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

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Minister of Democratic Institutions]

moved that Bill C-50, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (political financing), be read the third time and passed.

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-50. This bill would amend the Canada Elections Act to create an unprecedented level of openness and transparency for political fundraising events.

Political parties are made up of Canadians from across the country who have different experiences and points of view. Political parties help the public learn more about their leaders and their politicians, as well as their policies and positions of principle. Political parties appoint and train candidates and volunteers, support them before and during elections, and coordinate the logistics for national election campaigns.

Unlike many organizations with mandates that are just as broad and vital, political parties must do their own fundraising to support almost all their activities. Donations pay for all activities, from daily operations to a national election campaign.

The system works. Canadians donate because they believe in our political parties, what they stand for, who leads them, and the candidates they empower to run for office.

A strict regime is in place to ensure fairness in this system. Existing regulations regarding political fundraising in Canada are among the strongest in the world. The existing regulations include strict spending limits, a cap on annual donations, and a ban on corporate and union donations.

Caps on donations have existed for 44 years in Canada, and governments, both Liberal and Conservative, have worked to strengthen our political financing system over this period of time. Bill C-50 would do just that. It would add an additional layer of openness and transparency in political fundraising.

Our government has stated that we must raise the bar for transparency, accountability, and the integrity of our public institutions and the democratic process. We also said loud and clear that we want to encourage Canadians to fully participate in our democracy. It is this last objective that I have been focusing on since the Prime Minister asked me to serve as the Minister of Democratic Institutions one year ago.

Our government has moved on several fronts to ensure a more open and inclusive democracy. We have changed the way we appoint senators and judges. More women have been appointed through our public appointments process. We are making elections more accessible and inclusive. We are taking steps to protect our democracy from cyber-threats and foreign interference. We take these actions seriously, because we know how deeply Canadians value and cherish our democracy.

Former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci said:

Political parties provide individual citizens with an opportunity to express an opinion on the policy and functioning of government.

Section 3 of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees Canadians the right to vote. This article and the right to freedom of association are intimately connected. Canadian citizens and permanent residents also have the right to donate to a political party of their choice.

Many Canadians make financial contributions to election campaigns or participate in political fundraisers, since that is a way for them to actively participate in our democracy. It is also an important way for people to express their democratic will. We will continue to protect the right of all Canadians to provide financial support to the political party of their choice.

Canadians have been loud and clear. They want to know more about who funds political activities in Canada. Bill C-50 would shine a light on who is attending political fundraisers, where and when these events are taking place, and the amount required to attend them.

This bill would ensure that more information than ever before about political fundraisers was shared with the media and the public. This transparency would allow Canadians to continue to have confidence in our democracy, confidence that they could support a party with which they shared values, ideals, and policy positions and confidence that they, too, could actively participate, should they so choose.

Our laws, when it comes to political financing, are already quite strict in this regard. Bill C-50 would build on these existing strict laws. Specifically, it would see the following rules put in place. First, details about fundraising events involving the Prime Minister, cabinet ministers, party leaders, and leadership contestants of parties with a seat in the House of Commons, when over $200 per person was necessary to participate at the event, would now be required to be made public. Second, these events would be required to be advertised on political parties' websites at least five days before they took place, and political parties would be required to report a list of attendees to Elections Canada within 30 days after the event.

The bill would also make technical amendments, which would bring leadership and nomination campaign expenses in line with the current regime for candidates.

This bill takes into account certain privacy considerations with regard to the disclosure of the names of minors, volunteers, event staff, journalists, and support staff for people with disabilities or for any minister or party leader who participates in the event.

I would like to highlight some quotes from acting Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault, who said the following at a committee appearance on the subject:

I note that the bill offers a calibrated approach. Not all parties will be subject to the new requirements and I believe that is a good thing. Similarly, the rules will not apply to all fundraising activities, but only those for which a minimum amount is charged to attend and where key decision-makers are also present.

Later in his testimony, he elaborated, saying:

Generally speaking, the bill increases the transparency of political fundraising, which is one of the main goals of the Canada Elections Act. It does so without imposing an unnecessary burden on the smaller parties that are not represented in the House of Commons or for fundraising events that do not involve key decision-makers.

It is clear from Mr. Perrault's testimony at committee that he feels that Bill C-50 would accomplish the goal outlined in my mandate letter to “significantly enhance transparency for the public at large and media in the political fundraising system for Cabinet members, party leaders and leadership candidates.”

I believe that my hon. colleagues, like our government, want to provide Canadians with more information about political fundraising activities.

If Bill C-50 is passed, it will keep the government's promise to significantly enhance transparency in Canada's political fundraising system for both the public and the media. By improving transparency, we will also help build Canadians' trust in the political system. This is one of many measures that we are taking to improve, strengthen, and protect our democratic institutions.

I am proud to speak to this bill at third reading, as I strongly believe that it is one more step in our efforts to improve our political financing system, one that would strengthen the confidence Canadians have in how parties raise money through events.

I would like to close my remarks by thanking the officials in my department for their hard work in helping to put this bill together, the members of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs for their diligent study of this bill, and the members of this place for their support in getting this bill to the next step in the parliamentary process.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Madam Speaker, I first want to thank my hon. colleague, the Minister of Democratic Institutions, for the quality of her French, which is quite impressive. I congratulate her on the quality.

I am sure the member for Winnipeg North will also appreciate the fact that I salute his effort to speak French. Quality will come in time.

I also want to give the minister my best wishes for what is coming in the next few months and say congratulations.

The Conservatives are concerned about this bill, because it would make legal something we consider unethical.

That is what is called cash for access, or paying to get access to decision-makers.

Let us remember that the Minister of Justice organized a fundraiser at a Bay Street law firm with only lawyers in attendance, and that was not a good thing. Let us remember that the Prime Minister held $1,500 fundraisers and that when the public learned of those events he had to come up with a new plan.

My question for the minister is this: why legalize something that is ethically unacceptable?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his kind words and his best wishes for the coming months.

I would like to clarify one thing: all these fundraising activities are already legal. The activities of those on either side of the House do not break any laws. It is important to make this clear.

I would like to quote Jean-Pierre Kingsley, the former chief electoral officer of Canada, who testified before the committee on October 5, 2017.

He said:

I will admit that the limit of $1,550 right now is a very reasonable one and should not lead one to suspect that an individual is trying to do something wrong by contributing that. There are relationships that are made when firms, or partners of firms, or people working with the same organizations, all participate in an event. This bill will help us to understand those better, so that's good.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to extend my congratulations to my colleague, the minister, on her pregnancy. I wish her much happiness in this wonderful adventure.

I was hoping to see the changes promised by the Liberal Party on electoral reform and the voting system, especially since the experts and the Canadians polled were in favour of a proportional voting system. I have already spoken about this.

I understand Mr. Kingsley's reticence. However, as progressive New Democrats we are concerned about the rich having privileged access to decision-makers and ministers.

Would lowering the political contribution limit not have been the best change to make? We all agree that a middle-class Canadian cannot donate $1,550 a year to a political party. That does not happen in real life. We could have restored public financing for political parties, which would have improved our democracy and reduced the influence of money on the quality of our democratic life.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his kind words and well wishes. I congratulate him on his new role as environment critic. We miss him at Democratic Institutions. I thank him for his question.

I would clarify that there are several ways to make donations regardless of their size. I would like to quote Mary Dawson, the former commissioner of conflict of interest and ethics, when she appeared before the committee.

She said:

I support the direction of this proposed legislation. As I've said on previous occasions, transparency is important for any kind of regime that touches on conflict of interest....The amendments to the Canada Elections Act proposed by Bill C-50 promote transparency with respect to fundraising activities. I think it is a positive measure that would benefit our electoral process. It will also help to apply the Conflict of Interest Act more effectively. The easier access to the names and addresses of participants in these fundraising activities could be useful to the office if it has to investigate an allegation that a participant in such an activity obtained an advantage from a minister.

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

Madam Speaker, one of the things we know that is so important in our democratic system is the idea of openness and transparency. Despite the fact that the Liberal Party is already practising what is being put forward in the legislation, the leader of the Conservative Party is refusing to be open and transparent, as he did with fundraising activities he was having last spring when he was a leadership contestant.

Could the minister comment on how important it is for the institutions we have, for faith and trust from the public, and why it is so important that be embedded upon this idea of openness and transparency, as it relates to political financing?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Madam Speaker, I encourage all parties to act already in the spirit of the legislation, to post their fundraising events online five days in advance at a minimum, to report who attended these events, how much the tickets cost, and where these events took place. I would certainly encourage the leader of the official opposition to lead by example as well, and undertake some of these initiatives.

I want to again quote Mary Dawson, the former conflict of interest commissioner. At her PROC appearance on October 17, 2017, she said:

It goes quite a good way, I think, because it puts things in the public domain. It allows me to have access to some information if I'm dealing with some kind of a problem. I use the lobbying register a lot for that purpose as well. There are interfaces in all of these public reports, so I think it's a good initiative.

That goes specifically to your point about openness and transparency, so Canadians know who is trying to access their leaders.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

I would remind the minister that she should be addressing the question to the Speaker.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I could be wrong, but I understand the Minister of Democratic Institutions had some experience and expertise in democratic reform and looking at different kinds of electoral systems prior to getting into politics.

One of the things that has struck me about Bill C-50 is its lack of ambition in changing the landscape of Canadian elections. We are doing some tinkering at the margins with respect to transparency around political financing reform. However, prior to getting into politics, had she known she would have the opportunity to reform the Canadian electoral system, whether political financing or the way we vote, is this the extent of her ambition for changing Canada's electoral laws? If it is not, what does she think we should do in addition to this and why is it not in the bill?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Madam Speaker, as I mentioned in my speech, I am very proud of the bill. This is an important step and it opens up fundraising activities in a way that we have not had before in Canada. It is yet to be determined what kind of impact it will have. However, the fact that the official opposition does not want to pursue it demonstrates that it has a significant impact on how we raise money as politicians, something all of us absolutely need to do.

With regard to the other elements of my mandate that were mentioned, I am very proud of Bill C-33. It is a really important bill that will reverse some of the elements of the previous government's so-called fair elections act.

With regard to cybersecurity and protecting our democratic institutions, it is absolutely vital for our next election.

I look forward to continuing to work with members in this place to do what we can to protect, strengthen, and improve our electoral system and democratic institutions.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I want to commend the minister as a woman minister who is also, in pregnancy, fulfilling all of her duties. I commend and congratulate her.

We will always have problems while political parties are dependent on having a hand out, constantly needing to fundraise. Will the government reconsider bringing back in the reforms brought in by Jean Chrétien to have public support, as indicated by the way people vote, even a token amount per year?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague and friend for her lovely comments.

Very briefly, one of the things I mentioned was with regard to the charter and the right of Canadians to make contributions to political parties and the important element of democratic participation that this encourages. We are looking forward to debating the bill on public financing, but we also have to recognize that political parties also receive a substantial subsidy following an election based on the amount they have spent.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister of Canada, the chairman of cabinet, the head of government is a very powerful position, one that only 23 people in the history of our country have had the distinct privilege of holding. While constitutionally this position serves at the pleasure of Her Majesty, it is Canadians who the Prime Minister ultimately is to serve.

Therefore, we have to ask ourselves, when we have newspaper headlines like, “[Prime Minister] defends cash-for-access fundraising”, or articles that state, “Prime Minister...says financial donation limits in federal politics are too low for wealthy donors to buy influence with his cabinet ministers”, are Canadians really being well-served and, specifically, are they being well-served by this legislation?

Today, as we debate Bill C-50, those are the questions we have to answer. Perhaps this headline speaks to that, “Liberals’ fundraising bill fails to quell cash-for-access charges.”

Let us be perfectly clear why the Liberals introduced the legislation. It was because they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar, and now they are trying to blame the cookie jar.

Bill C-50 came to fruition because the Liberal Party was selling cash for access to the Prime Minister at events where tickets cost up to $1,525 a person. What is worse, in the Prime Minister's own “Open and Accountable Government” guide, under the fundraising section it states:

Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries must avoid conflict of interest, the appearance of conflict of interest and situations that have the potential to involve conflicts of interest.

The document goes on further to state:

There should be no preferential access to government, or appearance of preferential access, accorded to individuals or organizations because they have made financial contributions to politicians and political parties.

One wonders if Orwell's 1984 Ministry of Truth may have produced that document, given the actions we have seen from the Liberal members and the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister simply got caught for breaking the very ethics guidelines that he himself created. Now we get this legislation as a mandate, as an attempt to try to fix this self-inflicted Liberal wound.

Even after introducing Bill C-50 and promising to abide by these new rules, the June 19, 2017, Liberal fundraising event took place. This event featured the Prime Minister speaking at a Liberal so-called donor appreciation night for Laurier Club members. In order to join such a club, members must donate at least $1,500 annually to be a member. Just to get in the door, one needs to donate $1,500 to see the Prime Minister speak.

This is after the Liberals promised to abide by the rules of Bill C-50, the legislation they had just introduced, and promised to be open to the media. However, instead, the following took place. Liberal Party staff restricted media access to Ottawa bureau chief at the Huffington Post, Althia Raj, as well as to Joan Bryden from the Canadian Press. Then, after a lot of representations on its own behalf, the media was actually allowed inside, cordoned off into one little area, and not allowed to mingle with any of the guests. Giuseppe Valiante, a Montreal reporter with the Canadian Press, was told to leave after the Prime Minister gave his speech.

Therefore, it is not quite clear why the Liberal government bothers to put these so-called rules in place when it is quite evident it just intends to break them anyway.

Legislation is not supposed to be about a PR exercise, legislating is not about a pair of the Prime Minister's socks that BuzzFeed can write a kitschy article about. Legislation is supposed to be about making good policy that changes Canada for the better.

Legislation should not be a way for the PMO to try to spin out of the bad headlines the Prime Minister created through his bad behaviour. Some of those bad headlines include, from the National Post, “Ethics watchdog says [Prime Minister] vacation on private island broke conflict rules”; from CTV, “[Prime Minister] broke ethics rules, watchdog finds”; and from the Toronto Star, “[Prime Minister] violated conflict-of-interest rules with vacation to Aga Khan's island: ethics commissioner”. It is kind of like a greatest hits album for the Prime Minister, but it is not one he should be proud of.

In 2006, when our previous Conservative government came to power, we came in to clean up the corruption culture, the corruption that had taken hold in Ottawa after 13 years of Liberal rule. One of our government's top priorities then was passing the Federal Accountability Act. In that legislation, our Conservative government banned all corporate and union donations to political parties. If political parties wanted the ability to be heard and operate, they would be forced to go to ordinary Canadians on main street and make their case. That is a promise Canadians were and are on board with.

Clearly, that is not a concern for the Liberal Party or for the Prime Minister. Regular Canadians do not have billionaire friends who invite them to vacation on private islands. Regular Canadians usually cannot afford $1,500 for the privilege of bending the Prime Minister's ear. After all, the Prime Minister should be equally accessible to all Canadians. However, we know that is not the case.

If this is something the Prime Minister actually believes in, then he should do the right thing and stop attending cash for access fundraisers. The ethical issue surrounding cash for access fundraisers is not solved because the event is apparently open to the public. At the end of the day, is the event really open to the public? Does publishing the list of attendees on some website a month and a half later make the event transparent? No, it certainly does not. For the Liberal government, it is apparent that it is “do as I say and not as I do”. Apparently, the Prime Minister thinks the law does not apply to him.

If the Liberals really wanted to end these sorts of practices, all they had to do was simply follow their own guidelines to stop attending cash for access fundraisers. It is really quite simple. If one is the justice minister, this means not attending the fundraiser with lawyers who are lobbying the government. If one is the parliamentary secretary who has been tasked with coming up with a plan for marijuana legalization, do not attend fundraisers with representatives from the cannabis industry, and if one is the Prime Minister, do not attend fundraisers with stakeholders who regularly and actively conduct business with the government. Those are very simple measures that even the Liberal Party should be able to follow, if it cared to bother following the rules.

Ethics is not a tricky thing, but I guess for a Prime Minister who views his role as merely ceremonial, there is really no reason for him to be worried about a conflict of interest. I have bad news for him. The office of the Prime Minister is not ceremonial. It requires more than selfies and signing autographs. As the head of cabinet and the head of government, the Prime Minister should go above and beyond what is stated in the law. He should follow his own guidelines.

The Prime Minister is most certainly not above the law, no matter how much he thinks he is, so he should lead by example. As public figures, we are all expected to lead by example. The Prime Minister should understand that, but it appears that neither he nor his government have plans to stop this obvious conflict of interest.

If someone does not have $1,500 to pay for access to a fundraiser, apparently that person's opinion does not matter to the Prime Minister, and that is simply not right. We are talking about the Prime Minister and his cabinet, the people who make our laws, create regulations, and raise our taxes. Is it right that they attend partisan fundraisers where they are being actively lobbied? How does the entire Liberal government not see that this is a serious conflict of interest?

I know the answer to that one. It is a classic case of Liberal arrogance seeping in yet again, the same type of arrogance that led to the sponsorship scandal. How quickly the Liberals forget that they were swept out of power previously during the Chrétien and Martin days because Canadians were simply tired of their arrogance and their unethical dealings. Now, after just two years as government, the Liberals have piled up a whole slew of ethical breaches already.

The finance minister introduced a bill that would rewrite pension laws while he still held on to a million shares of Morneau Shepell, a company that could benefit from these new laws. That led to an investigation by the ethics commissioner.

The Liberal's former Calgary minister campaigned with his father for a school board seat while using House of Commons resources. That also led to an investigation by the ethics commissioner.

Who can forget about the private island vacation that the Prime Minister took on an island of a billionaire who lobbies the government? That led to him making history as the first prime minister to have been found guilty of breaking the law, not once, not twice, not three times, but four times.

It is no wonder the Liberals have voted down the opposition's efforts to have the Prime Minister appear in front of the ethics committee to answer for his actions. He has even refused to answer the opposition's questions in question period in the House of Commons about these serious ethical breaches. Instead he leaves the government House leader to answer for him, for the mess that he made, while he sits there and signs autographs.

This is why it is so hard to take the Prime Minister and his government seriously when they claim that Bill C-50 would make political parties more accountable. The truth is it will not.

The barbershop owner, the mechanic, and the farmer in our ridings do not have time to go on the Internet to keep up with the fundraising activities of the Liberal Party. They rely on the Prime Minister and his cabinet having the moral integrity not to sell access to themselves to the highest bidder.

Fundraising is a perfectly normal activity for politicians and political parties. Asking Canadians to support us and our party's vision and our ideas is part of how democracy works. Political parties take their ideas to the people and if the people like them enough, they chip in a bit of money to help the message get spread. Selling government access for donations to a political party is not a part of being in a democracy. Maybe it happens in countries with basic dictatorships, which the Prime Minister admires so much. I do not know. Maybe that is where he came up with the idea that this was okay. I can tell him that it is not right and it is certainly not ethical.

As politicians we are expected to go above and beyond. I challenge the Prime Minister and his government to do just that. Stop attending cash for access fundraisers and all of these problems will be gone. No more publicity stunts. It is time to take real action and to make real change, not just lip service.

[Fayçal El-Khoury, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like every Canadian to understand that any citizen has access to the office of the Prime Minister of Canada. They can simply write to him about the issues that concern them and I can assure them they will get the proper answer.

In addition, the Prime Minister at any public political activity or appeal spends many hours agreeing to citizens' requests to have a photo taken with him. We did not see this kind of action with the leader of the previous government.

I am sorry to tell the member that when it comes to stopping cash for access, we are looking for a concrete regime for any political financial activity. Why does the member not just support it and then it would benefit all political parties in this chamber?

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Is that member serious, Madam Speaker? He says it is okay because if every Canadian writes a letter to the Prime Minister he might answer them in a few months, but guess what, they could all have a picture with him. I bet that makes them all feel so much better. I am sure they feel great. Maybe they can get one of those autographs he signs during questions. I am sure they would feel great about that too.

Other people who can afford it have the ability to buy, with their cash, access to the Prime Minister, to bend his ear and talk to him about whatever project they might want approved or whatever it is. However, that is okay because others can get an autograph or maybe have a selfie taken with the Prime Minister. They will feel better about that I am sure.

If that is the defence that the member is providing, then I do not know what kind of defence that even really is. If he thinks that is going to move him up to the front benches or something, I am not quite sure that will do it. Maybe the Prime Minister will send him a photo too.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to the speech from the hon. member. In fact, I would like to correct him to say that it was a former prime minister, the Right Hon. Jean Chrétien, who brought in the legislation to end the corporate and union donations.

I am very proud to have been in public service for many years, and doing my annual fundraising events where 800 to 1,000 people come to support me. I think the rules we have around the $1,500 limit is probably the lowest in democratic countries.

Has the member ever accepted a $1,500 donation from one of his constituents? If he did, why did he not follow that rule at that time himself?

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Madam Speaker, when the member wants to stand up in the House of Commons to try to correct somebody, he should make sure he has his facts straight. He is simply wrong. He can go back and check that for himself.

I guess the way to respond to his various statements and questions would be say that these cash for access fundraisers are part of a pattern that we have seen from the government of unethical behaviour. Part of that pattern, just as a way of a parallel example, is this vacation that the Prime Minister took, his so-called vacation, when he went to the private island of a billionaire who lobbies the government. Obviously that was found by the Ethics Commissioner to have broken the law in four separate ways. The Prime Minister says that he is taking responsibility, but he is refusing to actually take responsibility by paying that back.

There have been previous instances where the Prime Minister, when he was simply a member of Parliament, prior to being the Prime Minister, was found to have inappropriate travel expenses. This was back in 2012. He was found to have misused $672 in transportation costs to attend an event that had nothing to do with his role as a member of Parliament, and he used House of Commons resources to do that. When he was caught doing that, he admitted to the wrongdoing and repaid the money.

There is a saying about what is good for the goose is good for the gander. In this case, I would ask the member, is what was good for the goose still good for the goose? Why is he not paying back the money now?

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

Madam Speaker, I have a question for the member for Banff—Airdrie. It is about Mary Dawson.

When she appeared before the committee, she made it very clear that parliamentary secretaries are not covered under the provision currently. She made a recommendation that the committee may want to consider that omission. This could potentially be expanded.

Could the member comment on whether or not he agrees that parliamentary secretaries should be included in the changes that are being proposed?

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Madam Speaker, I found that omission interesting as well.

I suppose if one actually believed that this piece of legislation was intended to try to address or fix the problem, then maybe one could say that there is an omission. However, I do not really believe that is what this is about at all. It is simply a PR exercise, because the Liberals got caught with their hands in the cookie jar and now they are trying to blame the cookie jar.

What is really interesting about it is that if we actually look at the Prime Minister's own guidelines that were written, it says very clearly that they should apply to ministers and to parliamentary secretaries, and there should be no conflict of interest and no appearance of it. Simply, all they have to do is follow their own guidelines. They do not even need a new piece of legislation. Clearly, that is not what this is about at all. This is simply a PR exercise for the Liberal Party because it was caught breaking the rules.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Alberta and commend him on the quality of his speech.

My colleague has been in public office for a number of years now. He served under the former government and was first elected in 2011. Being from Alberta he is practically neighbours with the riding of our former prime minister, the Right Hon. Stephen Harper.

Could our colleague tell us whether, to his knowledge or from what he remembers, former Prime Minister Harper ever took part in what is known as cash for access events?

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Madam Speaker, that I know of, no, that never occurred. That is because he is someone who tried to conduct himself with integrity. That is the difference between that prime minister and the current one.

As for the current one, I cannot even name the number of examples of ethics breaches, violations, hypocrisy, and the breaking of promises, all things that speak to the integrity of the Prime Minister, of which there really is none.

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

Madam Speaker, the member referenced a number of articles. I would like to reference one in The Globe and Mail on September 20, 2017, with the headline, “Conservative Leader...won’t post details of private fundraisers”. The article talks about how he sees a big difference between the Prime Minister and himself, somebody who aspires to be prime minister and by all intents and purposes is really just one election and one vote away from it. I guess once he does become prime minister, if he ever gets to that point, as the opposition party would like, he would then suddenly become responsible for making sure that he lives up to those requirements.

I am wondering why, if the Leader of the Opposition has nothing to hide, he would not want to release that information. Does he not appreciate the fact that openness and transparency would allow others to look into what he is doing to make sure that he is completely clean on this as well? Why will he not provide that?

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Madam Speaker, the member is right about one thing. There is a very big difference between the Prime Minister and the leader of the official opposition. There is a very big difference. We have a Prime Minister over there who thinks that he is above the law and better than everyone else. Over here we have a Leader of the Opposition who is one of us. He is one of the people. He is someone who understands what everyday Canadians go through and has their best interests in mind. That is the big difference between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.

I can assure members that when the Leader of the Opposition is the prime minister of this country in 2019, they will not be seeing his name attached to any kind of ethics scandals or wrongdoings, like we have seen multiple times with the Prime Minister and his government, because the Leader of the Opposition stands up for regular everyday Canadians and understands what they are going through and does not feel he is entitled and better than everyone else. He wants to accomplish something for everyday, hard-working Canadians, and that is what he will do.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise at third reading of Bill C-50 to offer some thoughts about the bill and about the issue of electoral reform, whether it is reforming finance, reforming the way we vote, or more generally.

I think it is important to start off with some reflections on why anyone listening at home might care about this debate, because if members looked at the bill, they would see it would not do a lot. It would add some measure of transparency to political fundraising events held by members of government in the formal sense, such as cabinet ministers, the prime minister, and party leaders.

Those Canadians who are on the Elections Canada website all the time and are interested in poring over these things, or those who watch political news shows with analysts who are more familiar with the names and data would benefit from understanding better some of the relationships around government, and understanding those things is not a bad thing. It is helpful to have more of that information in the public domain. However, I do not think that a lot of Canadians would think that Bill C-50 would make a big difference for them personally in terms of the way they relate to the political system.

The way a lot of Canadians relate to the political system is with a fair bit cynicism. They feel that it does not really matter whom they vote for as the issues of the day do not really get addressed. If they are going to see any kind of reform, it has to be big enough and bold enough to help them feel that their participation, even if it is only voting once every four years, is going to start to make them feel that it makes more of a difference than they feel that it does now.

I would say to a lot of Canadians that voting makes more of a difference than they know. They may not feel that it makes much of a difference, but it can make a lot more of a difference than they know. However, I would also forgive them for not feeling that way, particularly in light of a government that ran on a slogan of real change but is largely defending the status quo. We can see that with the bill before us.

The bill is not really about fundamentally changing the Canadian political system at all. A lot of Canadians who voted, and many more who do not ever bother to vote, would look at this and think that our political system is not working for them. They feel that it is hard for them to have their voice heard, and tinkering around the edges does not fix that.

A lot of Canadians voted for a government that promised real change, and not just real change generally, or real change on this or that, but it promised real change specifically on electoral reform. The big promise was that 2015 would be the last election fought under the first past the post system. Bill C-50 is really a status quo bill. It would not provide anything near the level of change that was promised in terms of electoral reform.

To the extent that I think all of us in this chamber have a stake in caring about how Canadians feel about the state of their democracy, and to the extent that some real change is required in order to get many Canadians who feel disaffected and disinterested in Canadian politics back to the table or to the table for the first time, we should be concerned that the bill, which was an opportunity for the Liberal Party and the government to present its vision on how we were going to bring some meaningful change to Canadian electoral politics, really is saying to let us keep on with the status quo.

Around 40% of Canadians do not find it is worth showing up to vote, and many feel that the system is, in some important way, broken. This is not a good status quo. It is not a status quo that the Liberals promised to defend in the last election. They said they were going to change it. They said that they heard that message, and that they were onside with Canadians who felt that way, and a reason to vote for them was that they understood that and they were going to bring meaningful reform.

When it comes to publishing the details of a fundraising event five days in advance, the lack of that information is not what has been driving Canadians away from the political process progressively more and more over the last 30 to 40 years. It was not that they did not get the five-day notice on the fundraiser. It was not that it did not apply to the leaders of political parties that are not currently in government. That is not what Canadians were calling for when they said that they wanted meaningful change in order to feel that the political process was working for them. However, that is all that is offered in the bill. That is fine. It is a step in the right direction. I do not have a problem supporting it. It is not that it is a bad measure because it is not enough, but it really does not meet the expectation that was set in the minds of Canadian voters for improving the electoral system.

Where are we four years from now regardless of who is elected as government in the next election? Well, we are in the same bloody place we were over two years ago when Canadians were dissatisfied and electoral reform was an election issue. How is it that we went through a whole election where that was a key election issue and there were key promises made on the part of the now governing party, and we end up in the same place with the same complaints and the same feelings of dissatisfaction? That is the problem with the bill. It is not a reason not to vote for it, but it is a real problem with the bill and it is a problem for Canadians who were rightly fed up with the status quo.

To some extent this does not just defend the status quo, but it actually legitimizes some of the worst aspects of the status quo that the Liberals have professionalized to an extent that no one foresaw or expected in terms of cash for access fundraising. Politicians of all stripes have always done fundraising and members of the governing party have always done fundraising. However, it was not until this Parliament that it became an issue. Believe me, it is not because we had more charitable opposition parties in former Parliaments that cash for access was not an issue; it is because there was not the same evidence of the professionalization by government of selling access to their ministers.

That is why we did not hear about the term “cash for access” even under the Harper Conservatives. It was not because there was a benevolent opposition party that was willing to let the Conservatives get away with that. Believe me, if they had been doing that, the NDP as the official opposition would have been calling attention to it and the Liberals as the third party would have been calling attention to it too. I disagree with my Conservative colleagues on many things, but I am not going to make up that they were doing something that they were not doing.

Cash for access was not a theme of the Canadian political discourse until these particular Liberals came to power. There is a reason for it. Nobody was as organized in seeking out members of the Canadian business community or different communities that would have an interest in getting the ear of a minister until the current government was elected and members made a science of it. They recruited those people and offered them special time in smaller venues at a high price in order to get the ear of ministers. That is wrong. I do not care what the law says, that is wrong.

To be going through the motions of passing a bill on electoral financing and fundraising and not address that issue, not by making that practice, which is a repugnant practice, more transparent is not what we need to do. It is a practice we need to put an end to. To the extent that we do not see any sign from the government benches that the repugnant practice of selling access to ministers is not going to end as a result of Bill C-50, there are serious problems with the bill.

It is a great step in the right direction. We could pass a law that says anytime we meet someone in the grocery store we should smile at them. That would make the world a better place. It would make everyone feel good. It would be a step in the right direction, but it would not solve a lot of the real problems that are facing Canadians today.

The bill does not do that and it does not solve the real problems that Canadians are facing today with respect to how they feel about their own political system. At the very least, it should do that. We do not expect the bill to fix the problems with pensions in Canada. We do not expect it to fix the problems with health care, but surely we could have expected that it would fix some of the problems that Canadians experience in the way they relate to their politics.

I am concerned that the government sees the passage of this bill as legitimizing a new practice in Canadian politics in terms of the level of sophistication of going out and selling access to ministers based on interests that donors have in the ministers' portfolio area. The government's defence of this practice does not hold up at all. It says that this is not so bad because the Prime Minister gets out there and does town halls. He talks to people, and if they write him a letter he will get back to them.

It is an offence to the intelligence of Canadians to pretend that the little old lady who comes to a town hall with 3,000 people and has to sit in the back because she got there by Handi-Transit and gets to wave at the Prime Minister is the same as a high-powered corporative executive who pays $1,500 to go to a small dinner in somebody's condo, residence, or whatever, to talk about whatever he or she is going to talk about. This bill does not give us any more insight into what is talked about at those events, what is said or not said.

To compare those two scenarios and expect Canadians to believe that they are comparable is just ridiculous. It is totally ridiculous, and kind of offensive. It offends me, and I think it probably offends a lot of Canadians. “When I sign up to go to a town hall,” says Joe Canadian, “I get it that I am not going to get the kind of experience that a high-powered corporate exec is getting when he pays $1,500 to go meet the Prime Minister in a mansion somewhere. I get that it is not the same thing.” However, the Liberals are trying to say that it is the same thing. Canadians have to ask themselves whether they want people in government who think they are that stupid. This is a legitimate question for Canadians to be asking themselves.

That is the issue as I see it. We have a really repugnant practice of cash for access. We have a bit of window dressing here to try to make it seem a little better, maybe kind of okay. I do not think it accomplishes that at all. However, in the absence of real reform, it is not worth turning down.

What a missed opportunity this is. The Liberals actually built a mandate for meaningful reform. They said they were not a status quo party and wanted change. Instead of talking about the quality of this window dressing and the colour of the drapes, we could be talking about what kind of new voting system we are going to have.

We could be talking about other measures that would have done a lot for Canadian democracy. Some measures we have talked about, because they have been presented in the form of various private members' bills. I am thinking particularly of my colleague from Burnaby, who had a great idea. We talked a bit about how political parties are already subsidized publicly in two ways.

One is that when these high-powered corporate execs buy that $1,500 ticket, Canadian taxpayers actually reimburse them almost half the cost of the ticket. There is something particularly perverse about that. Corporate execs, who can pay the $1,500 with the money in their pocket, are able to climb over ordinary Canadians, who also want the ear of the government to get special attention, and then actually have those same ordinary Canadians pay them back about half the cost of the special access they are using to steamroll Canadians. One can pick any issue, whether it is big pharma and jacking up drug prices, or energy companies that want to build a pipeline through this community or that community and want the ear of the government instead of having to go to the communities to get their permission. There is something perverse about the fact that those same people who are the victims of those bad policy decisions are being made to pay for the corporate executives' access to those dinners.

That is one way in which Canadians already subsidize political parties. There is another way, in that the costs that Canadian political parties incur during an election are rebated, in part, by taxpayers as well. Therefore, we already have different forms of subsidy. I am trying not to go off on a tangent too much.

It is completely legitimate to talk about a per-vote subsidy, and maybe even look at cancelling some of those other subsidies in order to pay that money. Allocating already existing public subsidies on the basis of the parties that people actually want to support makes far more sense than rewarding certain parties for having donors who have more money to give, and then forcing all taxpayers across the country to rebate those donors simply because they are the ones with more money in the first place. There is something perverse about that, too.

However, I will digress on that point. The point I want to make comes back to the excellent point made by my colleague from Burnaby. Because we are rebating a certain portion of the costs to political parties for what they spend during an election, we could use that as a tool in order to encourage political parties to nominate more female candidates so we can start to correct the serious gender deficit we have in the House of Commons. We have 26% or 27% women in the House of Commons, even though women make up more than 50% of the Canadian population. That is a great idea. That is the kind of bold thinking that might actually do something to change the status quo of Canadian politics. That would be in keeping with the kinds of promises the Liberals made in the last election, when they said that they would not be defenders of the status quo.

That is not what we see in the bill. The bill is simply a reimagining and reinstituting of the status quo. We have heard good ideas about how to really increase the participation of women in Canadian politics, and not just to encourage them more. That is good too, and it is something that also needs to happen, but it ignores the fact that there are a lot of systemic barriers in the way of women participating in politics. It is not just about calling up our female friends more to see if we can get them to run. We also have to take more concrete measures.

Earlier this week, I was listening to the member for Burnaby South speak to this bill. He said that Canada has slid down to 65th in the world for participation of women in its House of Commons. That is not a very impressive number. It is certainly not an impressive number for a government that styles itself as a feminist government and says it is very committed to increasing the participation of women in politics.

We know that the Liberal Party has assured its incumbents of being able to run again, and it has a disproportionately small number of women in its caucus. This means that if the Liberal Party is successful in the next election, in re-electing most of its members who are here, that would be a bad day for women, because there are not a lot of women, proportionately, in the Liberal caucus.

There are no real policy ideas coming from those benches to address those issues in any real way. It has been unfortunate that when we have had real ideas come forward, they have been quashed. Who quashes new ideas like that?

They could be ideas that came out of an all-party committee on electoral reform, which many pundits predicted would not be able to come to a majority opinion on how to proceed with electoral reform, but it did. It recommended a referendum on proportional representation. That idea got quashed, even though it took many people across many different political fault lines working together to make it happen.

Here we have a great idea on how to concretely take a measure that would not cost Canadian taxpayers any money. In fact, it would save them money, because the way it was going to work was through the rebate I was talking about. Parties that did not run a slate with gender parity across the country would have their rebate reduced by a proportionate amount. That would actually save Canadian taxpayers money and incentivize political parties to get more women involved in politics at the same time.

If we want to talk about policy innovation and good ideas, that is a good one. A lot of good ideas we talk about that would move us in the right direction do cost money. That is money worth spending, in many cases. I do not apologize for that. However, this is one that is actually more likely to save Canadian taxpayers money, and certainly would not cost them any more. We saw it quashed. Who would quash those things? Only a party and a government that, frankly, are satisfied with the status quo would do that. Where this leaves us is largely with the status quo. We have changed the drapes, but the house is the same.

We need to do a heck of a lot better if we are going to address the real democratic deficit in Canada. I look forward to passing this bill and then moving on to those real questions.

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

Madam Speaker, we have some of the strongest political financing rules in the world. We can look at the ban on corporate and union donations, the cap of around $1,500 in personal donations, and, most important, the limits on what politicians can spend.

I mentioned this in the House earlier this week. I have friends in the United States whom I play baseball with. When I told them that I was thinking about getting involved in politics and that the spending I could do during the writ period was $100,000, they laughed in my face. We talk about window dressing and substantive changes to political financing rules. Political financing rules are incredibly strong in the country.

The member said that this is legitimizing cash for access. He said it is window dressing that does not accomplish anything. If he truly believes that, why is he supporting this legislation?

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, as I said in my speech, having a bit more transparency is all right. However, that does not mean I am going to run home and say that everything is right with Canadian politics and that the Liberals fixed it all and we don't have to worry about who is giving money to whom anymore, because that would be ridiculous.

We still have a democratic deficit in this country, and there is a lot of work that needs to be done to correct that deficit. This does not do that. I have alluded to some of the things I think we could do to really start addressing the democratic deficit, which has to do with a deficit in gender in our politics, not enough women in politics. It has to do with the fact that a government that got less than 40% of the vote is the one that is able to choose what is in our bills on electoral reform and quash good amendments presented by our party, because the Liberals have a majority on the committee, with less than 40% of the vote. I would like to talk about those issues, and we are nowhere near that with this.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to add a point of precision. The hon. member left the impression that someone who makes the maximum donation, which I think is $1,550, is somehow benefiting more from the tax credit than a smaller donor. However, as he no doubt knows, the tax credit is progressive. Someone who gives $400, for example, gets a bigger benefit. In fact, that $400 donation really costs someone only $100. There are many people giving that kind of money, because it only amounts to $100.

My question is about the per-vote subsidy. The hon. member is implying that the per-vote subsidy would be a reflection of the support a particular party has in any given year. However, a per-vote subsidy is calculated based on the results of the preceding election, and as we have seen, sometimes a party's standing after an election is nowhere near what it was the year before the election. How is that a reflection of what that party deserves to get from the public purse?

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, to the member's first point, I would say that my point was not that people who give the maximum get a proportionately larger benefit but that there is something perverse about people giving the maximum to get in to a special meeting with a minister, perhaps in an area in which they have a particular business interest, and the rest of us Canadians are giving them half that money back. It is approximately half, because it is 75% on the first $400, 50% on the next $300, and 33%, I think, on the next $250. It works out to about a $666 rebate on $1,500, which is approximately half of $1,500.

I am going to give myself that one.

I stand by my main point, which is that there is something perverse about that.

On the second question, about the nature of the per-vote subsidy, we can all agree that it is hard to engineer a perfect system. The public subsidy is already being paid, as there is already a total amount that is paid in terms of public subsidies to political parties. Right now it is a system that rewards parties that have donors who have more money to give. They can make those decisions to donate, and money comes back to them, which is a factor in how much they can donate. If people donate $20, because that is all they have, it does not really matter what the rebate is. It is a question of cash on hand, not how much is coming back at the end of the tax year. Therefore, my point is that a per-vote subsidy I think goes a long way to try to reduce that inequity in the current public subsidy system.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would ask that my colleague comment on the cynicism the government has engendered through its action, or lack of action, on the electoral reform file. During the election campaign, the Liberals said it was terrible that we had a Conservative government for the last four years with only 38% or 39% of the vote yet had 100% of the power and was taking Canada down a road they did not agree with, yet when the Liberals were elected, they said that now that they were in power, it was okay. I have had so many people tell me that they feel so betrayed by this. The cynicism is palpable in my riding. I wonder if he might want to comment further on that.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, the member is quite right. There are two roots to that cynicism. One is that what we are ultimately getting out of the government, certainly on the electoral reform issue but actually on a lot of other issues, is the defence of the status quo. That is not at all consistent with the main message of the Liberal campaign, which was change, real change, in fact.

If the Liberals promised real change and the upshot of a lot of their measures, and that is certainly the case here with Bill C-50 and it is the case on the electoral reform file, is a strong defence of the status quo, then people are going to feel disappointed and betrayed. I do not blame people for feeling that way with respect to the paucity of ambition of this bill and the total lack of movement on the larger electoral reform file.

The second root of the cynicism comes from the idea that those guys were bad and we are better so anything we do is okay. We see that in a lot of ways. We see that in the Prime Minister's remarks about electoral reform. We needed electoral reform when it was Stephen Harper, but now that it is him, we do not need to change it. The system is working again. The job of the system is to elect Liberals and, hallelujah, the good old days are back and we do not have to worry about making any changes.

We see it in the Prime Minister's behaviour with respect to being found to have broken the law on conflict of interest, and thinking that it is okay that there are no consequences for that. We see it from government ministers who are unapologetic about their cash for access fundraising and do not think it needs to change. In fact, the Liberals can pass a bill that kind of tweaks at the edges of some of the rules of this nefarious thing they are doing, and they think that is okay.

That is where cynicism lives and grows. It is unfortunate to see it all day, every day, in this place.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the fact that the NDP is voting in favour of the bill.

At the end of the day, what we are talking about in this legislation is an expansion. We are saying that it not only applies to the Prime Minister but also the cabinet and leaders of political parties, leaders who are ultimately striving to be the prime minister some day, and I think Canadians have a right to know who is attending those major fundraisers. To give the impression that the Prime Minister is the only one is wrong. Leaders of all political parties have fundraisers.

Why would people object to leaders of political parties being subjected to legislation such as this?

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, we are voting for this bill, but it is important to call out the obfuscation of the Liberals that we have seen many times, conflating the role of government ministers, ministers of the crown, who disburse large amounts of public funds and make major policy decisions, and those of other members of the House, or in some cases leaders who are not yet a member of the House. The role is clearly very different.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

Order. It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona, the Environment; the hon. member for Drummond, Food Labelling; the hon. member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith, Government Services.

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

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Surrey—Newton.

It is a pleasure to rise today to speak to this important piece of legislation that the government has brought forward, Bill C-50, which would make political fundraising events more open and transparent for Canadians and enhance the trust and confidence in our democratic institutions. Transparency is so important because the public deserves to know what its elected representatives are doing, what information lies at the root of government decisions, and how influence is exerted in the government. Transparency is in the best interests of Canadian democracy and is much needed in our political financing process.

The previous government simply did not understand the importance of transparency. It was a government often criticized for its pervasive secrecy and categorized as one of the worst in history regarding access to information. In fact, reports from the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression gave the previous government the lowest possible grade on transparency for a number of years running. Liberals were elected on a promise to restore a sense of trust in our democracy. At the heart of this is a simple idea: transparent government is good government. Through Bill C-50, our Liberal government will establish the openness and transparency that political financing has been needing for so long.

It is important to recognize that fundraising is a significant part of political participation and democratic expression. Fundraising is a way for Canadians to show support for a party with which it shares values, ideals, and policies. Therefore, it is of vital importance that we get these processes right.

Canada already has one of the most robust systems in the world for political fundraising. This system includes strict spending limits, a cap on annual donations, and the banning of corporate and union donations. At a national level, Canadian citizens and permanent residents can contribute a maximum of $1,550 annually to a registered party. Contributions to federal political parties are reported to Elections Canada and donations of more than $200 are published online, including the contributor's name and address.

At present, Canada is the sixth best democracy in the world, according to the Democracy Index from The Economist's intelligence unit, with a score of 9.1 out of 10. Canada ranks particularly high on the process of financing political parties with a score of 9.6 out of 10. It is evident that our democratic system is strong, but the performance of our system is due to the constant work of assessment, evaluation, and improvement.

Our democratic institutions are the pillars upon which our democracy is built. As our society continues to evolve, these systems need be strengthened and improved. Measures within Bill C-50 are a step in the right direction. These measures ensure our system continues to evolve while furthering the principles of political participation and democratic expression.

Bill C-50 would improve the fundraising process and simplify the processes of accountability. In front of committee, the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner mentioned her support for the direction of this proposed legislation with the following. First, this piece of legislation, via increased transparency, would also make it easier for her office to investigate complaints. Second, the ease of access to the names and addresses of attendees at fundraising events would be useful if her office were to look into an allegation that a stakeholder who attended such an event subsequently received a benefit from a minister or a party leader. Third, the bill would remove secrecy surrounding fundraising events.

It is these types of results that demonstrate our government's commitment to a fair, transparent process. These types of measures are how we seek to restore a sense of trust in our democracy. We recognize that these are important steps in improving the system and, as this government has said time and time again, we will work tirelessly with opposition members, the Ethics Commissioner, and other experts in making sure we get this right.

In examining this bill, Dr. Leslie Seidle, a leading scholar in this field, has gone on to say that transparency is a vital principle of our political financing system. In fact, for those who do not know, political financing regulations in Canada were created under the 1974 Election Expenses Act, which established a regime for the financing of federal elections in Canada. Seidle explains that since 1974 two critical developments have occurred to strengthen transparency in federal political financing. First was the extension of reporting requirements beyond parties and candidates to other entities such as constituency associations, leadership contestants, nomination contestants, and third parties. This was an amendment of the Election Expenses Act of 1974, and took place in the eighties.

The second development mentioned by Seidle took place in 2004. Since 2004, political parties must report on their contributions at the end of every three-month period rather than annually. According to Mr. Seidle, Bill C-50 fits into these two critical junctures as a third development, enhancing further transparency to our political financing system.

The reason I mention this is that it was under a Liberal government that the Election Expenses Act of 1974 was crafted. It was under a Liberal government that reporting requirements were extended. It was also under a Liberal government that enhanced transparency over political party contributions were established. It is now again under a Liberal government that transparency over political financing is further being strengthened.

Looking back in history, it is very easy to identify the pattern. Not a single Conservative government has enacted legislation to strengthen transparency in political financing. Not only have the Conservatives chosen to disregard this file time and time again, the Conservatives have chosen to omit making improvements to our democracy. The Conservatives are now refusing legislation that enhances public scrutiny.

I wonder why the Conservatives would continue to oppose strengthening transparency in our political financing system. Even though stakeholders such as the Ethics Commissioner clearly indicate that Bill C-50 is good legislation moving forward, the official opposition continues to reject it. It does not make any sense that the Conservatives are unwilling to support sound legislation that promotes transparency. It does not make sense that the Conservatives object to transparency, unless of course they have something to hide. Under the bill, measures would also apply to fundraising events held by party leaders, and in this case, as I have mentioned many times in the House, the Conservative leader specifically.

We know the Conservative leader, the leader of the official opposition, has refused to disclose details of his own private events in the past. However, moving forward under this legislation, he, along with all parties, would have to disclose these events. No longer would the leader of the Conservatives be able to hide who his donors are and who influences his agenda.

In sum, I am strongly supportive of Bill C-50 because it reflects the importance of transparency in democratic rule. Bill C-50 brings forth enhanced transparency to the political fundraising process. These changes are a step in the right direction. They complement and strengthen our democracy, and they contribute to fairness within the political fundraising system.

I encourage all members of the House to vote in support of Bill C-50. Again, our party understands that when we bolster transparency, democracy wins.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Madam Speaker, in following what my other colleagues have said, yes, we will support the bill because there are some changes. However, the bill is missing the point. The Liberal Party ran on a platform that the last election, in which they got the majority government, would be the last election under first past the post, period. Then suddenly we changed ministers and mandates, and gosh darn, we do not need that anymore because we are a majority Liberal government.

Yes, there may be some changes here, but it is still not resolving the key issue, which is cash for access. The issue is that it is one thing for somebody to pay $10 and get entrance to the bar in Edmonton Strathcona to have a meeting with me, and usually we do not charge anything, but it is another thing to pay $1,500 in a private law firm, by invitation, and one simply has to reveal who was there and that the Minister of Justice was there but claim that she was just there as an MP and not as a minister of justice.

Can the member explain to me how this resolves that overriding issue of cash for access to the Prime Minister and ministers of the crown?

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

Madam Speaker, to the point that the bill is missing the point, I would suggest that the bill entirely hits on the point the member is concerned about. On the whole idea of paying to get access to particular individuals, it is about the openness and transparency that would come with that. The Ethics Commissioner could scrutinize after the fact who had access, who paid to go to an event, and who donated.

We would have access to these individuals. We would have access to the list of people and where they live. As the commissioner said herself, this would improve her ability to do her job and to properly scrutinize who had access to these particular individuals. I would suggest that the bill completely hits the point.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Madam Speaker, I do not think the member got the last question. I am going to ask it again, perhaps in a different way.

On this problem of cash for access, we could go out on the street and tell reasonable people that we have a problem with cash for access fundraisers, where people are being asked to pay $1,500 to the Liberal Party to gain access to the justice minister or the finance minister, and ask what would help. Would knowing about this beforehand help? If they were invited, would they feel better about it? If they were told within a month afterwards who had been there instead of having to wait until the end of the year, would that help? Maybe we should ban the payment of money to the Liberal Party for access to cabinet ministers.

I would ask the member what he thinks people would say. What would fix the problem more: the first three options, or the last one, banning this unethical conflict of interest of cash for access?

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

Madam Speaker, the member asked what would help. What would help would be giving the tools and resources to the commissioner and to the general public to scrutinize how these events were put together, who attended them, and how much money was paid to attend.

The whole idea of openness and transparency is to have the ability to look into the details. Not only would we get the retroactive perspective of looking back in time, but those who were planning this stuff would know in advance to prepare themselves accordingly, because this would be scrutinized later.

Absolutely, I believe this legislation would help. That is not only coming from me but from the Ethics Commissioner, the individual who is responsible for looking into this stuff professionally for us.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Madam Speaker, first of all, I would like to thank the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands for splitting his time with me and for the very passionate speech he made.

I rise today to speak to Bill C-50, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act, political financing. Under the leadership of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Democratic Institutions, we have taken concrete action to make the government more open so that Canadians can fully understand what their government is doing. A clear way to do this is to make political fundraising more transparent.

I am proud to say that Canada has been a leader in this since the former prime minister, the right hon. Jean Chrétien, banned corporate and union donations to political parties. Today Canada's strong fundraising and election laws are an example throughout the world, as foreign countries regularly visit our country to understand our system and learn from it.

We have one of the most robust systems in the world, which includes strict spending limits, a cap on annual donations, and a ban on corporate and union donations. Canadian citizens and permanent residents can contribute a maximum of $1,550 every year to a registered federal party. This is among the lowest in the democratic world. In fact, many other democratic countries have no limit at all.

These laws prevent big money from influencing our elections and policies and provide transparency, because any donation above $200 is published online with the information about who donated it. It is important for our democracy that the voice of every Canadian is heard and that decisions are made based only on facts, principles, and values. I have no doubt that every member in the house would agree with that.

I am proud of the work that has been accomplished to make our elections fairer, where big money plays no role. Our elections are about ideas, and we need to keep it that way. These laws are important to protect the integrity of our institutions. When the government or its policies are motivated by large donations from corporations or unions, that is when public trust in government begins to erode and Canadians become disinterested in the political process. This undermines the foundation of our country and the foundation of our democracy.

Many countries have no limits on how much one can donate. The result is that large interest groups control the conversation regarding policy because of their ability to donate large amounts of funds. This leads to the policy discussion changing from what is in the public interest to what is in the interest of raising enough money for the next election.

I want to be clear. There is nothing wrong with raising funds. It is an important part of our democracy, as it gives political parties and their candidates the ability to reach out to citizens through communication materials and other means.

It is also an opportunity for voters to express their support with their money, which is their individual right. I myself am very proud of the grassroots fundraising from thousands of people who have supported me over the many years I have been in public service. The value of those donations is much higher than those that come in large sums from single groups, because they bring real committed support along with them.

However, these laws need to be made stronger so that our bar for transparency and accountability is high enough to maintain the highest standards of trust in our election process. That is why we are introducing new actions that will increase transparency and give Canadians a new way to understand the fundraising by political parties.

Our promise to Canadians was to increase trust and accountability in Parliament and the democratic process. This is something we have continuously worked towards that began with our actions to strengthen our election system and to engage more Canadians, especially new and young Canadians. Bill C-50 would build on the existing rules and add a new layer of transparency around fundraising by making several changes.

First, fundraising events that had a ticket price of over $200 and were being attended by cabinet ministers, party leaders, and leadership candidates, would have to release the name and partial address of each donor, with the exception of youth under the age of 18, volunteers, staff, media, and individuals providing support services.

Second, parties would have to advertise the event to the public at least five days in advance so that Canadians would have access to where and when fundraising activities were taking place. After the event, political parties would have to release the names and partial addresses of donors within 30 days.

Third, to ensure that the rules for fundraising were followed, the donations collected would have to be returned if not reported within a set period of time.

Bill C-50 recognizes that even though Canada has world-renowned rules on political fundraising, we understand that this is something that needs to be continually addressed and improved.

This bill would allow Canadians to continue to place confidence in our democratic institutions. These amendments to the Canada Elections Act would give Canadians, including the media, more information than ever by letting them know who was going to fundraisers, when they were happening, who was attending, and the amount required to attend.

In closing, I urge all members to support this bill. Our democracy is the most important foundation of our country. Making fundraising activities more open and transparent has been a core commitment of this government, and we will continue to deliver on that promise.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Madam Speaker, I listened to the member's speech and heard wonderful words, but that is what we always get from the government: a bunch of words and very little action.

The Liberals might claim this to be action, but at the end of the day, this is really a cover-up, a PR exercise. What would really be required to prevent these kinds of practices from occurring is simply for the Liberal Party to start following some of the guidelines it set for itself, for the Prime Minister to start behaving ethically, and for the Liberals to stop doing cash for access fundraisers. That is all that would be required.

There is no need for a piece of legislation to tell someone what everyone should already know, which is how to behave ethically and how to follow the rules, something the Prime Minister thinks he is above and beyond. Simply, all the Prime Minister needs to do is follow them. Why does the government not simply choose to follow the rules?

I would like to ask a corollary question. Let us look at the kinds of incidents that have occurred, whether they be cash for access or the Prime Minister's travel. The Prime Minister inappropriately claimed some travel expenses in 2009, before he was Prime Minister. It was $672 for a limo ride to an event that had nothing to do with his responsibilities as a member of Parliament. At that time, he said that he would take responsibility, and he paid back the money.

What was good for the goose then should be good for the goose now. Why does the Prime Minister not simply start to follow the rules instead of creating legislation to cover it up with a PR exercise?

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Madam Speaker, I want to tell the House and Canadians that the Prime Minister is not being above the law. This is a prime minister who is a grassroots leader. I have seen him over many years, and he does not shy away from being transparent. That is why we have brought Bill C-50 forward.

On the other hand, I am sure the member for Banff—Airdrie is very informed that his leader, who did events this past summer, refused to declare who attended and who donated. It is our Prime Minister, our leader, who is transparent and open. That is why we have brought the legislation forward.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would ask the member to comment on this. I wonder what most Canadians would have thought if we had asked them a while ago about the government putting forward a bill to amend the Canada Elections Act. Would they have thought it was about trying to fix some unethical Liberal fundraising tactics or would they have thought it was about the big promise the Liberals made in the last election, that of electoral reform? I went to 20 all candidates forums, and every time the Liberal candidate would stand next to me and would say that this election would be the last under first past the post, that the Liberals would fix it, that they had listened to the experts, that they would ask Canadians, and that they would come up with a better system.

Ninety per cent of the experts at committee said that we needed proportional representation. Over 80% of Canadians who participated said that we needed proportional representation. The Liberals went back on that promise, and the cynicism across the country is tremendous. What does he think of that?

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for South Okanagan—West Kootenay for raising an important issue. On this side of the House, I can bet that every member went to their constituents and had open discussions, round table meetings, and had a town hall meeting. When I had that town hall meeting, the status quo system was very well supported, because people were confused. They wanted to see the current system remain.

When it comes to Bill C-50, I want to thank the hon. member for supporting it. The bill will take us in a positive direction, which is putting transparency and accountability out front.

[Bob Benzen, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Madam Speaker, today I will be sharing my time with the member for Edmonton Griesbach.

The Liberal Party's campaign platform literature attributes a quote to its leader as follows, “sunlight is the world’s best disinfectant. Liberals will shed new light on the government”. That quote by the now Prime Minister has proven prophetic, but not for the reasons he had hoped. A new light has, indeed, been shed on government in this Liberal era, and that light has been unflattering. In the space of less than two years, the government has tallied a litany of ethical failures.

Now, here we are today, against that background, debating Bill C-50, a proposal to amend the political financing rules of the Canada Elections Act.

Context is important here, because the bill, at its heart, is one that addresses a question of ethics, namely, those surrounding the cash for access fundraisers in which Liberals engage. The Liberals are retroactively attempting to find political cover for a problem they created.

Bill C-50 is before us because the Liberal Party was selling cash for access at events where tickets were up to $1,500 per person. Many speakers before me on this issue have detailed the ins and outs of the cash for access scheme and the instances in which the Liberals benefited from it. Suffice it to say, the Liberals now want to legitimize the practice because they depend on it. The numbers have been crunched and they do not look rosy for the governing party.

The Conservative Party just had its best quarter and best year of fundraising results since 2015, but the Liberals logged their worst fundraising year since the current Prime Minister became the party's leader. The Liberals know that Canadians are responding to our positive Conservative vision and taking action to support that vision for Canada through their financial support for my party. The Liberals, for their part, have lost the support of their grassroots donors because of their unethical behaviours.

It seems many Liberal supporters are showing that they have had enough of their party's tax hikes, their government's continuous pattern of debt and deficits, and its failure to deliver results for middle-class Canadians. The Liberals, therefore, want to formalize the cash for access arrangement to help them make up for the loss of funds that have resulted from Canadians' loss of confidence in them. They view Bill C-50 as the answer to their problems. They want to change the rules to conform to their behaviours so they can tell Canadians they are following the rules when they organize these types of fundraisers.

The Conservative opposition, in the course of its duty to hold the government to account, has repeatedly stood to defend Canadians' interests against the cross-purposes of its own Prime Minister. We have consistently exposed matters linked to the unethical behaviour of the Prime Minister and others within the Liberal ranks. Every time we have exhorted their party to do the right thing and take responsibility for their actions, to apologize and change course for the sake of the Canadian people we are all here to serve, their leadership has responded, instead, by dragging out the issue, dodging legitimate questions Canadians have about their conduct.

Here we have Bill C-50, which is the latest attempt by the party to avoid doing the right thing in favour of setting the rules up to give them more latitude. The Liberals know their cash for access fundraisers do not pass the smell test with many Canadians.

Canadians understand human nature and know how suspicious meetings could happen at events of the type that Bill C-50 governs, where people are paying a lot of money to attend and bend the ears of the powers that be. Rather than take the high road and forgo a practice many find objectionable, however, they choose instead to legitimize their bending of the rules so they can keep charging wealthy individuals to meet and discuss government business with Liberals.

We know what Bill C-50 means for the Liberals, but what does it mean for Canadians in general? In short, it means more government. Since the Liberals refuse to relinquish their cash cow, they have decided instead to bring in new rules, which come with new advertising, new reporting, and new administration requirements, which, under a Liberal government, we can bet means more costs for Canadians.

The Liberals prefer this avenue of new expenses for taxpayers so they can continue their sketchy events, rather than the obvious, honourable, no-cost alternative to simply call a stop to these types of fund raisers. That does not take legislation to do. That does not require making new rules to follow, and thereby creating more expense to administrate. The Liberals could just stop doing it. Instead, they opt for more red tape and to make a big bureaucratic mess out of more matters to regulate. The paternalistic answer for the Liberals is always a bigger government and new regulations, as opposed to making right choices. We need less red tape, less bureaucracy, less expense for the taxpayers in Canada, not new opportunities to grow all of those categories.

By now we have heard all the details and provisions of the bill many times. We know how Bill C-50 would provide, among other things, that fundraisers requiring a contribution over $200 and at which party leaders, ministers, or leadership contestants would be in attendance must be advertised online by the party five days in advance, and a report of each individual fundraiser, including the headline guest, individuals who attended, and how much each attendee was required to pay to attend, must be submitted to Elections Canada within 30 days of the fundraiser for public disclosure. These and other proposals in this bill are tailored to add a gloss of acceptability to the Liberals' tradition of such fundraisers that charge for proximity to their ministers.

A new law will not make these cash for access fundraisers ethical, however. What a cynical world view that represents. Canadians want to know that their representatives are honest, trustworthy, and scrupulous in their dealings. People are naturally leery of political fundraising, and Canadians want us to have not even the appearance of a conflict.

That is what some Canadians thought they were getting with the Prime Minister. They were led to believe so because the Prime Minister's own “Open and Accountable Government” guide under the fundraising section states, “Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries must avoid conflict of interest, the appearance of conflict of interest and situations that have the potential to involve conflicts of interest.”

Given such a directive from the Prime Minister, why then do Liberals need Bill C-50 at all, when they could just follow their own stated ethical standard? I think we know the answer. The answer is because the government is ethically challenged. I do not say that as an insult; I say it as a matter of unfortunate fact. It has been proven time and again.

The recent breaches of ethics we have seen from the Liberal Party cannot be characterized as simple mistakes or missteps, though the Liberals have certainly attempted to portray them that way. No, rather these breaches have been serious and even historic in nature.

Less than halfway through his mandate, the Liberal leader has the dubious distinction of being the first Canadian prime minister to break a federal law while in office, when he accepted a gift that the Ethics Commissioner ruled could have influenced his decision-making, a gift, I hasten to note, which also posed a cost of $200,000 to Canadians, a cost the Prime Minister to this day refuses to repay the taxpayer.

It has been evident from his actions for some time now that the Prime Minister does not think rules should apply to people like him. Every indicator points to his belief that there is one set of rules for Liberals and their friends, and another set for everybody else. We have seen this in the decision to wait nearly a year to apologize to Canadians for multiple violations of the Conflict of Interest Act. The Prime Minister genuinely did not see anything to apologize for until the Ethics Commissioner's report publicly pointed it out.

Bill C-50 shows us that the Liberals also do not see a problem with selling access to those who are willing to pay up to the maximum federal amount. I am reminded of the proverb “Physician, heal thyself”, an admonition to ensure we are not guilty of the faults we are attempting to correct in others. Cash for access events resulted in the Ethics Commissioner and the Lobbying Commissioner launching investigations against the Liberals, which, in turn, has resulted in Bill C-50.

It shows us that these particular positions in the Liberal Party are choosing only to treat the symptoms rather than cure the disease. Bill C-50—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

Unfortunately, the member is out of time. I allowed for a few extra seconds. I would remind the member that if he had additional information to share, I am sure that he will be able to do that during questions and comments.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Madam Speaker, the member quoted quite a bit in his speech, and I have one for him as well. However, I want to touch on the fact that the transparency issue is one that is brought forward in Bill C-50, and whether one calls it a positive first step or a step in the direction, it is simply just that. It baffles me that the member would not vote for this.

I mentioned before in this debate how Conservative ministers used to have fundraisers as well. I mean, that is politics 101 in this country. The executive sits within the House of Commons. Therefore, they have to get elected just like the rest of us.

The Conservatives also claim that when they found out or when it was reported in the media that stakeholders were at some of the ministers' fundraisers, they decided to back away. It is almost like they were saying one's hand was caught in the cookie jar, when in fact they were caught reaching for that very same cookie jar. I find that baffling.

The member mentioned the success of Conservative money raising as opposed to Liberal money raising. Here is what was said by a Conservative member during this debate:

By the way, the party in government should be able to raise twice as much money as the opposition because the governing party is the one that makes the decisions.

Does the member agree with that?

[Bob Benzen, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Madam Speaker, to some extent that is true. The incumbent always has the advantage. I mean, that is a given. If one is an incumbent in one's riding, one is well known, and has the name and the power right now. Therefore, in that sense, in theory, yes, the governing party should have an advantage.

However, the problem with this cash for access is that we are dealing with government officials, either the Prime Minister or a cabinet minister, who has the power to make decisions that affect us all. That is an important distinction we have to make. It is not as if we are just talking about a backbencher. We are talking about the people who make the decisions.

Why do the Prime Minister and the cabinet ministers have to put all of their assets into a blind trust while other backbenchers do not? It is because they have so much power. Therefore, if one has access to them simply because one paid money, it could be a problem. That is what we are worried about.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Madam Speaker, again I have to ask, because it was said in the House by a Conservative member that the government should have that distinct advantage to raise twice as much money as the party in opposition. Is that not the very essence of cash for access? If that is his assumption, then that is exactly what we are trying to get rid of. Is that what the Conservatives are arguing against or are they arguing for it? I am not sure.

[Bob Benzen, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Madam Speaker, I think that there are different ways to get donations. Yes, every Canadian citizen could write a cheque for $50 and send it in, no problem, but if the way a party is getting money is by giving personal time with the Prime Minister or a cabinet minister for 10 minutes or half an hour, then that is special access. This is not sending in a cheque for $100.

The governing party could easily get tons of money just in simple cheques. Nobody asks questions and there is no personal time with these people. However, when one has access to the most powerful person in Canada, the Prime Minister, because one is a wealthy citizen and has given cash, it can create issues that we have to be very concerned about, because it is unequal access. It is extra access, and one could easily influence the Prime Minister's decisions with that.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am here today to speak to Bill C-50. We have heard a lot of comments from this side of the House noting that the bill really would not get it done. It is quite amazing that our cohorts in the NDP want to support it. I have to say at the outset of my remarks that it is so typical of the Liberals to introduce very complicated legislation and red tape instead of just being inherently ethical.

In the Prime Minister's own open and accountable government guide, which we all know is “Open and Accountable”, under the fundraising section it states, “Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries must avoid conflict of interest, the appearance of conflict of interest and situations that have the potential to involve conflicts of interest.” It is pretty simple, straightforward, and sounds pretty good.

Why do the Liberals need such legislation if they could just follow their own rules? It just does not add up to me.

We all know that the Liberals broke the rules and they were caught. That is why we are here debating this legislation today. That is the only reason this legislation has come forward. Here we are debating Bill C-50, which is basically a band-aid for bad behaviour, Liberal bad behaviour.

This legislation really is quite unnecessary. We do not need new legislation to tell us how to act and to tell us what to do and how to behave. It has been said here before, but it is worth repeating, that a new law will not make the Prime Minister's infamous cash for access fundraisers ethical. Those famous, or maybe I should say infamous, Liberal fundraisers saw scores of people paying $1,500 a pop to have special access to the Prime Minister or cabinet ministers. It is really quite shameful.

Members on all sides of the House should know what is right and what is wrong. We have probably all known this since we were four years old or maybe younger. If we are caught with our hand in the cookie jar, there is a price to pay. The Liberal leader of Canada was clearly caught with his hand in the cookie jar. There is absolutely no doubt about that. He has admitted it, etc., etc.

Canadians tell me they believe the Prime Minister just does not understand basic ethics, and that is pretty evident. He does not like to own up to what he has done. He does not understand that when people do something or take something that does not belong to them, they have to give it back. We were taught that as children. We have to accept punishment. We cannot just say, “My bad, can't do it. Sorry about that. Sorry if I hurt your feelings.”

It is just like his trip to the Aga Khan's private island. The Prime Minister was found to have broken the law. He was found guilty of four ethics violations. We all know what happened. When we break the law, there is a price to pay. We cannot just say “sorry”. We all remember that famous song of the 1980s, Tears Are Not Enough. It rings true now.

We also know the Prime Minister is very good at crying on cue and appearing to be sorry, but he has to make amends and is just not willing to do so. He has said that again and again in the House. I guess he is just not ready. Where have I heard that before? I do not know. It is true that he has just not grown up yet. Maybe he was never punished before. I do not know.

Every Canadian knows that we just cannot take something, say sorry, and then not give it back. We learn that as children. It is especially not cool when someone is taking taxpayer money from hard-working Canadians. Now these are people who know what it is like to work hard for a dollar. That is precisely what the Prime Minister is doing. He is taking from hard-working taxpayers. He is even refusing to pay back more than $200,000 for his illegal family trip to fantasy island. That is what I like to call it. It was a fantasy.

Do not forget he is the first sitting Canadian Prime Minister found in violation of a federal statute while in office. That is quite a record. It is terrible. It is shameful. Here is something I think of all the time. Could we imagine the outrage if then prime minister Stephen Harper had broken the law in this way? They would be stringing up the gallows. However, I know that would never have happened. It did not happen and it could not have happened because of the fundraising rules already in place, as well as the fact that we, as Conservatives, followed them. That is the key. We followed the existing rules.

Canadians really deserve better than a Prime Minister who believes there is one set of rules for Liberals and his friends, and a whole other set of rules for everybody else, all the other poor schmucks. What is really at play here is that if the Prime Minister truly wanted to be ethical and end cash for access, all he needed to do was just stop doing these types of fundraisers. It is a no-brainer. It is cliché to say that it is not rocket science, but it is beyond that. I mean, it could not be clearer. It just does not take legislation to stop unethical behaviour. It just takes being ethical. It is ludicrous that we are even having to sit here and debate this kind of thing when we all know what the situation is. Just be ethical. All one needs is a good moral compass, and we are not seeing that from this Prime Minister.

I will transition for a minute to say a few words about the party I represent. The truth is that we approach things differently. We get a lot of smaller donations from regular Canadians, and we continue to get them. As a party, we do not rely on wealthy elites and pay-to-play events and such fundraisers. We really do not. In fact, I am told that opposition Conservatives just had their best fourth quarter ever and the best year since the 2015 election, without relying on these kinds of unethical fundraising practices the Liberals have employed. Now, the Liberals had their worst fundraising year since the Prime Minister became their leader, because they had to halt these unethical types of fundraisers. That is exactly why that happened.

These numbers support what we are hearing from all constituents and Canadians across the country. Canadians are really tired of the Prime Minister's unethical behaviour, tax hikes, and failure to deliver results for middle-class Canadians. Conservatives will continue to follow the law, as we always have.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

I am sorry, but the member has run out of time. I am sure he will be able to work anything else he has to say into the questions and comments.

We have time for a question and comment before we continue on with some of the orders of the day that are coming up.

The hon. member for Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, a brief question.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Madam Speaker, when we listen to this time and time again, it is almost like the years 2006 to 2015 just did not exist. My issue about all of this is, it is not like there was never a Conservative minister that attended any fundraisers, or that leaders never had any fundraisers. I am not even sure if Mr. Harper ever divulged his list of donors from the very beginning. Then those members say things like, “We do not take money from the wealthy.” Has no wealthy person ever given to the Conservative Party of Canada? That is a rhetorical question.

I am absolutely gobsmacked by the amount of hypocrisy in this. I absolutely have no question. I am stunned.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is not so much the fundraisers. We all know we have to fundraise. It is a matter of what happens at these fundraisers and what the expectation is. Conservatives do not come to fundraisers to bend the ear of the prime minister. That is off limits, and it always has been. I saw that, absolutely, when I was running as a candidate. There were strict rules. I was told if we thought someone was coming to a fundraiser hoping to get to lobby a minister or the prime minister, it was on us to keep them out. It was very strict.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

I want to remind the members on the government side that when someone has the floor, they should show the member some respect. If they have other questions, they can attempt to get up and ask them.

The House resumed from February 7 consideration of the motion that Bill C-50, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (political financing), be read the third time and passed.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill C-50, which is important legislation.

I am a little surprised that the Conservative Party has opted to vote in opposition to the legislation, which does not make sense. I listened to them talk at great length, attempting to explain why they were opposed to it.

If they were to read the bill, I think most Canadians would have to question why the Conservatives have made this decision. I hope to maybe explain, at least in part, why I believe the official opposition has decided to vote against it.

The New Democratic Party has taken a little different approach. The New Democrats are reiterating a lot of the their Conservative friends have highlighted. I have often made reference to the unholy alliance between the two parties. They like to work together, fairly closely, and we can hear that at times with their speaking notes. However, the New Democrats have the wisdom to recognize something the Conservatives have not, and that is that this is good legislation and is worth supporting.

What are we asking of the House? The essence of the legislation is that not only do we want the Prime Minister to be more accountable and transparent with respect to who he meets with and who pays for these $250-a-plate meetings or gatherings, whatever type of reception it might be, but that same principle also apply to cabinet ministers, and I think this is really where the catch is, the Leader of the Opposition, and other leaders.

It is a step forward in government legislation and the types of things that could improve accountability and transparency. It all boils down to wanting to amend the law so there is a legal obligation for political entities, those leaders, the Prime Minister, and cabinet ministers, to indicate who shows up at these receptions. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with that. I see that as a strong positive.

We have seen many reforms over the last couple of decades to improve the Canada Elections Act and the Financial Administration Act, and this is yet another piece of legislation to do just that.

One has to question why the Conservatives are in opposition to that. The only thing I have discovered is the current leadership within the Conservative Party seems to believe Canadians do not have any business knowing with whom the Leader of the Opposition is meeting.

It is interesting, because last year there was a fundraising event, and we knew it was a fundraising event, but the Conservatives denied it. It was with the current Leader of the Opposition, the Conservative Party. When we made some initial inquiries in regard to it, we were told that the event never occurred. The Conservatives were formally asked whether there was an event and we were told no.

That puts things at odds with the individuals who actually attended the event. One of those individuals said “No, I did pay”. I believe the opposition leader met with realtors and some business leaders, but I do not know the actual price that was paid. It was over $250, and it might have been $500, although do not quote me on the price. However, it was a substantial amount of money to meet with the leader. The leader finally had to admit they did have the fundraiser. I do not understand the resistance in telling people this, but there was a great reluctance.

If we read the one published news story on the issue, it is interesting that the leader of the official opposition said, in essence, that he was not the prime minister, that he did not have to report it, that he would keep within the law. He implied that if it were the law, then he would report it. If we connect the dots, one could draw the conclusion that the Conservatives do not want this to be the law, and that is the reason they will vote against it.

Members across the way say that it is somewhat silly or possibly ridiculous, but think about it. The leader of the official opposition said if it were the law, he would report it. We now are introducing the law that would obligate him to report it and the Conservative Party will vote against it.

I do not quite understand how the Conservatives can justify that the leader of the official opposition, the person who wants to be prime minister some day, should not have to share with Canadians who he meets with for these big bucks. Instead of trying to explain or justify that, they are choosing use the line that they are voting against the legislation because of so-called cash for access, as if the Conservatives never did it when they were in government. Some of them across the way say they did not do it.

I can recall when former prime minister Stephen Harper would go to British Columbia for summer barbeques. The good news is that if people attended the barbeque, they could watch the prime minister walk into the big white tent. They could not go into the big white tent unless they paid at least $1,000, but if they paid that, it would give them two minutes with the prime minister and a photo. It is not like that was just a one-time event. I understand it was almost an annual event and it was very nice of a senator to put on that event. How quickly things have changed.

Do the Conservatives believe that former prime minister Stephen Harper did not raise money for their party, never attended an event where money was charged? I just gave an example of it.

Did Stephen Harper say that these ware all the people who were in that big white tent? I will suggest, no. If I am wrong, please tell us who was in the white tent with the prime minister, who paid that extra money to have the ear of the prime minister.

We know that whether one is a leader or a prime minister, leaders of political entities have a responsibility to assist their respective parties in raising money. Is it too much to ask that the individuals they meet with, who are paying over $250, at some point become public knowledge? I would suggest not.

This government has said no. The Prime Minister and the cabinet ministers have now been following the rules in this legislation. The Conservative Party still does not want to follow it. It reminds me of another situation, and my friends will recall this one.

I remember when the current Prime Minister was the leader of the Liberal Party, sitting back where the New Democrats are sitting today. We all remember those days. Personally, I am glad those days are over, and the biggest beneficiary of that has been Canada's middle class. I remember when he stood in the House and said that he believed in proactive disclosure. He asked for the unanimous consent of the House to implement “proactive disclosure” in regard to members of Parliament. I remember all the objections and the noes, especially coming from the then official opposition the New Democratic Party. However, those members were not alone at all. The Conservatives also objected to it. It was not like we just tried it the one time; we tried it on several occasions.

I believe the Prime Minister set into work good deeds that ultimately ensured there would be more transparency and accountability coming out of the House. That is what this legislation would do that.

I will go back to the proactive disclosure for MPs and what happened. We decided that even though it was not the law, we took actions and we imposed it upon ourselves, and that is what is happening with the Prime Minister and cabinet ministers today. It did not take that long for the Conservative Party back then to recognize it was offside, kind of out of touch with Canadians. I give the Conservatives credit. They recognized it, jumped on board and complied. My New Democratic friends went kicking and screaming. It ultimately took an opposition day where they were shamed into supporting proactive disclosure.

Today the New Democrats are recognizing that this is good legislation so they are supporting it. People will notice that even though they are supporting the legislation, they are still somewhat critical of the government but they recognize the value of good legislation, unlike my Conservative friends across the way. After the current Prime Minister convinced them that listening to Canadians was a good thing to do, they came on board with the proactive disclosure for MPs. However, now on this issue, the Conservatives do not seem to want to listen to Canadians.

I always thought we would not do any worse than Stephen Harper with respect to leadership, but on this issue, the Conservatives do not recognize something that even Stephen Harper recognized, which was being more transparent and accountable was what Canadians expected. That is why I do not quite understand their position on Bill C-50. The good news is that it is not too late. It took the Conservatives a little while to come to their senses on proactive disclosure for MPs. I am an optimistic person. I believe the glass is half full. I would hope my friends across the way will actually see the merit of passing the legislation.

I know some Conservatives have argued in their presentations that we do not need the law to tell us what we should be doing.

[An hon. member]

Correct.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, one member across the way has said “correct”. That is not true; they do need the law.

Just prior to the House getting under way, I was hoping to find a news article. I wish I had it here because I am sure my friends would have been quite impressed by it. Due to the fine work done by Patrick, I had that quote but I do not have it with me right now. However, let me capture the essence of the quote.

The quote is from the current leader of the official opposition. One kind of has to chuckle when reading it. If members want it, I can provide the actual quote. The current Conservative leader admitted that he is a little different from the Prime Minister, but that is okay and he will follow the law. However, it is not the law today, so he does not have to abide by it. He feels that he does not have to share that information. In the article, he said that if it were the law, he would follow it and comply.

The question I have for the backbenchers of the Conservative Party is whether they believe in accountability and transparency, as the Liberal members of the House do. If they believe in accountability and transparency and improving the legislation, they should vote in favour of the bill. Some members are laughing about that.

Conservatives have talked a lot about the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner lately. Do they know what the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner had to say about the legislation? In essence, she said it is good legislation and that it would move us forward. I suggest that if my Conservative friends were to canvass on this particular issue, they would find that Canadians, as a whole, would support this legislation, because it is time that we have it.

I applaud the Minister of Democratic Institutions for taking the initiative in a relatively short time span and bringing forward legislation that I believe would ensure more accountability and transparency. These are important to be put in place as we continue to evolve our election laws and the way campaigns are financed. For me personally, some of the reforms over the years, in particular, getting rid of corporation and union contributions to individuals, have been strong and positive. It has changed the way many Canadians look at politicians. They do not perceive us as having been bought by interest groups.

In one of my earlier comments, I talked about how important finances are. There is no question about it. I would argue the best democracy in the world is right here in Canada. There is always room for improvement, and that is why I am glad to see this piece of legislation. However, on the financial, in essence, I believe Canada leads the way, in many ways, in the world. At the end of the day, one candidate in Winnipeg North would probably spend—I am not too sure of the actual dollar amount—somewhere around $80,000 to $100,000, and there could be four or five candidates. Where would they get that money from and how important is it that they get the money necessary for a full campaign?

The reason I raise that, to finish my debate on a personal note, is not to overestimate the importance of money, but rather, to emphasize how important our volunteers are. I can receive a donation, for example, of up to $1,500, but the real value of my volunteers far exceeds the value of a $1,500 donation. I do not believe we give enough credit to volunteers of all political stripes. Whether they are Green, Liberal, New Democrat, or Conservative, the efforts that our volunteers put into our campaigns, both at the local and national levels, are vastly underestimated.

From my colleagues and all members of the House, I would like to express appreciation to those individuals. They deserve just as much credit as anyone who would give any sort of cash donation. Having said that, donations are always appreciated too.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech. It is great on a Friday morning to get me all fired up like that, so I really appreciate it.

One of the things he talked about was the need for this particular law, and that it brings clarity and things like that. What is interesting about that is there is something called the spirit of the law and then there are the words of the law. On the Conservatives' side, we understand the spirit of making sure campaign financing is not tied to a particular decision. When we are in opposition, as well as the many backbench MPs in the Liberal and NDP parties, we do not have any decision-making abilities in this place. We have the ability to vote on particular issues. However, when one is in cabinet, when one is the Prime Minister, one makes significant decisions every day that do not necessarily meet the scrutiny of this particular place. That is where we really need to ensure the financing is not being drawn in to influence a particular decision. We understand that on the Conservatives' side. Apparently, the Liberals need a law to lay that out for them.

Will the member not recognize there is a spirit and intent that we all understand?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I believe the members, whether this particular individual or others, underestimate how influential the leader of an official opposition really is. I would underline that the leader of the official opposition hopes someday to become the Prime Minister. To say there is no interest in knowing who the leader is meeting with at these big-dollar events is just wrong. I believe that at the end of the day Canadians have the right to know. It could formulate many of the questions posed by the opposition and the way in which they might deal with specific issues.

I am very much aware of the influence the leader has in opposition, and I have seen that, especially with Stephen Harper and that whole glass bubble thing. The member is not really recognizing the type of importance that leaders of all political parties carry in our democratic process. To try to say that Canadians do not need to know who their financial backers are is wrong. I really believe leaders of political parties have a responsibility, and that is what this legislation is doing. It is putting that into law.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think we would do well to remember why we are having this debate. After this last election in 2015, all Canadians will remember the tawdry spectacle of the Prime Minister and Liberal cabinet ministers having events held for them in corporate boardrooms and law firms, where people were paying $1,500 to get special access to the Prime Minister and cabinet ministers. That is why we are here today.

This is the Liberals' tepid and weak response to that situation. We could drive a truck through the loopholes in this bill. Basically, it does not change cash for access. It enshrines cash for access. Now what someone has to do is just advertise the cash for access event in advance, but the loophole is that it only applies to events where it costs more than $200 to attend. Just charge $199 to attend and then hit them up for $1,000 once they are there, and there is no need to publish the names of anybody who is there.

At one time the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien, basically after the sponsorgate scandal, where it was shovelling millions of taxpayers' dollars to friends in the Liberal Party, had to bring in electoral finance rules. Those were good. That is where it banned union donations and corporate donations. At that time, it also boldly allowed public financing of elections with the per vote subsidy. The Harper government got rid of that.

Why does my hon. colleague not take a bold step and get rid of the private financing problem, so that we get rid of this tawdry spectacle of politicians having to beg people for money, and bring back the per vote subsidy that at one time the Liberals brought in? Why will the current government not have the—

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

Order. We are getting on with time. The hon. parliamentary secretary.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, as I indicated earlier, I appreciate the support that the New Democrats are giving to the legislation. Even though the member across the way just criticized the legislation and virtually said it was not all that good, I recognize that they are voting in favour of it. I suspect the reason why they are voting in favour of it is that, much like proactive disclosure, they understand that this is the type of legislation that Canadians would get behind and would expect all members of Parliament from all political entities to support.

As democracy continues to evolve, I believe in having it enshrined in law that ministers, the Prime Minister, the leader of the New Democrats, and the leader of the official opposition all have a responsibility to ensure that who it is they are meeting with goes public when these individuals are paying in excess of $200 to go to a reception or have dinner with any one of those individuals.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad my hon. colleague mentioned former prime minister Stephen Harper who, to this day, has never revealed the top 10 donors to his first leadership campaign in 2002. That was before the Liberals brought in the most significant political party financing legislation ever. It was the first time that corporations and unions could not donate, the first time there were spending limits, and the first time there were transparency requirements. That was opposed by the former Conservative Party as well. Former prime minister Stephen Harper, with the National Citizens Coalition, took the Government of Canada to court to strike down the rules that did not allow lobbyists and other third-party groups to spend as much as they wanted to influence an election. Now we have the official opposition opposing even this legislation.

Could my colleague let us know which party has always brought the most significant changes for transparency and accountability on political party financing?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague and friend for her great question because it highlights the difference between the Conservatives and the Liberals inside the House. The Conservatives tend to want to resist any sort of change where there is more accountability and transparency with respect to election financing laws. Historically, what we have seen is that, whether it was Jean Chrétien or our current Prime Minister, Liberals want to put in place what we believe is positive legislation that ensures more accountability and transparency.

My colleague made reference to former prime minister Stephen Harper. I can recall that there was a great deal of money that was raised. We never did find out who the top 10 contributors were. I would ultimately argue that opposition leaders and leaders of political entities have a responsibility to be accountable and more transparent with Canadians. This will do that, along with incorporating the Prime Minister and cabinet ministers.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I feel like I am Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, except instead of waking up every day in Pennsylvania, I wake up and it is the member for Winnipeg North speaking.

Of the hundreds of cash for access events that the current government has held, one of my favourites was the one that was nicknamed “hash for access“, where registered lobbyists for the marijuana industry were allowed in to personally lobby the parliamentary secretary for justice, who is in charge of marijuana legalization. They bragged that the $150 they paid to him was well worth it because they could not get in to see him on his free time.

This legislation does nothing to bar such events from happening again in the future, either because of the $200 or the fact that parliamentary secretaries can be lobbied. How can the member say that this is a decent bill that will help clear up some of these cash for access scandals that the Liberals seem to live on?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that my colleague and friend would say that. He somewhat gives the impression that if it included parliamentary secretaries, then the Conservatives would be voting in favour of the legislation. I do not know if that is in fact the case.

What we need to recognize is that with every opportunity the government has had to ensure more transparency and accountability, the government has taken actions in that direction. Today, we are debating a piece of legislation that deals with the Prime Minister of Canada, cabinet ministers, and leaders of political parties. I suspect we will continue to look at ways to ensure even more accountability and transparency in the future, which could possibly go beyond that and maybe even include all members of Parliament.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the government is proposing to further regulate political fundraisers by requiring leaders and ministers to file a bunch of reports every time they hold one. To be clear, the names of donors and the amounts they give are already published. The bill would simply require more reports on where and when these donors attend gatherings.

Before we judge the merits of the proposal, let us go back to first principles and ask why restrictions on political fundraising exist at all. There is only one reason we restrict those donations. It is to prevent people from turning money into power. Political power is zero sum. There is only so much of it to go around. If a donor gets more, everyone else has less.

Why would donors be willing to pay for political power in the first place? The answer is the return on investment. Large-scale donors almost invariably want something in return for the money they invest in politics. Usually they want a grant, an interest-free loan, a contract, or a regulation or protective tariff to stop their competitors. They believe that the donation will help them get the government's assistance, and they calculate that the advantage gained is vastly bigger than the donation necessary to get it.

As an example, just yesterday we learned that the largest corporate donor to the Ontario Liberal Party gave the party $480,000, in exchange for which it got $160 million in government handouts. What a return on an investment. The company got three hundred times what it paid the party, smashing all stock market investing records set by Warren Buffett and John Pierpont Morgan.

Monied interests that donate are not, therefore, giving, at least in many cases. They are buying. They expect something in return. Will a bill that requires the publication of events they attend, events for which their donations are already reported and made public, prevent that from happening? Of course not. We are seeing that right now.

Monied interests have found other ways than just donations to purchase influence: paid lobbyists; massive, unregulated third-party advertising campaigns, in which tens of millions of dollars were invested in helping this government get elected in the last election; and gifts to the Prime Minister in the form of paid vacations or exorbitant speaking fees by organizations that had vested interests in how the then-leader of the Liberal third party would vote in the House of Commons.

If these restrictions on donations have not thus far been successful in getting money out of politics, at stopping people from converting their dollars into power, then how can we put an end to this tawdry practice? The answer is that we need to get government out of the economy. Government has become such a dominant part of the economy that those who wish to make money need the favour of government decision-makers to do it, so they invest in political influence to get that favour.

Nobel prize winning economist James Buchanan called it public choice theory. He wrote:

However, when governmental machinery directly uses almost one-third of the national product, when interest groups clearly recognize the “profits” to be made through political action, and when a substantial proportion of all legislation exerts measurably differential effects on the separate groups of the population, an economic theory can be of great help in pointing toward some means through which these conflicting interest may be ultimately reconciled.

His public choice theory has been described as political theory without the romance.

According to William Shughart, public choice theory “transfers the rational actor model of economic theory to the realm of politics.” Where people act rationally in a market economy, investing in order to get a return, Dr. Buchanan found that government-run economies have the exact same kind of calculated trade-offs: people investing in politics in order to get rich.

Socialists often decry corporate profiteers who make money in the private sector. As a solution, they believe in replacing the private sector with ever bigger government. However, when government replaces private business, what happens to these profiteers? Do these rapacious, capitalist vultures transform into selfless doves? When socialism replaces the free market, does it simultaneously remove all greed from human DNA? Do people stop wanting to make money? Of course not. In fact, the only thing that changes is the way they make money.

The way one makes money in a government economy is by winning the favour of the political decision-makers who allocate the resources. Instead of selling things people agree to buy, one buys the politicians who control the money. If all the money is in the great vault of the state, profiteers work at buying or renting the keys to that vault. They donate to politicians who give them subsidies. They offer luxurious vacations to prime ministers in exchange for grants to their foundations. They hire lobbyists to convince governments to shut down their competitors with more regulation and tariffs.

As Buchanan wrote:

The individual who seeks short-run pleasures through his consumption of “luxury” items sold in the market is precisely the same individual who will seek partisan advantage through political action.

In the book Welfare for the well-to-do, economist Gordon Tullock put it this way: “Today the individual who works hard and thinks carefully in order to make money in the market will also work hard and think carefully in order to use the government to increase his wealth. Thus, we should anticipate that effort and ingenuity would be put into using the government for gain, and if we look at the real world, we do indeed see such activities.”

The larger government becomes, the more we can expect profit-seekers to turn their money into power and to turn that money back into yet more money.

We see the evidence. In 2014, the last full year of the Conservative government, when government spending was on the decline, lobbyists registered 14,000 interactions with designated public office holders. Last year, there were 23,000 lobbyist interactions with designated public office holders, which is a 79% increase in just three years.

Why is it that businesses, unions, and others are spending so much more on lobbyists? The answer is that there is so much more money in the government to be had. Businesses, to see a return on investment, believe that if they invest in a lobbyist they can get more of that government money. The two fastest growing sectors in our economy are now government and lobbyists, which are two sectors that grow hand in hand.

There has been a payoff. Bombardier invested in lobbyists and got $400 million in interest-free loans from the government. Private equity funds and investment bankers that have invested in lobbyists secured a $15-billion infrastructure bank to protect their investments in megaprojects. Some tech companies have invested in lobbyists, and they have been able to secure a brand new billion-dollar corporate welfare fund that will create so-called superclusters. Money, of course, will go to the best lobbied-for firms.

Big government leads to more lobbying elsewhere as well. Strategas Research Partners produced a graph showing the correlation between U.S. government spending as a share of GDP and the amount corporations have spent on lobbying in Washington. In 2000, federal spending in the U.S. was about 19% of GDP, and there was about $2 billion of lobbying. By 2009, government spending had grown to 25% of GDP, and lobbying had nearly doubled, in inflation-adjusted terms, to $4 billion. More money in the government in Washington means more money spent on lobbyists to get that money in Washington.

When government decides who gets what, business buys a larger share of government. Who wins when that happens? Well, of course, it is those with money. They can hire lobbyists, promise future jobs to politicians, make donations, and schmooze with officials. The working class, by contrast, can afford to do none of these things. They are too busy trying to keep their heads above water, raise their children, and pay their bills to have the means to accumulate and leverage political influence.

Great big government brings economic oligarchs. It concentrates wealth in the state and in the hands of those most able to control the state: a privileged class of modern-day aristocrats.

If we want monied interests to stop pouring money into politics, we must remove the economic power of politicians to reward them for doing so, and that is done by reinstating the free market, a free market in which business makes money by pleasing customers, rather than a government-run economy in which business makes money by pleasing politicians; a free market economy in which people get ahead by having the best product, rather than a government-run economy in which people get ahead by having the best lobbyists; a free market economy in which people put their minds to work investing in products and services people would voluntarily buy with their own money, rather than one in which we put our best minds to work winning the favour of powerful politicians with the keys to the vault of the state; a free market economy based on a meritocracy, not a government-run economy based on an aristocracy.

If the government really wants to put an end to the excesses of money in politics, it must have the humility to surrender control of large parts of the economy over which it has no business being involved.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I can assure my hon. colleague that people at the Manning convention a few doors down would love to hear that speech.

I will get back to the heart of the reason we are doing this. It is to bring transparency to election financing. We have heard the Conservatives say time and time again this week that we should not have to relay to the law to provide us with moral values, yet we find that we are co-operating with the spirit of the law, even though it is still not the law.

We are wondering when exactly the Conservative Party is going to get in line and finally publish the names of those who attend their fundraisers.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we already publish the names of all the people who attend our fundraisers. That has happened since 2006, when the previous Conservative government introduced the Federal Accountability Act requiring full transparency in donations. It was when the Conservative Party banned corporate and union donations and required such public reporting.

The problem is that no matter how many rules we create, the Liberals and other big government parties continue to find ways around them. If corporate donations and union donations are banned, they just set up third-party groups to spend millions of dollars to elect Liberals, as happened in the last election.

If direct gifts to a party or to a politician are banned, the Prime Minister calls it a speaking fee. Those interest groups that want to have his ear and control his direction pay him exorbitant sums of money that no one would realistically pay to hear him speak.

When we restrict the ability to donate to a political party, influential players simply exert influence on the Prime Minister by taking him on luxurious vacations that are worth tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars.

There are always going to be ways monied interests exert their power over government. What I am proposing in my speech is that we ought to reduce the power of government so that those monied interests devote themselves to pleasing customers and not politicians.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Speaker, during the 2015 election campaign, the Prime Minister said, “There should be no preferential access to government or appearance of preferential access, accorded to individuals or organizations because they have made financial contributions to politicians and political parties.”

This is the rule the current Prime Minister set out for himself and for his cabinet. He said that there should be no preferential access to government, or even the appearance of preferential access, based on donations. However, this legislation would do nothing to effect that. Only the names of those who donate to political parties would be published, and the bill would change the timing of the publication of those names. Therefore, pay to play would continue, and cash for access would continue. This would just speed up when we tell people how the government was bought and sold. We would inform the public online more quickly how preferential access was given.

Could my colleague explain how Bill C-50 would do anything to help implement the Prime Minister's own promise to Canadians that no preferential access to government or the appearance of preferential access would be given based on financial contributions?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it would do nothing. It would require that politicians file another report to reveal information that is already necessarily revealed. Donors are already public. However, there are multiple ways people give donations.

The Aga Khan gave tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of donations to the personal well-being and luxury of the Prime Minister while he was simultaneously seeking a $15-million grant for his foundation. In other jurisdictions, decision-makers in the government receiving that kind of luxury benefit has led to resignations, police investigations, and even charges. With time, I can give many examples of politicians around the world whose careers have been ended by doing much less.

The point I am making here is that this is a government that has rendered itself open and susceptible to all kinds of gift receiving and favouritism from those who are seeking something from the government. The fact that we have a sitting Prime Minister who would think it appropriate to receive tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of free luxury from someone who had personally asked him for 15 million dollars' worth of government money is an astonishing fact, indeed.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things my hon. colleague mentioned in his speech was the arrogance of the government to think that it can control every aspect of the economy. I was wondering if he could elaborate on that point a little more.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one of the false allegations levelled at parties on the left is that they are against people getting rich. In fact, they are not against people getting rich. They work very hard to make themselves very rich. We have a millionaire Prime Minister and a gazillionaire finance minister.

The Liberals are not against rich people. They just have a different idea of how people get rich. They believe that people should get rich off the government through corporate subsidies, through complicated loan-guaranteed schemes, through inflated electrical contracts for so-called green wind and solar energy, etc. These policies have made a small number of people spectacularly rich, but when one is getting rich off the government, one is getting rich by making everyone else poorer.

In a free market economy, one can get ahead only by selling people things they actually want to buy with their own money. They are, by definition, better off, or they would not be spending their own money to buy these things. When a teenage high school student who makes his money mowing lawns goes to an Apple store to buy an iPad, he may have a net worth of $1,000. He is negotiating with a nearly trillion-dollar enterprise, yet in that one moment that high school student has just as much power as the biggest company the world has ever known, because it cannot get his money unless it gives him something that is worth more to him than what he has to part with to get it. That is the genius of the free market. Everybody must necessarily win in every single transaction for it to occur.

If the government wants to democratize our economy, it will reinstate the free market system and put an end to the excessive controls of the government and the elites that the Liberals have instilled since they took office.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Salaberry—Suroît, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, and I would like to ask him a question.

The Liberals are trying to seem as though they are more transparent. They want to show that they are more ethical and moral. However, they are proposing a maximum fine of $1,000 in the bill. Now, we know that the Liberals' extremely wealthy friends who were invited to their fundraisers were paying much more than $1,000. They were paying $1,500. Consequently, the fine provided for in the bill still allows the Liberals to make money.

What is more, the bill does not give the Chief Electoral Officer investigative powers, even though that was requested. There is thus very little opportunity to really shed any light on not-so-ethical and extremely questionable behaviour.

I would like to know what my colleague thinks about that.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we already have very strict rules governing donations to political parties and candidates. I do not feel we need to give Elections Canada officials more powers. They have lots of powers already.

The combination of money and power in politics is a problem because the government is now so big that it controls who gets what. Of course interest groups are going to invest in political power to grow their own personal wealth. If we want to reduce the amount of money in politics, we have to reduce state control of the economy.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

Before I recognize the hon. member for Salaberry—Suroît on resuming debate, I must inform her that I will probably have to interrupt her three minutes from now for statements by members.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Salaberry—Suroît, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is no accident that today we are once again debating the Liberals' Bill C-50.

Several scandals have put the spotlight on the Liberals' outrageous and questionable fundraising activities. They introduced Bill C-50 to improve their image. After breaking the electoral reform promise they made before, during, and after the 2015 campaign, they introduced this bill to cover up the fact that they had broken their promise.

The Liberals dangled this promise before a generation of young people, my generation, saying that our electoral system was obviously not very representative and that it did not necessarily reflect how Canadians voted. People believed this promise. The NDP believed it. At the end of the day, we were too naive. We were thinking that, for once, something constructive would be done.

Tens of thousands of Canadians testified and were consulted as the committee travelled across Canada, gathering ideas and suggestions from citizens. Eighty percent of Canadians said that they were in favour of a system with a proportional component. Furthermore, almost 90% of the experts who appeared before the electoral reform committee were also in favour of a proportional system for the next election.

About two weeks ago, the Prime Minister told the CBC that he was not convinced. When he put an end to the electoral reform process one year ago, everyone was devastated. What more do we need to do if the Prime Minister cannot recognize what is democratic, even though 80% of citizens and 90% of experts are on the same page?

At some point, the people stop believing the politicians, whom they mandated to represent the public. The Prime Minister himself repeated some 60 times that he would do what it took to ensure the 2015 election was the last under the first past the post system. He is now outright rejecting this and telling us that the current system works in his favour and that he will leave it as is, despite all the work done on this file.

The committee travelled across the country at great expense. All that work was done for nothing because, in the end, the Prime Minister did what he wanted and decided that the views expressed at all those consultations by all the experts and by all Canadians were meaningless.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

The hon. member for Salaberry—Suroît will have 16 minutes and 30 seconds remaining when the House resumes debate on this motion.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-50, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (political financing), be read the third time and passed.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

When the House last took up the debate on the motion, the hon. member for Salaberry—Suroît had sixteen and a half minutes remaining in her speech.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Salaberry—Suroît.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Salaberry—Suroît, QC]

Mr. Speaker, since we are still talking about Bill C-50, let us all agree on why we are here.

We are talking about this bill, the main goal of which is to restore the Liberals' reputation, which was tarnished by certain ministers and the Prime Minister. We are not talking about the Prime Minister's vacation to the Aga Khan's island. He was severely chastised by the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner recently for that. We are talking about political party financing.

As we all know, politics and the exercise of democracy requires funding. Funding is needed to run an election campaign. In order to raise that money, some members of the Liberal government sold privileged access. At what price? It seems that the maximum amount that can be donated to a federal party is $1,500.

In May 2016, the Prime Minister went to the home of a wealthy businessman, where 32 guests paid $1,500 each for exclusive access to the leader of the government.

We also learned that the Prime Minister was present at receptions hosted by the wealthiest people and business people at $1,500 a plate, in order to meet people interested in the infrastructure bank. There were also Chinese nationals hoping to buy Canadian telecommunication companies in B.C. Other people had interests in cannabis, for example. All of these very influential people with a lot of money managed to land a private evening with the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister cannot deny it. This has been made public, so Canadians would know, which put him in an awkward position, much like the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Justice.

If that does not constitute selling access to ministers or the Prime Minister, I do not know what does.

In October 2016, as I said, it was the Minister of Finance who was hosting a cocktail party at $1,500 a plate with wealthy people from Bay Street. The Minister of Finance is supposed to be an arbiter and show fairness to all Canadians, since he regulates Canada's financial sector. However, he had no problem taking money from some of the world's wealthiest people.

The activities of the Minister of Justice have also been the subject of much discussion. What exactly is the problem? How is the Minister of Justice in conflict? Certain lawyers hoping for judgeships attended the Minister of Justice's fundraising events, which were held not in her riding, but in various places across the country. Since the minister is the one who approves judicial appointments, there is clearly a conflict of interest there.

Certainly political parties need to hold fundraisers to generate revenue and to have a platform for candidates' ideas during election campaigns. The problem is the lack of transparency with respect to who attends, what they talk about, and access to ministers.

“Open and Accountable Government” states the following:

There should be no preferential access to government, or appearance of preferential access, accorded to individuals or organizations because they have made financial contributions...

That is exactly what we are talking about today.

Let me be clear. Very few of our constituents, such as the people of Salaberry-Suroît, can afford to spend $1,500 to attend a private event. When someone is prepared to do so, they obviously expect something in return. In the case at hand, it is the possibility of becoming known to a minister or getting one's name into an address book, which could help get an idea or a project off the ground. It goes without saying that there is always the possibility of putting a word in or making a recommendation to the right person.

The only way to make these events less secretive is to make them more transparent. To that end, we have to allow the media to publicly report on the goings on at these events and to name who was present. One might think that that is the goal of Bill C-50 . However, as my colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley said, the Liberals invented the Laurier Club loophole.

In some cases, specifically during party conventions, people might donate the maximum amount of $1,500 to the Liberal Party, but the names and addresses of those donors do not have to be made public. Under Bill C-50, every donation of $200 or more will have to be recorded in a report sent within 30 days to Elections Canada, which could publish that report on the Internet. Again under Bill C-50, any fundraising activity that involves ministers, the Prime Minister, and party presidents has to be announced five days in advance, a measure we applaud. In fact, that is why we support this bill. However, that does not stop people from avoiding disclosure by buying a $1,500 ticket under the pretext of attending a Liberal Party convention, for example.

This is just another bill that allows the Liberals to have it both ways. They claim to want to improve transparency, but with a bit of game-playing and an open back door they can continue to provide Liberal Party donors with a bit of discretion to ensure that they do not have to disclose their names and addresses, except in a final report at the end of the year. They also get to keep organizing questionable events providing special access to the Prime Minister and ministers.

Is that loophole fair? Should it be removed? The NDP thinks so. We made this recommendation in committee and the Liberals rejected it outright. Every time we make a recommendation in committee, the Liberals take great delight in rejecting it. Why? If the recommendation improves a bill, if it improves transparency, if they are looking to be accountable to the public, and to be fairer, more equitable, and more ethical, why do they refuse to prohibit privileged access at conventions? No one knows. We suspect that the Liberals are not opposed to that revenue stream.

We are also asking that the Chief Electoral Officer be given investigative powers to ensure that political financing during elections is fair and equitable and that he has the public's trust. Once again, the Liberals rejected the NDP's recommendation out of hand. The NDP has made many recommendations in committee, but the Liberals have ignored them, even though that is part of the democratic process. What is the point of having committees if we cannot make sensible recommendations based on the advice of experts and common sense and if the Liberal majority, which refuses to listen to reason or to be open to other ideas, always prevails? What is the point of hearing from one witness after another, if in the end the government does not listen to any of their suggestions?

The Liberals are the champions of excessive consultation. They are doing the same thing to farmers. The Liberals keep saying that they want to know what to do to protect supply management and maintain family farms in Canada. They keep telling farmers that they are going to consult them and listen to them and that farmers are important, but when it comes right down to it, the Liberals are using farmers as a bargaining chip.

Getting back to the matter at hand and Bill C-50, it is the same thing. Once again, fair, sensible, and significant recommendations that would make Bill C-50 more than just a charade will not be acted upon because, unfortunately, the Liberals rejected them.

Bill C-50 still allows parties to hold fundraisers and makes it even harder to fight corruption. This is an opportunity to strengthen our democracy and prove to all Canadians that their elected representatives live up to moral and ethical standards, but that is not where the Liberals are going with this.

Clearly, the bill does not go far enough. There is an effort to be more transparent, but it still allows cash for access events to be held. Those kinds of events, which we oppose, have been making headlines for the past six months. They will stay in the headlines because certains parties will maintain this practice, as the Liberal Party is doing now.

I want to reiterate that this was a Liberal promise in 2015. This is a betrayal of the people who voted for the Prime Minister, who then decided to give up on the electoral reform that Canadians, especially young Canadians, so desperately want.

We are trying to get young people more involved in politics, not just as candidates, but more interested in political activities, in the debates, in social issues. We want young people to know what is going on, to propose ideas, and to become engaged.

There was one idea that really united young people, gave them hope, and might have won them over, but in the end, they were told “never mind”; the old system was too advantageous for the Liberals, and our young people were robbed of that hope.

What effect will that have? Youth voter turnout has declined by 30% over the past 30 years and no one seems to mind. The Liberals do not seem to think it is important to remedy the situation. They are in power. They have a majority. That means that they are going to continue to dash the hopes of these young people who believed them. These young people will be told to have faith because there may still be some authentic people who keep their promises and bring integrity to politics. Nevertheless, with every broken promise, it becomes harder and harder to show people that there can still be honest politicians worthy of our trust.

Electoral reform was not just a simple election promise. It was a commitment made by the Prime Minister to everyone. Again, we are nowhere near it. The Prime Minister has done a complete about-face and left people with their shattered dreams of a better world.

It is 2018 and there is nothing left of the promise that brought the Prime Minister to power. He made people believe that legislators could not agree. However, as I mentioned, 90% of the people did agree. The Conservative Party, the NDP, the Bloc Québécois, the Green Party, everyone agreed that there was a need for electoral reform and that proportional representation had to be part of the next system. That was not enough for the Liberals.

Clearly, a mixed member proportional system resonated with MPs, Canadians, and experts alike. It would have given a voice to every Canadian.

For all these reasons, I find that Bill C-50 is poorly thought out. It does provide some additional transparency, but there is so much more to be done. The Liberals could have gone further. We hope that they will listen to reason and will be open to the NDP's recommendations and those of the other parties and the experts.

Under the bill, any party that does not follow the rules would be fined $1,000. However, according to a former chief electoral officer, this fine would not deter parties from breaking the law. If donors can donate up to $1,500, the parties are still making money and still manage to fill their coffers. It is not hard for them to pay a $1,000 fine. That is ridiculous.

This really is a smokescreen. The Liberals are trying to restore their public image, but this is mostly fluff.

I think the Liberals should go back to the drawing board, improve this bill, and make it genuinely ethical and moral.

[Celina Caesar-Chavannes, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Development]

Mr. Speaker, the member seemed to focus quite a bit on the Liberals. This particular piece of legislation is focusing on all parties, making sure that we have openness and transparency across parties in terms of fundraising.

Could the member share her thoughts on the legislation requiring political leaders, in particular, to have increased openness and transparency as related to their fundraising activities?

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Salaberry—Suroît, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question. It is true that this bill affects all members of the House, including the Prime Minister, ministers, and party leaders.

However, if she agrees that we need to improve transparency, then why not give the Chief Electoral Officer investigative powers? Why is the Liberal Party continuing to allow members of the club to participate in convention events and give the maximum amount without having to disclose their name and address? That is allowed. In committee, we asked the Liberals to eliminate that loophole, but they refused. Are they really in favour of greater transparency if they continue to allow such privileged access to ministers and the Prime Minister at Laurier Club events, for example?

If the member really believes what she just said, then the answer should be no. However, the Liberals have said to leave that alone and not to give the Chief Electoral Officer investigative powers. What does that mean? It means that the Liberals can happily and shamelessly continue to hold this type of event.

I do not understand where the Liberals are going with this, unless their goal is to continue to be able to make money by giving the wealthy privileged access. Meanwhile, other people also have problems, but they have a hard time accessing services at the Canada Revenue Agency. Some people have problems related to the guaranteed income supplement, but it is very difficult for them to reach someone from the CRA on the phone. These people do not have $1,500 to donate so that they can talk to someone who can help them. However, members of the Laurier Club have all kinds of money. They pay money to meet with ministers, the Prime Ministers, or party leaders because they can do so on the pretext of participating in a party convention. Is that ethical, fair, just, and transparent? Not at all.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to hear my New Democratic colleague's views in this area. We all hear that our constituents, voters, Canadians want to see themselves reflected in the government, both in the seats that are here but also reflected in the outcomes of public consultations and public participation. I know that very active youth activists, especially, feel deeply betrayed by the government abandoning its promise, repeated 1,500 times, that it would make every vote count. It had broad public support, and the parliamentary committee made a lot of strong recommendations that the government totally ignored.

Bill C-50, for one, feels like a distraction from that broken promise on true democratic reform. As well, the Liberal government ignored the previous committee study, in the previous Parliament, that could have informed this work, and then also ignored the amendments that the NDP made at committee. It just did not even give them consideration.

How do these betrayals affect public support for the political process and for the democratic process? What is lost when those promises are broken?

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Salaberry—Suroît, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right. Experts, young people, and Canadians in general see it as a betrayal, and it is making people even more cynical. I do not know how people can be even more cynical than they already are. Voter participation is already extremely low.

Why did the Liberals not keep that promise? The Liberals must have said it about 1,500 times before, during, and after the campaign: the 2015 election was supposed to be the last to use the first-past-the-post system. People have been calling for electoral reform for years. Scientific studies of the past 30 years have shown that our voting system needs to change if we want people to feel more engaged and involved, if we want them to feel that the system is fair, their vote counts, and their views will be heard and represented in the House of Commons.

They say that the Prime Minister earned the trust of young people. To do so, he repeated this election promise over and over, and then last year he turned his back on them. In a recent interview he did with the CBC at the Library of Parliament, he said that he had no plans for electoral reform, but that if people wanted to talk about a preferential system, he would be interested. Wow. Is that the electoral reform he had in mind a year or two ago? That is really not what Canadians expected from him.

The government spent money on consultations across Canada and created an all-party committee to consult the public and experts. In the end, 80% of Canadians were in favour of a system with a proportional component, and 90% of experts agreed that this was the direction we should take. The Prime Minister ultimately decided that this was not convincing enough.

What facts and studies is he looking at if 90% of experts and 80% of Canadians is not enough? Is he truly respecting Canadians' wishes? Is he truly representing the public? I do not think so. This means that he will decide, no matter what he hears. He used his veto. How democratic. Canadians are losing hope and losing confidence. This affects all of us as members of Parliament. It affects everyone who wants to get into politics. It is very sad.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her very pertinent remarks.

Last year, I sat on the Special Committee on Electoral Reform that travelled across Canada. I was one of the members who went to Canada's Far North. That is one of the great things I have done in the past two and a half years. No matter what happens, I am happy to have gone to Whitehorse and Yellowknife.

It is remarkable. We achieved unanimity among the opposition parties. Members of the Conservative Party, the NDP, the Green Party and the Bloc Québécois all wanted a referendum on electoral reform. It is important to point this out. We totally trusted Canadians to decide whether or not to move forward.

The Prime Minister realized that he was no longer in the driver's seat and decided to change his mind.

I would like my colleague to comment on the fact that unanimity was reached by the opposition parties because we were willing to let the people decide in a referendum.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Salaberry—Suroît, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right. When do we ever see all the opposition parties in the House of Commons agree on how to give a voice to Canadians? We can count on one hand the number of times the opposition parties have all agreed to give the public the opportunity to have a say.

The opposition parties represent 60% of public opinion because the Liberals were elected with only 40% of the vote, even though they have the majority in the House of Commons. That means that the Prime Minister deliberately chose to ignore 60% of Canadians when he changed course and said that he was no longer interested and that 90% of experts in committee did not manage to convince him.

The Liberals are washing their hands of all the work that was done in committee from coast to coast. They decided to conduct an informal online poll to see if people were still interested. However, nowhere were people directly asked whether the system should be reformed or which system they preferred. There were no clear questions. Everything was vague, but the Liberals boast about being responsible, ethical, and democratic in this process.

I do not understand. There is an immense gap between the Liberals' perception and the actual outcome of the consultations, like those conducted by my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent, I think, who just asked the question.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in the House. It is particularly an honour to rise on a Friday afternoon, when so many of my friends and colleagues have joined us in the House today to listen to my speech. It is always a great honour to have so many people tuning in.

It reminds me a bit of when I was a lecturer at King's University College at the Western University when so many people would turn up for my lectures on Canadian public administration. They were always hanging on every word, until I had to wake them up, and then realized they may not have been paying as much attention as I had thought.

However, it is a pleasure to speak today to Bill C-50. As a member of the procedure and House affairs committee, I am well-acquainted with the legislation, having heard from a number of witnesses and participated in the examination of this bill.

Bill C-50 is really about legitimizing the Liberal cash for access events. So often the Liberals try to tell Canadians that they are different, that they are not like those Liberals of the past anymore. The days of the sponsorship scandal and the Gomery commission, that is not them anymore. Those days are gone. The days of being entitled to their entitlements, those days are gone, as this is a different Liberal Party. The Prime Minister told Canadians, hand over heart, that the Liberal Party was different.

The Prime Minister, when he came to office, told Canadians:

There should be no preferential access to government, or appearance of preferential access, accorded to individuals or organizations because they have made financial contributions to politicians and political parties

However, shortly after the government was elected, that is exactly what happened. We saw a string of cash for access events. High-profile Liberal politicians hosted events where donors gave significant amounts of money to the Liberal Party. In exchange, these donors got private one-on-one access with senior Liberal ministers, senior Liberals ministers who many of those donors could potentially have business with the government and could potentially have business with these same ministers. Most Canadians know this is wrong. Most Canadians know that this is not an appropriate way for ministers of the crown, those who serve our country to operate. However, with the Liberals, old habits die hard.

We should not be too surprised when the Liberals formed government that these types of cash for access events would happen. After all, the Liberals learned from the best. The Ottawa Liberals learned from their Ontario counterparts. The Ottawa Liberals learned from Kathleen Wynne, Dalton McGuinty, and their great success with fundraising through cash for access events.

I want to quote from a Globe and Mail article of July 6, 2016. The title is, “An inside look at cash-for-access Ontario Liberal fundraisers”. The article reads:

On the evening of March 2, 2015, Premier Kathleen Wynne gathered with eight guests who paid $10,000 each for exclusive face-time. Three months earlier, 22 donors spent $5,000 apiece to be entertained by Finance Minister Charles Sousa. Days later, eight people shelled out $5,000 each to attend a reception with then-energy minister Bob Chiarelli.

These were just three of more than 150 intimate cash-for-access fundraisers the Ontario Liberal Party held in Ms. Wynne's first three years in power. At the events, contributors paid thousands of dollars each to bend the ears of the Premier and members of her cabinet privately, typically over cocktails and dinner at five-star hotels or high-end restaurants.

Therefore, the Ottawa Liberals had a great road map from their friends in Ontario.

What happened once the Liberals formed government? They quickly started implementing cash for access events.

Chinese billionaires have been attending Liberal fundraisers, even though they are not allowed to donate because they are not Canadian citizens. One of these individuals, Zhang Bin, who is also a Communist Party apparatchik, attended a May 19, 2016, fundraiser at the Toronto home of Chinese Business Chamber of Canada chairperson Benson Wong, according to the report in The Globe and Mail. A few weeks later, Mr. Zhang and a business partner donated $200,000 to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, and $50,000 to build a statue of the current Prime Minister's father.

On November 7, 2016, B.C. multi-millionaire Miaofei Pan hosted a fundraiser at his West Vancouver mansion. At this event, which was of course a pay-to-play event, Chinese investment, seniors care, and real estate developments were certainly topics of discussion. This event took place while the federal government was reviewing a $1 billion bid by China's Anbang Insurance Group to buy one of British Columbia's largest retirement and nursing home chains.

In Toronto, another example of cash for access was an event with the justice minister that had a $1,500 paycheque. This was again an event with a minister who could potentially be having dealings with these same donors.

When the Liberal Party promised real change, this was certainly not what Canadians were expecting. Canadians know this is wrong. Canadians know this type of cash for access event is not right. In fact, a 2016 Nanos Research survey showed that more than six in 10 Canadians disapprove of this type of event. They disapprove of political parties holding fundraising events in which access is sold to Canadians.

One has to wonder why the Liberals are so eager to raise money through cash for access events. One reason is that they are failing to raise money through other means. Time and again we see the Conservative Party raising more than the Liberal Party. Why does the Conservative Party raise more than the Liberals? It does so because of hard-working Canadians who feel the Conservative Party reflects their views. It does so because the Conservatives have a leader who is committed to Canadians, average Canadians, and not selling access, as our friends across the way have been doing since the beginning of their time in office.

Let us go back to what this bill is trying to do. It is trying to legitimize what the Liberals have been doing. Rather than simply stopping cash for access, they would rather print new rules just to legitimize what they are doing. However, they did not have to. They already have rules in place in their mandate letters and in the “Open and Accountable Government” document.

I will quote from the Minister of Democratic Institutions' mandate letter, but the words are reflected in all the mandate letters of ministers. The Prime Minister wrote the following to his Minister of Democratic Institutions:

...you must uphold the highest standards of honesty and impartiality, and both the performance of your official duties and the arrangement of your private affairs should bear the closest public scrutiny. This is an obligation that is not fully discharged by simply acting within the law.

The Prime Minister's own letter to his ministers clearly dictates that simply following the letter of the law is not enough. They have to appear to be fully above board. This was not happening with the Liberals' cash for access fundraisers, so they brought in this piece of legislation to try to legitimize them.

The Liberal government introduced its “Open and Accountable Government” document with great fanfare. This would be the road map for a new era of transparency for these Liberals. The opening clearly states, “Open and Accountable Government sets out core principles regarding the roles and responsibilities of Ministers in Canada’s system of responsible parliamentary government.”

What are some of those requirements? What are some of those issues ministers and parliamentary secretaries ought to follow? Annex B, “Fundraising and Dealing with Lobbyists: Best Practices for Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries”, states:

Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries must avoid conflict of interest, the appearance of conflict of interest and situations that have the potential to involve conflicts of interest.

The best practices the Prime Minister lays out were not followed by his Liberals. They were not followed by his ministers, who felt the need to raise $1,500 from donors who could have direct dealings with not only the government as whole but also with its individual departments. Under “General Principles” in annex B, it states:

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.

It is not only following the letter of the law. It is the appearance. It is ensuring that all actions are above board and are able to have the closest degree of scrutiny to ensure that those who serve as ministers of the crown, those who serve our country in high office, are not tainted by even the appearance of conflict of interest.

I am reminded of a former minister in the Harper Conservative government. Once she became aware that there was a potential that those who lobbied and who worked with her department could be attending a fundraiser hosted by her riding association, that event was cancelled and all funds raised were immediately returned. Then we fast-forward to this government. Not only is the money not being returned, but the Liberals are doubling down on these events and they have introduced Bill C-50 to do so.

This bill has had great fanfare from pretty much only the Liberal Party. In testimony before the committee, almost all witnesses were very lukewarm in their excitement about this piece of legislation. They were very lukewarm in their response to an underwhelming bill being brought forward. It could be because this bill really does not do much at all.

In fact, the media knows this. Despite the advertising of these events, the way the media is actually treated at the events is far from ideal.

Let me read from an article in The Hill Times from June 21, 2017:

A Hill journalist is calling into question the Liberal Party’s promise to make its fundraising events more open and transparent, after party staff restricted media access at a June 19 Ottawa event for the party’s top donors.

Sure, the media can know about the events. They can even show up, as long as they stay in the corner and do not talk to anyone. The report goes on to state:

Reporters were ushered into one room for an RCMP sweep prior to speeches. They were told they were not allowed to mingle, but could talk to guests registering and entering the event in the foyer of the museum.

Even a Liberal Party candidate expressed concern about how the Liberals were treating journalists:

Allan Thompson, a journalism professor at Carleton University who ran for the Liberals in the riding of Huron–Bruce, Ont. during the 2015 election and attended Monday’s event, said in an interview afterward that he had sympathy for the reporters who weren’t allowed to mingle, especially because of his background as a former Hill reporter with The Toronto Star.

It is one thing to try to legitimize cash for access. It is another thing to blatantly use this as a ploy to keep the media away and to ensure that this is actually not opening up transparency at all, unlike the former Conservative government, which, on taking office in 2006, introduced Bill C-2, the strongest measures of accountability and transparency in our country. It was a bill that banned corporate and union donations, and put hard caps on the amount of money that could be donated to political parties. Unfortunately, the good work that was begun by the Conservative Party is now being used by the Liberals to initiate and to continue their cash for access events.

Of course, there are certain exceptions and exemptions to this bill. One such exemption is what I like to call the Laurier Club loophole. Yes, donor appreciation events are included under this legislation, except for when they occur at a party convention. A perfect example of this is the Liberal Party convention happening later this year. The Liberal Party's own website boasts about the benefits of being a Laurier Club member, which include invitations to “Laurier Club events across the country, hearing from leading voices on our Liberal team” and the “opportunity to meet a strong network of business and community leaders who share your commitment to Liberal values”.

The Liberal Party is selling access through its Laurier Club. In fact, earlier this week, the chief of staff to the Minister of National Defence sent a tweet that said, “if there was a time to join Laurier Club, now is the time”, of course, referring in advance to the Laurier Club event that would be held at the Liberal convention later this year. It is cash for access, but simply another way of doing it.

I find it interesting that when this legislation was tabled, we heard from certain witnesses in committee, and one of them was Canada's acting Chief Electoral Officer. It was interesting because the acting Chief Electoral Officer had a number of suggested amendments to this piece of legislation. Why should the Chief Electoral Officer have to encourage a committee to introduce amendments? Could it be that the Liberal government did not actually consult the Chief Electoral Officer before introducing this piece of legislation, and instead, had to rely on the committee to review to take into account some of his recommendations?

Let us talk about penalties in this act. Clause 11 of the bill states:

Section 500 of the Act is amended by adding the following after subsection (1):

Punishment — strict liability offences

(1.1) Every person who is guilty of an offence under section 497.01 is liable on summary conviction to a fine of not more than $1,000.

That is one aspect of it. The other aspect is found in proposed section 384.4, which refers to the return of contributions. I find it interesting with these Liberals that if, in this situation, an event is held that does not comply with the new rules they are putting in place, the money has to be repaid, but what about an all-expense paid trip to the Aga Khan's private island? What about a trip in which the Ethics Commissioner found that the Prime Minister had violated the ethics laws on four separate occasions? What about that situation?

No, these Liberals feel there is no need to repay money in that situation. There is no need for the Prime Minister to pay back $200,000-plus that was expensed to Canadian taxpayers for an illegal and ethically challenged trip that the Prime Minister himself took. No, the Prime Minister does not feel the need to pay that back, because what is good for the goose is not good for the gander. This behaviour, by an elected member of the House, let alone the Prime Minister of this country, is unacceptable.

The bill is clear in what it intends to do. It intends to do nothing more than legitimize the cash for access schemes of the Liberal Party of Canada. Old habits die hard and with these Liberals, it is the same old Liberal Party.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Democratic Institutions]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague across the way for his work not only on this today but in the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, where we often get to work very productively.

The member opined on whether the government had engaged or consulted with the acting Chief Electoral Officer. I would like to read a quote that the acting CEO shared with the committee and Liberals when we did, in fact, consult with him. He stated:

There is also an important exception for party conventions, including leadership conventions.... The convention itself is exempted, but if there's a fundraiser that meets all the conditions within the convention, then that is caught by the new rules. Again, this reflects a concern to achieve a proper balance and I think it is wise.

Everyone who attends the convention in the first place will pay a fee and then that will be recorded because that is a political contribution. That is why he believes the correct balance has been struck by exempting events within the convention. I wonder if the member would care to characterize the weight or validity of the acting CEO's remark in this regard.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in almost any piece of legislation, there will be exemptions and exceptions, and important exemptions and exceptions under the law, but just because there are exceptions and exemptions does not mean it is open season for the Liberal Party to exploit those exemptions and exceptions. That is exactly what is being done by the Liberal Party. It is using every loophole, every exemption, every exception in the book to continue with its cash for access exercises.

It is using its pay-to-play fundraising to sell access to senior members with only one caveat, “Don't worry, we will report it.” It is already being reported. Any contribution over $200 is reported. That information is already there. The Liberal Party is using this piece of legislation to legitimize what it is doing when it is selling access to its senior ministers. It is wrong, and Canadians know it is wrong.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like the thank the member for Perth—Wellington for his speech on Bill C-50, which is a bill, as he described, that arose because of the problem around the Liberal cash for access fundraisers.

I wonder if the member could comment on what the average Canadian might want the government to do to fix this problem. If we asked a reasonable person on the street, would they feel a whole lot better about these things if they had been invited? Would they feel a whole lot better if they found out a month from now who was there rather than a year from now? These people cannot afford $1,500 to get this access.

Should the government make it illegal to have cash for access fundraisers? I wonder if the member could elaborate on that.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member is right. What does the average Canadian think about the practices of the current Liberal government?

Most Canadians cannot afford a $1,500 donation to the Liberal Party, let alone a $200 donation. There should not be any preferential access to decision-makers because of how much one donates to the Liberal Party. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, the Open and Accountable Government document that the Liberal Party proclaimed with great fanfare clearly prohibits any preferential access, yet the Liberals have ignored it.

The average Canadian wants to see better from their decision-makers. The average Canadian wants to know that their members of Parliament, that their ministers of the crown, are not being unduly influenced by large donations to the Liberal Party of Canada simply for access to their ministers to bend their ears. Most Canadians cannot afford that opportunity, and neither should the wealthy few.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that my colleague enjoys comparing the Liberal record with the Conservative record. I appreciate the Conservative Party's newfound vision of respecting taxpayers' dollars and asking that it be paid back. However, I recall that, a few years ago, the Conservatives seemed to be on fishing trips often, and the former national defence minister, Peter MacKay, took a helicopter illegally. I do not recall him signing a cheque to the Government of Canada, but that is beside the fact.

There is one thing that the Liberals do not do. We do not appoint senators to help gratify our party coffers. I will read this quote. It says, “It soon became clear that Stephen Harper had not chosen Mike Duffy merely to speechify in the Red Chamber.” He was known to go across the country on the taxpayers' dime and fundraise for the Conservative Party. No senators currently are doing any fundraising in the chamber for the Liberal Party. I am not sure if it is quite the same thing for the Conservatives.

The member mentioned Bill C-2 and the Federal Accountability Act. We would take that one step further and ask party leaders and those obtaining the nomination to immediately publish the list of names of those who attended a fundraiser. To this date, the Conservative Party has chosen not to do that. We have proactively done this, yet the Conservative Party refuses to do that unless it becomes law.

I am just wondering where the transparency is in the Conservative Party.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member wants to talk about appointments, so I will talk about appointments. I will talk about Madeleine Meilleur.

I had the great pleasure of sitting on the official languages committee when Madeleine Meilleur was appointed as official languages commissioner for Canada. This is a woman who paid $5,000 in donations to the Liberal Party. She directly contributed to the Prime Minister's own leadership campaign. Only weeks before she was officially nominated, she was a card-carrying member of the Liberal Party of Canada. She was told she was being appointed before the official opposition and the third party were even consulted.

This is the nomination process that the current Liberal government undertook for nominating an officer of this place. She was a partisan Liberal donor and an individual who, just a year prior, was a sitting Liberal cabinet minister. This is the type of appointment we are seeing from the Liberal Party, an unfair appointment and reward for being a long-time Liberal donor and a long-time Liberal.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, indeed, the Liberals have some nerve talking about partisan appointments, when they themselves decided to give someone such an appointment because she could not be appointed to the Senate. She probably was angry and upset, so they gave her a consolation prize. That appointment was supposedly non-partisan. It was despicable.

My colleague mentioned the sponsorship scandal. I would like to hear his thoughts on the Liberal sponsorship scandal that happened 10 years ago and on the dangers that could play out over the next few years with respect to the legal sale of marijuana. We know there are dozens and dozens of influential, well-entrenched Liberals who have their tentacles in everything.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the hon. member for Louis-Saint-Laurent, for his excellent question. Indeed, I have serious concerns regarding the Liberal Party's ideas about marijuana.

I am very concerned about the direction in which the Liberal Party is going with the marijuana proposals. The member for Louis-Saint-Laurent is absolutely right. Is this going to be another proposal, another way in which Liberal Party members and past ministers are getting rich off the legalization of marijuana? It is a worthy question and the Liberals owe Canadians a response to that.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

Pursuant to Standing Order 45 the recorded division stands deferred until Monday, February 12, at the ordinary hour of daily adjournment.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, if you seek it, I think you would likely find unanimous consent for the following. I move:

That, notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, that the recorded division on third reading of Bill C-50, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act, be further deferred until the expiry of the time provided for oral questions on Tuesday, February 13, 2018.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

Does the hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader have the unanimous consent of the House to propose this motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

The House has heard the terms of the motion. Is it is the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

(Motion agreed to)

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I suspect you would likely find unanimous support to see the clock at 1:30 p.m. so that we could begin private members' hour.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

The House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's Order Paper.

The House resumed from February 9 consideration of the motion that Bill C-50, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (political financing), be read the third time and passed.

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

Pursuant to an order made on Friday, February 9, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at the third reading stage of Bill C-50.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #449

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

I declare the motion carried.

(Bill read the third time and passed)