Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to participate in this debate today because the hon. member's motion is a serious one.
I want to point out that while I think he has raised a subject that is one we ought to discuss, I am not sure the solution he has proposed to the subject, laying criminal charges and getting the returning officers and elections involved, is a particularly helpful set of suggestions.
I would like to deal first with those. Then I will try to say something constructive about what the hon. member has put forward because I know he has done it in all seriousness.
I also want to say that I do not think the experience he had is one that was shared by all members of this House. Most of us when we took over in the House after having been elected-mine of course was not in 1993; it was in 1988, but I took over from a sitting MP at that time-did not find the situation quite as bad as the hon. member has described.
The outgoing members in most cases were very civil in their treatment of the newly elected members in that they handed over the office supplies that were there. I think also the hon. member might have sought greater assistance. It might have been available in a way that perhaps he did not appreciate at the time. He was seeking that assistance having found that most of the equipment apparently had disappeared.
The difficulty that the hon. member's motion indicates in my view are twofold. First, he has suggested that the proper solution for this is to have, I think he says, the deputy returning officer look after this. I assume that he means the returning officer in the constituency and not one of the deputy returning officers in one of the polls.
If he means the returning officer in the constituency, he suggests this person go in and do an inventory as soon as the writ is issued. With all respect, the returning officer in the constituency has to get his own office set up within hours of the writ being issued. He has to hire all his staff to get the election machinery going. The time when that person is at his or her busiest moment is in the few days following the issue of a writ. To suggest that person ought to take time out of that schedule and drop around to the MP's office to have a look at the furniture is patently silly.
If the hon. member thinks about that, he will realize it is not the place of the returning officer in an election to go around and see the MP's office equipment and conduct his own inventory. There are other reasons it is not a good idea that I will elaborate on in a moment.
The second criticism I would make is that I am not sure the hon. member needs to have the deputy returning officer be the person that does it. There are dozens of deputy returning officers appointed in every constituency, one for every poll. In my constituency there are something like 240 polls. In other ridings there are more. Surely we do not have to wait until those people are appointed, which takes some weeks into the election period in the first place, then choose one that will be the person that runs about to the MP's office to inspect the equipment. I do not see that as necessary.
I want to deal with the current arrangements that affect members' office equipment and how they are covered in fact by provisions currently existing in the Member's Manual of Allowances and Services. I am sure the hon. member has read the manual on allowances and services. It is entirely possible that when he got to the pages on materiel management he fell asleep. I have had this experience reading this manual. It is tough going. I do not suggest for a minute that the hon. member is negligent in his duties, but this manual is heavy duty stuff.
In it there are all kinds of things that deal with members' equipment, budgets and so on. If the hon. member turns to section 7(1) of the bylaws-I think the bylaws are at the back or the front of the manual; there is a separate book that has them but they are also in the manual-it says:
Where an MP contravenes the bylaws of the House and the situation is not resolved to the satisfaction of the Board-
This means the Board of Internal Economy.
-the Board may order any amount of money required to rectify the situation to be withheld from any budget, allowance or other payment that may be made available to the Member-and
c) -if the Board considers it necessary-the Board may order that any budget, allowance or other payment that may be made available to the Member be frozen for such time and on such other conditions as the Board considers necessary.
In addition to that the board has powers of enforcement using civil remedies. It can sue members of the House who have breached the provisions of the bylaws of the board. I want to make it clear that inventory of members' assets is not something that is done just before election time.
The hon. member will discover there is an annual inventory carried out of the assets that are in his constituency office. My experience has been that the list is sent to my staff and I am asked to verify and sign a document that those items are in my constituency office. If the hon. member has a real problem with the conditions of the assets, that is if they were being destroyed and damaged by an outgoing member, which I heard by rumour may have happened in one instance but I do not know, the member can be asked when the inventory is done to comment in the inventory on the state of the assets over which he has control.
I frankly cannot understand why it would be a particular problem in almost every case for members to review this list of assets on an annual basis and pass their comments to the House officers in charge of this, materiel management, and have those reports made available. As the hon. member knows, they are made available on the election of a new member. This list is given to the new member and the new member is then told he can go to the constituency office and reasonably expect that the items on the list from materiel management will be available to him or her, as the case may be. I am of course referring to the hon. member who opened the debate with his motion in this particular case.
I am not sure that we can do a great deal to prevent former members from making off with assets. It happens in various places around this country. As I have said, I think virtually all members have been quite honestly dealt with in this regard and they have received the things they ought reasonably to have received from the former member.
I know the hon. member for North Island-Powell River has had his problems. I see from the scowls on the faces of hon. members opposite that some of them may have had a shared experience. But that has not been the experience of the vast majority of members in this House.
I think to go on a witch hunt or come in with some draconian rules that are extremely cumbersome, awkward and expensive to administer for the sake of saving a few thousand dollars here and there on missing equipment is hardly worth the trouble that I think the hon. member for North Island-Powell River is suggesting we ought to engage in by this motion.
I sympathize with the plight he described. I recognize that there can be cases of dishonesty and we all deplore that. But the law affords sufficient remedies. Where there has been dishonesty charges can be laid. We do not need a motion in the House to lay charges. That can be done where fraud has been established.
On the basis of the annual review of assets that is conducted by materiel management and officers of this House and are signed for by members of this House when the review is complete, and is done on a regular basis, there is no reason in my view why that list cannot be accurate and up to date when the new member takes over.
If that is the case, it seems to me it is unnecessary for us to get into a lengthy procedural arrangement whereby we have all kinds of people coming into MPs offices and inspecting this equipment day after day. It is a nuisance, it is expensive and unnecessary. I know the hon. member, being a member of the Reform Party, like us is much opposed to government waste.
I suggest that some of the things he has put in his motion would lead to increased government waste.