Mr. Speaker, this is an extremely important issue and I congratulate the hon. member for Gatineau, even though he sits across the floor. I clearly remember speaking to his motion and, in my opinion, his point of view makes sense.
He said he had talked to a lot of people in his riding and elsewhere in Quebec. He said that 90% of these people had lost confidence in the financing of political parties in its present form.
We Bloc Quebecois members want to convince this House to do like Quebec and to pass an act limiting the financing of political parties to individuals, as opposed to businesses, given the risk of influence peddling or undue influence. It is a difficult thing to do, as the hon. member for Laval Centre explained.
At times, when large sums of money are involved, and I will discuss these later on, it is difficult to say no to someone who wants to make a contribution to a political party.
The hon. member goes further and says that perhaps the financing of political parties should be provided exclusively by the government. He did not have time to elaborate, but I understand his point of view. What is the purpose of his proposal? It is to achieve a balance between political parties.
The financing of the New Democratic Party is no better, in the sense that it is provided by unions.
I am not suggesting it is illegal. Under the present legislation, it is perfectly legal, but the NDP has very often taken positions that are influenced by union demands. In a way, their position is not any better, because it is biased the other way.
If we want to achieve a better balance, we, in the Bloc Quebecois, suggest political parties should be financed by small contributions from individuals. Hundreds or thousands of individuals would be financing the various political parties.
In the last report, the one for 1996, we are told that the Bloc Quebecois received contributions from more than 17,000 individuals in all ridings. So, we should not show any undue preference for one group or the other. Contributions of $100 or even as low as $5, $10, or $15 in many cases are not going to influence a member or a party in any way. It is the big contributions that have an impact.
Under the Quebec legislation on political party financing, contributions over $3,000 are not allowed. If the same thing applied at the federal level, we would see some improvement. That was the second goal of the legislation on political party financing, Bill 2. The first legislation that was passed by the Parti Quebecois in 1977 was Bill 2. The first bill was on linguistic matters. But Bill 2 was passed first because it needed less extensive consultations. It was passed in May 1977 by the Parti Quebecois. René Lévesque, whose memoirs I have been reading for a second time recently, was really insisting on that piece of legislation. It was really standing out.
Why did René Lévesque want to make this a priority? Those who know something about his political career will recall that he is the one who nationalized power companies in Quebec, and he has been put under intense pressure at that time. He did not want other democratically elected parties to be put under undue pressure by companies trying to protect their interests. He did not want governments that would be bound and gagged by legal entities like corporations, groups, businesses or unions. Individual citizens were to make the decisions in a very democratic system.
I pay tribute to the hon. member for Gatineau because his suggestion deserves some consideration. I invite him to reintroduce his bill so we can look at it, because it would a step in the right direction. The goal is to achieve a balance, to avoid abuse and, more importantly, to restore public confidence in federal and provincial political parties.
In Quebec, the process has already been completed. All parties agree with it. The idea of going back to the old system never occurred to the Quebec Liberal Party which, led by Mr. Bourassa, came back to power for nine years. The Quebec Liberals know—and so should the member for Bourassa, who worked with them, and, for that matter, all Quebec MPs—how proud Quebeckers are of that change. Perhaps there is room for improvement. Anything can be improved. Perfection may be an unreachable goal, but this is a major step towards a better democracy.
Before concluding, I want to talk about two particularly painful experiences as a Quebecker. I am referring to the two referendums held in 1980 and 1995. In both cases, some major companies influenced public opinion in Quebec and had a bearing on the political future of Quebeckers. If you look at the report on the last federal election, you see amounts such as $61,000 from Microsoft Canada, $53,000 from Nesbitt Burns Inc., $50,000 from Charman Securities Co., $70,469 from Scotia McLeod Inc., and $66,000 from the Toronto Dominion Bank.
Oddly enough, in all reports, even going back ten years, it is often the banks who are the biggest contributors to the federal political parties. Curiously, they are doing well these days, making record profits.
It is hard to make any changes to the monetary system, because there is the Bank Act. The Liberal Party says it is hard. But when it comes to cutting the deficit, for example, to changing the Unemployment Insurance Act, to bringing the surplus in the unemployment insurance fund up to close to $14 billion, then there is no hesitation.
But if the Liberals were limited to collecting contributions only from Canada's unemployed, I can tell you that they would not have raised much in the last election. They would not have got much from the unemployed in the Maritimes. But they did get a nasty message, they were nearly wiped out in the Maritimes. The New Democratic Party got a pretty good showing, the Conservatives as well.
Those were messages the Liberal Party did not get. I think the hon. member for Gatineau go the message, when he admitted that 90% of the population no longer has confidence in the present system of corporate funding for political parties, and he is right.