Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) Committee on June 12th, 2006

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

I want to quickly clarify one point.

In the statement the chair read earlier on, he did not say he would vote with the government. In fact, in cases where a government amendment would come to a tie, he would vote against it as well. So the chair has been consistent with the statement he made earlier on.

I urge the committee to respect the truth of his statement.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Lukiwski.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Very briefly, notwithstanding the huge amount of inaccuracies Ms. Jennings has just listed, I have two quick points that address what both Mr. Sauvageau and Mr. Owen were saying. I believe we have passed an amendment calling for a five-year review of the act. Five years from now, if people around the committee felt that the $1,000 limit was sufficiently too low because of cost of living increases and the like, then the legislation could be changed to increase that limit. I think $1,000 is perfectly in line with the message we're trying to give to Canadians.

With that, Mr. Chair, I would just call the question.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We've got four speakers before we do that.

Mr. Tonks, go ahead, please.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Chairman, I would urge the committee to support the $2,000. It's been my experience—I'm sure similar to that of many others—that many people say to me that they'll be making a contribution to my campaign and to other campaigns.

In urban areas there are family relationships and interests in specific issues that lead people to support, my goodness, even the Green Party—when I say “even the Green Party”, I don't mean “even the Green Party”, but our party, in addition to the Conservative Party and the Green Party. People will make those contributions. The spirit of this amendment is to increase that flexibility so that people can engage the democratic process.

If we're approaching it from two positions, one, that contributions are bad, just like lobbying is bad, so it's a nefarious activity that just has to be illegal, then, okay, I think that's wrong-headed. And two, if we're approaching it with the viewpoint of encouraging people to participate in the democratic process by attending conventions, my goodness, to go to the convention in December is going to be several hundreds of dollars. If you want to encourage the average person to get into the process, he or she is not going to be able to afford that.

So I would argue, if I can use that term, that the $2,000 is in keeping with what the statistics in Quebec have indicated is reasonable. There hasn't been any advice that's been given that illegal activities have taken place with respect to paying for privilege and access beyond that defined in the act, so I don't know what we're arguing about. It's in the spirit that the government has put this forward. It's coming down from a personal contribution, I think, of $4,000, and the government is coming down to the $1,000 from the Bill C-22 recommendations. Let's saw it off. That $2,000 sounds pretty good, in the middle, to me.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We've got Mr. Murphy, then Mr. Rob Moore, then Mr. Martin.

Mr. Murphy.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Boy, I couldn't disagree with Mr. Tonks more. To suggest that people who contribute to the Green Party and the Conservative Party at the same time—

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

And the Liberals, as a matter of fact.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

—I can't believe it.

But what bothers me, Mr. Chairman, is that we're essentially in a legislative committee, attempting to build policy, and ultimately this part of it perhaps, with all due respect, is a bit of a charade to suit each party's purpose.

The Conservative Party has lots of money right now, and it will have lots of money, and they're going to spend lots of money. To say, as John Baird said, that moneys come out of politics, well, they don't.

But if we can get serious about something, we are currently going through a convention. You may someday have a convention. They're expensive. We heard not the same testimony from all three...four, I suppose, but three mainline political parties regarding convention fees and how they treat them differently. There was by no means unanimity on how that convention fee is dealt with, and there was by no means any unanimity, or even disclosure, on how much they actually cost, but conventions, let's say, are expensive. To have that limit include convention expenses I think is manifestly unfair to any party in a given year.

Think about it. You may have a convention one year and we don't, or as large a one or as many of them, and it's manifestly unfair to the democratic process that you spend a lot of your time, energy, and money in the political system on many conventions in one given cycle when the other party is not. I really do think this part of the amendment that excites us, I guess--convention delegate fees--is a sensible one. The people of Canada would see it as such. Overall, this is going to put a freeze on people attending conventions, and what could be more important to a political party than to having policy conventions and leadership conventions to get people more interested in the democratic process.

Having said that, the limit proposed in the act is probably unconstitutional. Peter Hogg, and other names that I gave to the clerk, and to you, Mr. Chair, learned constitutional professors, are busy people and could not, in this railroaded environment, foresee to find their way to give expert testimony of eminence from the best law schools in Canada on the constitutionality of this issue. We have heard nothing about it. When you get down to $1,000, and $700 of that might be for a convention, there might be a very good argument that one's rights to contribute to the democratic process—and I'm only kidding about Mr. Tonks' remarks—to the parties he or she believes in, are limited.

I only need to cite—and I don't have the SCR site—the case of Harper v. Canada with respect to the unfair limits on your right to contribute as you see fit, as a manifestation of the charter right of free expression. This comes dangerously close. I'm sure it will be challenged. I think you should think about it, and as a resort, I think you should try to find some way to save delegate fees. It's very important to the democratic process.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Martin.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you.

I wanted to take a moment to clarify for my colleague, Marlene Jennings. I don't always agree with Ms. Jennings, but it's rare that she's completely dead and utterly wrong. Just because this is a televised meeting, I think it's important to the debate and the quality of this debate that we all come from the same base level of information.

We should make it clear that Bill C-24 allowed $5,000 for individual donations and $1,000 for corporations or unions. My problem was the way in which they calculated what constituted a union. That was the point I was making.

The second point I would make is that not everyone has convention fee problems. We're having our bi-annual convention in September of this year, and the delegate fees are $90 if you pre-register and $135 if you pay at the door. So you're the architects of your own problems if you have delegate fees of $700. It's elitist anyway, and you should probably reconsider that as a party policy. We shouldn't be crafting legislation to suit bad elitist practices. The inverse should in fact be true.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Let's have a vote on L-3.

The chairman votes against the amendment.

(Amendment negatived [See Minutes of Proceedings])

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We will proceed to NDP-2, which is on page 51.

Mr. Martin, it's a New Democratic Party proposed amendment, if you could move that, please.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I will very tentatively move it and then wait to see if the chair has anything to say about it.

I'll be happy to speak to it, if you find that it's in order.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

The chair finds it in order, Mr. Martin, so go to it.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

You can't blame me for being a little gun-shy.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Well, I know.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I would like to strongly recommend this particular amendment, and I hope there's broad interest in it because the goal is to put some controls on the massive leadership loans we see taking place, even though this amendment deals with candidates of any kind, whether electoral or for the leadership.

We believe that the current rules surrounding loans are problematic, and that if the loan is not repaid within 18 months, it's deemed to be a donation. So if someone loans me $100,000 and I don't pay it back, it's deemed to be a donation of $100,000, which is illegal. There's an illegality built into the current Canada Elections Act.

What we contemplate is that there shouldn't be these huge personal loans to begin with, because it's impossible to track down the repayment schedule, etc. In the Liberal leadership race, a person loaned himself or herself $50,000. How do we ever know if the person repaid the loan?

So the amendments I'm seeking are in two stages, NDP-2 and NDP-3. The first part only says that the loan must be made through a bank, credit union, or other financial institution.

When we get to NDP-3, you will see that we also consider that no one should be allowed to co-sign a loan to an extent greater than the donation limit of that individual, in case there's a default and that loan becomes a donation. This would solve the problem that there are no built-in illegalities to the bill. So I urge support that these loans....

In closing, one of our concerns and reasons for moving this is that we believe some of the loans in the current Liberal leadership race are tantamount to corporate sponsorship, because they're made by senior corporate executives and may never be repaid. So in the cases of Apotex Inc. and Power Corporation, these people are having a disproportionate influence in the political arena by virtue of these massive personal loans.

So I urge support of NDP-2, meaning these loans have to come through a lending institution.

(Amendment negatived [See Minutes of Proceedings])

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Martin, you briefly started it off, but could you move amendment NDP-3, which is found on page 52?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I would be happy to move amendment NDP-3, which, as I began to explain, is also dealing with this issue of when a loan is not a loan, when a loan is actually more properly a donation or undue corporate influence on the electoral process.

This subsection would say:

(1.1) Any loan of money that is made to a candidate by an individual is considered to be, for the purposes of subsection (1), a contribution made by that individual.

So having failed in the first one, and that individuals will in fact still be allowed to make loans, at least this loan cannot be any larger than the donation limit under the act. If you need to borrow $20,000 to run your own election campaign next time around, Mr. Chairman, you would have to find 20 people to loan you $1,000 each. That would be within what we're contemplating in this amendment.

(Amendment negatived)

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We now move to amendment NDP-4, which is on page 53.

Mr. Martin, could you move that?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I will move amendment NDP-4 on page 53. I think people will like this one a lot better than they liked amendments NDP-2 and NDP-3.

This one deals with the issue of the Volpe clause. This is what we're calling the Volpe clause.

Canadians were horrified. They were shocked and appalled, from one end of the country to the other, that children were being exploited by those who would seek to abuse the donation limits of the Canada Elections Act. It drove people away from the elections process, I think. An already jaded electorate was jaded even further by this rampant abuse. Clearly there's a legislative need to create an environment where the people aren't willy-nilly circumventing the donation limits of the Canada Elections Act.

In the case of minors, we believe this is a logical approach to address the issue of whether minors should or should not be able to make donations. The language we're recommending is “Any contribution made to a candidate by a minor is considered to be made by the parent”--and I would like to add the word “or guardian”, if I may, later--“of the minor designated for that purpose” by the parent or guardian of the minor.

I think this satisfies everything. There are logical reasons that the guardian should be directly linked to any donation by the minor.

First of all, we have to start from the premise that it's not a bad thing that minors make contributions to the electoral process. That's certainly our position, that while maybe it's something that should not be encouraged, it shouldn't be discouraged.

To accommodate that, we should also start from the premise that guardians or parents have a responsibility for the actions of a minor. That's well established in law. If a child vandalizes someone's house or something, it's the parent who's going to have to make good for that, often through the courts. This is true also in this case, that the guardians and the parents have some control and direction over their minor children. So if we are saying that minors should be able to donate, and if we are saying that parents and guardians have some responsibility, and if we are realizing that it's the parents who will be able to use that contribution as a tax deduction, if it's in excess of the $25, as pointed out by Mr. Chénier, then this language satisfies all of those and it would preclude the possibility of some corporate executive laundering money through their children's bank accounts to exceed the donation limits of the Canada Elections Act.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. Martin.

Mr. Murphy.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

I have a question of the legal panel on this. It gets back to age of majority and imputation of gift and trust.

I can imagine my young daughter wanting to give money perhaps to the Green Party, and by the time I made my mind up, all the money was exhausted; my daughter had made the contribution for me but I had no room left to make my own donation. That's a possibility--the imputation rules and trust. People are not people until the age of majority kicks in. How does this square with what the law is, anyway, which is that a minor really can't make a contribution? It's not his or her property?

Mr. Wild, take the UNB perspective and deal with 19 as the age of majority in New Brunswick.