Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I rise this evening regarding Bill C-2, at third reading.
I had the honour, if I can put it that way, to sit on the legislative committee responsible for Bill C-2, to which the bill was referred at second reading. That was a revelation.
It was something to see the way that the government, with the complicity of the NDP member for Winnipeg Centre, ensured that the witnesses appearing before the committee did not have the time to fully present their points of view. They were unable to do their preparatory work properly before coming before the committee.
After their presentations, certain witnesses asked to come back a second time, considering that they had not been given enough time to do justice to their viewpoints or to the recommendations they wanted to make to the committee.
The government members and the NDP member refused to give these witnesses the option to return.
I will go no further with this. I think that those Canadians who followed the committee’s proceedings—which were, after all, publicized and in the media—were able to see the behaviour of the hon. members, particularly that of the government’s parliamentary secretaries.
I will be raising five points in my speech. I want to talk about the Parliament of Canada Act, the changes that the government has tried to make to it, and the reasons that drove the hon. members of the opposition to stop the government’s action to amend the Parliament of Canada Act.
I also want to talk about the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Tribunal.
I want to talk about the Public Appointments Commission.
I also want to talk about two other subjects that were raised by certain hon. members in both the NDP and the Conservative Party.
I would like to talk about the questions of floor crossing and of the minimum age to contribute financially to a political party. I will start with the question of floor crossing.
I find it amazing that a member of the NDP took to task members of the Liberal Party and the Bloc for certain decisions taken in committee. What was interesting was that same member was also denouncing Liberal members and government members, who sit on the Standing Committee on the Environment, for upholding a ruling of the chair regarding an NDP motion. The member said it was anti-democratic, it was disgusting, it was this, it was that. I will not even use all of the words.
At the same time, in the legislative committee on Bill C-2, my colleague, the member for Vancouver Quadra, who is also the Liberal critic for democratic reform, had tabled an amendment to Bill C-2 which would have dealt with the issue of floor-crossing. It would have allowed a process for constituents, who had voted for a member who then crossed the floor to another party, to do what we in popular terms call a recall. The chair of the committee ruled the amendment out of order. The NDP member for Winnipeg Centre and the government members voted to uphold the chair's ruling. The Liberal members did not say that was undemocratic. We did not denounce the member for Winnipeg Centre for voting to uphold the ruling of the chair.
However, one of his colleagues turned around and denounced Liberal members for upholding a chair's ruling that an NDP motion in another committee was out of order and said it was undemocratic. I think that speaks to the level of hypocrisy we see at times from at least two parties in the House, the Conservatives and the NDP.
On the question of minimum age for donation. For the last several weeks we have heard non-stop members of the Conservative government, members of the NDP and especially the member for Winnipeg Centre rise in indignation that a Liberal leadership candidate legally accepted donations from children under the age of 18. They said it was inappropriate and reprehensible. It was like stealing from kids' lunch boxes or doing political financing in day cares.
Yet on the legislative committee, when a Liberal amendment would have set the minimum age to make legal contributions to political parties at 18, guess who voted against it? The NDP member for Winnipeg Centre and the five Conservative members of Parliament who sat on that committee.