Debates of April 25th, 1995

Lobbyists Registration Act

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt Motion No. 19?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Deputy Speaker]

All those in favour will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker]

All those opposed please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker]

In my opinion, the nays have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[The Deputy Speaker]

Pursuant to Standing Order 76(8), the recorded division on the motion stands deferred.

Motions Nos. 22, 23, 25, 28, 29, 30 and 31 will be grouped for debate but voted on as follows. An affirmative vote on Motion No. 22 obviates the necessity of the question being put on Motion No. 23. On the other hand, a negative vote on Motion No. 22 necessitates the question being put on Motion No. 23.

Motion No. 25 will be voted on separately.

A vote on Motion No. 28 applies to Motion No. 29. An affirmative vote on Motion No. 28 obviates the necessity to the question being put on Motion No. 30. On the other hand, a negative vote on Motion No. 28 necessitates the question being put on Motion No. 30.

Motion No. 31 will be voted on separately.

[Michel Bellehumeur, Bloc, Berthier—Montcalm, QC]

moved:

Motion No. 22

That Bill C-43, in Clause 5, be amended by replacing lines 27 to 29, on page 13, with the following:

"10.1(1) There shall be an Ethics Counsellor who shall be appointed by commission under the Great Seal after approval of the appointment by resolution of the House of Commons.

(2) Subject to this section, the Ethics Counsellor holds office during good behaviour for a term of seven years, but may be removed by the Governor in Council at any time on address of the House of Commons.

(3) The Ethics Counsellor, on the expiration of a first or any subsequent term of office, is eligible to be re- appointed for a further term not exceeding seven years."

[The Deputy Speaker]

We are debating a group of motions. I believe the Member for Elk Island had the floor to start.

I believe the member for Elk Island would like to ask for unanimous consent. Is that correct?

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Though I would normally have the floor first, I seek unanimous consent of the House to have the floor granted to the member for Prince George-Bulkley Valley who would like to speak first on the motion.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Is there unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[John Manley, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order only to ask whether we will complete the moving of the motions grouped for debate in this case prior to commencing debate on one of the motions.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The Chair is obliged to read each of the motions in full because they have not been put on the public record before in the House. They are not very long.

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

moved:

Motion No. 23

That Bill C-43, in Clause 5, be amended by replacing lines 27 to 29, on page 13, with the following:

"10.1. (1) The Governor in Council shall, by commission under the Great Seal, appoint the person who has been recommended by a resolution passed by the Senate and the House of Commons to be the Ethics Counsellor for the purposes of this Act, to hold office during good behaviour for a term of ten years, but the Ethics Counsellor may be removed by the Governor in Council on address of the Senate and House of Commons.

(2) Notwithstanding subsection (1) the Ethics Counsellor ceases to hold office on attaining the age of sixty-five years."

Motion No. 25

That Bill C-43, in Clause 5, be amended by adding after line 37, on page 13, the following:

"(2.1) The Ethics Counsellor shall cause a copy of the proposed Code to be laid before each House of Parliament and shall not apply any proposed Code that has not been first approved by both Houses of Parliament."

[Michel Bellehumeur, Bloc, Berthier—Montcalm, QC]

moved:

Motion No. 28

That Bill C-43, in Clause 5, be amended by replacing lines 45 and 46, on page 14, with the following:

"(3) The investigation shall be conducted publicly."

Motion No. 29

That Bill C-43, in Clause 5, be amended by deleting lines 13 to 30, on page 15.

[John Manley, Liberal, Minister of Industry]

moved:

Motion No. 30

That Bill C-43, in Clause 5, be amended in the English version, by replacing line 23, on page 15, with the following:

"any findings or conclusions contained in a report under".

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

moved:

Motion No. 31

That Bill C-43, in Clause 5, be amended by replacing lines 35 and 36, on page 15, with the following:

"lor's conclusions and shall cause a copy".

[Dick Harris, Reform, Prince George—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the House for allowing me to speak to the bill and the motions.

We have talked in previous debate about the three-tier registration system for lobbyists. We have talked about increasing the transparency of how lobbyists operate. We have talked about increasing the authority and the autonomy of the ethics counsellor. I should like to focus my input on Motions Nos. 23, 25 and 31.

Reformers were sent to Ottawa to try to influence the way government operates in the House of Commons, a return to ethics, integrity and honesty in the way the House of Commons and different government departments operate.

In the eyes of most Canadians, politicians and government people in this plastic city, as it is called in my riding, are very much in question. The average Canadians has lost trust in government, lost trust in the bureaucracy of the public service and lost trust in the way the people entrusted to operate on their behalf operate.

I will talk about integrity and trust, in particular the portion of the bill that deals with the ethics counsellor. The ethics counsellor, according to Bill C-43, will develop a lobbyists code of conduct. I do not share the same concerns about how lobbyists operate. Having been in the marketing business all my life-and I was a pretty good salesman-I look upon lobbyists as salesmen. They are selling concepts or ideas to the government on

behalf of companies or interest groups. They are there to do a job. If they do a good job I am not uncomfortable with that.

However, the part of the bill I am uncomfortable with is how the people in trusted positions react to lobbyists, whether they be the ethics counsellor, the registrar or employees. Guidelines must be put in place to ensure people in positions of trust are not privately influenced by lobbyists. In other words, it has to be an open and visible process so the people of Canada and parliamentarians are able to see clearly what is going on behind the closed doors of the people in trusted positions.

I refer to the infamous Liberal red book or the red ink book, as we prefer to call it. The red book said that integrity in our political institutions must be restored. That is a very honourable statement but the proof of the statement must be in the pudding. How is integrity in our political institutions to be restored? That is the question people ask. It is fine, in the heat of an election, to make statements and even put them in writing. However following through on the statements is the most important thing a government can do and the most important thing the people of Canada are looking for.

When Canadians see a statement in the Liberal Party red book that it is going to restore integrity in the political institutions, they are looking for some proof of it. The proof is not there.

We have a situation where the Prime Minister can appoint an ethics counsellor. We beg to ask the question: Where is the integrity in that? It opens a door to many conflicts of interest. We in the Reform Party are firmly convinced that the appointment of an ethics counsellor, if integrity in our political institution is to be restored, must be approved by the Parliament of Canada. After all, every MP in this place represents the Canadian people. We were elected to come here and do a job. A position as important as the appointment of an ethics counsellor should be approved by Parliament as a whole.

There are some examples already in the 35th Parliament in support of the Reform Party's demand that an ethics counsellor must be approved after debate in the House of Commons. Let me go through a few.

Patronage is alive and well in the country and in the government. When the Prime Minister appoints another Liberal he says that he has to appoint Liberals. We question every day in question period the qualifications of some of the appointments made by the Prime Minister and his ministers. We say that they have the qualifications but we ask if they happen to be Liberal supporters, long time Liberal friends. That is a small example of patronage being alive and well. It is something the government said it was to do away with.

Let me quote some other examples such as the minister of heritage affair. In October 1994 it was revealed that the minister of heritage wrote a letter to the CRTC on ministerial letterhead in support of one of his constituent's applications. In our opinion it was a clear conflict of interest in as much as the minister of heritage is responsible for the CRTC. The Prime Minister in his wisdom called it an honest mistake. We questioned that. We asked how many more examples of perceived conflicts of interest can be written off by the Prime Minister as honest mistakes.

The Prime Minister refused to ask for the resignation of the minister of heritage as was demanded by many members in the House. He also refused to tell Canadians what the ethics counsellor had advised him to do.

On one occasion the Prime Minister said that he had talked to the ethics counsellor. Then he said he had not talked to him and then a staff member had talked to the ethics counsellor for the Prime Minister.

Under the present guidelines of the ethics counsellor we in the House will never know what happened in the minister of heritage affair. Canadians have seen a perceived conflict of interest swept aside with some talk about an honest mistake, that maybe he should not have done that but should have done this instead.

If we had an ethics counsellor, truly independent and responsible to Parliament rather than the Prime Minister, there would be a clear obligation on the part of the ethics counsellor to report an incident such as I have described to Parliament and there would be no question as to what happened.

We can talk about the post office scandal and the perceived conflict of interest between a Liberal senator and president of Canada Post and a developer. We can talk about the direct to home satellite flip-flop just discussed in the House the other day.

What we want in Motion No. 23 is to force the ethics counsellor appointment to be approved by Parliament and that he or she would serve 10 years. In that case the ethics counsellor would no longer be at the whims of the Prime Minister as to his appointment and removal. Setting a term limit would ensure he does not become entrenched in a self-made empire, which happens all the time in this place.

The red book promises an independent ethics counsellor. Under Bill C-43 he is not independent. This amendment would truly make him independent.

Motions Nos. 25 and 31 would require the counsellor to table his code of conduct to Parliament for approval and for debate. The counsellor would report directly to Parliament, not to the Prime Minister.

Motions Nos. 25 and 31-this is very important-create accountability, legitimacy and autonomy within the ethics counsellor's department. I believe these last three words, accountability, legitimacy and autonomy, are very important to this bill and I urge members to give their support.

[Michel Bellehumeur, Bloc, Berthier—Montcalm, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I believe the group of motions we are currently considering is the most important, because it focusses on the essence of the problem and of the goal of transparency. The amendments, the motions presented by the opposition relate directly to this.

This is why I am extremely happy to see all the Liberal members and ministers listening very attentively to what I have to say. Let them take notes and they will realize that the objective of the motions put forward by the Bloc Quebecois, Motions Nos. 22, 28 and 29, is indeed in line with the purpose of Bill C-43 with respect to transparency.

I believe that, if we are really to convince Canadians and Quebecers that Bill C-43 does indeed increase transparency and is not some dubious undertaking, it will be with the help of Motions Nos. 22, 28 and 29.

Motion No. 22 concerns the appointment of the ethics counsellor. I do not want to go over this whole issue, but I think and I believe everyone across from me will agree that the elected representatives are the people who sit here. If someone is to report to somebody or account for something to somebody, anywhere in the entire system, it is to the duly elected representatives.

But they still have to be able to choose this person-the ethics counsellor. Bill C-43 gives a lot of power to the ethics counsellor. Some witnesses even told us that the ethics counsellor should be someone extremely powerful. Powerful for whom or for what, if we, the elected representatives have no say in the choice or in the appointment of this individual and, more importantly, if he or she is not required to report to the House and is not accountable to the elected representatives?

We are now being told that his job is to watch over parliamentarians' chastity. I would like to have a say on the kind of work to be done by this ethics counsellor. I would like to have a say on his appointment and his reports to the House.

As it now stands-and I think that most critics will agree on this-, Bill C-43 has no teeth. One of the reasons why this bill does not achieve the objectives set in terms of transparency is that the ethics counsellor will have to report only to the Prime Minister.

I see hon. members opposite shaking their heads in disagreement and indicating to me that Bill C-43 still provides for some safeguards. The ethics counsellor will release his findings. That is not enough. Not only do we have no say in his appointment, but the ethics counsellor will only justify his findings. That is the purpose of Bloc Quebecois Motions Nos. 28 and 29, which provide that the ethics counsellor must conduct his investigations publicly.

We must keep in mind that the ethics counsellor will act in matters involving public money. I would not say anything if the ethics counsellor could look at contracts involving two private individuals or companies. I do not need to know the circumstances, how much they paid for a given piece of land, or why the contract was signed. However, when one of the parties is the government, when one of the parties spends taxpayers' money and makes laws or regulations that will have an indirect impact on the population as a whole, I think it is a different matter.

When I sat on the committee, people told me that, even though I am a lawyer, I asked for things that even the Bar Association could not ask for. I reminded these people that, whenever the Quebec Bar Association investigates a lawyer, it is no longer a public but a private matter.

The ethics counsellor is responsible for reviewing an issue like the Pearson Airport deal, which everyone in this House is familiar with. This is not a matter between two private parties. The ethics counsellor will have to look go over the telephone calls, the letters, the contacts, the meetings. We could have had information. The people could have received information they do not have at this time.

I think that the Canadian people have a right to know what is being done with their tax money. We are paying enough taxes. I think we should know what our money is being used for. The only way to get to the bottom of this whole matter of lobbying would be through public inquiries. This way we would know which ministers and members of Parliament were involved and who contacted a particular civil servant. We need to know. It is not enough to go by findings on which the ethics councillor will base his conclusions.

Let me give you a very simple example. If the only part of court judgments to be released were the conclusions, whether at the Superior Court, the Quebec Court or another court, few people would be able to find grounds for an appeal. Basically, disagreement would be expressed regarding the conclusions. But why did the judge come to these conclusions? How does one know what the judge's decision is based on? To appeal a

decision, one needs to know who testified in the case, what they said, what evidence was introduced, what the charges were and so on. And where is all this information found? In the judgment.

Why the judgment? Because most of the time, perhaps 99.9 per cent of the time, trials are public. While private parties are involved, 99.9 per cent of trials are public and we get to know on what basis the judge made his decision.

This is plainly a public matter involving public funds, and the government, which claims to be transparent and which came up with Bill C-43 to show its hands were clean and it was fulfilling an election promise, introduced a bill whereby we will have no say in the selection of the ethics councillor and, moreover, we will never know a thing about his activities.

That is what this government is about, a Liberal government that cannot even manage to fulfil the simplest of promises made in its red book concerning transparency and lobbyists, when it had promised to implement to the letter the recommendations of the Holtmann report on greater transparency. I can see that what we are saying here is painful to them because it is the truth. This government is good at hiding problems without ever solving them. It is hiding something. Bill C-43 is further evidence of this.

You will understand therefore why these motions are so important and why the government is reacting this way to my comments. The fact is that we have put our finger on the real problem and the problem is over there.

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with my hon. colleague from the Bloc that this is undoubtedly the pivotal group of the items we are discussing today.

As I mentioned in my earlier intervention, the ethics counsellor and the registrar basically will be the people who administer this act and the revisions to the Lobbyist Registration Act. The ethics counsellor is undoubtedly the one who will make it work or allow it to fail. It will not be due to his or her work. Subsequently it could be anyone. It is possible their work could be undermined simply because this legislation is inadequate.

It is not really what the ethics counsellor does but the freedom he has which will determine whether his reports will be received with trust by the Canadian people or whether they will be suspect. This is what I am speaking about.

The word independence is mandatory here. Imagine a court in which a judge ruling on a matter is part of the family of one of the people in the dispute. I am not a lawyer but I think it is against the rules. A judge cannot sit on a case which involves a member of his family.

Liberals are in government but next time it will be the Reformers and then they will obviously have a need for an ethics counsellor. There should clearly be no connection to the Liberals. When Reformers are in power after the next election-I hear no objections so I take it the House approves of the idea-the ethics counsellor should have no connection to the Reform Party. There should be not only a perceived independence but an actual independence, or else the ethics counsellor will not be heard.

When is the ethics counsellor needed? Primarily when there is an item in dispute. If everything is tickety-boo, as we say, if everything is running smoothly, there is no need for an ethics counsellor. People are not suspicious and everything is fine.

The ethics counsellor comes into importance when there is a perception that something has gone awry.

In this Parliament, even after the Liberals ran under the platform of more accountability, more openness, more trustworthiness, a number of questions have been raised. There are really only two possibilities. Either the suspicions and accusations are accurate and something has gone wrong, or the suspicions and accusations are not accurate, which means the people involved are innocent of the suspicions.

If we have an ethics counsellor who is basically answerable to the government of the day and not to Parliament as a whole, nor to the people, then we will have an ethics counsellor who is totally unable to put the matter to rest. If there is something untoward and he is answerable to the Prime Minister, he now has lost his freedom to be totally open and honest in describing the situation. He will not be able to make his friends or his family look bad, so there will be a restriction there. If the people are innocent and he so declares, the public will not believe him. It will be perceived by the people-probably incorrectly-that he is part of a cover-up, he is part of trying to put the matter to rest without necessarily disclosing the truth.

I would like to remind the members opposite that I am not trying to persuade them of something they do not believe in. At least their words are that they believe in this. I would simply quote from the Liberal red book, quoted often here. I do not think we have any reason to distrust the integrity of the people who wrote this in their book as part of their election platform: "A Liberal government will appoint an independent"-I emphasize that word-"ethics counsellor to advise both public officials and lobbyists in the day to day application of the code of conduct".

That is the Liberal aspiration. Frankly, it is our aspiration as well. It is what Canadian people are asking for. If we agree, then I am sure we will have consent to the motions before us, which will provide that independence.

There are several of these motions here. The first one is really a choice we have between accepting Motion No. 22 or Motion No. 23, because they are very similar. Both provide that the ethics counsellor be appointed by governor in council but subject to the approval of the House of Commons and to be removed by the same authority, rather than just being an appointee of the Prime Minister with all of the implications of that closeness, answerable to him-a necessity to make him look good, a necessity to try to cover up. Whether it is true or not, it has that appearance.

The ethics counsellor must have a method of appointment so that there is absolutely no connection. He must be totally independent.

I want to move on, because the time is limited and we have a number of items in this grouping that I want to address. I would next like to talk briefly about the code of conduct itself, which the ethics counsellor will be administering. He of course is responsible under this act for developing the code of conduct and then administering it. I would like to say something about that code of conduct.

It is almost impossible to legislate goodness. Sometimes governments try to do that. I have said in public meetings, especially when we talk about gun control, criminals, and the Young Offenders Act, that there is probably not a law we can pass that will make people good. I believe that. However, we do have to have laws that will restrain those who are not good. That is the objective of a law.

When we think of the flaws in the human psyche we are trying to prevent here, it has to do with office holders and their relationship with lobbyists. If we are going to have a code of conduct that is going to be fair, that is going to satisfy the needs of the Canadian voters and taxpayers, that code of conduct also will have to have a certain degree of independence. There will have to be a development of that code that has a broad support.

I would like to recommend Motion No. 25, which says that the ethics counsellor as proposed now will be producing the code of conduct but that it will be approved by both Houses. Both the House of Commons and the other place will have approval of this code of conduct.

Indeed, I would even go further and say that it would be very judicious of us to give that code of conduct wide reading. It should be published in the papers so that the people know what level of expectations we have of ourselves. Then they can comment on it and we can get feedback from the people.

We need to provide for not only independence of the ethics counsellor but also independence of the code of conduct. That will come through open debate and free votes, as promised in the red book, on that issue in the House of Commons. So all members, if they see a flaw in the code of ethics, will have the freedom to move an amendment to it and to vote against it unless that amendment is made.

These are necessary things. They are absolutely mandatory. Without the acceptance of these amendments, the code of conduct, the ethics counsellor, the whole of Bill C-43 will essentially come to naught.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a few minutes to respond to some of the things I have just heard.

I had something to do with the drafting of the 1987 report, the Cooper committee, the legislation that appeared afterward, and then of course the Holtmann committee, which reported to this House early in 1993.

The member across who just spoke is missing a few points. I know he is sincere in what he is doing and in what he is proposing. For that I commend him. I am sure he means very well. There is, however, something wrong with the logic of what is proposed by the member. The member is saying that only an officer appointed by this House and the other place could in fact be truly independent in terms of administering a code of conduct for lobbyists. There is something very flawed with that. Members will know that if that were the only test for independence of judgment then no judge in this country would truly be independent. If it were the only test for independence, then the director of competition policy would not be independent, and so on.

Of course members will say that one of the differences is that judges have tenure. That is obviously true, but it is not true of all positions where there are quasi-judicial bodies. Therefore the member is wrong when he says that only an officer of the House administers in an independent and non-partisan way. What he is doing, notwithstanding his obvious good intentions, and I credit him for those again, is creating and setting a stage whereby it will be difficult for anyone having this function to operate independently because of the aspersions that are cast perhaps even inadvertently today and in this debate.

There are a number of people who make rulings. I can think of the CRTC. I can think of the director of competition policy as one person who reports to the same minister. Does anyone say that these people operate in a way that is not independent? Does anyone suggest now that their judgment is tainted because they were appointed by the government?

In this case, the person was appointed by the government in consultation with the opposition. There has been that consultation. I remember the Prime Minister specifically mentioning it on the floor of the House. The consultation was made with the two opposition parties.

Someone was just heckling who obviously-and I will try to be kind-not having had the benefit of hearing the whole debate in this House today is pretending to be outraged by-