Bill C-50 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (political financing)

This enactment amends the Canada Elections Act to
(a) enact an advertising and reporting regime for fundraising events attended by Ministers, party leaders or leadership contestants; and
(b) harmonize the rules applicable to contest expenses of nomination contestants and leadership contestants with the rules applicable to election expenses of candidates.

Canada Elections Act

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the only member of the House who is younger than I am for that question, and I am proud to serve with him.

It is very clear that Liberals are desperate to hold these cash for access fundraisers, especially considering that the Conservative Party of Canada, yet again, destroyed them in fundraising this year and we are not even the governing party. We do not need to dangle out our ministers and sell cash for access; we have Canadians who believe in this party and this party's principles. We do not need to engage in this sort of cash for access: pay me something and we will give something. We do not need to engage in that sort of activity.

Bill C-50 is a public relations exercise. The government was caught with these cash for access fundraisers, but it cannot get off of this, so it needs to have the bill to make it appear like it is doing something about it. Canadians are not fooled.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my hon. colleague's comments, although I do not want to hear more about his referral to age.

Could my hon. colleague comment on what is going on currently whereby the Prime Minister has breached and broken four parts of the Conflict of Interest Act, said sorry, but refused to make right the wrong that he has done?

When we think about ethics and honourable behaviour in this place, could my hon. colleague talk about how the Prime Minister is disrespecting Canada and Canadian taxpayer dollars by what he has done?

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it goes to show that some things do not change. We have a party in government that will use all apparatuses of government, whether it be personal jets or meal allowances, or the power of ministers to fundraise and cover costs for personal pleasure. Canadians expect better of their government, and they expect better of their Prime Minister. There was over $200,000 spent on security and jet costs, which is perfectly understandable, but we had $32,000 on a government jet and over $1,700 on booze and meals. The Prime Minister needs to pay this money back. It was an illegal vacation. He needs to pay the money back.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a privilege to rise and speak and contribute to debate in this place on behalf of the people of Portage—Lisgar.

It seems that too often these days I feel I am standing, whether in question period or during debate, and we are talking about ethical lapses that the current government is showing. I find it disappointing. I think that Canadians are disappointed. However, it seems that more frequently we are talking about some of these conflicts of interest and ethical lapses. Sadly, with Bill C-50, there is no exception to this pattern.

We hear the Liberals portraying themselves as being cloaked in virtue as they discuss the bill on political financing. What Liberals and especially the Prime Minister are very good at is talking a good game. Saying all the right things is the Prime Minister's forte. Doing the right thing, not so much. The Prime Minister, on so many issues around ethics, says one thing with his words and a completely different thing with his actions. Bill C-50 is no different, and the backstory to the proposed legislation is even more telling.

The House will recall how the Liberals were creating for themselves a big ethical crater, because literally the moment they got into government, they began setting up and holding their cash for access fundraisers. Members will remember the Minister of Justice being the guest of honour at a fundraiser held at a Bay Street law firm in Toronto, which was targeting members of the legal community, the very people she was making decisions for and about, including appointing to the bench. She was selling access to herself to these individuals. It was absolutely shocking. Members may also remember the parliamentary secretary, the MP who was the Liberal point man on legalizing pot, as the main attraction who was then lobbied by marijuana advocates and investors at a fundraiser.

Members will remember the Prime Minister himself travelling the land and appearing at more $1,500 fundraisers than any of us can count. These were not just one-offs; there was not just one fundraiser that he went to. The Prime Minister, as we all know, has gone to more fundraisers, and $1,500-a-head fundraisers, than any of us can count. Of course, there was the ultimate cash for access trade-off, where the Prime Minister and his wife called and asked the Aga Khan if they could use his private island for free while, at the same time, he was asking them for public money. Wow, a free island holiday for access to the Prime Minister, and a personal benefit to the Prime Minister. However, I will get to that one a little later.

The Prime Minister has done more cash for access events than any of us care to count, but we all remember the one that came to light where the Prime Minister sold access to himself when he met a wealthy tycoon who was the principal investor in a bank that was seeking federal approval to begin operations. That was a bad idea. He was at another one of these events when the Prime Minister met a Chinese billionaire who also was asking for some government favours. Lo and behold, just weeks later, he made a quarter of a million dollar donation for a statue of the Prime Minister's father, and a donation to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. It is “You give me this. I'll give you that. You give me cash. I'll give you access. You give me cash. You have my ear.”

On another occasion, a Quebec businessman in the vaping industry bought a ticket to speak to the Prime Minister about Bill S-5. In fact, the gentleman told Global News, “ I saw an open door and I walked through it – and I’ll walk through every open door I see.... I took $250 out of my own pocket to accomplish what I needed to accomplish..”. He got access to the Prime Minister.

What is the problem with Bill C-50? In a nutshell, it would formalize and try to legitimize these cash for access fundraisers. As I said, it attempts to confer a veneer of legitimacy upon them. What Bill C-50 would not do is make these fundraisers legally ethical. They are unethical. Changing the rules to allow deep-pocket individuals to meet the Prime Minister to bend his ear on government business is still wrong.

If the Prime Minister would like to shut down his cash for access fundraisers for the Liberal Party, he would stop doing them. He could tell his cabinet the same thing, to stop doing these fundraisers. He could maybe follow his own guidelines.

Let me read from the Prime Minister's own “Open and Accountable Government” document. He told his ministers, under “Fundraising and Dealing with Lobbyists: Best Practices for Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries, the following: “Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries must ensure that political fundraising activities or considerations do not affect, or appear to affect, the exercise of their official duties or the access of individuals or organizations to government.” Wow, everything I just described moments ago is contrary to what this “Open and Accountable Government” code does.

This does not require legislation; it needs conviction and integrity. It needs men and women and a government that is authentic and genuine and does not just say the right words but does the right thing. That is not what the Liberals and the Prime Minister seem to do.

Why could the Prime Minister not have said he would follow the rules like everyone else? Why could the Prime Minister not have just said this: “I put this out. It makes sense. I have asked my ministers to follow these guidelines. We're going to follow them.” Obviously, it is because the Prime Minister thinks that rules do not apply to him. We have seen this over and over with the Prime Minister. He thinks there is one set of rules for one group of people and another set of rules for him.

That brings me to another point, and it is with regard to a provision in Bill C-50 that I want to highlight for the House. Clause 2 in the bill would, among other things, enact a new section, 384.4, of the Canada Elections Act. I am going to summarize briefly what this would do.

Section 384.4 would basically put into legislation that if a registered party received a contribution that does not comply with the act, that party would have 30 days to either return that contribution to the donor or pay it to the Receiver General of Canada. The principle behind this is that in the event of a breach of the fundraising rules, the message is clear and the law is clear that the money must be paid back. That is in the bill we are currently discussing. If a party receives money that it is not entitled to, that party cannot just apologize and then smile. It has to pay that money back. That is not a revolutionary idea. Although we have some concerns with Bill C-50, this provision makes sense.

This is not revolutionary. If people are caught taking something that does not belong to them, they give it back, pay it back; they make restitution. We teach our children that when they take something that does not belong to them, they have to make amends, and that includes saying sorry. More importantly, and maybe the toughest part of saying sorry, is actually making it right.

These are rules and lessons that we as parents, as society, and certainly as leaders in this place should be adhering to. However, we are seeing a stunningly hypocritical exception to this principle, and that is with the Prime Minister.

When the former Ethics Commissioner handed down her report which determined that the Prime Minister had violated the Conflict of Interest Act, the House will recall that what he did cost taxpayers over $200,000. If the Prime Minister is truly sorry and wants to be transparent, if he truly wants to put action behind his words, then he needs to right the wrong he has committed. He needs to pay back the taxpayer. He also should look seriously at making the wrong right. He should make the wrong right by paying back the value of that holiday. That is one of the principles of making restitution. If somebody takes a painting that does not belong to that individual, then he or she has to give that painting back or pay back the value of that painting.

It is one thing to talk about legislation like this, but the Liberals are still having their cash for access events. This legislation would do nothing to stop it. We have good rules in place. All we need are men and women of integrity and honour to follow those rules and then show leadership. When they have done something wrong, stop doing it and make it right. That is what we are asking the Prime Minister to do. I would think that all Liberals would agree, as would everyone in the House. We are asking the Prime Minister to not only be sorry but to make right the wrong that he has done.

I expect that the Liberals will not be asking me questions about that, but I would ask them to think about that. In their own meetings with the Prime Minister, ask him to do the right thing: make this right.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, let us look at the facts. As of right now, the Liberal Party already practises everything in the bill.

By actually adopting this and making it law, it will only become applicable, the openness and transparency, to two more individuals in the House. They are the leader of the Conservative Party and the leader of the NDP. Why would the member be against having that openness and transparency for her leader and the leader of the NDP, unless they have something to hide?

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Mr. Speaker, that is my exact point. We identified the problem a year and a half ago, that there were cash for access events going on that were wrong. Instead of Liberals of correcting it, they said, “Gee, what can we do? Oh, I know, let's advertise and invite the media. Let's put that into legislation, and then we will support it.” That is absolutely ridiculous.

When we were in government, and when we are in government again, we did not do cash for access events. In fact, we did the opposite. I remember what our former prime minister, Stephen Harper, told his ministers. He said that we were to stay away from lobbyists, the people in the our portfolios, and not go to fundraisers. Instead, the Liberals did fundraisers. Now they want to make a law that validates what they do.

That is not a good question.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up on that point.

I look back at the summer. As people are aware, it was a horrific wildfire season in B.C.. Communities were devastated. The Prime Minister went up there, did a photo op, and, from my understanding, then went down to Vancouver and did a cash for access fundraiser.

I want to contrast that with our leader. He came up, did a community event, and did a fundraiser for the food bank to help people who were wildfire victims. That shows the difference between those two men and their sense of ethics. For one, it is cash for access for his party. For the other, it is to try to make things a little better for the people who were so devastated by the wildfire.

Could my colleague talk a little more about how this is a simple fact of ethics and doing the right thing?

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things we know about our leader, the leader of the Conservative Party, is that he really understands the struggles that everyday Canadians go through.

Our leader was raised in a very humble, average Canadian family. There is no family fortune. There is no millionaire's stockpile of money somewhere for him. One of the things this has done for him is that he understands what it means for Canadians to have to pay the mortgage, make a car payment, and maybe save some money for their kids. When he is thinking about what he can do to help Canadians, he wants to help with those kinds of things, whether it is putting more money in their pockets or helping with worthy fundraisers, like for the victims of the forest fires.

That is one of the challenges with the current Prime Minister. He really is not like a lot of average Canadians. He was born into a lot, and that is not a bad thing, but he does not seem to understand what the average Canadian goes through. It would appear that he feels very entitled to all of this money and all of this cash for access. Recently, he quite blatantly referred to himself as “The Prime Minister”. He likes to refer to himself in the third person.

He needs to realize that even though he is the Prime Minister, Canadians are concerned about his ethics and his lack of understanding. We saw his response to veterans recently. He needs to get back in touch with Canadians. I am so grateful our leader is doing that, because that is where he comes from.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my parents were both teachers. I certainly paid my way through law school and eight years of education.

I held a fundraiser, and the parliamentary secretary to the minister of justice at the time came. We made an agreement that we would not talk about cannabis. It was of interest to both of us and it was of interest to some in the audience, but we were not going to talk about it.

The ticket price was $150. It was $20 for monthly donors. Of the list of 80 people who came, I knew 78 people. The two people who I did not know bought tickets under a different name. When we found out who they were, we gave their money back.

Does the hon. member think that is inappropriate?

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Mr. Speaker, that is very responsible. If the Prime Minister and the Liberals would govern themselves to that kind of detail, that would show a real desire to not have a type of cash for access.

I recall when we would do the same thing when we were in government. If we did fundraisers, we wanted to ensure the stakeholders, those who were part of our departments, were not part of those. That shows responsibility. Certainly, we would understand if some fell through the cracks. However, I think all of us would want to endeavour to do that.

The examples I cited, and what we have seen, is the exact opposite of that. Here is a simple solution. The Prime Minister should not do those massive fundraisers and the ministers in turn should not do fundraisers with their stakeholders. That would, in a practical way, go a long way to cleaning this up. It is simple and we all should be able to do that.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am enjoying the minutia of this debate. Actually, I have a quick solution for this whole problem. Why do we not just lower the upper limit for donations? It is $1,550. Why do we not just drop it to $200? Then we would not have this debate at all. Neither of those sides are really interested in that.

This year, I think I had 1,200 donors through my fundraising efforts through my EDA. My average donation was $50. Most average Canadians are not able to give $1,550 per year to any kind of donation. They will give what they can to support their parties. However, we will not hear those kinds of arguments from either side of the House. For example, in Quebec, the limit is $100. We could end this whole debate if the Liberals would change their bill and lower the limit to be much lower than $1,550. We will not hear that. We will just hear a back and forth about who is more corrupt.

Also, this is a very minor bill. The big changes to electoral finance were really led by the province of Quebec. It brought it in the first limits on spending, then eventually increased transparency until we had some of the best finance laws in the world. Therefore, this is a minor bill in a Parliament of minor bills.

When we read books about the histories of parliaments, we will read about the Parliament that brought in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the one where women were allowed to vote. The kinds of bills we are debating in this Parliament are nothing of that scope. I think any Canadian watching this today would say that this is a minor tweak to existing laws, and I would agree. That is what is going on here. This is what parliamentary time is being spent on. There are no grand ideas coming out of this Parliament, and I find that sad.

If students of democracy looked through the history of democracy, they would see these moments where things were done because within the House of Commons members had the imagination on how to improve the way decisions were made and how to govern themselves.

There is need for a change. Two great academics out of Harvard have now shown how democracy is declining around the world. What is most scary is that young people now are losing faith in their democratic processes. It is not only that they are not voting anymore, some would actually prefer authoritarian processes over democratic ones. This is a widespread problem. We know this from the World Values Survey that was recently released. It is quite concerning. However, we cannot get any data on Canada because we do not participate in that survey.

We can be bold about how great our democracy is, but we do not even measure it. We do not even pay attention to what is happening here because we do not participate in international surveys. This is a big problem.

Pardon me for yawning through these debates, but they really will not do anything at all to improve our democratic problems.

One of the problems we have, which I have talked a lot about, is under-representation in the House of Commons. About 28% of the seats in the House are filled with women, who make up over 50% of the population. We have had lots of back and forth about how we need to encourage more women to run for office. That is assuming this is a supply problem, which is ridiculous. It is ridiculous to think there are so few women in the House of Commons because of lack of supply.

We have anywhere between 50,000 or 100,000 each in our political parties. Are we saying that out of those 100,000 members, we cannot find 338 women, or even half of that, 170 women, to run for each party? That is ridiculous. The problem is demand. Parties block women from becoming candidates. Time and again this is what academic studies, published in referee journals, show.

I put forward a private member's bill that would help remedy that by using electoral finance law, something that could have been put into this bill but was not. Instead, after the next election what we will have is a Parliament that will look almost exactly the same as this one with respect to gender representation. Because we have taken no action in this Parliament, I bet we do not get anywhere near the 50% threshold. We will probably have around 30% of the seats in the House filled with women. How do I know that? Because both the major parties have decided to protect their incumbents. That basically means we have a gender freeze in the House, unless there is a massive turnover of seats, where one party, say our party, runs 50% women candidates and we take over all the seats in the House of Commons.

This means that if we stay the same, in terms of the percentage of seats and how they are distributed, we would not add any more women in here. It means that, when you come back next time and sit in that chair, Mr. Speaker—and I think you do a very good job—you will look out over the House and see the same gender distribution, because we failed to take action in the House. That is a terrible thing. With all the rhetoric we hear from the other side about a feminist prime minister and “because it's 2015”, there has been no action on that side, and there have been opportunities to take action, which have been dismissed and sneered at.

That is the side of the House that has to live with the lack of change. The Liberals are the ones who said they would do something, promised it, and did not do it. It is the same with proportional representation. The Prime Minister said 1,800 times that the last election would be the last one with the first past the post system. That change has gone by the wayside as well.

When all the dust clears from the 2019 election and we see what the House looks like in 2020, it is going to look exactly the same. The parties might switch around a little, but in terms of representation, it is going to be exactly the same. Also, we will not have proportional representation.

Let us go to another problem we are having, and that is with the nomination of candidates. We are having all kinds of problems with candidates not being screened correctly or slipping through the cracks in parties when their integrity is in question. We see it in Ontario. We see it all over the place in political parties. These parties are more concerned about electoral success than they often are about the integrity of their candidates. This problem is found all over the world.

The U.S. fixed this problem in the 1920s after the Tammany Hall disaster. There was massive corruption within that institution. What did it do? It let the state do its party nomination process. It had primaries. Why do we never consider that in the House? We have these little details of bills that really do not mean anything to Canadians, but what we could do is clean up our system and have primaries, not party-run primaries, but state-run primaries. Elections Canada would oversee how parties select their candidates. It would make sure that the processes are fair, and that the voting is fair and beyond reproach. There would not be stacked meetings. The nomination processes would be fair. More than that, the citizens could trust in them.

I have given members three ideas of things we could work on. We could work on bills, where we work on gender parity in the House. I have given members the idea of proportional representation, which the NDP has always fought for, and that side has promised but never delivered. I have also given an idea about how we could fix our nomination process by having primaries. This is all about taking democracy where it needs to go. This is not defending a system that has perhaps served us okay in the past and stacked up well against other systems.

As an example, when the Prime Minister took office in 2015, we were 48th in the world in terms of the proportion of women in our House. Since that time, we have dropped to 65th place, which means that there are 64 countries in the world that have more women in their legislatures than we have here in this place. That is the problem with “because it's 2015”. How can the Prime Minister be the world's most feminist prime minister, when we have dropped from 48th to 65th place in terms of the percentage of women, and we are doing nothing about it? I applaud the gender-balanced cabinet. It is a great idea, but it is only a symbol. It is not locked into our institutions. The next prime minister could come in and have no women in the cabinet.

We need to change our laws and our rules to ensure that we set a world example, that we set the tone and timbre for the world to follow, and not lag behind as we are.

I have listened to the minutiae of the debate, and I have heard the rhetoric, but this is a very minor bill, when we have major problems we should be fixing.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, I did not get a sense, through the member's intervention, of whether he is actually supportive of the steps that would be taken in the bill to make political fundraising more transparent and to make party leaders, cabinet ministers, and all federally elected representatives more accountable in the way they engage party members and people within their communities to add a level of transparency and openness to the political fundraising system. I would like to know whether he supports the pieces in the bill that would improve transparency, as well as the process we are undertaking.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

Yes, Mr. Speaker, I support the bill, but I will not go home and brag about it, because it is so minor. If I am asked if I support the Liberals' bill, I will say yes, but no one will even notice it. It is going to be a very small change to our system. The Liberals have challenged me to support their bill and I would challenge the member across the aisle to come up with something more bold that we could debate in a way that matters. Members can say that some members took money for their fundraising and other members took money for their fundraiser, but we are only talking $1,500. It is not a huge deal.

I would challenge Liberals to do better, but I will support their bill.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. It really does not have a whole lot to do with changing our democratic institutions, the way we elect members and have a functioning modern democracy.

There is a massive public subsidy of the $1,500, in that the first $400 is 75% of taxpayer money and then there is a subsequent decrease. I introduced a bill that provided the same thing for charitable organizations, which are tied to a much smaller amount. One would think there would be the highest degree of accountability, openness, transparency, and expectations for the result that taxpayers get when the mere fact is that for every $1 under $400, they get 75% back. It becomes a massive public subsidization for the parties in our current system.

Could the hon. member comment about the fact that the public is so invested in massive subsidization?

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

Mr. Speaker, most countries in the world move in this direction. They realize that if they allow unions, large businesses, or wealthy individuals to control the system, the laws and budgets favour those folks. I would be much more in favour of, for example, a much lower contribution limit at the same level of taxation limits, but also bring back the per-vote subsidy, which would, of course, eliminates a lot of this problem. It is practised in most places. I do not know why we are discovering it for the first time again and again here. We owe more to taxpayers than this, and we owe them better bills than this.