Mr. Speaker, we are dealing here late tonight with an interesting bill. It looks like we will be able to pass it before the summer. The bill proposes a lot of changes to the conflict of interest rules and is generally framed as a fix to some of the accountability mechanisms which we have in the federal government.
The bill includes provisions dealing with whistleblowing. I see those provisions recycling a previously introduced bill in the House. There are new lines of financial reporting from departments, a few changes to the political contribution rules, minor changes to the conflict of interest rules, and some new post-employment provisions for public office holders which now involve not just cabinet ministers but senior civil servants a little further down the pecking order.
Most of us see this as fixing something or providing a better framework of accountability. That is the general intention, but it struck me that as the bill was introduced and the lead-up to it, there were an awful lot of allegations coming from the Conservative opposition members then, and even in government now I still hear these allegations. They use the word “corruption”.
I thought I would do some research and see if I could figure out why they were using these words. I was also curious why from time to time the Speaker would not have thought it a matter of some concern that many words of that nature were being thrown about in the House and why some of them were not found to be unparliamentary. That never happened, and my party and I took the verbal blows.
I wanted to do some research to find out why the Conservatives, and perhaps the NDP, were so concerned about corruption. I started going back in time. I was looking to see if there have been any members of Parliament charged or convicted of fraud or corruption offences. I have been here about 18 years, and you have been here longer, Mr. Speaker. I have looked and I cannot find any Liberals on the list.
Let us admit right off the bat that there have been members on both sides of the House who have encountered personal problems, problems with relationships, and problems with alcohol. I am not talking about those kinds of problems here in terms of corruption. These are personal issues and they sometimes percolate up in the life of a member from anywhere in Canada, and those things have been dealt with reasonably well by the House.
I want to talk about real Criminal Code fraud and corruption. I have found the last six individuals who were charged and convicted. I am just going to go through it. I am a little uncomfortable doing it, but these are the individuals who have been charged and convicted.
The first one is a Mr. Gravel. He was convicted on February 13, 1989 of 15 counts of influence peddling and bribery. He was fined $50,000 and jailed. He was a member of the Conservatives.
The next one is a Mr. Grisé, and son of a gun if he was not also a Conservative. He was convicted in May 1989. There were 13 counts of fraud and influence peddling. He resigned from the House of Commons. He was fined $20,000 and served a day in jail. He was a Conservative.
Here is another one. This is Mrs. Jacques. Son of a gun, she was a Conservative. She was convicted on October 13, 1989 of two counts of fraud, one count of conspiracy, and one count of influence peddling. She was sentenced to two years less a day, conditional sentence, plus community service. She was a Conservative.
There is another one. This is the fourth one on my list that I have found. This was Mr. Desrosiers. He was a Conservative as well. He was convicted in 1990 of fraud. In exchange for having all of the other charges dropped, he was fined and given probation for one year.
I kept on with my research and then found number five. This was Mr. Fontaine, also a Conservative. There are an awful lot of Conservatives here. He was convicted in 1999. He pleaded guilty to three counts of fraud. Before the trial was to begin, he was sentenced to a $15,000 fine, and remained in the House while his case went through the system.
That is an awful lot of Conservatives and it is the Conservative Party that is alleging a whole lot of corruption.
Another one was Mr. Stupich, a New Democratic Party member of the House of Commons. He was convicted of fraud and contravening the gaming provisions of the Criminal Code. That was called “bingogate”.
I looked and still I could not find a Liberal member of Parliament who had been convicted, let alone charged, with any corruption offence. I could only find a whole list of Conservatives.
I was very disappointed, if I could put it that way, to hear all of these allegations over the last two or three years coming from Conservatives in the House. It seems to me that the Conservatives and perhaps even the NDP must have been drinking their own bath water. Maybe they were so concerned about corruption because they had it in their own benches. The Conservatives really understood corruption because it was found in their own benches here.
I am still looking for a case involving a Liberal and I cannot find one, no cabinet ministers and no backbenchers involved in fraud. Yet, some members of this place have the audacity to get up and allege that my party and my colleagues over here are somehow corrupt, when it is the Conservative Party that has sown the seeds of corruption and has the convictions.
There is a whole list of charges, not convictions. The convictions were overturned on appeal. I could go through that list, but I am not going to because I do not think it is fair to the individuals. A lot of the charges have been overturned or not proceeded with. I have done my research and I can say they were all Conservatives as well.
I am not saying that every Liberal on this side of the House is perfect, but what I am saying is that if people are going to allege corruption, they should look in their own house first. I do not think that was done. I wanted to put that on the record.
The last thing I want to say is not about corruption at all. It is about the contribution limits contained in the federal accountability act, the act that was generated because the Conservatives thought the Liberals were so corrupt, which turns out not to be true.
I do not know how it is all going to work out, but there is a contribution limit in the bill now of $1,000 per person. My experience in the political system now is that some members of political parties will, in the ordinary course of a year, by following through all the political activity that goes on, including provincial, federal, regional or leadership conventions, will actually end up spending convention fees of a significant amount, between $500 and $1,000.
If they are spending that kind of money participating in ordinary political activity, will they have any room to make an actual cash donation to the party for an electoral purpose? I am suggesting that they may not. I think it is unfair that those who participate a whole lot in the political process with their parties will not have any contribution room when it comes to donating at the time of an election to a candidate or party.
I do not think that is fair. I think that is inequitable. I wish that the bill did not have that limit. I wish the bill had a provision that allowed for a higher limit in circumstances such as I have described.
I thank the House for letting me get through those remarks without a whole lot of cat calling. I guess the House is in a better mood tonight.