I told you, Madam Speaker. They are a little slow off the mark. They should have been quicker on that one.
I want to say to the hon. members across the way that I participated in an election observation mission in Morocco in the last few weeks. What is one of the most important things to the people of Morocco? It is a struggling, emerging democracy in northwest Africa. One of the most important components they felt they needed was subsidies for political parties from the public purse to level the playing field.
When the government talks about a level playing field, it is often like we all have the right to live under the bridge, that old example. When we stand back and look at the macro picture, at the end of the day, money will play a bigger role in Canadian politics after the government than it did before. That is wrong.
I have given, at every opportunity, former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien as much credit as possible. I think the president of his own party used the expression, that was about as dumb as a bag of hammers. Why? Because the Liberals used to get all their funding from corporations. That was to be set aside, in large part, and replaced with the subsidies.
That was a good thing to do. It did make our democracy better. I have had the chance to participate in six or seven election observation missions. Anyone who is involved in elections around the world either has that component, or the one thing they desperately want is to get private money out of their political system and replace it with public funding. They are either doing this because they know it is important, or they want to because they know the damage and corrosiveness that money can play in a democratic system like ours.
My next comment will be on the same quote, when the minister used the word “accountability”. I love this. When the Conservatives say that word a lot, I want to bring into the broader discussion, to put the context of Bill C-21 in a more enlightened form, that under their new elect-the-senator bill, there is no accountability.
In fact, the senators would be prohibited by law from being accountable because they would run on a platform of promises, as we all do. They would serve nine years, which we do not. If we look at the model all of us here live by, if we want to stay in office beyond our term, we go back to the people and say, “Here are the promises I made. Here is what I did, what I said, how I voted. Now I ask you, my boss, how did I do, and do I deserve to get rehired or re-elected for another term, yes or no?”
However, elected senators, and I use that term loosely, would be prohibited by law from running again after nine years. Where is the accountability? There would be no accountability at the beginning, only promises. There would be no accountability in the middle. They would not even have constituency offices so they would not even be meeting Canadians, never mind being accountable. At the point when they should go back at the end of their terms, they would be prohibited by law from running again. Where is the accountability?
The minister also said in that same quote, “integrity”. That is pretty rich, coming from the party that gives us the current Minister of National Defence.
The last point is on the Conservatives' use of “transparency”. We do not need to look any further than today's question period and the Canada-U.S. border plan. We do not even know what is in the plan. It may be taking away massive amounts of Canadians' rights.
I raise all of that because the minister sets all these standards and uses these lofty words in his news releases. When we start to analyze piece by piece what the government is doing, it is undemocratic reform on a whole host of files. The words “accountability, integrity and transparency” are the last ones that Canadians are thinking of when they look at the actions and the agenda of the Conservative government.
I will end there. We are in support of closing the loophole. However, we think that there is some improvement needed to make our system stronger.
We have some serious concerns about having banks and other financial institutions as the only ones that can provide capital, with no requirement to actually provide it to all parties no matter what the circumstances. That is a huge problem, but it is solvable. I believe, if we wanted to, we could find ways to bring in conditions that would be acceptable to everyone concerned and make that aspect even fairer.
We hope that we can do something about the requirements for 20 or 30 people to get that initial line of credit. Here is one idea. One could be allowed to spend up to a certain percentage of the maximum. If one's limit were $100,000, one might be allowed to borrow up to $40,000 or $50,000 on the signature or collateral of the candidate.
I am sure we could find a regime that would still meet the goals of the government to level the playing field in terms of money, but also to make sure that our election laws apply equally across the country. The laws should not give an advantage or disadvantage to one's opponents in a general election or byelection.
If these concerns are not resolved, then there is no guarantee what position we will take at third reading. However, with those caveats, we are prepared to support the bill going to committee.
I hope the minister will allow us the same flexibility and tone that we had when we reviewed the previous bill, which we are voting against. The process at that committee was certainly as fair as I could have hoped for. At no time did I feel that the government was using a hammer to shut down democracy. I hope that we can look forward to the same relationship at committee on this bill. I hope we can make the improvements we need as well as look at other improvements to make it even better.
I always say that on bills like this, the ideal would be if we could all be standing in support of it. Would that not say a lot about a good piece of election law?
That is our goal; that is our position. We will see what happens.