Mr. Speaker, so there is no confusion, I want to remind everybody that I do represent the riding of Témiscamingue.
I was in my riding over the weekend and people asked me some questions. They noticed that we were debating the bill before us at considerable length and they asked me to explain a little bit to them what was going on. They said: "We see a lot of members of the Bloc Quebecois express some reservations about this bill, but the government is not saying much. The last time we heard it speak on that subject was during the election campaign".
I tried to explain to them the difference between the contents of this bill and what they heard during the election campaign. After listening to what I had to say, they were wondering what happened to the transparency that the government had been talking about so much since it came into office and that had been promised during the election campaign.
I explained to the people of my riding that this bill provides in principle for the cancellation of a very bad contract, a contract which was concluded as a result of considerable lobbying that was not done maybe in the most positive way. I also told them that it may be necessary to call into question the way lobbying is being done, something that the government promised to do, something that it says it will eventually look at.
A party that spent more than eight years, almost nine, in opposition and that has a long-standing tradition like the Liberal Party should be able to act quickly to control lobbyists and to put something on the table immediately if it really wants to do so. But now that the Liberals form the government, they want to try to take advantage of the situation a little bit before doing a clean-up job.
I also explained to my constituents that some compensation payments will be made following the cancellation of this contract. Clause 9 states that there will be no compensation, but clause 10 provides for exceptions with the approval of the Governor in Council; this amounts to allowing the Minister to give compensation for costs incurred to whomever he considers it appropriate to do so. It might not be quite abnormal, but it is very worrying.
Of course, we are dealing with respectable people, but if their integrity were above reproach and if we were sure that things would be done in a more open way, we would be a lot less worried. However, I am not sure that public opinion is extremely confident about the process and that it will ultimately provide for fair compensation.
They might even be able to differentiate between good and bad friends among those people who incurred costs, since it would be up to the Cabinet to determine which costs are eligible for compensation and which are not. Will we even be able to know the total cost of all that? I do not know, we will see at the end of the day, but that might be cause for concern. Maybe we will not even know. Maybe they will not even have to report to this House the whole cost for that operation.
I would like to refer back to the electoral campaign for a moment, because this government made many commitments during the campaign, all the while often making reservations in a much lower tone of voice, with a lot less strength. What made the headlines was simply: "We will cancel the Pearson airport
deal". They never mentioned compensation. They never talked about this compensation mechanism. Once in office, of course, probably under the advice of influential people, they got to that point.
That leads me to make the connection with what is probably the real cause of the problem. One of my colleagues, the hon. member for Richelieu, put forward a motion here in this House. We discussed the financing of political parties by the people. Of course, our friends opposite were not very talkative on the subject, nor, in fact, were members of the Reform Party, who expressed support for the matter. Yet, this appears to me as something that would help solve in part a lot of problems, as we now see with these rather doubtful transactions. I will elaborate a little further, because people tell us: "You talk about financing by the people, but what do you mean exactly?"
As a political party not even subject to Quebec's law on political party financing, we nevertheless complied with this obligation during the election campaign in order to have a lot more freedom.
Those who finance a political party, be they individuals or companies, are not disinterested. But, of course, the person who donates $5, $10 or $15 does so out of conviction, as a show of confidence in the local member, the party and the leader. They donate small amounts. It is ordinary people who come to political rallies, who are phoned, who register as members, who are canvassed each year; they are canvassed very often, in fact.
These people contribute according to their means at the time. Also, political parties are not sheltered from recessions. Financing campaigns are made. There is truly a direct contact with grass-roots militants. It is an excellent operation.
Sure, it is not the most interesting thing for a policital party to do because it is a lot of work. We must ask volunteers in the entourage of members and local associations to get together, call people, drive to the far end of the riding to get $5 or a membership renewal. But we do it. We do not necessarily look at what it costs to do it; we do it out of principle. Those people, when we call them or contact them, express their opinion, say what they like or do not like about the government, about the party which has the finances; they say what they would like to have, say what their expectations are. It is a contact with the grass roots.
I was talking with people whom I will not name on the government side and they told me: "I find it much easier to get donations than new members. I have difficulty recruiting new members, but for donations, it is not a problem".
When their party, during the election campaign, asked them to get a certain number of new members, they simply did not understand that approach at all. It is the very principle of a party that is in touch with its grass-roots members. We do not sell membership cards just to win a leadership race. In major parties, leadership conventions are about the only occasions when there is a flurry of recruitment activity. Those parties concentrate more on lucrative fund-raising. They make a cost-benefit analysis of the time to be invested and conclude that they should concentrate on big contributors. Some people, including some of our members, asked: "Why not do the same? You would stop asking us for funds, we would enjoy more freedom, and we would still believe in you". I objected.
When business people or representatives of companies or big private interests give considerable amounts of money, you should not think they are not hoping for something in return. It is not true that they dish out big money just for the sake of the democratic process.
What are their real motives? They frequently hope for favours and they often get them. That is the root of a real problem. We never talk of that new way of looking at political party financing. Nobody ever talked about that before we did. We are the only ones who raised that question in the House.
But we get no reaction whatsoever. We cry out in the desert. Somebody asked me: "Why should you bother? Bloc members want to leave this Canadian system, anyway". My answer is that if there is a heritage we would like to leave before we go, if that is the will of Quebecers, it would be a law on the financing of political parties that would introduce a much higher level of public morality.
Such a law would force parties like the Liberal Party to be much more in touch with its membership. They would realize that getting a much greater number of smaller contributions of only $5, $10, $15, or $20 would bring them much closer to their grass-roots. They would hear people say they do not like the budget because of drastic cuts in unemployment insurance. They would get that message, which they are not getting now.
Liberal members could have an even more direct response from their grassroots, and even from their own rank and file; they would notice it and make some pressure on their ministers and tell them: "Listen, even our own rank and file say we are taking unpopular actions. There are things that are not working".
Of course, the government cannot be only popular, but it would be able to know if its actions are appreciated. In that way, even to a certain point, that would be a major gain for democracy. That is where real transparency should start, even before the lobbyists control. Even before that, the government should deal with political party financing. It should adopt much more severe legislation.
As I said earlier, my colleague from Richelieu had tabled a motion where he suggested a ceiling and proposed copying the Quebec model that already exists. There is no need to start all over again. We are not talking about something that we have to get from nowhere. There is a model, and Quebec's political party financing legislation has been recognized all over the world as a model. But here, and for all kinds of reasons, now that the Liberal Party is in office, it is tempting to go around those people who hope to benefit from the financing of a political party in office, and who will do so. It can wait a couple years, in order to fill its coffers and, of course, to take advantage of the fact that the coffers of their former political enemies are empty and they have a lot more trouble getting financing because they are very far from power.
For all these reasons, I spoke briefly on Bill C-22. I had talked about it previously because there are too many things that were obscure in the old transaction and that the government does not necessarily want to solve. This government could have shed much more light on that issue in order to get to the bottom of the problem, but it is not really interested in doing that. It is then impossible for the members of the Bloc Quebecois to support this bill. In concluding, I would even like the government to get this message well: if it wants to deal with real problems, it has a golden opportunity to connect this with the Pearson Airport issue and to put on the table a reform of political party financing which could very widely be inspired by the Quebec legislation.