Debates of Oct. 19th, 1999

Canada Elections Act

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh.

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

I wish members opposite would listen to what I am saying. I know they have a duty to protect their political party and the government of the day.

It is a sham in this sense. It is known that the Liberals as the governing party dominate every committee. For the Liberals to have eight members and all of the opposition parties together to have seven is I suppose okay, but unfortunately government members lose their freedom in committee as they do the House. Just as we have had members of the Liberal Party stand with tears in their eyes to vote against something they were deeply in favour of, so we have those members in committees controlled by the leader of the government or the minister, as the case may be. I have firsthand experience in this regard.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Order, please. The hon. member for Elk Island has the floor. With all the yelling that is going on it is very hard for the Chair to hear him. I know members are enthusiastic in their support of what he has to say or against it as the case may be, but it is nice to be able to hear the words of wisdom of the hon. member for Elk Island. I am sure all hon. members would like to do that.

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I really wish they would give thoughtful attention to what I am trying to say. As defenders of democracy, as they like to call themselves, they should also be speaking the same words I am now speaking.

I remember that when I was first elected in 1993 I came here and I was involved in a particular party. I brought in an amendment to a bill at committee. It was one of the first bills that went to committee before second reading. I was involved in the debate. I thought it would be great and I put forward an idea.

A clear majority of members, including those on the government side, were in favour of the amendment I proposed. One Liberal member used my name and said that I had a good idea. I cannot use my own name here. It is a stifling of freedom of speech in the House of Commons. I proceeded with the amendment to the wording of the bill and assumed that it would be accepted.

There came a day some time later when we voted on clause by clause in committee. The chairman asked “Shall clause one pass, shall clause two pass, shall clause three pass”. When it came I moved an amendment to the appropriate clause as required by procedure and the Liberal members all voted against it.

Later on I challenged them. I said “I thought you guys were on my side. I thought you agreed with the common sense of what I was trying to propose”. I would never divulge the name. Nor would I even identify the riding, which is within the rules here. The Liberal member to whom I spoke looked at me, shrugged his shoulders and said “We really don't have a choice”.

I put forward that evidence to say that the whole process is a sham. Even though the committee will do the work, and I have no doubt that it will try to do good work, the ultimate control will come from the government House leader in that committee. He will basically dictate what the final results of the bill will be.

It is surely unfortunate that I do not have a couple of hours to debate everything. I will have to hurry. I will now talk a little about the bill. My colleague has already mentioned the magnitude of Bill C-2. It is a huge bill. It has 250-some pages. There is a lot of detail in terms of prescribing how we conduct our elections. The index alone has xxii pages, and I will talk about two of them.

According to the government House leader who made a speech this morning, one of the topics covered is improving the way our elections work and of improving democracy in Canada. I want to talk about clause 39. It is important to actually put on the record what it says. I want to alert Canadians across the country from coast to coast who are sitting there glued to CPAC this morning to pay attention to what it says. There are several different positions. I cannot read them all but they all have this wording:

—the returning officer shall solicit names of suitable persons from the candidates of the registered parties whose candidates finished first and second in the last election in the electoral district, to be submitted to the returning officer—

Then it says that the candidates shall be appointed as much as possible half from the candidate's party that finished first and half from the candidate's party that finished second.

Is not Elections Canada and the work of Elections Canada impartial? Is that not what democracy is? We have right in the elections act proposed by the government an entrenchment of a practice which has been in our procedures for far too long. There is a pay off if one votes correctly. The Prime Minister will tell people in his riding to vote for him and he will be able to funnel millions of taxpayers dollars into the riding. That will be their prize for voting for him.

It is time to give Canadians free choice to vote for the candidate and the party that are principled and that represent the true values of Canadians. We should not cloud that decision by the immediate appeal of having money funnelled into the riding or getting some patronage appointments at the next election because all these positions are paid for by the Canadian taxpayer via Elections Canada.

I was surprised when I was first elected to find out that this process existed. In fact I was a brand new candidate back in 1993. I had never participated in elections before and one day I got a phone call telling me that the Reform Party came second in the 1988 election and that I now had the right to name all the deputy returning officers in the polls. I said, “That cannot be, Elections Canada is surely impartial. Just because we came second surely does not give me the right to now say that the people who voted for the Reform Party in the last election will now get a payoff, a government job”.

This was wrong and I recognized it right away even though I was inexperienced. I declined. I told the returning officer in Elk Island to choose the person who did it the last time if she or he did a good job. I also said that I did not care what party the person was with, but that if there was somebody who worked last time and did not do a good job that I would give my permission to fire them. I should have been out of the loop.

The principled Reform Party, not the one of political expedience doing anything that needs to be done to get elected but rather the one that is based on principle, says that the Reform Party supports giving Elections Canada the power to select and hire all of its own employees, including but not limited to returning officers, deputy returning officers and other field staff. We believe that the decision should be made on merit and on ability to do the job and not based on a debt to be paid because of having shown favour to one political party or another.

If I had time I would also love to talk about many other issues in Bill C-2 but of course with this process we cannot. I have only these few minutes and members cannot even ask me any questions. That is regrettable, I am sure.

[Randy White, Reform, Langley—Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. My colleague spoke so eloquently that I wonder if the House would agree to allow him another 10 minutes. It was such a great speech, I would like to hear more.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Is there unanimous consent to extend the hon. member for Elk Island's time by an additional 10 minutes?

[An hon. member]

Agreed.

[An hon. member]

No.

[Steve Mahoney, Liberal, Mississauga West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to speak to Bill C-2.

I was particularly interested in the analysis and comments by the previous speaker with regard to the work of committees. In the last two years I have served on the public accounts committee which is chaired by one of the Reform opposition members who, I would add, does a very good job, is very impartial and fair and really runs an excellent committee. We have a process in place here where the official opposition automatically gets the opportunity, if it so chooses, to chair the public accounts committee.

I also served on the citizenship and immigration committee and filled in on a number of different committees. The committee system that is in place is not dysfunctional and is not what the member has said, a sham. In fact, it is representative of the make-up of this place. Why would that be? Interestingly enough, the majority of Canadians voted for this government in two elections in a row.

Should we abdicate our responsibility? We have been told by the Canadian people that they want the Liberal Party and this Prime Minister to run the government. We understand that the opposition is not happy with that. I served in opposition myself to a labour party, to Bob Rae and—I will be nice—his group of colleagues. It was somewhat frustrating, to say the least, to see a majority government of New Democrats in the great province of Ontario.

[Derrek Konrad, Reform, Prince Albert, SK]

Mr. Speaker, it appears to me there are not very many members to hear the speech of the member opposite. I ask that quorum be checked.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Call in the members.

And the bells having rung:

[The Deputy Speaker]

I see a quorum. The hon. member for Mississauga West has the floor.

[Steve Mahoney, Liberal, Mississauga West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is not my fault if the room empties when I stand up to speak. I try to do my best. I do appreciate the assistance to bring in some of my colleagues whom I know are working hard at their desks on behalf of the people of Canada and their constituents.

People often wonder why the Chamber is so sparsely populated when members of parliament speak. It is because we have so many things to do and committees are just one example. Even though the official committees are not up and running yet, although I understand they will be in a day or two, we, in particular, have caucus committees. We have interparliamentary committees of Canada and Europe that are meeting and, as we speak, the Canada-Taiwan interparliamentary committee is meeting.

Last evening I had the privilege of having dinner with the parliamentary group from Barbados who are here on official business and will be here for question period. There is a lot of work to do. I recently attended a meeting of AECL where it gave us an update of its work around the world. To denigrate the work of members really is not fair. It is not something that I would do on that side of the House and would not expect it to be done here.

I would say that the committee system is very clear in this government. In this place, in Ottawa, there is a role for opposition members. Sometimes I am quite surprised, actually. Were I in opposition, I think I would be substantially more aggressive in going after—

[Lynn Myers, Liberal, Waterloo—Wellington, ON]

Or effective?

[Steve Mahoney, Liberal, Mississauga West, ON]

I might be more effective, I do not know. I will leave that for others to judge. I certainly would find more opportunities to raise issues. I do not see that.

I put a proposal forward back in the Ontario legislature in 1992. In fact, I stood for the leadership of our party. One of my proposals was that a bill should not be referred to committee; an idea or a problem should be referred to committee and that a committee should be convened in an attempt to write a bill and to put forward a solution that could go in the bill rather than having the bureaucrats draft something, put it on our desk and it appears too many times to be a fait accompli.

This is about as close as I have seen any government get to that particular principle. This is taking the bill reforming the Elections Act into committee before second reading. If I were in opposition I would have my staff working overtime going through the bill. I would see this as an open and accountable government giving opposition members the opportunity to make comments at committee, to repair anything they thought needed repairing, to change parts of the bill and to have input into the process.

What do we get? We get, I am afraid, the somewhat typical response, “If they are doing it, we must disagree with it”. That really is unfortunate. It is somewhat myopic and narrow-minded. It does not do credit to the constituents who sent these people here, who expect them to roll up their sleeves and get into committee and work with government members and other members of the opposition to make this bill a better bill. Why would anyone opposed it?

My next election will be my tenth at the municipal, provincial and federal levels. I have had some experience. In fact, my wife has had three elections. She sits on the Mississauga council. I guess one could say we are a bit of a political family. We care about the process that is in place. We care about the rules. I, along with my family and the government, believe very much that the rules need to be fair for everyone.

Frankly, I would go a little further with this reform. If I have an opportunity at committee, I might even float an idea that members may accept or reject. I believe there should be a penalty for someone who does not vote. I know it is a very controversial idea, but there are places in the world where they actually do that. The penalty in Australia is a fine. It could show up on one's income tax reporting.

I find it disgraceful that municipally we only get a 30% voter turnout. It is the one level of government, in my view, that impacts more directly on people's lives than any other level of government and less than 30% of the people vote. In fact, if there is not a high profile contest for mayor, quite often less than 20% of the people vote. However, they are quick to pick up the phone to call their elected representative to solve a particular problem in the community, for example, if the garbage is not picked up or they have other difficulties. They just do not accept the responsibility to cast a ballet.

Provincially, that percentage goes up to between 50% and 60% depending on, I guess, the nature of the election. In the 1995 Ontario provincial election I think there was a higher voter turnout because the public generally wanted to dismiss the government of Mr. Rae that was in office. However, we have now slipped back down again. Federally, it again increases into the 65% to 75% range.

We live in a country with democratic freedom and we see other places in the world experiencing difficulties, in particular, the problems we see in Pakistan today.

I had the privilege of being part of a parliamentary group visiting Croatia during the first free election since the second world war. I saw men and women lining up down the street, with tears in their eyes, having the first opportunity to actually cast a ballot.

Let me tell members what that experience was like. When I walked into the polling booth there were Yugoslav soldiers with rifles on their shoulders standing on either side of the ballot box. Behind the ballot box was a life-sized picture of General Tito. It was only just a little bit intimidating to those people casting their ballot. I tried to lighten it up by pinning Canadian flags on the lapels of the soldiers but I do not think they were particularly amused by it.

When one sees that kind of thing, when one sees people fighting and dying for freedom and democracy all around the world as we have seen in our generation, one realizes that a Canadian who does not cast a ballot unless there is a legitimate reason, although I cannot think of one other than being dead, is not living up to the responsibility that goes along with the freedom of living in such a great and democratic society.

I would go even further, but the bill at least sets a level playing field, makes it fair for everybody involved and cleans up the election procedure in Canada.

[Yves Rocheleau, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am quite pleased to take the floor for the first time in this new session, and especially so because we are debating the Canada Elections Act, which is supposed to be completely amended by Bill C-2, an act respecting the election of members to the House of Commons, repealing other acts relating to elections and making consequential amendments to other acts.

I am very happy to take part in this debate because I have been involved in the consultations undertaken by the chief electoral officer after the May 2, 1997 election. He was looking for ways to improve this legislation which is rather outdated. For well over 30 years, it has not been revised significantly, and the chief electoral officer was striving to have it amended significantly.

After what I had gone through and what had been reported to me in my riding during the election, I got involved in this process with the help of an excellent lawyer and friend of mine, Jean-François Lacoursière. As a legal adviser to the Bloc and a good adviser on electoral law, an area in which his expert opinion has been frequently sought, he agreed to write a report which I have tabled in the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, a report we may come back to. It has hardly been mentioned.

Incidentally, it is very hard to find one's way around in this bill. Mr. Lacoursière himself told me some time ago that the Canada Elections Act was very difficult to consult and to understand. This is not normal. The federal government is already being criticized for its lack of transparency. The elections act is an extremely important important tool in that it is the basis of the election process in our country.

Therefore, it is important to call a spade a spade. It is important for the thousands of people who have to work with the Canada Elections Act at some point to be able to find whatever they are looking for quickly and efficiently instead of always feeling lost in the legalese used by government lawyers—we hope they themselves can find their way through it. It really is difficult to consult that document, which is at least one inch thick. Something is wrong here.

The problems raised by Mr. Lacoursière dealt with issues that will undoubtedly be raised again, issues like voting by mail, a process that is riddled with flaws, and voting at mobile polling stations, a process that will certainly have to be refined.

In my speech, I will touch on three main elements of this bill on which we are criticizing the government. First, there is political party financing, which is not a new issue but which deserves to be raised again because of the scandalous way in which political parties are managed and because of the connections that exist between large corporations and the election funds of traditional political parties in Canada.

Second, we want to address the designation of returning officers. Third, we want to talk about voter identification, something that leaves a lot to be desired and, here again, we can give some examples from Quebec.

Party financing is really outdated. We have not made any progress in this area. We know full well that the legislation is full of holes that allow corporations as well as individuals to shamelessly contribute all they want to Canada's traditional political parties.

Issues like the Onex proposal, which I feel, as a Quebecer, goes against the best interests of Quebec and maybe even of all of Canada and which, notwithstanding its basic flaws, demonstrates the more or less honourable relationship between the Liberal Party of Canada and the main promoter of the Onex deal, can only further undermine the proposal. We feel this entitles us to criticize this proposal all we want.

Its credibility is open to question, given the known relationship between one of the major contributors to the Liberal Party, former Cabinet members and current party managers. The federal government blithely announced that there will be a moratorium, as if it were one of its own management decisions. Obviously, it is part of the Onex agenda to get the federal government involved at some point by taking such a measure to help the deal along.

The Canadian government obviously committed itself in favour of Onex, for reasons that may too shameful to mention because they are related to the financing of the party currently in office.

[Ghislain Lebel, Bloc, Chambly, QC]

It is true.

[Yves Rocheleau, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

This is shameful, because it is primitive. So-called civilized societies such as ours should ensure that rules are in place to protect government decision makers from undue influence.

This is what democratic financing is all about. This is what we realized in Quebec. We set a limit of $3,000 for contributions made to political parties, and such contributions can only be made by voters.

The Parti Quebecois government is depending on no one in particular, but on everyone, whereas this government depends on financial backers such as oil and pharmaceutical companies, banks and logging companies. All these businesses contribute tens of thousands of dollars and, in return, get privileged access to the ministers and the Prime Minister. This is unacceptable, it is a unending scandal, and it is easy to figure out why the government sometimes makes very dubious decisions. It is all a matter of cause and effect.

When the financing process is flawed, it is not possible to look after the public's interest only. The government must take other things into account, because the telephone could ring at any time and someone might say “We will remember this the next time you come looking for work or money”.

Nowadays, governing is complicated enough in itself. Therefore, it is a good thing that the Quebec government does not have to concern itself with private interests. This is the strength of the Quebec government, given the complexities involved. It is free to act. It only needs to do so intelligently, whereas the federal government must accommodate all kinds of phantoms who remain nameless.

My second major criticism has to do with the appointment process for returning officers. This is issue is not as well known. We are talking here about the qualifications of individuals who hold strategic positions in each of the ridings, during elections. These positions should be filled through a process that is above suspicion.

Here again, what we have is basic and primitive; it does not provide any protection against abuse. All these people possess personal qualities that are beyond doubt, but there is one condition that must be met to be a returning officer for Elections Canada, or so it seems, although it is not written down anywhere: to be a member of the Liberal Party of Canada. It is even better if one has been the president or vice-president of an association, and better yet a defeated candidate.

This is unacceptable, and primitive. It smacks of the way things are done in a banana republic. Canada is one of the western democracies that go around preaching to the whole world on how things should be done. We travel all over the planet to tell people how to govern themselves, and yet to this very day we still tolerate having as one of the main, yet hidden, criteria for appointment active membership in the Liberal Party of Canada.

To top it all off, the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada saw how incongruous and unacceptable the situation was, and has long been recommending that the Canadian government change the rules so that, like Quebec, there would be a competition to designate elections staff, as indeed there should be.

Finally—and I shall close with this—the last weakness is that there is not a word about voters being required to identify themselves with a card or some other means. Given the impersonal character of our society and our big cities, it is completely normal for citizens to be required to identify themselves to the person at the polling station, since we know all the funny business there can be.

It is in within the order of things for voters to be required to identify themselves to whoever is duly mandated to require it before giving them authorization to vote, a fundamental right in a democracy.

Yet again, this is a considerable weakness in the bill and one against which we must speak out.

[Lynn Myers, Liberal, Waterloo—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to enter this debate today with respect to the Canada Elections Act. I find it of considerable interest. I sat on the procedure and House affairs committee and this was certainly a part of the committee's work. I thought we did it in a very non-partisan, effective way that ended up being very succinct and to the point in terms of the kind of meaningful changes Canadians expect in terms of their electoral system.

We in Canada have a model electoral system that is emulated around the world. It is certainly considered to be one that is of great interest to nations wherever they are in the world. It underscores the great democracy that we in Canada have. It is one which I think we should be very proud of in terms of its effectiveness and what it means for Canadians wherever they may live in this great land of ours. It also underscores the values, institutions and symbols that unite us as a people and present us as an effective nation not only to ourselves internally but to the wider world community.

I am a little surprised by the Reform Party, especially the member for Elk Island who tried to denigrate the things we are trying to do. Instead he should be celebrating the fact that this bill is going to committee where they can be part of a system where there can be effective changes. Instead of trying to work with the government in this all important area, Reformers are content as usual to take extremist views to try to sabotage the system. That is most unfortunate.

But then Reform is a party that is always intent on pitting region against region, people against people and group against group. It is most unfortunate that Reformers take that tact all the time. It underscores where that party is coming from. I know Canadians want and will have no part of it. What Canadians will have a part of is the government's position on this all important legislation, understanding that this is the way we have to go. We need to ensure that we do the right thing for Canadians in this area because it underscores our democratic system as we know it.

There are many issues I could get involved with, election financing for example. I know—

[The Deputy Speaker]

I am sorry but it is my duty to interrupt the hon. member and the proceedings at this time and put forthwith the question on the motion now before the House.

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Deputy Speaker]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.