Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to talk about the proposed legislation.
It was pointed out by my hon. colleague that this is not so much a government initiative. It is about Parliament, democracy and action. It seems to me that the Liberal Party does not recognize the distinction between governing the nation and providing rules for democracy.
Democracy is the engagement of all citizens in Canada in choosing their government, criticizing their government and holding their government's policies up to scrutiny prior to passage. At election time, if people do not like what has been delivered, they can vote for another party.
The Prime Minister wants to leave some great legacy, although I am not sure why because he has had nine years and has done nothing. However he now feels that in his last year in office he should leave some kind of tangible legacy. He thinks this legislation is part of that legacy. This is no legacy. He has taken an autocratic approach. He has gone to the Liberal Party caucus on a Wednesday morning and told his members that they will vote for this. Then it is foisted upon all other political parties in the House, and the country has to live with one man's opinion on democracy. This cannot be. That is why the bill is wrong.
Bill C-24 is wrong in the fact that it is one man's opinion. It should have been by all party negotiations, by all party support, so that the parties representing all Canadians who voted in the last election could have had a say as to how democracy would work in Canada. The simple, fundamental, failing of the bill is that this is democracy in one man's opinion. That in itself tells us that the bill is wrong.
When history looks back on the legacy of the current Prime Minister, it will say that he failed. He has failed in many ways but he has failed again in the way he has foisted this upon all Canadians.
We all know that the bill denies corporations and unions from participating in the democratic process. Unions by their very selves are part of the democratic process because they represent their members. Corporations have been used in the developed world to create organizations that bring capital and labour together to provide the prosperity, the goods and services we enjoy in Canada and in the western world. They are also being denied participation through the bill.
The next time around we might find out that local groups and organizations that want to have a role in the democratic process will be deemed illegal. Rather than regulating segments of society, we should be controlling the political parties. We should not be controlling the people. It seems to me a fairly simple thing to do.
There is nothing in the legislation that controls political parties once they get their hands on the cash, and most of that cash comes from the taxpayer. Therefore they are not accountable any more to the people who donated it. Therein is a fundamental flaw. The government is saying that political parties are now going to be another institution on the government welfare role and they will get a cheque from the government, from taxpayers, whether taxpayers support their ideology or not. The taxpayer has no say. The voter has no say. The people who disagree with the philosophy of a party have no say. The cheque will be written. From the point of view of the Liberal Party, maybe that is not a bad thing.
I heard on the radio a couple of weeks ago that the former minister of finance seemed to have vacuumed up all the Liberal Party money available in the country. I think that was the terminology used. There is nothing left for the party itself and now it has to negotiation with the banker to defer its loan payment because its does not have the cash.
How convenient it would be if the cheque just came from the taxpayer in the mail every month? Then the party could send a part of that to the banker, no problem whatsoever. I am quite sure there was a significant amount of that kind of thinking when the bill was drafted.
Democracy is about engaging citizens. Citizens have been sidelined by the bill. We all know that elections are about knocking on doors, distributing literature, having town hall meetings and engaging society in public debate. I remember one former prime minister who said elections were no time for public debate, but that is by the way. Perhaps I think elections are the time for a public debate and this is when we engage citizens.
The proposed bill will marginalize citizens and make them feel that they are not making a meaningful contribution because their money is no longer be required. We as politicians will not have to go out and raise funds. Therefore we will not have to have policies that will resonate and with which people will have to agree if they are to donate to our political cause.
Instead, based on the votes at the last election, the cheque will come in the mail from the taxpayers, which it should not. It will guarantee that party which won the last election will get the biggest chunk of money and therefore has a leg up chance of winning the next election just based on the money from the taxpayer alone.
I cannot understand why the Prime Minister would think that this is a legacy. If the taxpayer is not engaged, if our young people are not engaged, if the taxpayer pays the bills, then democracy will be even more so an issue in a place called Ottawa.
Ottawa is a long way from my riding in St. Albert, Alberta. Quite a number of people in my riding I am sure have not been to Ottawa. They have not seen this marvellous place, this crucible of democracy. They can only see what is on television. It is somewhere way over there, thousands of miles away where those people make rules and decisions that seem idiotic, unexplainable and unfathomable. Yet it affects their daily lives and the way they participate in democracy.
Political scientists bemoan the fact that every time we have an election voter turnout gets smaller and smaller. They also point out a lesser known fact that it is the younger people who are not voting. If younger people do not vote, if they are not engaged in democracy, when they grow up, democracy will be on a very weak footing. Bill C-24 will just make it weaker.
Democracy is a fragile flower that has to be protected and defended. Unfortunately, periodically we go to war, although I hope we will not go to war soon. When we go to war, we go to defend freedom and democracy. People have understood what democracy is all about. As many people know, there is an organization called GOPAC, Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption, which tries to elevate the effectiveness of parliaments and legislatures around the world because in some places they are totally ineffective.
I always use Zimbabwe, the Ukraine and Peru as three examples where there are elected presidents and elected parliaments. However in all three cases the elected leaders have been implicated in murder because the parliaments are totally and absolutely ineffective. They have become totally sidelined and marginalized. With the bill before us, we are going down the same road in Canada. This institution has become marginalized where people talk all day and achieve next to nothing.
I want it recorded that I am totally and absolutely opposed to this bill.