Madam Speaker, we are here this afternoon debating the Figueroa decision: that the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the current requirement of a political party to field at least 50 candidates in a general election as a condition of registration.
The court ruled that this 50 candidate rule treated small parties unfairly by denying them three key benefits that are granted to larger parties, namely: the right to issue tax receipts for political contributions; the right to receive unspent election funds from candidates; and the right to have a candidate's party affiliation listed on the ballot.
This treatment was found to be unequal and to infringe upon the right of citizens to participate in a meaningful way in the electoral process, as protected by section 3 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
As was pointed out by the government House leader, the court did suspend its decision, or the effect of its judgment, for one year until this June 27 in order to allow Parliament time to bring forward the necessary changes to the Canada Elections Act.
The government is telling us that it believes the bill before us strikes an appropriate balance between fairness to the parties and the need to preserve the integrity of the electoral system.
The prerequisites are that the party have at least 250 members who have signed statements declaring that they are members of the party and support its registration, and that one of the party's fundamental purposes must be to participate in public affairs by endorsing one or more of its members as candidates and supporting their election, and that the party leader make a declaration to that effect.
That is the background to why we are debating this today. Of course with the prorogation of the House last November, the bill had to come back to be dealt with in order to meet the Supreme Court's requirement. It will require the amendment of the Canada Elections Act and the Income Tax Act.
I agree with the Supreme Court decision that fifty is too high a threshold, but I also wonder at the same time whether the number one is not too low. I will raise some of that as I go through the remaining moments that I have available.
As I said before, the fifty rule was struck down because small parties were treated unfairly and that did infringe on the rights of citizens to participate in a meaningful way, but if fifty is too high, is one too low? Let me delve into the example of the member for Saskatoon—Humboldt. It may be instructive for members of the House to consider it in that light.
Here is a member who appears to be a total political misfit in the House. He was elected as a member of the Reform Party in 1997. He was not welcome in the Reform Party, he was not welcome in the Progressive Conservative Party, and he appears, so far as we can tell, to be unwelcome in the newly formed Conservative Party. One assumes, because we are all trying to maximize the number of members we have here, that his views are simply too extreme for any political entity, for any political party in the House. That is the background.
Under the proposed bill as it has been laid out, there is nothing that would prevent this individual from continuing to raise money, to retain any unspent election funds and to continue on in his way, a way that is more destructive than instructive. It is fair to say that it is difficult for independents to win re-election, and the odds of this oddball member returning to Parliament Hill after the next general election are probably not very high.
Let me just stop here and say that I am one who very much favours freedom of speech. I basically agree with the notion that I may disagree with everything the member says but I will go to my grave in order to give him the right to say it. However, I am not sure that in giving him the right to say it we should necessarily be funding it. I do not think I would necessarily go that far in my libertarian view of the world.
My concern is that the bill is going to give more oddballs an opportunity to gain notoriety and have the right to raise and keep money. It certainly does not mean that they are likely to win political office, but it will do little to enhance the idea that more good people will want to seek office because of them.
The member from the Bloc Québécois who spoke before me referred to the Supreme Court decision as a unanimous decision, or at least that is the way it came across in the translation; perhaps it was an error. It is my understanding that it was not a unanimous decision of the Supreme Court. It was a five to three decision on the idea of this business of reducing it to one.
I am saying that fifty is too high, but I am clearly not arguing in favour of one. I like the arguments by the members of the Supreme Court who stated that it would be possible to enhance democratic values without so large a threshold, without reducing it all the way down to one member.
I think that perhaps twelve is too high a test, as the member from the Bloc Québécois said. Perhaps four or six members would meet the test, but I am not sure why we went to the lowest common denominator of just one. I agree with the court that this rule can be over- or under-inclusive and is potentially subject to manipulation. Fifty is obviously under-inclusive, but one may very well be over-inclusive.
Fifty, as pointed out in Bill C-24, has a disparate impact in that registration of a single political party at the federal level can occur only currently in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. If we had a political rights party, for example in Saskatchewan or Manitoba where there are only fourteen seats available in each of those provinces, the fifty rule is obviously too high a threshold and would not apply. Obviously we need something that is considerably lower than fifty, but one, to my mind, is too low. In fact, it reminds me of the Groucho Marx line: “I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member”.
I also recall Churchill, who said:
It may be that vengeance...is sweet, and that the gods forbade vengeance to men because they reserve for themselves so delicious and intoxicating drink. But no-one should drain the cup to the bottom. The dregs are often filthy-tasting.
I think reducing the number to one means that there will be far more dregs and drudges in the political system, and that is not going to encourage informed debate and make more informed political discussion.
In conclusion, let me say that we support the bill, but we have serious concerns about the reduction to one. We are glad that it is going to committee where these arguments can be made in an endeavour to improve the overall content of the bill.