Debates of Feb. 8th, 2001

Supply

[An hon. member]

Tell us about your bridges.

[The Speaker]

The hon. member for Charlesbourg—Jacques-Cartier.

[Richard Marceau, Bloc, Charlesbourg—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in politics, there are certain debates we have been dreaming about, and this is one of them.

The member for Beauharnois—Salaberry, who has just put a question to me, went through three election campaigns promising the same bridge and not once did he ever deliver on this promise. We will soon see a picture of the member for Beauharnois—Salaberry beside the definition of broken promise in the dictionary.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this very important debate on the question of parliament's need to be able to count on the services of an ethics counsellor, whose role it will be to examine the probity and the actions of members of cabinet and to report to the House on his findings.

In the questions and comments we have just heard from the two Liberal members, I find it particularly interesting that they mention that the public has lost confidence. However the public gave the Liberal Party a greater majority than in the last election. That is the trouble with this government, which still only wants to see part of the picture.

The hon. member for Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik has taken great care to conceal the fact that the turnout rate for this election was one of the lowest in federal election history. That must indicate something.

When we speak of loss of confidence, we mean a loss of confidence in political institutions and parliamentary institutions. Why was there such poor voter turnout? Perhaps because our fellow citizens did not find it was worth while. It makes no difference who gets elected, they feel.

What is it that gives them such a negative attitude or impression of the public and the political scene? It is the sort of things we saw during the election campaign, when the Prime Minister was suspected of involvement in some rather dubious undertakings. The ethics counsellor was consulted and his response in the midst of the election campaign was “I do not think the Prime Minister can be faulted in any way”. I shall return to this point.

I also found of particular interest that the hon. member for Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik raises the code of ethics of the National Assembly. Really now.

Here in Ottawa we have a nearly secret code of ethics, one established by the Prime Minister, enforcement of which is entrusted to a man who was appointed by the Prime Minister, who administers rules set by the Prime Minister, and who is answerable for his actions to that very Prime Minister.

The hon. member for Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik told us “It is no better in the National Assembly”. To that, I will say that there is one major difference, though. In the National Assembly, the code of ethics is a law. There is a statutory basis for ministerial integrity.

He spoke of the function of jurisconsult, saying the appointment is made by the premier after a vote in the National Assembly. That is a lot better than here, where the Prime Minister alone makes the appointment without consulting anyone. The members of the National Assembly have the opportunity to comment on the appointment of the jurisconsult.

Before the member for Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik starts denigrating the Quebecers' National Assembly again, I would advise him to find credible and relevant examples under the circumstances.

I think it is also interesting to note that our friends in the government are just as vigorously resisting the idea of having to agree to the motion presented by the Canadian Alliance.

Yet, we are simply asking them to honour an election promise they made in 1993.

We saw earlier—and the Speaker will be coming back to it later on, so I would not want to elaborate further—how twisted the government House leader got in his efforts to have the motion of the Canadian Alliance say what it does not, to avoid voting against their own red book this afternoon.

There is no way around it. The motion by the Canadian Alliance reiterates verbatim the promise in the Liberal Party's red book in 1993. It would be embarrassing, to say the least, for the government to have to vote against one of its own election promises. However, this would not come as a surprise, since we have seen the government, on a number of occasions, not fulfil its commitments.

The Liberals are in effect rising in this House, this symbol of Canadian democracy, and saying “Dear fellow citizens, we lied to you in that we did not intend to fulfil the promise we made in 1993”. I will admit that it could be embarrassing to say the least for the government to have to rise and vote against its own promise. This is why the Liberals tried their best to have us believe that this motion says something that, in fact, it does not really say.

I alluded to the broken promises of the Liberals. What about the infamous promise to scrap, to abolish the GST? What about the infamous promise to tear up the free trade agreement? What about this other Liberal promise the hon. member for Beauharnois—Salaberry mentioned in responding to the speech by the hon. member for Charlesbourg—Jacques-Cartier? What about the promise made during the last election campaign to build two bridges and 14 kilometres of highway?

The government now seems less anxious to provide an answer and to fulfil that promise. This is common practice among Liberals. It is no wonder that the participation rate at the last general election was one of the lowest in Canadian history. It is no wonder that, after such a display of cynicism and arrogance on the part of the Liberal government, people are much less inclined to take part in the electoral process.

The ethics counsellor answered one question and I will get back to it in a few moments.

First let me say that our comments here today are not in any way aimed at the ethics counsellor himself. Given his professional background, I presume that Mr. Wilson is a person whose probity cannot be questioned and that he has very high professional qualifications. This is not what is at issue here today.

What is at issue is the relevance of an ethics counsellor position, if the incumbent does not report to parliament. What is at issue is a broken Liberal promise from 1993 to create an ethics counsellor position, and fill it with someone who would be appointed by the various political parties in the House and who would report to parliament.

I come back to what I was saying earlier. The ethics counsellor gave his interpretation of the reasons why he does not report to this parliament. He said that the first reason is that the Prime Minister is responsible to parliament for the conduct of his ministers. He invoked ministerial responsibility. He said that since he reports to the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister reports to the House, the necessary transparency is there.

I will, if I may, mention something very much in the news right now which makes me question the validity of the ethics counsellor's response. We have only to look at the CINAR affair and the somewhat special role played in it by the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency.

When we question the Minister of National Revenue, he tells us that he cannot answer because of the confidential nature of tax files. What about ministerial responsibility? Is he not responsible to this parliament for the actions of his department?

His answer is: “I cannot answer. I do not know what is going on. My people are professionals. They are doing their job and I cannot interfere”. What is the point of having a minister who reports to the House?

I would close by urging all members to vote in favour of this motion, first of all because it is important for Canadian democracy and the Canadian parliamentary process, and also because it will allow the members opposite to finally deliver on one of their election promises made seven years ago.

[André Harvey, Liberal, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Alain Dubuc, from La Presse , was right to say that the Bloc is out of touch with reality. The former member for Beauharnois—Salaberry has been replaced by my hon. colleague. Someone has reviewed all the speeches made by the member for that riding. That member never had any concern for the issues his riding and his region were faced with.

I would like to ask the hon. member this: the real scandal, is it not the fact that the Bloc and the PQ let the regions die off while they keep talking about the Constitution, at a time when 8% of Quebecers are still willing to hear about the Constitution and 92% of Quebecers and people in the regions prefer to hear about the economy and health? Meanwhile, they are still discussing very nebulous items of parliamentary procedure, whereas we are focusing our initiatives on research and development, the infrastructure program and the upgrading of our small and medium size businesses to make them even more efficient. They are always out of touch with reality.

I see the hon. member for Jonquière who once wrote to President Clinton. I am sure the president did not find the time to answer her letter before leaving office.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague for Verchères—Les-Patriotes if, to his mind, the real scandal is not seeing the PQ and the Bloc Quebecois let the regions decline and fall at a time when our policies as a government are focused on structural initiatives?

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to thank my colleague, the member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, for his question, which is at the very least twisted and warped. I thank him, nevertheless, because it will allow me to set the record straight.

I use the words twisted and warped because we are discussing government integrity and the necessity for the government to justify its actions before the House. All the member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord has done is to bring us back to the constitutional debate, while accusing us of always bringing up that issue.

I will answer his question, first to say this. I find it at the very least outrageous that the member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord should undermine the work of the former member for Beauharnois—Salaberry, Daniel Turp, by saying that he never cared about his riding. That takes some gall. I challenge the member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord to go to Beauharnois—Salaberry to see what is going on in that riding and what was going on, these last years, when my colleague, Daniel Turp, was its representative in parliament.

Some say that the constitutional issue is not among the priorities of Quebecers. I would like to say something about that.

What are the priorities of Quebecers? Like most other people, their priorities are employment, health and education. Not foreign affairs, not national defence or the coast guard. The federal government has understood that well. This government invests as little as possible in areas which are under its responsibility. It cuts payments to the provinces and uses this money stolen from the provinces to invest in health, education and employment. These are all jurisdictions which do not belong to the federal government, under the Constitution. No wonder we want to talk about the Constitution.

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to add some comments to the debate and perhaps bring some focus back to what we are here to discuss, that is, the ethics counsellor, the integrity of government and the ability of the government to portray itself with confidence to the Canadian people.

It troubles me greatly when I hear the government House Leader get up and speak of the pristine ethics of the government and, in particular, of the Prime Minister. I know the hon. member who just spoke will recall what occurred in his province with respect to a Liberal fundraiser who, armed with lists of persons from HRDC and ACOA who had applied for grants, went far afield with that information and attempted to raise funds for the Liberal Party of Canada. I also know the member from Chicoutimi would recall that incident.

I wonder how the government reconciles that with its position of pliable ethics that it is so proudly clinging to today. I wonder if the hon. member would comment.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I greatly appreciate your indulgence and your concern.

I would simply like to thank the hon. member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough for his question. He is bringing the debate back to its real purpose, that is to the issue of the ethics counsellor and the government's accountability to the House.

That being said, I believe he raised a very clear case where, if the ethics counsellor were appointed by the House and reported to the House, dubious actions on the part of the government could have been prevented or corrected.

[Bill Blaikie, NDP, Winnipeg—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle. I still think of the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle as the member for Yorkton—Melville. I have not quite adjusted to the fact that he is not known by the riding that he was known by for 25 years.

I have a couple of things to say about the motion. We are talking about two things in the motion. We are talking about broken promises and we are talking about the substance of promises made, and whether or not those promises should now be implemented.

First, with respect to the question of broken promises, clearly this is a broken promise. It was very clearly promised in red book one that there would be an ethics counsellor created and that the counsellor would be responsible to the House of Commons. That has not happened and the government has given us no indication today as to why that has not happened. It has been very self-congratulating in terms of its record. It looks good only because it compares itself to the previous Conservative administration which was rife with controversy and scandal.

Sometimes I think that the only difference between the Liberals and the Conservatives, when it comes to that sort of thing, is that the Conservatives never really got out of their amateur status when it came to patronage, scandal and other things. The Liberals are the real professionals when it comes to that sort of thing. They are better at not being caught. They are better at hiding what they do. They are better at covering things up. The Tories were just a bunch of rank amateurs.

In fact, when the Tories were in government, I remember some Liberals in opposition saying to me off the record that the Tories were a bunch of rank amateurs, that they were really the people who knew how to do that. The Liberals have been back since 1993 and they are still doing it, in part because they have not kept the promises they made with respect to those kinds of issues. One of those promises was the creation of an ethics counsellor, an ethics counsellor that would be responsible to the House not to the Prime Minister.

The government House leader made the argument that the Prime Minister was ultimately responsible and therefore we could not have the ethics counsellor reporting to the House. The Prime Minister is ultimately responsible for the official languages policy, for the privacy law and for the freedom of information law, but that does not prevent us from having privacy commissioners, official language commissioners and freedom of information commissioners. It also should not prevent us from having an ethics commissioner, if that is what that person would come to be called whenever that position would be created, who would be responsible to the House of Commons. On the face of it, the Liberals have broken this promise and offered no explanation as to why they have.

What has given rise to the debate? It is of course all the controversy surrounding the things that have happened in the Prime Minister's riding.

I have listened to the Prime Minister carefully over the last 18 months to two years. It is not a question of whether the Prime Minister did anything wrong in the criminal sense. I am certainly not making that charge and some people who have made that charge have withdrawn it. What the Prime Minister does not seem to get is that he is not just an ordinary member of parliament. I just do not think there is any substance to that argument.

Yes, the Prime Minister can do the same things as an ordinary member of parliament can do, but to suggest that it is ordinary behaviour for the Prime Minister to have people over to 24 Sussex to talk to them about loans to hotels in his riding, not to mention hotels that the Prime Minister has had something to do with in the past, and that it is the sort of thing that I get to do every day as a member of parliament, is just ridiculous and the Canadian people know it.

Given the election results, the Canadian people seem resigned to accept this. They seem resigned to accept a certain level of that kind of behaviour. Unfortunately, they just seem to think that goes with the Liberals. They seem prepared to tolerate that behaviour with the hope that the Liberals have other virtues.

However, we as members of parliament do not have to tolerate it. We do not have to tolerate it as opposition parties. As members of this place We have a responsibility not to tolerate and that is why we are up on our feet today.

I say to the Prime Minister and to the government, not just for their own sake but for the sake of the political process in general, that they should behave differently. They should see that there is a distinction to be made between the kinds of opportunities that the Prime Minister has, the clout that the Prime Minister has, the question of how that clout should be used and whether there are times when the Prime Minister should resist the temptation to use that clout, even if it is for the benefit of his own constituency, because it puts the whole political process in jeopardy.

There is no question, from some of the figures I have seen, that the Prime Minister's riding has done very well indeed by virtue of having the Prime Minister as its member of parliament. When it gets so out of whack, when there is so much more money going into the Prime Minister's riding over what goes into other ridings, and when we see that there are secret opportunities for transitional funds going into Liberal ridings that people in other ridings do not even know about, all these kinds of things do not exactly bring a healthy smell to the political process.

I would urge my Liberal colleagues to see if they can find a way to act more appropriately when it comes to this sort of thing.

We often talk about governments breaking their promises. I want to say with respect to the party that moved the motion today that it is one of the rare political animals in our political system. It has managed to accumulate a whole number of broken promises while it is still in opposition. It is not something that everybody can do. One has to have a special talent to do it. Members of that party made promises as to how they would behave in opposition. They did not say how they would behave in government because they have not had a chance to govern, and God help us if they ever do, although if they ever do become government I hope they do break some of their promises. I hope they never bring them into being.

The Canadian Alliance promised that their leader would not move into Stornoway. They promised their leader would not take a freebie with respect to a car. Many of them promised they would not become members of the pension plan.

Having said all that, I think they have done some growing up while they have been here. They have appreciated some of the policies that were in place, that they made a political career out of criticizing, and have changed their mind. However, when they changed their mind, they broke another promise. They were the ones who said that when members of parliament change their mind or make a decision contrary to what their constituents thought they were voting for, then they should put themselves at the mercy of their voters once again.

With respect to the members of the Canadian Alliance who indicated that they would opt into the pension plan before the last election and the people voted them in, fair enough. What about the people who indicated after November 27, 2000 that they would opt into the pension plan? Do those members not have an obligation, given the things that they have said in the past, to submit themselves to the mercy of their constituents in a form of self-imposed recall? Do we see any of that? There is another broken promise.

It strikes us as a bit odd, without prejudice to the well deserved criticism that the Liberals deserve when it comes to breaking promises, that the official opposition should be on its high horse when it comes to broken promises because they are the one political party in the country that has managed to accumulate a record of broken promises without ever having been in government.

[David Kilgour, Liberal, Secretary of State (Latin America and Africa)]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Winnipeg—Transcona knows that I have a lot of respect for him. In his view, what would be proper for a prime minister to do for a riding that has an unemployment rate, as I believe the Prime Minister's has, of approximately 20%? What in his view is proper?

[Bill Blaikie, NDP, Winnipeg—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, we do not all have ridings that have 20% unemployment. Many of us have ridings that have less than that and some that have more.

The point is that the Prime Minister ought to let the ordinary process take its course. I would submit that having people over to 24 Sussex and using the full context of the Prime Minister's office is not always the appropriate thing to do.

The appropriate thing to do, not with respect to ridings but with respect to the issue before the House, is to keep the promise that was made in the red book.

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I too have great respect for the member from Manitoba, but he said something in his remarks that I could not support. He said that if the Prime Minister thought there could be or might be some challenge to a particular project in his riding that he should probably not do it.

It is almost like reverse discrimination. If the Prime Minister cannot use his position to influence a half a dozen projects for the cumulative total of not more than $5 million or $6 million, I just cannot figure that reasoning out.

In my riding, a week before the election was announced, we talked about a $500 million project. Everybody was happy about it. We are making a big fuss here about a $200,000 fountain and a $500,000 loan in a tourism industry that is going through a very difficult time.

I do not think Canadians are putting it in perspective. I never had any problem when the former Prime Minister of Canada, Mr. Mulroney, put a $300 million prison in his riding. That is just the way it goes.

I would never want to see a situation where because one becomes the leader of the country, one has to discriminate against one's own constituents.

[Bill Blaikie, NDP, Winnipeg—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I was not suggesting that the Prime Minister should discriminate against his own constituents. I was suggesting that there is an appropriate balance to be struck between not discriminating against one's own constituents and being seen to discriminate a bit too much in favour of one's own constituents.

This is all a matter of perception and judgment, but the Prime Minister has an obligation for the sake of the whole political process not to leave himself open to those kinds of perceptions. He should not be wrong on the facts, as he apparently was when he was very absolute about the fact that the hotel in question did not receive any money from the immigrant investor program, and then we find out that it did. Why was he so assertive about that? Why did he not check the facts? This does not help.

I want the Prime Minister to behave differently because that would benefit the whole country. I am not saying that people in the Prime Minister's riding should never get anything. I do not know about the $500 million project in the member's riding, but it sounds to me like something that is going on in the whole of Toronto, not just in the member's riding. Or, perhaps we should be looking more closely at the member's riding as $500 million is a lot more than most of us put together would get in terms of special grants and projects for our ridings.

[Roy H. Bailey, Canadian Alliance, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague from Winnipeg mentioned broken promises. Coming from Saskatchewan I could talk until midnight about broken promises.

The NDP member who just spoke was in the House when we had gold plated pensions. He was here when we had to serve six consecutive years. Conceivably a member could be elected at 19 years of age, retire at 25 and get a pension. Does his conscience bother him in that he sat in the House and supported that pension?

[Bill Blaikie, NDP, Winnipeg—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, here is the line that we all had to live with in the early nineties, that somehow we received a gold plated pension if we were in this place for six years.

Actually, after six years a member received six-fifteenths of a pension. All of the ads by the National Citizen's Coalition and the Reform Party implied that if a member were here for six years and retired or was defeated, he or she received a cheque for $1 million or something like that amount, instead of six-fifteenths or 75% of the average of their best five years.

No, I am not embarrassed because hen that so-called gold plated pension was brought in, in 1981, I voted against it. I did not have any choice but to be in it. People who did have a choice have since made different choices than the ones they said to the Canadian people.

[Lorne Nystrom, NDP, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I hope my friend from Souris—Moose Mountain does not leave the Chamber. The motion today provides us with an opportunity to talk about our vision of democracy: electoral democracy, parliamentary democracy and economic democracy.

I agree with the Leader of the Opposition moving a motion to make the ethics counsellor responsible for reporting to the House and not to the Prime Minister himself. It only makes sense. People cannot report to someone they are responsible to and then investigate the same person. There is an apparent conflict of interest.

It struck me rather strange this morning when I heard the opposition House leader talk about the importance of accountability and things being built on trust. I think 11 members of the Canadian Alliance Party campaigned against the MP pension plan. In many cases, after the election on November 27, these members decided to pay back into the pension plan. They broke a fundamental trust and a fundamental promise that they made to the voters in their ridings.

If we want to build a parliamentary system on trust, on confidence and accountability, it seems to me that the deputy leader of the Reform Party from Edmonton and others should do one of two things. They have now bought back into the pension plan after criticizing us strenuously and comparing us to hogs slopping at a trough. They should either submit themselves to a recall of their voters or resign their seats like the member from Hamilton, the Minister of Heritage, did when she campaigned against the GST and then was part of a government that supported it. If they have changed their minds the members should resign their seats and face the voters in a byelection to receive a new mandate. That is accountability.

If some of the Alliance members had said before the November election that they had changed their minds on the pension and would opt in and buy back past service, that would have been a different story. However, those who did not do it broke a fundamental promise and a fundamental part of what that party is all about in terms of accountability and respect for the House. They should resign their seats and submit to a byelection if indeed they mean what they say. That is an important part of what we are debating today.

I will use the words again of the Leader of the Opposition and the House leader of that party who talked about the importance of building on trust and the importance of accountability.

When we talk about the ethics counsellor being responsible to the House of Commons, we do this in a broader vision of our democracy. I believe our country is in a democratic crisis. Our parliamentary system gives the Prime Minister far too much power. The Prime Minister appoints all the senators, all the supreme court justices, the head of the army, the head of the RCMP, all the important heads of agencies, and makes thousands of patronage appointments to all kinds of organizations, agencies and crown corporations. He does this without any parliamentary accountability whatsoever.

If the Minister of Industry had any zeal for democratic reform he would lead a crusade to make sure that some of the powers of the Prime Minister's office went to the House of Commons and parliamentary committees in terms of important appointments.

We also have too many confidence votes in the House. If we had fewer confidence votes parliament would work in a more congenial and democratic way in trying to solve the problems that face the Canadian people. Those are just some of the issues we should be dealing with.

Parliamentary committees should have a lot more power and independence to initiate and timetable legislation. However the government will not even take the minor step of allowing the committees to secretly elect their own chairs. Such a step would simply follow the precedence of secretly electing a Speaker of the House. The government is in the dark ages in terms of basic democratic reforms.

On the electoral and democratic side, no wonder the Minister of Industry hides his head in shame. Only 5% of Canadians polled support the unelected Senate. The minister, however, sits across the way and says aye, aye and cheers on the Prime Minister to make more and more Senate appointments to that house of hacks, flacks and political has-beens.

The time has come for genuine reform to abolish the unelected, undemocratic and unaccountable Senate. Canada should also take a serious look, as has almost every other country in the world, at some kind of proportional representation in our electoral system so that every voter could have equality and not cast a wasted vote.

The Liberal majority government, elected constitutionally for another five years, received 40% of the vote on a turnout of less than 60% in the last election. That means fewer than a quarter of Canadians voted for the government of the day.

Canada is one of only three countries in the world with a population of more than eight million that does not have some form of proportional representation in its electoral system. Only Canada, India and the United States do not have some kind of proportional representation.

Under a PR system every voter would be equal. No vote would be wasted. People would be included and involved in creating a parliament that would actually reflect how people vote. That is the kind of democratic reform we should be looking at.

We should also get rid of the kind of enumeration mess we had in the last campaign. Over a million people were denied democracy because there was no house to house enumeration of voters. Most of those missed were younger or poorer people living in inner cities or younger people who had moved.

These are some of the things we must change to make Canada more democratic and inclusive.

We must also look at the question of economic democracy and the fact that Canada is now governed more and more by trade deals, the WTO, NAFTA and huge transnational corporations that have more and more power.

It is not a question of trade per se. There will be trade. There will be more and more international trade and more globalization because of technology. It is a question of losing democratic control over issues that affect our lives because of the power of transnational corporations.

These huge corporations are not really run by entrepreneurs. Many are run by bureaucrats and technocrats who are responsible and beholden to no one. They are like big icebergs at sea, bumping up against countries, distorting economies and denying local control and decision making over social programs, health programs, cultural programs, labour standards and farm programs.

This should change. Canada should lead the way in trying to build labour, social and environmental standards into trade agreements. Such agreements should protect the cultural identities of nation states and allow them to make important decisions over the lives of their citizens in health care, shelter, employment and other important areas.

That is part of the democratic vision people should hope for and espouse from the Parliament of Canada. The country is sleepwalking toward a crisis in democracy. Barely 60% of the people voted in the year 2000. In 1997, 67% of the people voted. Thirty or forty years ago it was routine to have 80% or more of the people voting in federal and provincial campaigns.

People are disengaging from the process because they feel politicians do not listen. In so many ways the people are right. We elect a government that has a mandate for five years and there is no power sharing. About 60% of the people voted for the opposition parties and 40% for the government party, and yet the Prime Minister has the unilateral power to make most important decisions.

If the Prime Minister wants to leave a legacy he should begin the process of democratizing the political institutions, the economic and electoral systems of Canada, so that the ordinary people, through their representatives, will have a real say over the common good and the direction of Canada.

The motion today is but a small step in that direction. It would make the ethics counsellor responsible not to the Prime Minister but to the House of Commons. The person would report to the House of Commons as does the chief electoral officer, the privacy commissioner, the official language commissioner and many others who operate in a way that is just and proper and in a way that governments past said would never work.

Let us not be afraid to take at least that one step toward democratic reform.

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with a lot of what the member said about trade. I have been racking my brain on the issue of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats in multinational corporations, and the way they move around like icebergs. We are responsible as members of parliament to maintain jobs in our communities and in our country.

What idea does the member have for handling multinational organizations in such a way that they will not hold us to ransom for all the jobs they control?

[Lorne Nystrom, NDP, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Mr. Speaker, the member from Toronto made a very good comment. He talked about the multinational or transnational corporations that can hold us to ransom for the jobs in our communities.

Part of the problem with the trade deals today is that they are like charters of rights for transnational corporations. We must somehow augment that with an international people's charter of rights which builds into these agreements minimum standards in terms of labour and labour mobility and in terms of environmental and social standards. Such a charter might even look at radical ideas such as a minimum global tax on transnational corporations so they cannot play off one country against the other.

In other words, I think many powers once enjoyed by the nation state must now be transferred to the international forum.

We have transferred the powers of capital to huge transnational corporations, but we have not counterbalanced that with a counterweight, which is the democratic control of people through their governments as institutions, and transferred other powers such as people's rights, labour rights, agricultural rights, environmental rights and environmental standards. One of them might be a minimum tax on transnational corporations.

Another idea endorsed by parliament in a 2:1 vote was contained in a private member's motion which I put before the House two years ago endorsing the idea of what was called a Tobin tax on currency speculation to help curb speculation in currency. About a trillion dollars are traded every day. There is no control of this or of the international casino of currency which distorts a lot of economies.

We became the first parliament in the world to endorse the idea of a small currency tax, which is called a Tobin tax, in concert with the world community. Our government should be aggressively selling the position of the Parliament of Canada at international fora like the World Bank and the IMF. These are some of the things we can do.

The main point is that democracy has been denied, thwarted and abrogated because of trade deals and because of transnational corporations. We have lost that democracy. These people report to no one. We as a nation have to take a leading role in trying to get that power back for ordinary people.

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it is enlightening to see you in the chair. I know the impartiality you bring to this place.

I want to pose a question to the hon. member with respect to his comments about the credibility and importance of an ethics counsellor. Reference has been made throughout this debate to various parties and to which party did what first. The hon. member's own party is not devoid of indiscretion or discrepancies.

I remind him of the former premier of British Columbia, Mr. Vander Zalm, who found himself in some difficulty. It resulted in a report published by Ted Hughes, a former deputy attorney general and superior court judge in Saskatchewan.

The report dealt with public land transactions and money that was then returned for a promise of a speculator acquiring adjacent properties. Federally owned oil companies were involved. All of this resulted in another premier from British Columbia resigning, Premier Harcourt. Although he was not personally implicated in the wrongdoing, he resigned after a forensic audit by an auditor he had appointed who found that party officials during the eighties had concocted a scheme to divert funds legally designed for charity into NDP coffers.

This demonstrates that the independent counsellors, the independent auditors, and in this case a former judge, were able to flesh out a situation that obviously was wrong.

Is the office of the ethics counsellor tainted by what has occurred in this situation? Should we be looking at a separate judge or special prosecutor to be assigned to cases like this one? He would be at arm's length from government. Perhaps he would be appointed by government but would not have that connection and therefore could credibly come before the Canadian people and lay out the facts so that there would be a credibility process.

[Lorne Nystrom, NDP, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I should like to clarify what might be a misunderstanding. Mr. Vander Zalm was not an NDP premier but a Social Credit premier. Mr. Harcourt was a New Democrat and he did resign. Mr. Vander Zalm is now the leader of the Reform Party of British Columbia. His cousins sit over to my extreme right.

The ethics counsellor should be an independent person. Perhaps he should have the power to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate certain things. A committee of the House could look at what additional powers the counsellor should have. He should certainly have the power to launch independent investigations.

[André Bachand, Progressive Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to indicate that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough.

I will start by making a few brief comments. Following the government House leader's procedural stunt, the debate seemed to cool down, except perhaps that our colleague from the New Democratic Party managed to heat it up a bit.

We got tripped up by procedural considerations on the appropriateness of an amendment and an amendment to an amendment. In my humble opinion, we are ignoring the purpose of the motion under consideration.

Of course, we can talk about the promise broken by the Liberals in 1993. We are used to that. However, the real reason we have this motion before us today is because of the Auberge Grand-Mère issue. Nor must we must dismiss the Canadian Alliance's desire to bring forward a motion about the ethics counsellor, because the Auberge Grand-Mère affair is a case in point.

The real debate must be centred on the Prime Minister, the ethics counsellor and a specific affair or affairs that have led to this debate.

When we look at the facts, we are told “You know, the Prime Minister did his job as an MP”. There is a big difference between the prerogatives of a Prime Minister and those of an ordinary MP. It is not the same thing at all.

Finally, what we want today is to know exactly what happened. We only get snippets of information about what the Prime Minister did in this affair.

When the Prime Minister called the president of the Business Development Bank and told him “Drop by 24 Sussex; we have to talk”, it was clearly not to congratulate him. Then he told the president “Look here, there is a loan application. You have to see to it. Understood?” Suddenly the loan is approved. Soon after there is a default of payment. Something is wrong.

The president of the bank says “Listen, we must call in the loan”. He gets a phone call from the Prime Minister who asks “What is going on?” He replies “They are not making any payments, so I have to call in the loan”. It is a Business Development Bank policy, but this is not how it worked.

A little while later, Mr. Beaudoin was moved out of the Business Development Bank. He got pushed out and the loan was not called in.

I hope the Prime Minister does take care of his riding. However, at one point, the prerogative of a Prime Minister should implicitly and explicitly require a certain amount of reserve, beyond what would be required of an ordinary member. I am not the Prime Minister, but he acted wrongly in this case, he acted very wrongly. That is what we say when we blame the Prime Minister.

As far as the ethics counsellor is concerned, we would like to know what data, what discussion, what evidence brought him to absolve the Prime Minister. Whom did he speak to? Over a two day period, he did not have time to meet with too many people. What evidence was his decision based on? Is he well informed about the whole issue? Did he speak with the representatives of the Business Development Bank? The answer is no.

After two days, he replied: “Everything is fine. I am reacting rapidly because this is an urgent matter. The urgency justifies a thorough analysis of the issue”.

We are asking for the truth, the whole truth. Did the ethics counsellor do his job properly in this case? This is an important case, because the office of Prime Minister deserves respect.

However, if we are to respect the person who holds that office, we must have reasons to do so.

We are told that we keep accusing the Prime Minister. Give us good reasons not to do so, and we will stop. Let the Prime Minister have the ethics counsellor meet with members of parliament. Let him have a good talk with the elected representatives of the Canadians. That is not too much to ask. Does he need the permission of the big boss? Let the big boss tell him to meet members on both sides of the House. We will ask him with whom he had discussions on this issue. Will his answer be “The Prime Minister? I had coffee with him”. That is not good enough. We must go deeper than that.

Once again, the reason we are having this debate today is the questionable conduct of the Prime Minister, who, among other things, approached directly the president of a bank. It is cloudy, and this had nothing to do with the storm that is coming tomorrow.

It is getting quite cloudy on the government's side, concerning the role of the Prime Minister. The best way out of these problems, the best way to bring sunshine back in the Prime Minister's Office and his function is to free from political limitations the person whose role it is to check the conduct of elected officials, Prime Minister included, and let the ethics counsellor be more open.

The ethics counsellor is a good guy, but François Beaudoin, of the Business Development Bank, is a good guy too. Unfortunately he did not do exactly as told by the Prime Minister's Office, so he is gone.

The ethics counsellor must like his work, and I can understand. He probably does not want to frustrate his big boss. That is why we are asking that the counsellor's code of ethics be improved. He should be made independent. The only way for him to be totally independent is to report to parliament as a whole, and not to a group, a party or an individual. That is the way things should be.

The Auberge Grand-Mère issue will no go away as long as the Prime Minister refuses to be more open. It will not go away until the Prime Minister allows the ethics counsellor to meet with us.

Let us not delude ourselves. Something fishy has prompted today's opposition day motion. Parliament should take all action necessary to ensure that the positions of Prime Minister and ethics counsellor are respectable and respected ones.

[Ghislain Lebel, Bloc, Chambly, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the comments by the member for Arthabaska, and I have a question for him.

I have read all the editorials, especially in Quebec. Members will forgive me for reading the French ones in particular, but I assume the English language newspapers are saying pretty much the same thing. Throughout this whole business of handing out contracts and favours, the Prime Minister has been saying that he is an ordinary MP and that he is doing his job as an MP.

The editorial writers are saying that this is not true; he is not an ordinary MP. Democracy imposes him on us every three years and four months, or thereabouts, but once elected our Prime Minister is a dictator. He has the discretionary, decisional power to hand out money without being accountable to anyone. Can he claim to be an ordinary MP like I and all the other MPs on this side of the House? Is he not something more? That is the first part of my question.

The second part is this. In a divorce proceeding would it be considered normal for the mother of one of the parties seeking divorce to also serve as the judge and award child support, assign fault, and determine access? It seems to me that one could say that this is not transparent, even if the mother-in-law in question were mine—she is very fair—and if she perhaps had a tendency to favour me, which I am not in any doubt about. One might wonder whether her ruling was an impartial one.

During the election campaign did the ethics counsellor not come up with his decision a bit too quickly, before he had all the facts? Does this not leave him open to criticism for the simple reason that he was appointed by his friend, that he is acting for his friend, and that his decisions favour his friend? I would like to hear what the member for Arthabaska has to say about this.

[André Bachand, Progressive Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member and congratulate him for having a nice mother-in-law. That being said, I want to point out that the Prime Minister is not just another member of parliament, and nor should he be.

As a member of parliament I cannot designate my chief of operations as the new vice-president of the Business Development Bank of Canada. I cannot call Jean Carle, who has worked in my office for some time and tell him that I have made him the new vice-president of the Business Development Bank of Canada. I cannot do that.

Even with all the credibility a Conservative member has, I cannot call the president of the BDC and tell him “I want to see you at my place, at 206 Brault Street, in Asbestos”. I do not think he would show up. It is not the same thing.

Of course it is quite an honour to have a premier or a Prime Minister as the member of parliament for one's riding. Does it come with some perks? The Prime Minister should be clear on this issue.

A certain amount of reserve should be exercised. If we look at the way the Prime Minister has been acting since 1993, we see that he has appointed a number of his friends to key positions. He has acted on his own. He will then be able to tell them what to do. That is what is going on.

This is why it is so important to have an independent ethics counsellor. There is a cloud hovering over the Prime Minister Office because of his involvement in crown corporations, federal programs, and so on, which is why we need an independent person to investigate.

Some may argue that an opposition member may not be fair enough to pass judgment on a prime minister, and they may be right. However an ethics counsellor appointed by the House and accountable to the House will be independent enough to clarify the whole issue.

The Prime Minister is not just another member of parliament. Unfortunately our current Prime Minister is nothing like the prime ministers we had before him.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Kamouraska—Rivière-Du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in his speech, my colleague pointed to the unhealthy situation that currently exists.

I will give an example. During the election campaign people must decide which party will be elected, which one will form the government and how it will operate. During the last campaign a few days before election day, a person appointed by the Prime Minister had to give his view on a very important issue, the Prime Minister's integrity. The next day the headlines read “Prime Minister Exonerated”.

Could we not make a comparison? If the auditor general were to report to the Prime Minister rather than to the House of Commons, would we have received this week a public report, like the one tabled, showing the good and the bad sides of the government, instead of something giving no sense of justice?

[André Bachand, Progressive Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is essential that the person appointed be independent from the House.

We cannot bet on that, but unfortunately I am sure that, having acted like he did since 1993, the Prime Minister will not put his head on the log by appointing an independent ethics counsellor not reporting to his office.