Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak for the second time to Bill-43, which amends the Lobbyists Registration Act.
The first time was when the bill was at second reading and we discussed amendments hoping that we would be able to force the government to take more seriously the promises it made in the red book and also to stand by the positions it took when many of its members were in the opposition and discussed a situation identical to the one in which we find ourselves today.
Unfortunately, like the majority of my colleagues, I feel that I am wasting my breath. However, we are not asking the Liberal Party for anything very special. We are not asking it to attain the goals of the Bloc or the Reform Party. We are only asking it to keep the promises it made in the red book. The promise to tighten controls on lobbyists' activities and make the legislative process or the awarding of government contracts more transparent was one that should have been easy to keep. This time, the government cannot use the usual excuse that the till is empty to avoid doing what it promised to do. This promise costs nothing. The government had the power to tighten up the rules and to issue new standards of conduct. It had the unanimous support of the opposition to act but did nothing.
Where are the Liberals who clamoured against the carelessness of the Conservatives? Where are the Liberal Party hardliners? Where are the transparent and honest Liberals? They have vanished and unfortunately their words have also vanished without a trace.
Liberals have changed the meaning of the word promise. A promise is a firm commitment to do what you said you would, but for the Liberals, a promise is something you talk about but never do anything about or which you achieve in an incomplete or uncertain way. Indeed, it is becoming more and more obvious that, for the Liberal Party, there are two kinds of promises: the promise made to the people and which deals with public interest. That kind of promise is achieved only when all favourable circumstances are present but you can always find good reasons to postpone them and bring them back at election time. The second kind are the promises made to friends of the government, those who finance the slush fund. Those promises are often tied to private interests and can take the shape of bills or orders in council for the benefit of a few individuals or companies, or expensive contracts which are often overvalued and given without a real call for tenders.
In the case of Bill C-43, there were once more conflicting interests. On one side, the general public and all the people who elected the Liberal Party, that is a few million people, and on the other side, a few hundred lobbyists and the thousand or so big companies which employ them. By not keeping its red book
promises and by watering down and thus weakening this bill, the Liberal government has shown its contempt for the public interest.
The clear message that this government is sending to the backers of the Liberal Party, to former organizers and dignitaries of the party and to the friends, relatives as well as former and future associates of government members is this: everything is allowed, but would you please be very discreet. That will certainly not help restore public confidence in politicians.
The message from the government should have been that lobbyists, like any other professionals, must follow certain rules and be more transparent in their work, as promised on pages 94 and 95 of the Liberal red book. This bill is not all bad, but it does not go far enough in terms of supervising and regulating the work of lobbyists. I am not implying in any way that lobbyists are in the business of corrupting. The great majority of them do their job in a most honourable fashion. This bill should be aimed at preventing abuse and influence-peddling, not at preventing individuals and companies from dealing legitimately with the government.
In this regard, Simon Reisman, chairman of Ranger Oil Limited and star witness for the liberal government, expressed the opinion, at the hearings on the bill, that the practice of contingency fees, which will not be precluded by Bill C-43, "encourages the wrong kind of people into the business and-contingency fees perpetuate the perception of cronyism and back-door access to government insiders".
In another vein, I would like to remind members that in the red book, the Prime Minister committed himself to: "regulate the activities of lobbyists by appointing an Ethics Counsellor". The Bloc, like all Canadians, expected the appointment of someone who is beyond reproach who would go after people engaged in murky business. In reality, the ethics counsellor has only limited powers in spite of all the goodwill this person brings to the task. The code of conduct that the counsellor produced does not have the force of a statutory regulation, but is just so many empty words.
The ethics counsellor is not accountable before the House of Commons. The counsellor is chosen by the prime minister and is accountable to him alone. All investigations are conducted in private. Moreover, it has become clear that the prime minister does not always deem it necessary to consult his counsellor or that he consults him only after the decisions have been made or after the fact. Such a manner of proceeding is not calculated to raise public confidence in our political institutions. What we needed was a counsellor appointed by the House of Commons, having real powers and accountable to the House.
A code of conduct having the force of a set of regulations would have been appropriate, as would more stringent disclosure rules for lobbyists.