Information & Ethics Committee on June 10th, 2008

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

The reason you amend motions is to change them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Excuse me. I'm sorry, Mr. Poilievre, but Mr. Dhaliwal has called a point of order.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, I think you have made a reasonable accommodation, accepting this amendment as being in order. What Mr. Poilievre is saying is a repetition of the things that should not be said, because we are here debating this—

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

What should not be said?

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Perhaps you can listen to me, Mr. Hiebert. When it's your turn you just bark whatever you want to, but right now it's my turn.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Thank you. Your point of order is a repetition on a point.

Again, with regard to this motion, there are no public office holders for the Bloc Québécois, but to debate a chair's ruling or this kind of thing is—

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

I'm not debating the ruling—

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Yes, but to argue something that's already been decided.... I think we should move on. We should move on, away from the Bloc issue.

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

I will be making these arguments outside of this committee, so silencing them here will not silence them completely. I will move on beyond the points I have raised, to new and better ones.

I see that has elicited some sort of response.

I want to read an e-mail I received, which is pertinent to this particular amendment. It says:

Subject: Radio co-op proposal.

Dear Lower Island Managers:

If each campaign can commit to providing us with $2000 for a total of $6000, we [the national party???] could match it for a total buy of $12,000. The ads would be tagged equally--i.e., would refer to each candidate--and would mean a $4000 expense under each ceiling ($2000 from the campaign, $2000 in-kind from the Federal Party). We would arrange bookings with a number of stations...for the last week of the campaign.

Mr. Chair, I've just read an e-mail from a British Columbia campaign organizer who describes intricately how national party money can be transferred to local campaigns, and then those local campaigns can run national advertising, and then that national advertising can be booked as a local expense, making it eligible for a rebate and allowing it not to count against the national limit.

Let me read another e-mail.

Hi, Phyllis,

We are told by communications folks in BC that these were radio ads with the Candidate's personal tag on the end - therefore a local expense to be reported under the Candidate's expense ceiling, regardless of who pays. For rebate purposes, we were asked to bill each campaign - in the case of VanEast, $2,612.00

The good news is that the Federal Party will transfer $2,600 to the Federal Riding Association as we agreed to pay for the ads.

That was an e-mail from the national NDP bookkeeper to the local campaign financial agent for Libby Davies, the NDP member in the riding of Vancouver East. So this gives you an example here.

The point that some will make is that she's not a public office holder, so she can do whatever she wants. Elections Canada laws don't apply to her because she's not a public office holder. Some might say that. But, Chair, as you know, they would be wrong to suggest that. And I know that you will not go any further in contorting yourself into pretzels in order to deny an honest, legitimate debate here about how other parties conducted themselves during the election campaign, the one that just went by or others previous.

I have just given you a series of examples from all the parties who have engaged in exactly the same practices in which the Conservative Party engaged.

Even if you accept the chair's flawed logic that we can only study--

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Order. Order!

Members, when I say “order”, I have the floor.

You know, I'm sorry, but when the chair makes decisions and gives rulings, and we challenge the chair or whatever it might be, we have to respect the chair.

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

I'm not challenging your position--

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

No, to be critical of the chair is to be disrespectful of the chair.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[An hon. member]

Come on.

[An hon. member]

This is like Mao Tse-tung.

[An hon. member]

Give me a break, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Excuse me; this is from page 858 of Marleau and Montpetit, under “Disorder and Misconduct”:

Disorder and misconduct in a committee may arise as a result of the failure to abide by the rules and practices of a committee or to respect the authority of the Chair. Disorder and misconduct also include the use of unparliamentary language, failure to yield the floor or persistent interruption of the proceedings in any manner. In the event of disorder, the Chair may....

And then it goes on to describe some things that I can do.

Once we have dealt with a matter, to start characterizing the chair's rulings or statements in a disrespectful fashion really is not helpful here. If you want to throw mud at me, you can do it outside of here. But you're not dealing with Paul Szabo here, you're dealing with the chair of the committee. No matter who sits in this place, you have to show a little bit of confidence in them.

I'm bending as far as I can to allow this matter to move forward. I don't want to do anything to stop the flow of this moving forward because it has to move forward. We're not going to get that by throwing mud at each other.

So I'm just going to ask all honourable members, please, just take a deep breath. Let's just put the points on as succinctly as possible and let's hear from the members so that we can move forward to, ultimately, at some point in time, a vote on Mr. Van Kesteren's amendment.

I'm asking; I'm just asking politely--please.

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

If we accept the logic of the chair that the only purpose of any proceeding is to investigate the conduct of current public office holders--and I don't--the only way to judge the conduct of those public officer holders is to compare their practices to the common practice. The common practice is defined by what all candidates for all parties do.

The amendment that the chair has ruled in order in a very wise ruling permits us to have a broader discussion about the practices of all the political parties. This is a discussion that the opposition has resisted for almost a year now, as we have been trying to get proceedings going in committees like this one on the subject of Elections Canada. As such, I have a book of these common practices. This is the book. There are more books like this one.

I'm not going to engage in the practice of filibustering and flipping through every single page in this book. But anybody who wants to read its contents is more than welcome to do so. I have been systematically laying it out on the floor of the House of Commons to show that the practices our party undertook, and for which this committee is attempting to persecute it, are the same practices that all parties have used to advance their electoral interests.

If we are going to discuss a motion to investigate the practices of just one party, the very least we can do as objective stewards of the public good is to compare those practices against the practices of other parties.

Mr. Chair, you have made it clear that it is possible for this committee to investigate political parties, even if those political parties, in your words, “are not public office holders”. This is an interesting interpretation. However, if we're going to allow one party to be investigated, then we have to allow all parties to be investigated, by logical extension.

If the opposition has nothing to fear, if all of its practices are as white and clean as they have claimed, then they should have no fear whatsoever of going ahead with a broad investigation that will bring their former candidates and their party officials before this committee to answer for their actions.

That is exactly what we have sought from the outset of this issue. We were the ones who sought an investigation at the PROC committee. When opposition members filibustered those efforts, we were disappointed. We attempted to persist, but unfortunately we are in a minority position on that committee. Then the opposition decided they would move the discussion over here so they could rule any scrutiny of their electoral practices out of order.

First of all, the average Canadian would say.... The average Canadian doesn't care, let's be honest. But if for some reason that average citizen had committed some sort of heinous crime and his punishment was to be dragged into this committee room to watch these proceedings, I think he would tell you that if one party's practices were going to be invested, then why not just have all parties' practices investigated? That is what we have sought from the outset.

What is so ironic about this is that we have members in this room who claim to be very anxious about getting on with this public investigation at the committee level. However, those same members from those same parties have voted against having such hearings. If they had voted last September in favour of our motion to open up the scrutiny to all political parties, then the hearings would not only have started, they probably would have ended by now.

That would have been a good thing for Canadians, because the public scrutiny you purport to seek would have occurred. It would have been a bad thing for the opposition parties, because their hypocrisy would have been made naked for all eyes to see--and what an ugly sight that is.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Speak for yourself.

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

Pat Martin says I should speak for myself. I was speaking about the opposition.

Frankly, he says he's not afraid to expose his practices naked in front of the public eye. If that's the case, then I'm sure he will vote to have the NDP's financial practices “unrobed” before this committee. I'm sure he will be anxious to invite members of the NDP to be amongst the first witnesses to explain their in-and-out transactions. But I have seen no such--

[An hon. member]

[Inaudible--Editor]

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Order, please. I would ask members to keep it down. The member has the floor.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

Mr. Chair, I am asking for peace.

So we see some anxiety on the other side.

Mr. Chair, the aggressive protests across the way notwithstanding.... I don't know if it's tears or laughter over there.