Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to this bill. Unfortunately the bill is not much of a pleasure to read or actually consider. There are five points I would like to make in my ten minutes about Bill C-24, the political financing bill of the Liberals.
First, replacing an addiction to corporate and union financing for campaigns with an addiction to taxpayer financing is not an answer.
Second, the Canadian Alliance is opposed to direct subsidization of political parties. Any public funding to political parties must be tied to voluntary donations coming from individuals.
Third, it is fundamentally wrong to force Canadians to give tax dollars to political parties they do not support or with which they have a profound intellectual disagreement.
Fourth, the bill provides for no limits on donations to politicians' personal trusts. This is a big loophole which would allow individuals, corporations and unions to circumvent the new donation limits in the bill.
Fifth, it is worrying that while the whole world is focusing on concerns beyond this place, particularly the situation in Iraq and the situation with regard to the financing of health care, the Liberals are focusing on what will get them re-elected and what will get their party the greatest financial gain in the coming months as we head into the next federal election campaign.
I will talk about some specific components of the bill and the problems that I have with them.
First, in the bill corporations, unions or incorporated associations can contribute a maximum of $1,000 per year to a combination of the riding associations, nomination candidates or general election candidates of each political party. Therefore, they can contribute a maximum per year of $1,000 times the number of registered political parties. I do not have a big problem with that part of the bill, although I have a problem with the idea of limiting how much an individual or a corporation should be allowed to give to a political party.
With regard to the campaigning of elections, to me the question is not how much should one be allowed to give or how much should a group of people who are organized collectively be allowed to give, but how much should campaigners be allowed to spend and how is the money that is given disclosed?
A Canadian citizen or landed immigrant can contribute a maximum of $1,000 per year to a combination of the riding associations, nomination candidates, general election candidates and the registered party itself for each political party and an additional sum of $10,000 for the leadership candidates of any one political party plus a further sum of $10,000 for one general election candidate who is not a nominee of any political party. Therefore, they can contribute a maximum per year of $10,000 times the number of registered political parties plus the additional sum in any year when a political party has a leadership contest or there is a general election. All these contribution limits will be automatically indexed for inflation.
In the bill there is to be a prohibition on indirect contributions in an attempt to prevent funding by way of trust; that is the legislation as drafted does not in fact effectively do that if we were to really look at it. The political contribution tax credit will be increased to 75% on the first $400 from $200 and a maximum tax credit increased from $500 to $650.
A lot of people who have not donated to political parties do not realize that if they currently give $200 to a political party, they will receive a tax credit the following year of $150. This is a way of channelling mandated tax liability to its particular political party, up to 75% of the first $200 donation. Since the actual cost to the taxpayer is $50, $150 is taken off the tax bill's tax credit. It is not a tax receipt.
In other words, if people have no tax liability whatsoever and if they earn $8,000 as a student or as something else and decide to give $200 to a political party, they receive a cheque for $150. It is a credit, not a deduction. Now the Liberals want to raise this up from $200 to $400 with the idea of incorporating more money into political parties and encouraging more people to give money to political parties.
On this point I would like to digress a little from the specifics of financing political campaigns. After a decade in power, it is absurd that the Liberals, if they want to encourage citizens to get more involved in politics, would not want to get citizens more involved in dialogue, debating, activism and volunteer activities. Instead they want more of their money. If we give $200 today, we get to write off $150 of it as a credit that comes back to us. The Liberals want to raise that $200 to $400, so if someone gives $400 to a political campaign, that person will get $300 of it back.
The Liberals are not going to let their members of Parliament vote freely in the House. They are not going to give Canadians the capacity to initiate citizens' initiated recall. They are not going to give them the power to initiate a citizen initiated referendum about an issue that is complicated and difficult that the politicians do not have the guts to talk about. The Liberals are not going to give Canadians those tools, but if they want more money, well hell, they will loosen up the laws and make it easier for them to line their pockets. That is something they will do.
That is the kind of Liberal mindset that does not actually feed a system. All it does is feed more cash going into the pockets of politicians.
The most absurd and offensive part of the bill states that there will be an annual allowance paid directly by the taxpayers to each political party that qualified for the reimbursement in the 2000 election. The allowances will total an amount equal to the sum of $1.50 times the number of valid votes cast in the last general election. Each eligible party's share will be based on a percentage of the valid votes cast.
What this means in actuality is permanent subsidization, a permanent distortion of the political financing of our country.
In the last federal election campaign the federal Liberal Party received just over 40% of the vote, the Canadian Alliance received 25.5%, the Bloc Québécois received 10%, the NDP received 8%, and the Tories received just over 12%. Under the Liberal plan, the Liberal Party of Canada would receive the number of votes cast, which would be 5.2 million times $1.50. They would permanently, every single year, from the year 2000 of the election campaign until 2004 or 2005 when we have the next federal campaign, have a cheque cut from the taxpayers for $1.50 times the number of votes they received in the last campaign. The Canadian Alliance, which received 3.2 million votes in the last campaign, would receive $1.50 for every vote cast.
The absurdity of this is twofold. First is the idea that taxpayers would be forced to finance political parties. Second is the permanent entrenchment of Liberal hegemonic power would now be financed by taxpayers against their will. Taxpayers would be forced to give the Liberals a financial advantage over other political parties. This would be entrenched in law. This is how the Liberals say they want to encourage political participation.
The best way to encourage political participation is to reform this institution so we can have debates in the House where there is more than one out of 180 Liberals actually sitting in the House participating in the debate. That is how we encourage more people to get involved in democracy. There is one Liberal in the House out of 180 Liberals. It is pathetic. If we want more people involved in political debates, in our political process and in political dialogue we need to reform the institution of Parliament and reform the mechanism by which we elect people.
We should inspire people by politics. We do not inspire people by entrenching a permanent financial skewing of the system whereby the Liberal Party of Canada will be sustained by taxpayer dollars in an unbalanced and unfair way that will permanently prop it up in this perpetual one party rule that we have in our country. It is completely destructive to our system of government.
Another part of the bill states that allowable expenses for nomination contestants will be capped at 50% of the writ period expenses allowed for candidates in a general election in that riding. I think the maximum a person can spend in a campaign in most ridings is around $68,000 to $72,000. Half of that, about $35,000, would be the cap for spending in terms of running a political campaign.
I, in principle, have a problem with limiting how much people can donate to a campaign. Capping on the spending side is not necessarily a bad idea but even capping on the spending side generally is unnecessary.
If we had mandatory reporting inside of 48 hours, if it were done electronically on the Internet, open for everyone to see the amount of money and who gave to whom and how much, I do not think we would need limits of the degree that are talked about in the bill because there is an assumed liability.
If a political party or an individual accepts a contribution, of whatever size from whatever organization or individual, there is an assumed liability associated with accepting that donation that they may be skewed with the perspective of that person, group or union. I think open disclosure about who gave how much to whom and why is perfectly okay.
I think it is fundamentally immoral and undemocratic to force citizens to pay politicians' election campaigns. It is against the very nature of democracy to reach into people's pockets and force them to finance political views with which they disagree. We have seen this with union contributions to political parties without asking the union's consent. Now we are talking about financing political parties, such as the Bloc Québécois which wants to separate from and destroy Canada. Asking people from my riding or any other riding to finance the destruction of Canada is wrong.