Mr. Speaker, it is essential that we debate today this bill on which, unfortunately, time allocation has been imposed at the final stage.
For our constituents who may be watching or listening in, a time allocation motion is a gag motion used by the government to preclude the opposition and the third party from using the time normally allocated to them in a parliamentary democracy to provide the people of Canada with information about the important issue of election organization, and party financing in particular.
I will address this first group of motions, stressing that, in our opinion, in byelections, the electoral period should remain 47 days. I will get right to the point, which is that we need enough time to raise public funds for byelections. I might add supporting arguments like the fact that some ridings cover very large areas. It is true in Quebec and other provinces. In fact, some ridings will be even larger come January because of the new electoral boundaries coming into effect. And to run a proper campaign worthy of being called democratic, more time is needed, given that the parties' information campaign cannot play the same role in a byelection as in a general election.
Coming back to the first point on my list, public financing, I can tell you that, as a matter of general policy, the federal government, the Liberal government, should have the courage to suggest public funding of political parties to Canadians. This is a proposal the Parti Quebecois and the Quebec premier had the courage to make to Quebecers in 1977-it was in fact the very first act passed by the PQ government-and one they are still congratulating themselves for. I might add that even the Quebec Liberal Party was revitalized by having to go door to door in an effort to raise funds other than large corporate donations, which is the whole point.
What does public financing of political parties mean? It means that political parties must not rely on large corporations for which donations of $50,000, $60,000 or $70,000 are no big deal, especially when such donations mean that citizens whose interests run counter to those of these large corporations systematically find themselves at a disadvantage.
Indeed, the fact that the federal Liberal government did not include a clause providing for public funding of political parties flies in the face of the democratic principle "one person, one vote", each vote carrying the same weight in deciding the results of the election and giving all citizens the same influence on their members and their government.
Basically, what the federal government is telling us is that it plans to continue to seek donations from these major sources of capital. It plans to remain under their influence. We will continue to be influenced by these major financial backers.
Of course, businesses have interests and these interests are often jobs. However, their influence is already strong enough without having political parties totally surrender to these groups, whose interests are not those of the general public.
The Liberal Party meant to be liberal, in the broad sense of the term. However, it is rather conservative, if not very conservative, regarding this issue. What it is doing will tarnish and even undermine the real efforts made by candidates and by teams in every riding, when confronted to other teams and candidates who do not reject such funding.
The Bloc Quebecois is very proud of the fact that it got 54 candidates elected in Quebec, including a record number who got a majority of the total number of votes. It just so happens that the Bloc Quebecois unilaterally pledged to fund its campaign based on the Quebec legislation.
I know that, in other provinces, some candidates would really like to get elected with the concrete support of ordinary citizens, of people who contribute $5, $20 or, when they can afford to do so, $100 to exert their democratic influence. Indeed, I have often had discussions with members from the other side who would love to renew the democratic source of their funding. On this issue, no one from the other side can look at us in the eyes and say: "We are not influenced by major financial backers". No one can do that.
To be sure, we could, if we wanted, find government decisions that have been influenced not by citizens who voted according to a democratic process, not by organizations that invested time and effort in the riding, but by financial backers who went over everybody's head, who had easy access to ministers, and who were able to send the necessary signals to make sure their position was the one that prevailed.
You might wonder why we, the Bloc, wish the Canadian federation would improve its democracy. I am asking that question in front of you because the Canadian people deserves to have a system that works according to democratic rules rather than a system that pretends to give everyone a vote but that, actually, creates the conditions to allow a team to get in power and afterwards to act only according to the interests of major players who remain hidden while the electoral process goes on.
It is all the more so in the case of a byelection, when we need time to go about collecting funds. We of the Bloc, in particular, will continue to do this.
We want to have the time to do it. It might be useless for us to hope so, but we continue to hope that the voices will be so loud and so numerous on the government side that the government will end up adopting this practice, which is a minimum in a democracy.