Mr. Speaker, with Bill C-43, the Liberal government has as usual ignored the real problems.
With this bill to amend the Lobbyists Registration Act and to make related amendments to other acts, the government has not resolved anything. What this Parliament needs is not another bill but above all a code of conduct for lobby groups, which wield excessive powers in this country.
To go on and conclude that lobbyists are leading the country seems to be the logical step. True enough. We know that lobbying activities have always been part of the Canadian political scene. Over the years, these activities have become an important component of the political process. Between 1969 and 1985, some 20 private members' bills dealing with this issue were tabled in the House of Commons.
All these bills were motivated by the same reason, the same need, the same desire, that is, to make the government more open and democratic. The fact that we are being asked to address this issue again today means that we have not made as much progress as we hoped.
As I read this bill, it occurred to me that, between the time when election promises were made and the time when they were put into law, lobbyists probably dictated the final version of Bill C-43, which would account for this abrupt turnaround in Liberal policy. I would like to caution this government against dissociating itself from these groups, as we all remember that the Government of Canada started being influenced by lobbyists as far back as 1969, under the Trudeau government, of which the current Prime Minister was an active member.
Let us remember the role played by lobbyists in developing the free trade agreement and the goods and services tax. Remember also the role played by the Business Council on National Issues, the most powerful and active lobby in this country. In fact, to join, you have to be president of one Canada's top 150 corporations. Together, members of this select circle manage $975 billion and employ 1.5 million Canadians, or 12 per cent of the country's labour force. It is therefore fair to say that this group has power, or a hold, over the government.
We also know that the members of this organization make generous donations to campaign funds, whether Conservative or Liberal. Must I remind members of the influence this group had on the Mulroney government when the Meech agreements were passed in 1990? As members will recall, the Mulroney government had hired Ronald Watts to act as the brain behind the constitutional strategy. But what everyone here may not know is that Mr. Watts was the expert adviser of the Business Council on National Issues at the time. Just think of how much influence he had and was able to bring to bear on the government.
I would even go further and say that the kind of lobbying practised in Canada is causing this country to become dehumanized.
In his memoirs, a former Quebec Premier, René Lévesque, refers to a meeting which took place in 1982 with a Bank of Canada official who was obsessed with the fight against inflation, but showed very little concern about unemployment.
As you can see, central bank officials change, but their obsession remains the same. Why? Simply because of the lobbyists, whose companies prefer to maintain unemployment high, so as to have access to cheap manpower.
When the party in office claims to want to put people back to work, we have to wonder, since its cannot do anything against powerful lobbies.
This is why members opposite are not so irked by a referendum campaign, since it provides them with an opportunity to avoid the real problems which they cannot solve, such as job creation.
I am only asking the government to fulfil a commitment made last June, when the Prime Minister said that initiatives relating to transparency, including Bill C-43, would give unprecedented transparency to the federal administration. The events of the last 15 days give you an idea of this transparency.
There can be no doubt about the power of lobbyists. According to an article published in a London newspaper in December 1992, there were 149 rich men and women in Canada. These are the people who run the country. These rich men and women are of course the members of the Business Council on National Issues. This is a group which, I say again, makes financial contributions to the Conservative and Liberal parties.
The credibility of the Parliament of Canada is undermined by such headlines. The time has come to act and this is why the Bloc Quebecois is asking that all lobbyists be subjected to the same disclosure rules.
Nobody in this House would be surprised to hear that, as usual, the government, contrary to its red book commitments, even refuses to subject all professional lobbyists, that is those who influence the government for essentially economic reasons, to the same disclosure rules. Why? What is the government's interest? Who is it trying to protect? Who is it trying to please? We hope those questions will be answered.
Obviously, clauses concerning the ethics counsellor need to be closely scrutinized. One of the main functions of the counsellor should be to prepare a code of conduct for lobbyists. Properly designed, that code could increase public awareness of lobbying and reduce improper conduct on the part of lobbyists. I hope that code would have a greater impact than the Lobbyists Registration Act itself.