Madam Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on the Bloc motion which condemns the attitude of the government in that it refused to introduce complete reform of legislation on the financing of federal political parties, even though the existing legislation allows for a wide range of abuses.
Before I get into the substance of the debate I wish to take this opportunity, my first opportunity, to thank the constituents and the voters of Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre for electing me to this assembly.
They voted for me in the majority because they felt the work I was doing was important to them and to our country. I acknowledge their support over the last four years, in particular in the last election, that returned me to this assembly.
I pledged during the campaign to work hard on their behalf to make sure that their voices were heard in parliament. I will continue to do that as long as I am a member of Parliament.
I also wish to take this opportunity to thank the workers in my constituency who worked hard for me, those who put up signs and made political contributions to my campaign. I would like to extend my appreciation to my family who sacrificed a fair amount of time, energy and money to see me re-elected.
The issue we have before is a very important one. It is on the floor of the House of Commons because of developments in Quebec where there were suggestions or allegations of influence peddling.
This is not a first. We have seen allegations and actually substantive proof and convictions in other provinces of influence peddling and of patronage, whether it is constituency patronage or politicians doing things for money provided to them by sources other than the taxpayers.
We in the NDP believe the regulations which govern party financing in Canada are like hunting dogs that will not hunt. They are there but they do not do the job they were intended to do. We believe there must be extensive reform in that area.
We have seen across the country, in particular in Quebec lately, a practice in backroom politics called tollgating. Tollgating is when a company is either on a list to bid for contracts or is actually receiving government contracts and is visited by a bag person. They used to be called bagmen. We call them bag persons. The bag person points out that the company received a contract from the government and now it wants a contribution for its political purposes.
That kind of politics is bad politics in Canada. It is bad politics anywhere. It is frontier politics that have not seen the light of day very frequently except for Quebec recently. We have seen examples in Nova Scotia and in Saskatchewan.
The Liberal Party is not the only guilty one. The Conservatives were very guilty of these practices in the past. As a matter of fact we have a Reform member of Parliament, the member for Souris—Moose Mountain, who was a member of the former Conservative Party and Conservative Government of Saskatchewan. Some 20 Saskatchewan MLAs that governed the province of Saskatchewan have either been charged or convicted on practices that are unacceptable to public and party financing and for other reasons.
The Reform Party is guilty. The Conservatives and the Liberals are guilty of influence peddling, tollgating and doing all sorts of illegal things with respect to people's money.
We even have former members of the Socred Party who would know what this is all about because they practised it in B.C. Now they belong to the Reform Party. We also have members from the Western Canada Concept Party who are now members of the Reform Party that do the same sorts of things.
We want these issues on the floor of the House of Commons to be transparent. We want political party financing to be changed so that it is transparent and open; so that constituency patronage and regional patronage end; and so that tollgating and other such issues end.