Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Feb. 14th, 2008

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

To address that point in particular, I would say that—

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Mr. Chair, you shut down the point of order. You ruled on it. Nobody else around the table has to debate it.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

That was a debate, not a point of order, anyway.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

A lot of this goes on in many committees, Chair.

On this side of the table—I believe I can speak for my colleagues—we are not convinced that the opposition MPs support a motion like this. This is unclear. In fact, based on the track record of the committee and the previous words of the opposition members, I would hazard a guess that they're against moving forward with the immediate study of legislation. After all, they're the ones who have been putting all of these motions on the table to sidetrack us.

[An hon. member]

Mr. Chair, I'm sorry, I can't quite hear.

[An hon. member]

I'm having trouble hearing Mr. Lemieux. Maybe he could start over.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Please, colleagues. I'm getting some complaints that some members can't hear others.

I'm going to invite members to step as far away from the table as possible, even out into the hall, to have their conversations.

My apologies, Mr. Lemieux. Please carry on.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

That's okay. I'll start at the beginning.

I was born on April 9—

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

No.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

All right. I was saying, Chair, that it is not evident to me, and I don't think it's evident to my colleagues, that the opposition supports a motion to move immediately to legislation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Ms. Redman has a point of order.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Monsieur Lemieux, I would appreciate it if you would define “immediate” for us, since it's government members who have been filibustering since last August.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

That's more like a point of clarification, but I'll give you the opportunity during your discussion.

Thank you, Madam Redman.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

The “immediately” means that it should be our first order of business in terms of working together--and I'll emphasize working together as a committee. I feel we do our best work when we're working together, and in fact we saw that earlier. It's just that we've been sidetracked by the opposition. In fact they have split the committee so that it's opposition versus government on something that's not even related to legislation.

Certainly when I discuss this matter with others on the Hill, but also in my riding, they wonder why we're not at work on legislation. They wonder why the committee is being sidetracked and why these motions are coming from the opposition. Why are these motions coming from the opposition to move the committee from its raison d'être, from its core work, off in all directions that don't concern the welfare of Canadians and particularly concern elections?

As I'd mentioned, we have an election potentially coming up, yet this matter is very unclear. So I'm putting this into the context of what the committee had decided before.

I was at the point where I was saying I was not a member of the committee during the first session. Now, being a member during the second session, what I have certainly heard other members say, members of the opposition, and what I've heard you say, Chair, is that the focus of the committee is to be in fact the study of legislation.

So quite frankly, I am baffled as to how it is that we have spent so many meetings not studying legislation. Thank heavens the previous motions from the opposition didn't pass, because if they had, more and more meetings would have been spent on things not related to legislation. I honestly think that would have been a great disservice to Canadians.

So I'm actually quite happy. My hope, Chair, is that it is behind us now as a committee. I'm hoping that on Valentine's Day we can embrace, we can hug, we can work together for the betterment of Canadians, particularly with an election on the horizon.

Chair, I must admit, as a member I am tempted to step off the main track, to step away from the core business of the committee to launch investigations.

The Liberal Party hosted the riding cocktail party last night--

[An hon. member]

We'd like to move on.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Yes, we have heard, but I'd like to reiterate it here.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Relevance?

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

The relevance, Chair, is that I myself am tempted on occasion to step away from what the committee has defined as the core business of the committee. So I'm just giving an example to show that....

Today, for example, I put in a motion that the committee should study Bill C-6. The relevance of this is that I could easily have put in a motion that says we should be looking at this eight-riding cocktail party, which actually would have been an absolute breach of election financing laws. The jingle is, “the sky is your limit” during this auction. This is the Liberal Party that was at work. They basically were saying, Chair...and it's shocking. Don't fall off your chair, please. They were saying that a successful bid—it was an auction—is not a political contribution and is not eligible for a receipt for income tax purposes. Now, that is a flagrant violation of the Canada Elections Act and election laws and a matter of great concern.

They also said, your successful bid will not affect your annual political contribution limit of $1,100, as if there were no limit whatsoever. I'm just trying to basically put, within the parameters, how critical and how important this particular issue is, and that I would have been tempted to step into that realm. But I've controlled myself.

I just want to finish off here quickly on this one issue.

They went on to say that individuals, partnerships, can you imagine corporations and associations--

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Monsieur Lemieux, I appreciate that. I think you've made your point on that issue. I'm just going to pull you back.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Chair, are you sure you have a good understanding?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Yes, I've got a perfect understanding. Thank you.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Do you want it tabled?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

No. Please just go forward, but not on that point.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

That's fine.

I will just pull back into my main point before I digressed into the details. It was that I myself as an MP had grave concern about what was about to happen at the cocktail party last night. So I would have been very tempted today to drop a motion on the table to say that we should be having a serious look at this, because this is a flagrant overstepping of the law when it comes to election financing. But I controlled myself and instead I said no, what is the focus of this committee? Is it to be chasing after these matters now when we have important legislation on the table? Or is it to actually do the work of the committee?

It is to do the work of the committee. I was just giving an example that all members have this tug at their heartstrings to move off the priorities of the committee and step into other areas, and yet we all must show--I'm just saying, Chair--some self-restraint.

In fact, there's a lot of noise there, and I know people are interested in what I'm saying, and if they showed some self-restraint, they'd be able to hear me. I'm really glad they have earpieces. Thank you.

I'm just saying that it's showing some of this self-restraint. I did that in the best interests of the committee. I think that as MPs we can all do that, and so this is another reason that accentuates why I defined the motion in the way in which I did.

The other thing I would like to comment on is this. I'm actually surprised that Ms. Redman's motion got as much air time as it did and that the committee report got as much air time as it did, because I was reading through some documentation concerning earlier meetings. This committee met in September. It met outside of the normal sitting time for committees, and there was an argument put forward, I believe, by my colleague Mr. Reid, and he was quoting from Marleau and Montpetit. In that argument of his, he was talking particularly to Madam Redman's motion about pursuing the election financing.

One of the things he was bringing out was actually from Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Forms, the sixth edition, page 153, citation 505. It says:

Members are expected to refrain from discussing matters that are before the courts or tribunals which are courts of record. The purpose of this sub judice convention is to protect the parties in a case awaiting or undergoing trial and persons who stand to be affected by the outcome of a judicial inquiry.

It was a fairly pertinent point and I think it was well received, certainly by the chair, but by the committee members, and so I must admit, as I was doing my research, it did surprise me that the committee had moved away from legislation like Bill C-6, as I'm proposing in my motion, and was stumbling into this overgrown field of launching investigations when in fact the matter is indeed before the courts. I think the opposition agrees with me. I don't hear any rebuttal against that. I'm assuming they agree in that regard, Chair.

There are some other points I'd like to bring out regarding the importance of Bill C-6. One of the things is that there was a comment made, again, when the committee was convened during the summer, because Bill C-6 came up and it was acknowledged by most members that Bill C-6 was of critical importance. And it was of critical importance because there were byelections coming, but also because of the uncertainty that was shown regarding this matter.

Here we had the House of Commons passing a bill into law, and when they passed it into law, it was interpreted differently by Elections Canada. This, I argue, caused great confusion. It caused great confusion among all parties because we had all parties commenting on this ruling of Elections Canada regarding veiled voters.

I know that the chair ended up, in good conscience, basically trying to address this issue with Mr. Mayrand. He had addressed a letter to you acknowledging receipt of your letter in which you had informed him of a unanimous motion of the committee—

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Excuse me, colleagues, but I'm going to suspend the meeting for five minutes so that we can have all of these conversations that we're having, and get them over with. Then we can come back for some quiet time.

The meeting is suspended, due to disorder, for five minutes.