would agree that everything should be transparent with respect to where we raise our money or what loans we have backing us. I for one believe that anything I do can be posted on a website, I will be accountable for it, and people can hold me accountable for it because they can elect me or not.

It is unfortunate that the Prime Minister has not been forthcoming. In his 2002 leadership campaign he failed to disclose the sources of the people who donated to his leadership bid. I would like to know that and I think many Canadians would like to know who supported the Prime Minister in his leadership bid in 2002. Was it the coalition for guns? Was it Canadian big business? Who was it? Right now we can only speculate and I think the Prime Minister would do himself a service if he came clean.

I should contrast that to the Liberal Party's last leadership campaign and conference in which the leadership candidates went above and beyond everything that was required by Elections Canada.

We need rules and regulations, but I believe that full transparency is a much more powerful tool.

I recall one incident that had to do with the Ethics Commissioner. I was invited to go to the Grey Cup in Ottawa a few years ago by some big company that I knew about. Everyone knew the name. I do not recall having any dealings with it. I told my staff to phone the Ethics Commissioner's office to find out if this was appropriate and get its blessing.

A member of my staff spoke to someone at the Ethics Commissioner's office and the person said that because the Grey Cup was such a big event I would be sitting with corporate people from that company and there would be no time to talk business. The individual thought it was inappropriate. To me it seemed totally counterintuitive. I would have thought the opposite would have been the case. I did not go to the Grey Cup.

That is the problem when one tries to regulate and micromanage things at that level. Let us be accountable and transparent. We have a very good transparent and accountable system in the Parliament of Canada. People vote frequently, sometimes far too frequently as they see it and certainly as many of us see it, but they have a vote. They can kick us out if they see that we took a donation from a company or individual who they feel is inappropriate.

I recall being the treasurer of the riding association of the former member for Etobicoke North who received a large donation, I would say in the thousands of dollars. That conjures up thoughts of $40,000 or $50,000, but it was not even $10,000. I talked to the member at the time. I was the treasurer, a part time volunteer. We discussed it and decided that it was inappropriate to accept a donation of what I will say was $5,000 at the time because there was clearly an agenda, at least in our judgment, by the company making the donation. We sent back a letter, thanked it profusely, and said we felt it was inappropriate.

I have had donations of $200, $250 from corporations and those are basically the size of any corporate donations. I have had some slightly larger over the years. Is a $250 donation going to buy my position in the House of Commons where I am representing the people of Canada? Of course it would not. If that were the case, I would send the cheque back. No amount is going to change my mind about a position I am going to take. I am going to take a position that is, in my judgment, in the best interests of all Canadians. That can be a judgment call and people would agree to disagree.

However, I think we get so hung up with these rules and regulations. I for one voted against our government's bill, Bill C-24, election financing, and tried to work a compromise out with the then Prime Minister to limit corporate donations but not to the extent that they were then or are today.

I do not think the bill accomplishes that much. It sort of reinforces what is already on the books. We cannot use loans to circumvent the donation limits. That is already there and we have to disclose these loans.

Certainly, I support transparency, accountability, and I am going to ask our critic for his best advice once the bill goes to committee, but at this point I am not sure it adds any value.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, some members of Parliament, especially Liberal members, and some former members had trust funds. No one knew who donated to these trust funds and many of those trust funds got transferred to the riding associations.

I heard the Liberal member talk about transparency and accountability. On behalf of his party, will he pledge to bring forward all the names of people who have donated to past trust funds that are now transferred to riding associations, so that even today we can get some clarity as to who are some of these past donors?

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am quite aware of the trust fund situation of my former colleague from Trinity—Spadina. In fact, I think those trust funds have all been wound down.

There are different motivations for setting up a trust fund. I have a trust fund. I have a trust fund because when I receive donations, I want to put it on deposit and I want to have it there. It is all receipted through the party, so the party gets its commission or whatever. I put it in a trust fund so that I can put it on deposit, it can earn money, and it is earmarked for an election campaign.

We need to understand that when we raise money, it is to run elections. There is a tendency certainly in many associations if we have the money there in an association's bank account to suddenly, if there is a great idea to support people who go to this convention or that convention, have a big picnic, to do this and that which are all good things, but we have to have the money there to fight an election campaign.

Therefore, I have a trust fund. It is all fully disclosed. There are no donations going directing to my trust fund. It all comes from the association. It is all receipted. It is all publicly available. Once it goes through that process, I put it into a trust fund. It is a legal trust fund sanctioned by the party and sanctioned by Elections Canada.

One of the things that some people were annoyed about is when they collected money, it had to go through the party and the party collected a commission. That was fair enough. It has to run the party apparatus as well, but some people were quite upset about that. I do not think it is driven by the need to hide donations, but right now the trust funds are all wrapped up, the way that one was and I am sure that it is appropriate.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure it did not escape your notice that the hon. member did not answer the question he had been asked about what the source was for monies in all these trust funds.

It is interesting that on the one hand that is a question not worth answering in his mind, whereas it is desperately important that the Prime Minister explain where he got funds from for a leadership race that occurred not under the current law, not under the proposed law, but under the current law which was enacted a year ago, and not under the law that Jean Chrétien enacted in 2004, but under a previous law. Therefore, we are going back now to 2002.

The argument I guess he is presenting is that somehow, and I will not say I guess because he essentially made an assertion, extremists and so on must have been at the root of any money that was received at that time. That is just indecorous and inappropriate.

However, I think we can probably guess that the same people who supported the Prime Minister when he ran for the leadership of the Canadian Alliance in 2002 would also have supported him in 2004 when he ran for the leadership of the new Conservative Party in a much better financed campaign.

We all remember that in 2002 the Canadian Alliance was in disarray and the leadership was not quite the prize that the leadership of the Conservative Party in 2004 was. He was not running against a billionaire either who had an infinite amount of money to spend financing her own campaign.

Therefore, if we were to take a look at the 2004 numbers which are public, we would get an idea of the kind of structure we can expect. What we see is very few large donations and we would also see the number one donor in that campaign. Number one was me. I gave the largest donation. I think we have a pretty good idea that we are not talking about vast amounts of money from corporations.

By contrast to that, if we were to look at the numbers for the Liberal leadership campaign, we would see--

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

Order. I do have to give the hon. member some time to respond. The hon. member for Etobicoke North.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, I think the member for Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington has it wrong because we cannot look at the donations that were made today to the Prime Minister's campaign and then conclude that they must have been the same people back in 2002. That is just not good enough. The member opposite knows that.

There could have been a whole group of different people in 2002, different corporations. It was then the Alliance Party. If I were to stand in the House and say I did not disclose my donations in the election campaign in 1997, but in the election campaign in 2000 we could see the list of people who donated to my campaign and we could infer that it was the same group. It is not good enough. The member opposite should know that.

[Tina Keeper, Liberal, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-54, which focuses on creating further restrictions on the use of loans for political entities.

I understand the bill, if passed, will amend the pre-existing rules of the Canada Elections Act. This is legislation that touches on the national discussion of democratic reform, a discussion that has always been of great interest for all members of this House and, indeed, for many constituents across my riding of Churchill.

As some members in the House may know, the Churchill riding is a very northern riding in Manitoba and it covers more than half of the province of Manitoba. It reflects rural Canada and aboriginal Canadians, including first nations and the Métis nation.

Canadians expect their members of Parliament to be continuously working to find ways to enhance our nation's democracy. As parliamentarians, we must work together to foster a nation that values both civic responsibility and empowerment. These virtues are the centre of any debate on democratic reform.

Bill C-54 purports to establish a uniform and transparent reporting regime for all loans to political entities, including mandatory disclosure of terms and the identity of all lenders and loan guarantors.

Strangely enough, the government's proposed provisions already exist in the current law.

The legislation is also designed to tighten rules of treatment of unpaid loans to ensure candidates cannot walk away from unpaid loans. This does not represent a substantive change to the law as, once again, there are already provisions in place to ensure that loans cannot be written off without consequence. Political riding associations would ultimately be held responsible for unpaid loans taken out by their candidates.

This would allow only financial institutions and other political entities to make loans beyond the annual contribution limit for individuals, and only at commercial rates of interest, although the current law already requires all loans to be made at commercial rates of interest. Under the proposed legislation, unions and corporations would now be unable to make loans and financial institutions could not lend money at rates of interest other than the market norm.

While it seems that the government intended to increase transparency with this bill, the shortcomings of the bill, as it is currently laid out, are such that it would do nothing to increase accountability. Instead, Bill C-54 would build new roadblocks that would restrict the access Canadians have to the democratic process.

If passed as is, the legislation would give financial institutions the full say on who gets to run for political office in Canada rather than Canadians.

In line with the Conservatives' trends of discriminatory policies, the bill would negatively impact many Canadians, especially people in my riding, including first nations, minority candidates and, I believe, women for nomination. Canada is at the point in our history where the government should be continuing the Liberal legacies of encouraging greater participation in the democratic process. The government must celebrate our diversity through political empowerment rather than design laws that would hinder one's ability to run for public office.

The proposed changes would make it very difficult for Canadians, especially those of limited means and those with limited contact to potential wealthy contributors to even seek nomination in Canada because of the challenge of securing loans from banking institutions. I am curious as to whether the members opposite were intentionally doing this or perhaps it is an aspect of the bill that they merely overlooked. Either case, I think it is a question worthy of further exploration.

I also want to add that under Liberal leadership in this country, the government passed legislation that limited the roles of corporations and unions in electoral financing and introduced the most dramatic lowering of contribution limits in Canadian history.

The key difference between limiting the role of corporate and union contributions in political campaigns and limiting loans in the manner that the government has introduced is a matter of equity. I feel that their proposed approach would be regressive. Given this opportunity to advance this debate, we should seize the opportunity to democratize our institutions where available.

For some, the window of opportunity to influence policy may only come once every four year. Since the passing of Bill C-16, the next scheduled time Canadians will have the ability to voice their opinion for policy change will be in October 2009. This is not to say that the federal election will occur on that date but rather that it is theoretically conceivable.

Our democracy is an institution of the people and in order for such an institution to be truly meaningful it must be truly accessible, regardless of gender, race and social status. With this in mind, we need legislation that will address these demands for all Canadians.

I look forward to hearing other members' perspectives on this debate and observing how it unfolds in the near future.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the member's comments about election financing reform. Of course, her party is opposed to any kind of reform in that area and it is no secret why that is.

If we go back to the Liberal leadership race we can see what the various candidates borrowed from private individuals. For example, for the opposition leader it was almost half a million dollars. For the member for Etobicoke—Lakeshore it was $470,000. For Bob Rae it was $845,000 in loans. It goes on and on, $200,000, $300,000 for a total of $3 million that was borrowed from private individuals to run those campaigns.

The problem is that nobody knows the terms of the repayment. Nobody in the public knows what the interest rates were. Are those loans being forgiven? Is this a back door to actually do donations? Nobody knows.

Why does the member not support the demand of taxpayers, voters and Canadians in general that there be accountability in election financing?

[Tina Keeper, Liberal, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin with what Canadians do not know. He is right. They do not know who the funders were for Prime Minister Harper's race in 2002.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

Order, please. I do not know how many times I have to tell members that they are not to refer to the Prime Minister or anybody else by their first or last names.

[Tina Keeper, Liberal, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize. As a new member I am sometimes shaky on the rules of the House.

I would like to add that it was the Liberal Party that brought in Bill C-24, the most sweeping changes on electoral reform. In fact, when we talk about this particular bill, Bill C-54, the core of the issue for many Canadians is access and participation in the democratic process.

Many members seem to use Bill C-54 to focus on the Liberal leadership race. I think there is a desperate attempt to make an issue of something that was not an issue. It is about access to the democratic process and we as parliamentarians have a duty to ensure that all Canadians can access this process.

I represent a large riding with a population that is not as large as many small urban ridings but 65% of my riding are aboriginal people. However, because of systemic policies and some of the laws in this country, the aboriginal people have been marginalized. For instance, in one centre in my riding where mining is booming and the price of minerals is going through the roof, the first nations have not had access to resource benefit sharing. There is inequity and it is through the history and the policies of this country that have created inequity. As parliamentarians it is our job to ensure that we have a process in place where we have equal access.

I represent many people in my riding who do not have the ability to access this type of loan from a bank because they do not have the capital. However, that is not due to not wanting it or not working hard enough. People did work hard but we come from a whole different cultural background where our industry was the land. We did not have financial institutions in the same tradition as western Canadians, or western civilization as we might want to call it. We had our own civilization. Our industry and our economy was based on the land. We did not have these types of institutions so we do not have a history of participating in these types of institutions. We did not have a framework where we built up capital and equity.

Therefore, this whole framework, which is at the core of this bill, is actually alien to people, but not out of choice. Many new Canadians who have come here are working hard and paying their bills but they are living cheque to cheque. We all know people who reflect that reality for many Canadians and in fact we know that probably the majority of Canadians live in a lifestyle where they may not have access--