Madam Speaker, I am rising to speak on the Group No. 6 amendments to Bill C-63. All eight of these motions have been proposed by the Bloc Quebecois.
As the hon. member for Bellechasse has indicated, these motions cover a wide range of subject matter and are obviously of major significance. I would share his concerns about the entire process here. It does seem to be unfortunate that in reviewing elections legislation we are essentially restricted to discussing matters of this scope and importance in only a few minutes before we move on to voting on the bill on a timetable imposed by the Liberal government.
I am very concerned about the partisanship in this. It is something we had hoped to address. As I have said repeatedly in this debate, we had hoped to be able to support this legislation but we are still not in a position where we can do that.
Having said that I do have grave reservations about most of these amendments, the one motion which I believe my party can support is Motion No. 29. Motion No. 29 goes to the heart of this concern about partisanship. This particular motion by the Bloc Quebecois would require the government to consult the House and specifically the opposition parties for future amendments to this act. That has been a practice in the past and I think it is a practice we should continue and in a serious way get back to.
I will reiterate what the member for Bellechasse said on Friday. I think it is ridiculous in a mature and democratic country that elections legislation would be imposed at the end of a Parliament. The rules of the game change by only one player, presumably for its own benefit. That is not the way elections law works in an advanced democratic society.
Nevertheless, I do want to take some time to address some of these other motions. These other motions have to do with a range of subjects but generally speaking, what they attempt to do in my opinion is to impose much of Quebec's electoral legislation and Quebec's election practices on the federal government. This is a much more radical view of federalism than either I or my party would subscribe to.
In this House there are three very different views of Confederation which come out over and over again.
One is the view of the Bloc Quebecois which on a certain level has been not just the view of two founding nations, but a view that this is very much a confederal arrangement and everything that goes on federally is really a creature of the provinces. In effect the
federal government really should only communicate with citizens through the provinces. That is one of the extreme positions.
The other extreme position is the historic position of the Liberal Party which is very much a centralist position. I know in Quebec the Liberals refer to themselves as federalists. This often makes the debate confusing because in fact they are not really federalists. The Liberal Party historically has been a centralist party which views the provinces as little more than units of administration, but not as entities that have sovereignty in their own areas of jurisdiction, which in fact we would maintain is the case under the Constitution.
The Reform Party view is of a federal state where both the provinces and the federal government are entities with clear powers in their own jurisdictions. Both have rights to communicate with their citizens directly.
I will deal with these amendments randomly because I want the House to understand how radical some of them are. For example, Motion No. 32 would amend the referendum act so that the regions would have a veto over a referendum question posed by the federal government. The formula laid out here is the five region formula that was in the government's bill on constitutional referendums, Bill C-110, at the end of the last session.
This goes much further than that. Bill C-110 was a formula for the approval of constitutional amendments. This is not a formula for the approval of a referendum question. We all realize the referendum act at the federal level, as in Quebec, is merely a consultative device. This is an approval process for a question to be asked of the people of Canada by the federal government. I do think this is an extreme position by the Bloc Quebecois. My Bill C-341 challenges the belief that the Government of Quebec can ask a binding question that concerns the future not just of Quebec but of all of Canada in Quebec only and on its own terms.
Yet this particular motion tries to put in the elections act and the referendum act a motion which would proscribe the ability of the federal government to ask a question of Canadians without the prior approval of the Quebec government. I cannot think of a motion that someone could put in here that is more unacceptable to Canadians outside of Quebec. In fact it is unacceptable not just in the case of Quebec; to me, the idea that the Government of Ontario or the Government of British Columbia could veto the wording of a referendum question across the country is absolutely outrageous.
The federal government has referred some of the Quebec government's constitutional agenda to the supreme court. There is a need in the opinion of the Reform Party for the federal government to be able to pose direct questions to the people of Quebec on the issue of sovereignty and separation if we are looking at another referendum down the road.
In the past, the Government of Quebec has not only posed questions which we believe have been fundamentally misleading, but also it has posed questions and has an agenda behind those questions which is clearly illegal and unconstitutional under Canadian law. It is more than appropriate, in fact it is essential in our view, that the federal government not only retain but also exercise its right to consult the people of Quebec directly on their real opinions on things like the issue of separation and on notions like a unilateral declaration of independence. I cannot imagine a proposed amendment to this bill that would be more unacceptable than this one.
Motion No. 35 is similar to Motion No. 32. Motion No. 33, like Motion No. 24, is a motion of wide application. It would effectively impose wide sections of Quebec electoral law upon the federal government, specifically those sections dealing with party financing. It would apply the financing provisions of Quebec's electoral law not just to federal elections but to federal referendums as well.
Let me go over some of the provisions. A lot of them concern matters which are already covered in federal elections law such as the role of auditors and party agents in making financial reports.
Some of these rules have broad sweeping content. For example, these are the rules that restrict fundraising to individuals. Corporate bodies, unions and organizations cannot contribute to political parties. It provides for public financing of political parties directly, based on percentage of vote, and deems what kind of non-financial contributions count as political contributions. It restricts the ability of people to contribute to political parties to no more than $3,000 in a single year.
Some of these notions I could support. I have never had a problem with the concept that only voters should contribute to political parties. However, these amendments are of a wide and sweeping nature and we do not have time to debate them. Suffice it to say there would not be anywhere near consensus in the House on some of these restrictions.
The chief electoral officer of Quebec explained to the committee that there is a history behind the development of some of the electoral practices in Quebec. They were designed to clean up the corruption which we saw, particularly prior to the quiet revolution. There have been great advances made in Quebec, but the fact of the matter is that in our view some of these proposals have problems of their own and would be regressive if applied to the rest of the country. We would be very resistant to some of these ideas, certainly if there were not an opportunity for further discussion.
There is a great deal of material here and further Reform speakers will have a chance to address it.