Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the hon. member for Richelieu and I am pleased that he put this motion before the House, because it is very important. I know that there are several such private members' motions before the House, and I hope that we will be able to hold many debates on these issues in the coming weeks.
I want to mention the hon. member's very careful review of the situation in respect of election contributions that has maintained itself in the province of Quebec now for some time. While I recognize the validity of some of the arguments he has put forward, there are more compelling arguments for perhaps considering that while the situation may be a fair or reasonable approach there are other fair and reasonable approaches. The Canada Elections Act has taken that approach. Obviously it is different from what the hon. member has proposed. That is why he made the proposal he put before the House.
I note other people than myself have expressed views on this question. It is important for the hon. member to recognize that those views have been put forward by people who are fairly experienced and competent in the field.
The Canada Elections Act, as the hon. member stated, does not currently have a limit on the size of contributions. Nor does it limit who may make those contributions aside from non-Canadians. The language of the act in my view is a little loose on that point.
The hon. member is aware that during the last Parliament the special committee on electoral reform was struck to review the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing. I had the honour to be a member of that committee. I know we spent a considerable amount of time discussing the question of contributions to political parties. I believe a report to the House on the subject was made by that committee, which report was not acted upon by the previous government.
I am optimistic that during this Parliament we will have an opportunity to look over the provisions of the act once again and possibly come up with some recommendations to change the existing law. I have no doubt we will be looking at the proposal
the hon. member has put forward. However looking at it and accepting it are two different things.
In its deliberations the committee considered a limit because some members of the committee were enthusiastic about the prospect of a limit such as is suggested by the hon. member in his motion. However, it was not one that found favour with the majority of the members and accordingly was not in the report.
Why was it not there? The place to look is the report of the royal commission itself. The royal commission did an extensive review of political donations in Canada. It went over not only the volume, that is the total number and the number of people who contributed, but it also looked at their source.
I would like to read a brief passage from volume I of the royal commission report. The page number does not appear on my photocopy, but it follows table 7.1. The report reads:
Large contributions from individuals are even less important as a share of total party revenue. In 1988, contributions of $2,000 or more from individuals accounted for 11.3 per cent of the total value of contributions to the Progressive Conservative Party and 7.9 per cent of contributions to the Liberal Party; only 14 individuals contributed more than $10,000 to the three largest national parties that year. The largest contribution from an individual-$103,000-was made to the New Democratic Party by Irene Dyck, and the largest donations to the Progressive Conservative and Liberal parties from individuals were $40,000 each.
The largest single contribution in 1988 was just over $1 million; it was made to the New Democratic Party by the Canadian Labour Congress.
One suspects perhaps that they are not going to be so generous in the future.
Contributions exceeding $10,000 from trade unions accounted for 11 per cent of total contributions to the New Democratic Party in 1988.
In reviewing the situation, the commission recognized that limiting contributions to individuals to $5,000 would have been very damaging to what was then one of Canada's three larger political parties. I would not call it one of the major parties, but it was one of the larger ones. To change the law, to restrict it in this way, would have serious repercussions.
I should note for the record what the recommendation of the royal commission was. I will quote recommendation 1.7.10:
We recommend that the Canada Elections Act not impose limits on the size of contributions to registered political parties, registered constituency associations, candidates, nomination contestants and leadership contestants.
I think it is very fair to point this out. The vital thing about this part of the commission's report is that they did say, and I will quote from the page a little higher up:
We recommend that disclosure requirements be broadened to cover registered constituency associations, as well as nomination and leadership campaigns. We also propose that twice a year, registered parties and constituency associations report on contributions, including the date each was received, and that their reports be filed within three months of the end of the reporting period.
The commission was recommending far greater reporting as an obligation on parties and constituency associations so that the members of the public could see who was making contributions to these organizations. The commission took the view-and I submit it was a correct and good view-that transparency in the process would make up for the lack of a limit because the limits can be got around altogether too easily.
The hon. member for Richelieu was a member of the Progressive Conservative Party before he fell by the wayside. He knows very well that the members of his party on the election reform committee, of which I had the honour to be a member, reviewed the situation of the Quebec law and discussed it fully in the committee. They were of the view that the $5,000 limit was one that was easily avoided by either corporations or trade unions, by those organizations making gifts of money to members who could then pass the money along as political donations to political parties.
In other words, a corporation that had $50,000 or $100,000 it wanted to give to a party could do it either by giving it to 20 different constituency associations in lumps of $5,000 or-the hon. member laughs. I regard that as a bit of coach and horses. Through the intent of his motion he may think it is legitimate, I am not so sure.
The other possibility is to hand the money out to directors or officers or members of the corporation and have them make the donations to the political parties involved. The money can be got there if a labour union or a corporation is intent on doing it.
It is quite unreasonable to put this restriction on these bodies so long as they have to disclose the amount of their contributions and that is exactly what the royal commission proposed.
It is exactly what our party proposed in the discussions in the committee. It is what we would have preferred to have and had we not run into so much obstruction from the now-gone Tories we would have achieved a law that would have done exactly that and brought about the disclosure.
I hope the hon. member will accept these comments in the spirit they are intended, will look at his motion in a new light and maybe withdraw it.