Mr. Speaker, the bill before the House is certainly one which I support, the more public financing of political parties. The main thing we have to do is get the big money out of politics. Most of that big money is corporate money. If we are going to get big money out of politics, there has to be more public financing of campaigns.
A very fundamental part of democracy is that we create a level playing field so that anyone can run regardless of his or her financial background and who may be supporting him or her in the campaign. The only way of doing that is by having a greater public side to the financing of election campaigns.
I certainly support the principle of the bill. The bill will limit a contribution by a corporation, trade union or an association to $1,000 per year. It will limit what an individual can give to $10,000 per year.
A couple of provinces already have legislation of this sort on their books. In the province of Quebec it has been on the books for a number of years. A more recent example is the province of Manitoba. This is legislation that is long overdue. It will create a more level playing field for all people of Canada.
I have some concerns about the legislation and I hope the government will be open to amendments. The major one is that the $10,000 an individual can provide per year can be provided not just to one party but to many parties. An individual would be limited not at $10,000 but at $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 or $60,000 if that person wanted to contribute to more than one political party. I think that is a violation of the spirit and the principle of the bill presented by the Prime Minister.
I hope there will be an agreement at the committee stage among members of all parties that we make the limitation $10,000 a year, regardless of whether an individual contributes that money to a candidate seeking a nomination, a leadership campaign, a riding association, a member of any political party, or a combination of all the scenarios I have already mentioned. If we do not do that, it will allow a wealthier individual to throw in $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 or more per year and have a great deal more influence than the ordinary citizen of Canada.
Another thing is the bill does not give an age limit; a person only needs to have a SIN number. A wealthier family could divvy up the $10,000 per family member in many different ways. That would be another way of contributing more than $10,000 per year.
In Quebec, the limitation is not $10,000 a year, but $3,000 per year for an individual.
It is exactly the same thing in Manitoba, a limit of $3,000 per person per year.
I think the $10,000 limit is high. We should be looking at an amendment to roll back the $10,000 to something more reasonable, maybe $5,000 per person. Let us have a $5,000 limit and let us make sure that a person can only contribute to one association, one candidate, one party, or one leadership campaign or a combination of all the above, but the total at the very end of the day does not go to any more than $5,000 or indeed $10,000 if the government does not want to roll back the limit. That is very important.
There is a provision in the bill that there will be no indexing for the contributions that are made in the legislation as before. We have to look at the principle of indexation so that it keeps up with the cost of living.
There is also the whole controversial topic of third party advertising. We have to find a way to design a law where there can be a limit on the advertising done by third parties in Canada. A political party or a candidate that is limited to a certain amount of money in a campaign can have a third party advertise without a limit, be it the National Citizens' Coalition or anybody else. That is very similar to what candidates can spend and in the spirit of it, it is a violation of the level playing field and equality for all candidates. We have to make sure there is some limitation.
The members of the Alliance will say it is a denial of free speech. There have been court cases fought to this effect. There is also clause 1 of the charter which says that something has to be demonstrably reasonable.
It does not seem to me that it is free speech if the size of the pocketbook dictates the kind of advertising one can buy. When there is some wealthy Canadian who can spend $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 on an advertising campaign vis-à-vis somebody else who cannot afford to do it, to me that is not free speech. There should not be a financial factor in defining what is free speech. There should be a level playing field for third party advertising and what a political party or a political campaign can spend.
Those are a couple of concerns I have about the bill. I do want to say that the time has come to take the big money out of politics. When we look at all the returns over the years we will find that many large corporations have funded political parties in this country to a massive degree. Members of the crown have said recently that when corporations provide an awful lot of money to a political party, they indeed do buy influence. The old saying that he who pays the piper calls the tune has a certain amount of credibility. If someone puts a lot of cash into a campaign, there is a far greater likelihood that his or her point of view will be heard by the government or by a minister across the way regardless of political party.
The only way to avoid that is to have campaigns funded by individuals and by the public purse. Campaigns funded by the public purse would create a level playing field. I am very much in favour of the increase in public funding of campaigns. I am very much in favour of a more strict limit on what candidates and political parties can spend and what they can also spend on leadership campaigns.
I support the bill in principle. It is the right way to go. It creates a more democratic society. It creates a more accessible society in terms running for public office with a measure of greater success regardless of the size of one's pocketbook. At the same time let us look at some reasonable amendments to make sure this law is a good one for all Canadians.