Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Feb. 12th, 2008

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

We're talking about the quality of the report and not just the philosophy of it, not just the political partisanship of it. We may have got there anyway, by a straight vote of democracy, but the fact that the non-representation was there is the point I was trying to make. We may have got to the subcommittee dealing with only this topic, or dealing with this topic first. It might still have happened. But I can tell you, I feel very comfortable that should another member of the government be on that committee, we would have at least talked about, we would have at least brought forward, some talk that legislation needed to be dealt with.

But this committee in its past has always dealt that way, that legislation came first. That's not what's happened here. It clearly says that they met and they considered the business of the committee, which means they should have considered legislation. But they agreed to only deal with a very partisan motion. So there we are, that's where we're at now.

[An hon. member, Bloc, Michel Guimond]

That's it.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

It's about fairness. I do listen clearly to the comments from the other side, because it may help me in my search for words for the next topic. But I'm glad to see that the members are getting their scrapbooking done. It's really good that we're able to spend all this time together.

[Some hon.members]

Oh,oh!

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

It would be a lonely life without coming to committee Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Let's go to the topic of the motion. It's important that we get there. We have said many times, and I believe Mr. Lukiwski read into the record during his conversation last Thursday or last Tuesday, one or the other, many cases of what is being suggested we investigate. Many cases of it being done by members of all of the parties represented in this room. This is not a case that has only been done by the Conservative Party.

First of all, under rules and regulations by Elections Canada, the transfer of funds from--I'm sorry, I thought maybe I was missing something, and that may still be the case, but that wasn't the issue--federal parties to riding associations and back is a common occurrence during election campaigns. Mr. Lukiwski read into the record last week, on either Tuesday or Thursday, many occasions of that happening, and even occasions of members opposite; even occasions of members of all the opposition parties. He also spoke at length about the rules pertaining to election advertising. That election advertising was based on, “Could it be local, could it be regional, could it be national?”

I'll put on my hat from my previous career, as a marketing person for one of the major fast food companies.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Yes, I know. I did sample some of the products.

We often looked for isolated areas of the country in which to test products. It used to be the case, in the late 1970s, early 1980s, where that was possible. We picked certain areas of the country where you could actually go and test a product, and then actually do some advertising around it, so that if you were introducing a new sandwich or a new something, only the people in that area heard about it while you tested it. For example, Winnipeg, Manitoba, used to be one of those markets that had its own media influence, and so we could do this there. London, Ontario, was another with its own media, including television, but it didn't spill outwards into the surrounding areas, so you could test products there.

But in the mid-eighties all of this changed and we became far more regional in our advertising reach, and that what this is all about here. That is what we're talking about now with the election buys, the national versus the regional versus the local buys of television particularly.

It's very hard to buy television in a market that's only going to stay right in that market now. There are no walls up outside of London now preventing TV signals from being regionalized. The A-Channel in that market spreads throughout all of southern Ontario. As a matter of fact, they actually have branches in Windsor and in Wingham, so that a TV commercial played in London is actually being played throughout all of southern Ontario. So although it may be a TV commercial done for a local candidate or even, in the case of radio, a radio commercial done for a local candidate and tagged for that local candidate—because that's who is paying for it—it may actually spill into many ridings. If it's on TV in London, there are four London ridings plus the ten other ridings around it that it would spill into, so it's very hard to isolate this.

We have looked at the Elections Canada regulations, of course, and they say that candidates can do commercials that are both local in nature, talking just about the goodness of Tom Lukiwski in Saskatchewan, and national in nature, talking only about the goodness of the Conservative Party and, therefore, on behalf of Tom Lukiwski. He could get elected simply because of the goodness of the Conservative Party only—and it works, apparently, as Tom is sitting here. It must work.

That's not to say it would be difficult to elect you, sir, without advertising. It could happen without it.

But that's the “regionalness”, if there is such a word, of the advertising. If Tom runs a TV commercial in his riding, it spills into neighbouring ridings. It says somewhere in the TV commercial, either visually or through audio, that the ad is approved by the financial agent for Tom Lukiwski, or “I'm Tom Lukiwski, and I approve of this ad”.

It works. It obviously works. Advertising works because we all spend a great deal of money on it. It's not just this side of the table, although we tend to be able to raise a lot more money, but the other side too that spends some of its money on advertising.

As I've said, money can transfer both ways, from national headquarters to local riding associations, and.... The regulations were there in the handbook, saying that was proper. The regulations were there in the election candidates' handbook, saying it was okay to run ads. Did it say what the ads had to be? No. It said the ads could be local in nature or national in nature to promote an issue or a party. We've done all of those things, which is why we scratch our heads at this point and ask how we got here.

We've moved forward, on our own, and are asking Elections Canada to clarify this issue. It's in court. Affidavits have been prepared and have now been given to the courts, and we're discussing the issue.

So that brings me, Chair, back to one of your original rulings. If we could take this back to September 12, I believe you ruled on whether this motion was in order or out of order. One of the things you were looking at was the fact that it was before the courts, that although it's the will and the rule of this House that legislative committees or committees like this standing committee look at legislation, and may even look at laws, we often don't tend to look at matters before the court as a matter of not influencing them. It's unwritten, if you will—though it may actually be written, because I haven't read all the books—that we just don't do it, that we don't talk about matters before the courts.

And you hear this answer a lot, that a matter is before the court; therefore, it can't be discussed. I don't think this committee or any other would want to influence the outcome of a trial or a procedure before the courts by talking about it in committee and calling witnesses forward.

I know the opposition would love that to happen. They'd love to have a trial about it here and a trial about it in court, and a trial about it in the newspapers, if possible, too, because it's about scandal to them. It's not about truth. It's not about justice. It's not about finding the way things should work. It's about scandalizing the issues so that eventually you cheapen the brand, the brand of your opponent.

It works. I don't disagree with their method. It works. I don't think it's what Canadians would like to see happen. As we've talked about in this issue, and I guess if you simply watch the House we talk about in other issues, here we are at this committee trying to talk about an issue that is before the courts.

As I said, Chair, you once ruled that it was out of order, and I remind you again that immediately after you ruled it out of order they challenged the chair. It's the first time I'd seen that done at a committee, and it was a bit disconcerting that it was possible that somebody made a ruling—you gathered the information even from the law clerk so that you had a legal element to why your motion was out of order—and yet just by a show of hands.... I think we even actually asked for a recorded vote, and I suppose if I had time I could look and see who voted which way, but I think it's pretty easy to figure out.

That's right, they're admitting to it, Chair. They're admitting clearly that regardless of whether the motion was out of order or not—because I can think we can safely say it was—you ruled it was, and a wise person like you wouldn't make a mistake like that, so the motion was out of order. Your ruling was immediately overturned.

Here we are again trying to deal with something that's before the courts. I'm not certain what this would do for us. We're looking to have an investigation, as the motion says, of the actions for election campaign expenses. We want to investigate that as a committee.

I know we call witnesses before committee often on legislation. If we're looking at legislation—for example, the legislation we should be dealing with, Bill C-6.—I know that as we have dealt with it we've called witnesses forward in the past, whether it's the Chief Electoral Officer or some of his associates, and we asked them questions such as, if this legislation goes through, what it would do, how it would happen, and how they would deal with it.

We then try to find interested parties usually who would be affected by it. I remember on the investigation of Bill C-6 we brought forward some of the church groups and other religious groups to talk to them about what they thought about it, and we certainly got great input from them. They told us that voter ID or identified voters is happening in other places in this world and it works. So that's what this committee does: we investigate it.

I have trouble thinking of what we'll do on this. We all want to be Perry Mason. I think we all grew up watching television and thinking we could be that prosecutor or that defence attorney who breaks down a witness on the stand and gets them to admit to something, and that's truly how I envisioned this.

This isn't about investigating to make a piece of legislation right. This isn't about investigating or asking pertinent questions of a group on the subject matter of a piece of legislation. This isn't about that. This isn't about just gathering information so that at the end of the day we can make a report or pass a piece of legislation and say yes, we've done our job properly, we've come up with legislation that works, we think we've covered all the ends and angles, and we've come up with what will work.

This is about investigating election financing. It's not about looking at the regulations of election financing. Has anybody asked for that? I've not heard the suggestion of looking at election financing regulations. That's what this committee does. We do it very well. If we wanted to change the Canada Elections Act, we'd do that well. We've done it on many pieces of legislation. That's truly what this committee is for. Elections Canada falls under procedure and House affairs. And so we could do that.

Did someone say we should look at the Elections Canada financing act or the legislative part of advertising in an election campaign? No, that's not what we've been asked. That's not what's asked here. Let's pick up some mud and throw it at the other guy. That's what's being asked here. It's not about looking at whether the legislation works or not, it's about whether I can play gotcha politics with the other guy. That's what this is about.

Instead of gotcha, we've offered go-ahead politics. We've said let's look at it. If the result is that maybe we want to look at advertising regulations on election financing, if indeed that's what we want to do, if that's the result, if that's the end game, if that's where we want to end up, then let's look at it. Let's open up all the books to see what we've all done. Let's look at what's happened over the more than...I think Mr. Lukiwski's motion said 2000, 2004, and 2006 as a range of elections, so we could look at the last three elections.

That's probably a good range to look at to see if there's something in those regulations, if there's something in the Canada Elections Act, if there's something in election advertising, if there's something in the election financing pieces that we would like to change, that this committee would like to look at.

Is there something? I don't know, I suppose there is. It might have to end up being a legislative change to election financing, election advertising, so in the next election this won't occur, or we'll do it a different way.

I know right now in the House--I sat there yesterday--we were talking about loans. As we speak, there's a piece of legislation before the House on loans--good piece, and it sounds as if it's the right thing to do. Instead of being able to get around the Elections Act from a donation point of view, we need to make it so you don't get around it by just going out and getting loans and using them as donations beyond the limits that might otherwise be there.

So we found a loophole, we found something we needed to look at. We found something that was being used by people in a way that perhaps circumvented the actual rules of Elections Canada. In its wisdom, this party, this government, and this House is moving forward on changes to that, so the loans situation won't be there the next time. It's important.

As a group we've asked, instead of this motion to move forward, that all books get opened, that we look at it in a fulsome way, that we look at everybody's method of campaigning. I know we may all campaign differently and we may all structure our advertising and our election finances slightly differently, but in the affidavits that Mr. Lukiwski read in over the last week, there certainly seem to be an awful lot of similarities among what we do as parties.

My party and the parties opposite do a couple of things in common. We often will transfer money from what we would call party headquarters to local campaigns, or to local EDAs, electoral district associations, and therefore transfer it from the EDA to the campaign, or from a campaign to an EDA and from an EDA to the national and vice versa. There's the opportunity to transfer in all those directions.

Is that common only to one party? I don't think so. I think we read in some affidavits that it happens in most parties.

Are there similarities in the advertising? Yes, there seem to be. There seems to be mention of a regional ad buy in New Brunswick that I believe the Liberal Party used whereby eight to ten candidates all signed on. They all decided they would say the same things and the only difference would be the tag at the bottom of the ad or the audio tag in the radio ads, so there's a group buy put together by the national party, I believe. The ad was put together by a group, and they all paid into it out of their own...or the national paid for it and they all returned money to the national, or the national paid for it and they sent the money in an invoice to the local campaigns and then the local campaigns sent the money and the invoices back. It's a trail, but good on you, for Elections Canada follows it. It's pretty easy. Our affidavits stated it pretty clearly.

I think there was also a case in Edmonton whereby another group of candidates, people who wanted to be MPs, did exactly the same thing. They put an ad buy together because they were buying advertising that had to do with a region. The city of Edmonton has far more than one riding--ten, if I'm not mistaken--and they all contributed and they all ran ads.

I'm certain if we looked we could find that the Conservative Party did certain regional buys also. That's part of what I think this is about. So are we saying that this stuff isn't done? No. There's no denial here. We're not saying it's not done; we're saying it's done by everyone. We're saying we should open the books and let everyone have a good, hard look at them.

I still question whether this is the proper place for such a discussion. I question whether we should be doing this at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. I suggest that the matter would be better dealt with by Elections Canada and the courts. If, from that investigation, we find a need for legislative change or regulation change, then this committee would be the place to do it. This committee would be the place for discussion of the matter as well as testimony by witnesses, who would include the commissioner of Canada Elections and the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada. They could come and explain what they found, what the result was, and how they determined it.

Then we could change the legislation, if necessary. Let us get to the work that this committee truly does, which is working on legislation. If we determine a practice to be incorrect, we can prevent it. However, if it has worked for all, if it's in the handbook, maybe the answer is to leave the legislation alone. Maybe we should simply be more educational: tell people what's happening and how it works. Maybe that's the answer. I don't know.

But the investigative part—the looking into it, the digging—is this the job of this committee? I think not. I've looked at the type of work that this committee has done in the past. Although I haven't been here as long as some others have, I can't find cases of our doing investigative work of this type. Normally the legislation is brought to us and we investigate it and discuss it. But I'm not sure it's the job of this committee to do this other type of investigation.

I know that the movers of this motion and the rest of the opposition would like it to happen. It's a chance to stir up the muck on this issue. But the real answer is that it's not been done here before. It's not what we do. It's not what we've agreed as a committee to do in the past. Therefore, I really think that it's not the right way for this committee to go.

This is why we're moving in this direction. We can't see it happening in the direction suggested by the motion. The motion is saying that somebody did something wrong, that we should find that person guilty and then investigate. This is not the way the courts work. It's not the way investigations work, even at Elections Canada. We're talking about investigating and finding wrong, rather than the other way around. This motion finds fault and then promotes an investigation for the sake of publicity. I don't think that's what we really want to do.

As for the subcommittee on agenda and procedure of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, I'm not certain that's what they meant to do either. I can't know what's in their heads, but I can't believe that they agreed to do this. I think if I gave them the chance, they would jump up, agree with me, and admit they were wrong.

I gave a gap there, just in case anybody actually wanted to jump up and register their agreement. Apparently, though, they're not in a jumping mood today.

Mr. Chair, we must come to our senses at this committee. I was so happy to be allowed to sit on this committee, so happy for the chance to research it and to see what it does in the House of Commons. I called it the grandaddy of all committees. It's the committee all committees want to be. It has such prestigious members—including the whips of most of the parties. This committee has done so much in the past.

It's my understanding that other committees of the House can't be struck without this committee doing it. This committee must assign the members to the other committees. We have that air of distinction, if you will. It's the pride factor of sitting on procedure and House affairs, that it's better than others. I'm not saying it from an arrogant point of view. It is something that has always been, that this committee sets the pattern for what happens on other committees. It looks at the rules and regulations of this House, the Standing Orders and the other orders this House follows, and it massages those; it makes those right. It makes it so this place can actually be functional.

So I find great distress, Chair, that at this time this committee is sitting here and it's not functioning. This committee, the granddaddy of all committees, is sitting here looking at a motion that doesn't even truly fall into anything this committee has ever done before. It just doesn't. It isn't there. It isn't what we've done. It isn't who we are. We're better than this motion, Chair. I know this committee is better.

In the past we were able to agree by consensus on a lot of issues. We certainly had nays and yeas, but we really have worked hard on being bigger than this. And now what have we done? Well, let's make it all about partisan politics. Let's make it all about finding fault with one guy so I can look better in the eyes of others.

I don't think anybody back home really thinks that's what we're about or that it's why we want to be here. That's not what we do here. That's not what procedure and House affairs committee is.

I hope it's not what other committees are either. But having been other places, I do realize there can be some of that there. But procedure and House affairs, as we've said, really does deal with issues of legislation and the Standing Orders and--

[An hon member]

Filibusters.

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Filibusters? Well, they are a procedure. They are something this committee uses from time to time when motions or reports are put forward that don't reflect how the committee has been in the past, and that don't reflect democracy, as I was mentioning before, because the government doesn't sit on the committee, except as the chair. Sometimes procedures are all we can use. It is procedure and House affairs. We must use certain procedures to at least draw attention to the inequity of what's happening. We have to use these methods to bring forward...and to somewhat scream out that it's wrong; it's not where we want to be; it's not who we are. This committee isn't that way. We have to sometimes use any methods at our disposal.

I can't believe that Mr. Lukiwski spoke for six and a half hours last week. I was enthralled. It seemed like it was only moments. He does it far better than I do. He spoke for a great length of time, but during that time he brought forward so many good issues that all sides, if they truly sat and listened to them, would agree they were the right things to do.

The answer isn't whether it's this motion or.... Mr. Lukiwski offered an amended motion of all parties last week--we'll even use your wording here, that we're going to “investigate”. I'd rather it say that we “review”. But it's about investigation. Let's make it all parties and all elections, or at least the last couple of elections. Let's make this equitable. Let's not make it about one thing; let's make it about a group. Let's make it about four parties all opening their books and examining the steps they took in the last election.

As I already shared with you today, and Mr. Lukiwski shared last week, we've read in many affidavits about other candidates--some successful, some not. So we're certainly not referring only to successful candidates doing this. Since all parties used these methods--as I said, not always to success--what's there to investigate if it's not all parties? I mean, we've thrown out case after case, example after example of the other parties--and it includes ours, but it's other parties too--using money transferred from national to local, from candidate to riding association, from riding association to candidate. It was used for advertising for regional purposes, for individual purposes, for only that candidate, or for national scheme advertising that affected the local candidate.

We've all done it. Why don't we accept the fact that this should look at all of us? When that investigation is done....

As I said, Chair, I'm not even certain I want that investigation to happen. I'm not certain this committee should do it. I think Elections Canada is already doing it. There's a court case already out there, and that's a far better place for it to be examined.

At any rate, once the day comes that the investigation is completed, it can come back to this committee for regulation and for legislation. We'll look at it then. Procedure and House affairs truly does look at it at that level. It's not about sticking somebody in the eye, it's about looking at the legislation, choosing good legislation, making legislation better so that if we found this to be wrong, it couldn't happen next time.

If we find that, in our affidavits, geez, every party is doing it, well, then, maybe it is something we can do. If it appears that the candidate handbook says it was okay to do, maybe all we simply have to do is verify that this is the case. We looked at it, sent it off and got it checked out by other people, and sure enough all we got back was that it was an okay thing to do: the legislation is okay, and we accept it, but least it's been looked at and come back to this committee as a piece of legislation rather than as a witch hunt.

And that is what we have before us today, Chair, we have a witch hunt. As I've stated, procedure and House affairs obviously is not the type of committee--I hope none of the committees of this House are the type--to take that kind of motion and use it.

Mr. Chair, we've had some substitutes in, so I may share with them that this motion, when it was first brought to this committee, was ruled out of order. You, through a great deal of research, ruled it out of order with help from the law clerk. Your actions were overruled because of the partisan nature here: it's great, it's a good flavour, let's go ahead and investigate it.

But you did do the work that you were supposed to do, Chair. You did it well. But it isn't where we ended up. We ended up with a motion that has been ruled out of order. It isn't the type of motion that this committee usually looks at, and yet it's still here.

And the motion keeps coming back. September 10 was the first day the motion came through, and we've had it back and forth a bunch of times. As I've stated, through the goodness of this committee and the good work it does, we did work on some legislation between that time of September 10 and now. Some legislation came before it, but now we have a motion before the House, today's motion, that is about denying any other work happening, denying the legislation that this committee will work at. Some good legislation in the case of Bill C-6--and some very critical legislation before next election--we can't even look at. The second report of the subcommittee on agenda and procedure simply says that this motion will take priority over all other work of the committee.

Well, Chair, I'll say again--risking repetition--that this doesn't make good common sense. It just doesn't.

[An hon. member, Bloc, Michel Guimond]

It makes no sense.

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

My colleague helps me out by saying that it makes no sense, but I'll go back to the common sense piece. It doesn't make any sense that we would in any way handcuff ourselves, that we would have a subcommittee here putting handcuffs on the rest of the committee, saying, “And don't do any other work. Don't look at anything else.”

I just don't get it. I just don't get that anybody sent here by the constituents in their own riding would think that would be the appropriate thing to do. I just don't get it at all. I know in their hearts they don't believe it themselves. I know that. They're good people. Outside of this committee and even in the past during this committee, Chair, through you, I know even Mr. Guimond's heart inside is saying that the committee should get to the work it's here for; that the committee should do the legislative work it's supposed to do; that the committee is not here for the mud-slinging piece; but that it's really about getting to legislation.

How we could possibly say on a subcommittee report that it should take priority over all the other work of the committee makes no sense. It just doesn't. We need to proceed. We need to move forward.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

Do you want a phone book? You could read that.

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

I could do that too.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

I know we are shifting some members in and out, and that's all good.

Colleagues, Mr. Preston, I think you'll enjoy noting that you spoke about the election act three times and witch hunt at least 15 times, so try to stay away from that one. As much as I love the stuff on the chair, etc., that's three times.

However, this meeting was called to discuss a certain report. There was a motion moved. We are now past one o'clock.

This meeting is adjourned until Thursday.