Mr. Speaker, Bill C-2 is intended to address principles that all Canadians and all parliamentarians share and that is a wish for openness, transparency and accountability in our government institutions. Bill C-2 has made some progress in this regard, but at the same time, there has been a fair bit of hyperbole about how far it goes and how effective it will be.
We heard some suggestion from the previous speaker that there was some haste in dealing with this bill at committee stage and that some mistakes have been made. As the legislation continues after third reading, some serious questions will need to be addressed and this House may have to address them itself.
Just to give the House an idea of how open and transparent the government wants to be on this, I would like to read into the record the entire speech of the Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board leading off the debate at report stage yesterday. He said:
Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the occasion to speak to these motions. I think most members of the House will agree that these amendments are largely technical in nature and fix the minor problems that the committee was not able to address.
I would invite any comments and questions from members across the way but I do not see these as being particularly controversial.
He had 10 minutes to speak at report stage and that was his entire speech. He had an opportunity to advise all hon. members, who were going to be asked to vote on important motions to amend the bill, as to the rationale for seven motions that were put forward by the President of Treasury Board just 12 hours earlier. We did not see those motions until the morning of the debate. This shows maybe a symptom of the wish for the government to have and to engage all parliamentarians on the importance of Bill C-2.
In the parliamentary secretary's speech he characterized people who donate money to candidates or political parties as big money and big corporate cash. To characterize those who participate and who support the democratic political process as somehow being a bad thing is quite unfortunate.
When Bill C-24 passed in this place with the support of all parties, the limits to donations were set at $5,000 for an individual and $1,000 for a corporation or a union. Is there anybody who honestly believes that someone who makes contributions at these levels has significant influence on the government? Of course not. They were fair and reasonable limits.
This bill says that a small businessman will not be allowed to make a contribution through his company to a local candidate who has worked hard for industrial or regional development or for improvements in the economic climate that will affect that individual's business or industry. Suddenly, anybody who is involved in a corporation is somehow supposed to be a bad person.
The parliamentary secretary also said that because of influence peddling somehow Bill C-2 would clean up the process. There may be some unintended consequences here. I would like to give the House an example.
For a member of Parliament such as myself to run in an election my spending limit is somewhere around $80,000. About 60% of this can be received through the Canada Elections Office, but half of it has to go to the party. This means I will have to raise $56,000 to run an average campaign to get to the over 50,000 homes in my riding. This is about $1 a home, not an exorbitant amount of money. Now I am going to have to raise $56,000, but I cannot get more than $1,000 from any one person.
We know some people are prepared to support the democratic process, but all the government has really done is force members of Parliament to get larger numbers of individual donors for this process. It is not enhancing the democratic process in terms of providing information to Canadians about the platforms of one's party, about a member's contribution as a past MP or what a person can do for new candidates.
This is not over. There are no transitional provisions in this with regard to the effectiveness or effective date of the changed limits on political donations. The way it sits right now the in force date would be basically the date of proclamation after royal assent. It means that it would be effective, theoretically, for the calendar year 2006.
The Chief Electoral Officer has indicated that should this bill pass in this form at all stages, including the Senate, and receive royal assent, in order for him to enforce the act he will have to go back and force people to get back some of the money they donated under the former law. This is a big problem. I can speak quite a bit more about it, but I just raise it. This is one issue that will have to come up.
Everybody who talked about it in committee was basically saying that the only way one can effectively control this matter and do it in a way which is the least disruptive to Canadians is to have the effective date of the change of the levels of political donations to be January 1 of the coming year. That way there will be no confusion or disruption to the overall process in a taxation year.
If one is going to be truthful and plain in disclosing what this bill really does, the parliamentary secretary maybe missed a couple of points. He said that this is a seminal event with the hyperbole about how all of these wonderful things are going to happen. He talked about whistleblowers and that the government is going to do this and that. That is not in this bill.
The creation of the Public Service Integrity Officer, the fact that there are reprisals as defined, the fact that there is a process, the fact that the anonymity is going to be protected, and the fact that there are all kinds of remedies available are in Bill C-11. Bill C-11 was passed in the last Parliament and received royal assent last November. If the government were absolutely committed to transparency and openness and an ethical approach to governing, Bill C-11 would have been proclaimed and there would be a law in force in Canada.
We could have that position filled. We could have had that kind of protection for employees already, but the government still has not done it. Why? There is one reason and it is totally political. Basically, the government wants to say that Bill C-2 is the bill that does this and somehow take credit for what parliamentarians worked on for three years.
When Bill C-2 becomes law in Canada, it will also enact Bill C-11 because Bill C-2 in fact makes some consequential amendments to Bill C-11. It tidies it up in a few areas which allows the government to say it has done this. It has not done it. The parliamentary secretary in fact misled the House as to what Bill C-2 does.
Then there is the Lobbyist Registration Act. After all of the foofaraw about people on the transition team not being able to be registered lobbyists for five years, what did the government do? It turned around and made amendments at report stage at the very last moment that established certain criteria, when the commissioner for lobbying has all kinds of latitude to make exceptions to the rules. With all of those problems, the government said it was going to tighten up on the lobbyists. Then it loosened it up.
What about the public appointments commission? Does everyone know what the bill says about the public appointments commission? The bill originally said:
The Governor in Council may establish a Public Appointments Commission consisting of a chairperson and not more than four other members.
That is all the bills says. It says it “may”. It did not say it “will”.
The opposition worked very hard and got the criteria put in with the details of what the commission will be able to do to bring transparency into the appointments process. What did the Prime Minister say immediately after it passed in committee? He said that he did not care because he would not appoint a commissioner and then we would not have anything.
The bill does absolutely nothing for the public appointments process. We will be reverting to Treasury Board guidelines, which have been updated in the last Parliament and have served us very well in providing for that.
Finally, with regard to the Access to Information Act, the bill is a failure in improving the accessibility of Canadians to information on their government. The Information Commissioner himself said that. I know all hon. members will want to look for other opportunities to ensure that important acts, such as the Access to Information Act, get the necessary amendments to make us truly open, transparent and accountable.