Mr. Speaker, first I want to heartily thank the hon. member for Roberval, who is the Bloc Quebecois House leader, for having allowed the other parties to have a few minutes to speak on Bill C-24.
In the final moments of this debate I want to say to the House leader of the Bloc Quebecois that I appreciate that he shortened his remarks in order to give the member for Saint John and me an opportunity to speak, because of course the bill is under time allocation.
I am pleased to speak at third reading of Bill C-24, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Income Tax Act. It is a bill that changes how we finance elections and political parties in Canada.
We as a political party have long called for the removal of big money from politics, so we have supported this legislation in principle throughout. Having said that, we recognize and will be pointing out that we still find there is some unfortunate and glaring errors with it, but on balance we believe it allows for better democracy and certainly greater transparency.
Prior to the clause-by-clause proceedings, when the committee on procedure and House affairs was meeting to discuss this in the spring, we heard from more than 70 witnesses. A number of them came forward and said that on balance this is good, supportable legislation. Many Canadians will have read the remarks of Ralph Nader who said that it is another example of Canada being first and should be quickly emulated in his country, the United States of America. When we see senators running for that institution in the United States, spending $30 million and $31 million to get themselves elected, Americans certainly need to see some urgent reform of their elections act.
The legislation goes a good distance toward getting big money out of politics. There has been a lot of big money in politics over the years. In the last election campaign, campaign 2000, the Liberal Party, which was returned as the government, took in almost $12 million from corporate donations. Sixty per cent of the total that the Liberals raised was from the corporate side. They received almost $700,000 from the chartered banks alone, another $100,000 from Bombardier, almost $100,000 from Canadian National and the list goes on. I would not want to lose sight of the fact that the Canadian Alliance, which claims to be the grassroots party, raised $7 million from corporate Canada in that same election campaign.
The equation is quite simple, especially when a party is returned to the government benches. The companies hand out big money and they expect something in return. They hand a cheque to the Liberal bagman with one hand and expect to receive a lucrative contract almost immediately with the other. The Prime Minister has admitted as much with his ethics package of a year ago. Indeed, the heritage minister, who is seeking to replace the Prime Minister, has said from her perch within cabinet that the ratification of the Kyoto accord was delayed in this country because big money does matter and does talk at the cabinet table.
The Liberal Party has been the party of big business. As I mentioned, big business accounts for 60% of its donations. The situation is somewhat reversed for the New Democratic Party. It is significantly reversed perhaps because we received 60% from individuals. They are modest amounts in the range of $50 or $100 for the most part.
If we look at the financial returns that parties have to post every year, we will see that the New Democratic Party has far more individual donors than any other political party in this country. That will come as a surprise to those who claim that the New Democratic Party is financed only by big labour. We have a long and proud tradition with the labour movement. That is certainly true. When the party was founded in 1961, it was founded on a partnership between the old Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and the Canadian trade union movement. That has remained and it will continue to remain as a partnership, I am sure, once Bill C-24 takes full effect.
Labour will continue to work with the New Democratic Party and vice versa, but the focus in future I believe will be to encourage union members to become more directly involved in the party and, if they so choose, to make donations on an individual basis.
The New Democratic Party supports getting big money out of politics. Our party convention in January instructed us to pursue that.
The legislation before us today allows individuals to donate $5,000 a year to a party. It was set at $10,000, which was reduced. We would have preferred a more modest amount of $3,000, which corresponds to the limits that are permitted in the province of Quebec and the province of Manitoba, the two other jurisdictions in Canada that have legislation along these lines, which essentially prohibits corporate and trade union donations from going to political parties. We would have preferred $3,000, but certainly reducing it from $10,000 to $5,000 is a step in the right direction and is certainly supportable.
Our concern, however, is that if they so choose, people with deep pockets can donate $5,000 to the Liberal Party and donate another $5,000 to the New Democratic Party or the Alliance or any of the other registered parties. We would have said that this should be an amount in total, an aggregate amount of $5,000, and all in and not spread around. I tend to agree with those who say this is unlikely to happen, but nevertheless it would have been better to close the gate before any chance of the horse getting out of the barn. Overall, this is a good improvement in the Canadian political system, because before this anybody with deep pockets could really have a significant influence on an election campaign and certainly in an individual election campaign.
As I mentioned, there is a prohibition on contributions to political parties from corporations and trade unions or associations, but there is a small exception. This legislation does permit organizations to contribute a maximum of $1,000 annually to the aggregate of candidates, local associations and nomination contestants of a registered party so that all the contributions are combined under the $1,000 limit.
Our first preference would have been that this not be in there at all. We do not think this is required. This is something that was not in the Prime Minister's mind when he floated this bill last fall. I think it is fair to say that some backbench members of his party were concerned, so this came back as an opportunity for trade unions, associations and corporations to still participate, but to a much more limited extent than they have been able to heretofore in the political process.
Our first inclination was to get rid of that altogether. We were not successful. Our second suggestion, then, was to level the playing field. We said that if franchised corporations like Dairy Queen or Tim Hortons, with units owned by different franchisees, if that is the right legal terminology, could each give $1,000 then trade union locals should be able to give $1,000. However, we have been unable to persuade the members opposite of the wisdom and the good sense of having that level playing field. As a result, unions are considered as one unit for the purposes of donations no matter how many locals they may have, but corporate franchises like Tim Hortons or Dairy Queen or car dealerships are each considered as separate units for purposes of political donations and each of them is able to make a separate $1,000 donation.
The effect of all this has been to weight this class of political donation heavily in favour of corporations as opposed to trade unions. We think that will be proven very quickly when we look at this as the procedure and House affairs committee or some other committee to see the ramifications of Bill C-24. This will stick out like a sore thumb.
There are 16,000 locals in total in national and international unions in this country and the vast majority of them, we believe, will be excluded from contributing to and playing a part in the political process. We have put forward amendments on this, as I have indicated, and they have been voted down by members opposite. To add insult to injury, the House leader said in debate yesterday in this chamber that there is a fundamental difference between union locals and corporate franchises when it comes to exercising local control and independent judgment. I think in effect he was saying that local businesses have minds of their own and that local unions are simply sheep that follow the edicts of their national or international offices.