Mr. Speaker, I want to thank all members of the committee for working on this bill and providing Canadians with a bill which we can all be proud of. It is a large bill. There might be some kinks in the bill to work out as we move along, but because of the amendments that were put forward, the witnesses who came forward, and the debate that we had at committee, we have a bill that we can be proud of.
Certainly some people have concerns with some things in the bill. That is fair with a bill this size. There are things in the bill that we will want to keep an eye on and make sure that, as was pointed out by other members, there is not unintended consequence.
I want to start my remarks with a quote:
When they find themselves in the midst of wrongdoing, those with a vivid sense of right and wrong have feelings of remorse. On the other hand, the defining characteristic of corruption is that feelings of remorse have been lost, replaced by the impulse to deny, perpetuate and cover up. The Liberal Party is losing its sense of remorse.
That was said before the last election by my predecessor, Mr. Broadbent. It deserves applause because it was insightful. He was distinguishing between those who understand when they have done wrong and do something about it and those who do not. He was identifying the concerns about ethics and accountability. What did he do? He proposed something. That is what we did on the bill in committee and it is what we are doing as we speak right now. We are proposing a better way. Mr. Broadbent proposed an ethics package which dealt with many of the concerns we all had at the time.
The first concern he had was about floor crossing as was just mentioned. He believed, as I believe and many Canadians believe, that if a member crosses the floor and is vaulted into cabinet, perhaps the member should go to the Canadian people and see what they think about it. It is a pretty democratic idea. We hope that will come to fruition one day. In fact the good people of Manitoba will have that type of law in place soon. They will not have to deal with floor crossing.
The second part of Mr. Broadbent's ethics package was to have fixed election dates. I am pleased that we will have fixed election dates soon. That was a smart thing for the government to introduce.
The third thing he put forward was transparent leadership contests. This is still a concern. In committee we said that we wanted to make sure that these outlandish, ridiculous, opulent, unaccountable leadership contests did not take place. In the last Liberal leadership contest, the former prime minister who was running for leader at the time had $12 million in the kitty. That is a little over the top. The $2.7 million that was spent for the present Prime Minister on his leadership may be a little more than is necessary.
Mr. Broadbent was proposing to have transparent leadership contests. The money trail would be followed. We would see from where it was coming. There would be some oversight. It would be regulated. We do not want to see influence being pedalled because the leader of one political party one day might become our prime minister the next. The process deserves accountability. It deserves a window of access to information.
The fourth thing that Mr. Broadbent proposed in the ethics package was electoral reform. We are still fighting for that and will continue to do so. We proposed a model which was very sensible and reasonable. The Law Reform Commission studied it and believes it to be a sensible model. We will carry on with that.
The fifth proposal was to end the unregulated lobbying that was going on because it was way out of hand. We saw what was happening. I will give an example, and we still have not heard the final details. It was the sale of Petro-Canada. It was interesting to follow the money on that one. It was the biggest sell-off of a Canadian asset. The New Democratic Party believes Petro-Canada should have been transformed into a crown corporation to deal with renewable energy, but alas, it was sold off. If we follow the money to see who was involved in selling it off, it is a very interesting story of influence and lobbying.
Look at what happened on the satellite radio file. Initially the cabinet believed that certain satellite radio companies should not have a licence. The lobbyists got to members of the cabinet and turned it around and there were contingency fees all around.
We saw that with the previous government. We have heard the entitlement to entitlements quote. I think that was exacted by my predecessor, Mr. Broadbent, in committee as a matter of fact. We believe that the unregulated lobbying had to end and Bill C-2 deals with it.
We still have a concern that someone who is lobbying government can get contracts. We will continue to keep an eye on it. What is really important is that the regulations for lobbyists have been strengthened. Contingency fees will be banned to get the money out of this really spurious kind of business. There are good, credible people who do credible lobbying in this town and they were being sideswiped by the people who were making money in, I believe, an ill-gotten way.
The sixth thing Mr. Broadbent had proposed was ethical appointments. I am delighted that because of the hard work of my colleague from Winnipeg Centre, the committee adopted an amendment to the bill. We finally have a process that will ensure there will be ethical appointments with oversight. That is no small gain. That is absolutely huge.
We only have to go back to 1867 and Sir John A. Macdonald, or to the 1984 election and the statement, “You had an option, sir”. We know this has been a problem for every single administration in Canadian history. We have seen people being appointed based on their party card, not on their merit card. I am hopeful that will finally end.
The last one was on access to information. I am glad to see there were some gains made. At the beginning of the debate on the bill there were some concerns that we would not have changes to the Access to Information Act. There are amendments. There is more to do and that work will be taken up in the fall.
To paraphrase what my colleague from Winnipeg Centre said, the oxygen of democracy is the access to information in the work we do here. If we are unable to hold the government to account by accessing the information through ministries, crown corporations and agencies, then we will have difficulty doing the job which citizens have sent us to this place to do, and that is to hold the government to account.
Those were the seven points of Mr. Broadbent's and our party's platform, our ethical package. When I look at Bill C-2, we are there in many ways, but there is more work to do for sure. I have already mentioned the need to deal with floor crossing. We need electoral reform. We need a little more work on access to information. The transparent leadership question still needs to be tweaked. We have come a long way.
We have been able to deal with the question of holding government to account and the accountability of government to Parliament and Parliament to government. We need to take into consideration the accountability to citizens. That is what electoral reform is all about. That is the next stage. That is the next area of reform. Our work is not finished. We will have to focus on that.
I was very delighted to see the changes to the whistleblower legislation. It has been referenced by members of the other parties that Bill C-11 was fine if we just put it in place. As someone who was in contact and worked with many whistleblowers in this town, I can say that it was not fine. The oversight was a board that had over 8,000 cases presented to it in a year. It took over 18 months to hear cases. We needed to have a parallel stream. We have it with the tribunal. The fact that Bill C-11 was there was not good enough for the people I worked with.
We have improved the whistleblower legislation. We and other members of the committee we able to make sure there was no reward for whistleblowers. I thought that was anti-ethical. In fact, it is not ethical to provide cash for people to do the right thing. Every single whistleblower that I know was clear about this, they did not want to be rewarded in cash for doing the right thing.
I will end my comments by thanking everyone in the committee for their hard work. We need to be proud of this work and to carry on with our work to be accountable to Canadians through electoral reform.