Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I rise today to take part in the preliminary debate on 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 would like to point out that, in preparation for this bill, no fewer than 14 sittings of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs were spent considering the present Canada Elections Act during this parliament.
Given our detailed and careful study, we were entitled to expect that the government would pay particular attention to the various recommendations formulated by the standing committee, but this did not seem to be entirely the case.
Certain unanimous recommendations of the committee are nowhere to be found in the bill. I will come back to this a little later in my speech.
To begin with, when we considered the Canada Elections Act, I was struck by two things in particular: funding of political parties, and the corollary issue of trust funds established to support candidates. No less important, I would say that the partisan process for appointing electoral officers also leaves me confused.
Under the Canada Elections Act, small and large corporations have always been able to contribute to the funding of federal political parties. This practice allows the various parties to amass huge sums, while making it less necessary to approach individual voters for money.
As they do not have to keep to a contribution limit, corporations may contribute huge sums to the federal political parties of their choice, and, need I point out, these contributions certainly do not go to political parties for purely philanthropic purposes.
The funding of political parties, as practised federally, necessarily implies preferential treatment for the most generous, and God knows just how generous they can be under the law.
I simply want to say that, with a simple contribution of a few dollars, the ordinary voter runs the risk of not having the ear of his political representatives to the same extent as a bank, which, for example, may make substantial contributions of up to several tens of thousands of dollars.
The situation creates different categories of contributors, and, unfortunately, different levels of attention to the many requests and expectations political leaders must address.
Today, we are considering a bill, which, according to the government, aims at, and I quote: “equity, transparency and accessibility”. I might question that. How can the government claim that this process is equitable, when the provisions of the bill do not establish any sort of limit for contributions?
Who could claim, without raising an eyebrow, that this system is truly equitable, transparent and accessible, a system that allows corporations, which do not have the right to vote, to meddle in the electoral process by making contributions far beyond the capability of the ordinary voter, and thus unduly influencing the political policy of the parties and the candidates seeking votes?
This bill runs counter to a narrow concept of the rules of democracy that should govern our society, since it still gives its wealthier members a more attentive ear and a greater voice with those representing the public.
As I mentioned in the introduction, having a trust fund to support candidates seems to be nebulous at the very least. Another financial matter, you will say. This point was unanimously recommended by the members of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs when the federal electoral legislation was studied.
The members of the committee wanted the government to clarify the rules governing this practice, which may make it possible to circumvent the already lax provisions of the election act on funding of political parties. Well, not a word; nothing we recommended on the subject appears in the bill we are now considering.
So what is the point of in depth examination in preparation for bills such as this one, if the government merely nods and takes from our deliberations only those elements that suit it and which it had already in all likelihood decided to legislate?
Does this mean that the work and recommendations of the committees are only recognized and implemented when they meet cabinet's expectations?
Large amounts of money may be deposited through trust funds in the election fund of a candidate, with no one being able to identify the source of that money. This directly contravenes the spirit and even the letter of the Canada Elections Act. Monitoring, through a legislative framework, the source of a candidate's trust funds would definitely have added greater transparency to the electoral system, to use a term so dear to this government. But the Liberals decided not to endorse that recommendation and one wonders why.
I will now address the appointment process of electoral officers, which is another example of transparency that is opaque, to say the least.
How can the government claim to have a transparent electoral process when returning officers are all appointed by the governor in council, that is by the party in office?
The Bloc Quebecois can only deplore the partisan nature of these appointments, something which is unacceptable in a process as democratic as an election.
The government preferred to keep this eminently partisan instrument, which it can use to its advantage, instead of leaving the electoral process in the hands of qualified, non-partisan and objective people. Can one truly believe that a returning officer appointed by the party in office will be unbiased? I have doubts about that in many cases. And what about the provisions dealing with third party interventions, which set a spending limit only for costs related to advertising?
When it considered issues such as the ones I mentioned earlier, my party came to the conclusion that the expressions “reform” and “in-depth review of the elections act” were somewhat exaggerated. It has been over 30 years since the Canada Elections Act last underwent any serious overhaul. The government claims to have put forth the so-called principles of equity, transparency and accessibility, when in fact it did nothing more than indulge in a primarily self-serving exercise at the expense of the voters that it should be serving.
Government members missed a good opportunity to demonstrate that they really had democratization of the electoral process at heart. It seemed to those of us in the Bloc Quebecois that, after thirty years of elections under this legislation, a serious reform could, and should, be undertaken. Having experienced, in this last year of the millennium, the Liberal regime and its twenty-five gags imposed in the first session of the 36th Parliament alone, it would be daydreaming o believe that the government truly intended to carry out any real modernization of the electoral system.
I will take this opportunity to express the wish that, despite the somewhat singular character of the legislative process in which we are currently engaged in order to pass bill C-2, the government will truly pay attention to the concerns expressed by the witnesses appearing before the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, that it will be open to proposed amendments it might receive from the various parties in this House, and that it will be prepared to truly make this process, this operation to revise the federal election legislation, a process devoted to truly democratizing the electoral system in Canada.