Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the NDP in support of this important legislation.
We owe a real debt of gratitude to Ed Broadbent who was the original architect of fundamentally transforming our federal legislation so we could look at accountability and look at the starting to renew the public's confidence in federal institutions. Mr. Broadbent, the former member of Parliament for Ottawa Centre and before that for Oshawa, put forward his points almost a year ago. He made it very clear how important it was to renew Canadians' trust and confidence in our federal institutions. It is for this reason that we owe such a debt of gratitude to Ed Broadbent.
Mr. Broadbent talked about establishing democratic accountability for members of Parliament. He talked about fixed election dates, a very important component that the NDP has pushed for some time. He also talked about establishing transparent leadership contests, again a very important component of establishing public trust from coast to coast to coast. Mr. Broadbent talked about electoral reform, about establishing the principle that a vote is worth a vote in the sense that the House should really represent how Canadians voted in a national election.
The NDP traditionally has been under-represented in the House. If we had the membership proportional to the voting support that we received across the country, we would have 60 members of Parliament voting for progressive legislation. The only reason we do not have 60 members of Parliament is because we do not have electoral reform. Though we play an important role, we would play an even more important role with the establishment of electoral reform. This is not present in the current legislation, but I will come back to that in a moment.
Mr. Broadbent also talked about ending unregulated lobbying and establishing an ethical appointment procedure. In his years in the House, Mr. Broadbent spoke very passionately about establishing access to information. This is really the essence of accountability and responsibility in federal institutions. It is about the right of Canadians to know what is going on, to have access to information that establishes transparency around our public institutions. I will come back to this important component of the Broadbent plan.
Why did he propose this? It is obvious that Canadians felt increasingly concerned about what transpired over the last few years in areas of our federal institutions. They saw the sponsorship scandal. They saw the scandal around Liberal political appointments. As I mentioned earlier in a question to a member of the Liberal Party, we had concerns about the Toronto Port Authority and the transfer of illegal funds and moneys that were lost. We have never been able to find out exactly how those funds were used. These kinds of scandals eroded public confidence in what was happening in Ottawa. Those kinds of scandals established the principle among Canadians that they had to take back Parliament.
It is important to note that not only were the various scandals coming forward and Canadians were becoming aware of the misuse of taxpayer money, but Transparency International, an independent NGO that rates countries according to the transparency and the accountability of their various public administrations, reported that Canada came from being a decade ago one of the top and most transparent, most accountable, cleanest governments in the world to falling to an also-ran.
It was not just the accumulation of scandals, it was also the fact that independent, impartial evaluations of public administration clearly indicated that Canadians were also getting haphazard administration, not transparent, with various levels of corruption and various levels of scandal. That is something we have to rebuild.
I believe that is why Canadians on January 23 voted to elect more Conservatives to the House, but also voted to elect many more new democrats. They voted to get many more New Democrats in as an effective watchdog to ensure that we could move forward on accountability legislation.
What happened? A bill was introduced. The NDP said it was in favour of it in principle, but it also said very clearly that it wanted to improve this bill. What Mr. Broadbent presented here in Ottawa almost a year ago went quite far.
What did we do? We worked for months. The hon. member for Winnipeg Centre and the new member for Ottawa Centre also worked hard. We made improvements to the bill as presented at first. We established a new Public Appointments Commission. We had proposed that for a long time in order to make favouritism illegal, to create a process based on merit and to verify ministerial appointments. We established a new, stricter rule to put an end to the practice of revolving doors between lobbyists and the upper levels of government.
We also made some improvements to the Canadian access to information legislation to broaden the application of the legislation to all government institutions. That is an extremely important aspect. The NDP caucus was able to make progress during the weeks of study and work on this bill.
We also supported giving more teeth to some provisions of the Canada Elections Act, namely making the use of trusts illegal and bringing the ceiling for donations to political parties down to $1,000. This is an important principle. Money will no longer be able to buy an election. We also lowered the ceiling for donations to $1,000, which is something all Canadians can agree on.
We have also tightened the rules governing conflicts of interest and authorizing any Canadian citizen to file a complaint with the new conflict of interest and ethics commissioner. And through this legislation, we have protected the rights of the first nations.
The bill that came forward had holes. Subsequent to that we were able to make substantial improvements to the initial bill. These are not minor improvements. These are improvements that will help substantially.
That does not mean that the bill meets the vision that Mr. Broadbent set out almost a year ago. There are still areas where, very clearly, there are holes, most notably in the area of floor-crossing. The NDP will continue to work on the principle that a vote is worth that vote and that members, once elected on a political party, should they choose to change, they submit themselves to the will of the electorate.
We will continue to work for improvements in public accountability in the House and in federal institutions, but Bill C-2 represents a step forward from what we have seen in the past and we will support it because of that.