Mr. Speaker, last November, the Nanos polling organization asked Canadians what they thought of cash for access or pay to play. I will just read from The Globe and Mail coverage what the answer was. It says:
A Nanos public-opinion survey, conducted for The Globe and Mail from Nov. 26 to 30, shows that 62 per cent of Canadians disapprove of the Liberal Party’s practice of charging people $1,500 a ticket to meet in private with Mr. Trudeau and senior cabinet ministers who oversee major spending or policy-making decisions.
Canadians strongly do not approve. There we go. Number one, it is a profitable way of raising money. Number two, Canadians strongly do not approve. Sixty-two per cent were against this and 33% approved, so 2:1 Canadians think this is a bad idea. Therefore, the Liberals need cover and their cover is to say, “We have this legislation that is going to still allow all these things to happen, but there will be public notice that the events are occurring”. Of course, there is public notice anyway. They are selling tickets, so that is not a change or an innovation.
It would be on a website now, which is nice. They would not be in a private residence. That was their promise that they subsequently backed off from. Members will notice how many of those that I cited were in private residences. I think the reason they took that out is that this is a key component. The really special access to the PM, to the finance minister, and to others comes from being the host.
As well, there would be a reporting afterward. The fact is that everything gets reported anyway, because donations are reported in Canada. They get put up on the Elections Canada website. We could go back and track every single donor who contributed more than a relatively paltry sum to my riding association or my campaign or any of the leadership campaigns we had going on for the Conservative Party. There is simply no new meat here.
This is simply a way of having it so that the next time someone like John Ivison thinks of writing a story, he will say, “Wait a minute, they passed a law about this; I guess it is now okay”. The next time the Ethics Commissioner has something to raise, she could say, “After the issue came up, Parliament passed a law, so it is the expressed will of Parliament that this sort of practice be permitted”. This is all about regularizing this practice. The legislation is all about legitimizing this practice. This is all about saying, “Yes, influence peddling is okay. Influence peddling is just the way we do business here in Canada.”
If there is a theme other than sanctimoniousness about the current government, a theme other than finding ways of violating the spirit of the law over and over again, a theme other than abandoning conventions of behaviour, whether it is about unilateral changes to the Standing Orders in the House of Commons or the unilateral breach of the practices that we have all had regarding fundraising, if there is a theme beyond those it is this: that we need to go back to the good old days. I do not mean the good old days of Trudeau senior. I mean the good old days of the 19th century, with no restrictions at all on the practice of power. Far from moving ahead to a new age or a new era, the current government is the most retrograde government.
I have been here since Jean Chrétien's day, and I was not the biggest fan of Jean Chrétien but the current Prime Minister is so much worse. In fact, I think it was a surprise to him that our prime minister, despite his vast powers, is not actually an elected dictator. There are in fact careful restrictions in this place and out there in public, some of them in law, many of them simply in conventions and practices and usages.
The Prime Minister frankly regards all of these as an impediment and would like to see them swept away. He is not our elected dictator, but it is my belief that he thinks he should be our elected dictator. Every four years we will go back and the people will decide whether they want to keep him on, but that is not what the Prime Minister of Canada is. He needs to learn that, and I can assure members that the Conservatives will be voting against Bill C-50.