Loyola Hearn

[Canada Elections Act, February 20th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take the opportunity to say a few words on the bill. It is one that I suppose a lot of us look at with mixed feelings. Most people in the House and all people outside of it have been looking forward for some time to cleaning up election financing. However we have to ask this question. Does the bill do anything about that or does it make it worse? There will certainly be arguments on both sides.

When people outside the House analyze the bill itself, they will note that they are being asked to finance political parties which are in existence. No provision is made for parties that are non-existent. It comes at a tremendous price. We are looking at roughly $20 million a year in contributions to the parties. No wonder the governing party is so interested in the bill because it would get the large share of the contribution.

Contributions will be based upon the amount of votes received in the last election. For a party that has a heavy debt, as does the Liberal Party, it will help pay off its debt and put it in very good shape. Other parties will not fare so well, although that part of it should not be the determining factor.

We should look at one thing. Why do we want to change the financing of elections? The first thing most people would say would be to make it transparent and clean it up. A lot of people think politicians and political parties are bought by big corporations, unions and, in some cases, perhaps individually bought by individuals who have significant dollars. That cleaning up and transparency has to be brought in.

I think most people would find it would be few and far between that large donations would be given to anybody except the governing party. Who can buy favours from our party, the NDP, the Bloc or even the Alliance? People might want to ingratiate themselves and make healthy contributions. However, if people looked at the contributors to most of our parties, I do not think they would be very concerned with influence peddling, regardless of what stripe the governing party was. It could be a different colour. That is the kind of stuff we need to clean up.

There is no doubt about the fact that there should be a limit on donations. However what that limit should be is a good question.

When I discussed the bill openly with people in my province, they asked me what the limits would be on donations. I told them that it would be $10,000 on a personal donation and $1,000 from corporations. They said to me that I had it mixed up, that surely it had to be $10,000 from corporations and perhaps $1,000 from an individual. I told them that was not the way the bill had been written.

To me it does not make a lot of sense to set a $10,000 limit from individuals and have a $1,000 limit from corporations. That is not reasonable. Certainly that amount could be significantly higher without people feeling the corporation is trying to buy favours.

We have to realize, as a lot of us do, that the majority of the companies do not try to buy favours. They are clean-cut, honest corporations and individuals. They contribute to political parties because they think those parties or individuals within parties are doing a good job. They want to ensure we continue to do our work. The only way to do that is to be re-elected, and to be re-elected costs money.

Reasonable donations made for the right reasons have always been a part of our system. There is absolutely nothing wrong with people, individually or collectively through their companies or unions, contributing to political parties, if it is within reason and it is done in a transparent manner so everybody knows where the money has comes from.

On the other hand, we also realize that the majority of politicians are honest individuals. They do not want to be bribed or bought and will reject any offers to try to influence their decisions.

That is not what a lot of people think. Just a couple of days ago I saw a poll on what people thought about different professions across the country and who was honest and who was not. Politicians of course came out on the bottom of the poll. People have a perception that politicians are there to get what they can out of it and to help the buddies who buy them.

That perception has to be cleaned up. The legislation does nothing to help out in that regard. Trust funds are not counted. Any contributions made before announcements have been made are not counted. Any specific individual, whether it be a leadership candidate or a party candidate, has all kinds of under the table ways of accumulating large sums of money that he or she can use. That will not be affected by the legislation.

I am not sure what the present legislation will do to help correct the problems that have to be corrected. The only thing of real significance is that it asks Canadians, who really finance everything that goes on in government anyway, to finance the election of members. Maybe people will say that by this they could ensure we were not being influenced by outside events, individuals or corporations. I do not think that is what they will to say. I think they will say that if a MP wants to be elected then go get elected and find any assistance that is needed. However in doing so, ensure that it is done properly, that is above board, that is transparent and that it is an honest process. The legislation does absolutely nothing to assure this.

I have absolutely no problem with the general idea that we have to make election financing accountable and transparent. The process in election financing and the financing of leadership races or anything else that is involved with those types of activities is what must be addressed and be addressed in a way that is right, proper, open and transparent.

If we do that, people will look at all of us here and say that we are here for the right reasons and that we have been elected through the right process. They will be able to say that they are proud to make a reasonable contribution and do not mind doing it openly. Then a lot of the misconceptions about politicians could be corrected. Maybe it is time we got down to doing it, instead of complicating the process which the legislation as it exists will do.

Hopefully through the House and through the committee these changes will be made. Then we will have a piece of legislation which we can all support by the time we finish.

[Business of the House, February 20th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am at a loss. At the meeting of House leaders, every party being represented, there was full agreement for a debate on fisheries generally. Is the member telling us that after we make decisions and agreements, we can run around behind the curtains and come up with something else?

[Business of the House, February 20th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, there has been agreement by all parties that on Wednesday of next week there will be a take note debate on the fisheries. I did not hear the member mention it in his oration.

[The Budget, February 20th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, in this week's budget the finance minister announced that he would split the CHST into a health transfer and a social transfer on April 1, 2004. We agree. However by that time the member for LaSalle—Émard, who set up the CHST, could be the new prime minister.

My question is for the finance minister. What guarantees has he sought from the member for LaSalle—Émard that he will actually go ahead with the promise of splitting the CHST?

[Points of Order, February 19th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, during question period today you ruled out of order a question from the member for Kings—Hants. I know it was very noisy in the House but I was wondering if you perhaps could look at the blues because I believe that the main part of that question was in order. I would certainly appreciate your ruling on that matter.

[East Coast Music Awards, February 19th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the Newfoundland and Labrador nominees and participants in the East Coast Music Awards held this past weekend.

I congratulate specifically the winners: Crush and The Flummies, and in particular the group, Great Big Sea.

These fine young men are not only good friends of mine, not only constituents, they are also super musicians and tremendous ambassadors for the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. We are very proud of them.

[Ethics, February 18th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the government's guidelines on blind trust stipulate that the peekaboo practice can occur only in exceptional circumstances where an extraordinary corporate event is likely to materially affect the assets. That means that the transaction between Canada Steamship Lines and the Indonesian company must have been exceptional or extraordinary.

Did the then minister absent himself from all cabinet discussions on the APEC summit, on the Asian market meltdown or other issues that might have affected the exceptional circumstances--

[Referendum Act, February 17th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand and say a few words on Bill C-216. I wish to congratulate my friend from the NDP for bringing this issue before the House, not because I necessarily agree with him although I could be persuaded, but because this is an issue that should be debated thoroughly in the House, to see if a better way can be found of reforming Parliament and the electoral system.

I have a concern about proportional representation. We would look at the percentage of votes that various parties get and those parties would have a number of members according to the number of votes those parties received. That sounds tremendous and it would be hard to argue against because that would truly be proportional representation. However to do that fairly is another story.

I will give members an example. The great province of Newfoundland and Labrador is the best example to use because we have only seven seats. In my province, the NDP and the Canadian Alliance seldom receive over 10% of the vote. Consequently, they receive no seats whatsoever. There are seven seats and a party needs about 15% of the vote to get one seat. If a party were to receive 15% of the vote, from which riding would the member be selected from? In all seven ridings the Liberals, the Conservatives or whomever, usually win with a large percentage of the vote. But because some other party received 15% in the total vote, that would mean it had to have a member.

I am not sure of the semantics involved because it is extremely complicated. Before we go off saying this is the way to do it we had better work out a system that does not deprive the majority of people in any one riding who voted from having the person they selected as their true representative of that riding otherwise it would be unfair to the riding involved. It might be unfair to the province and it might be unfair to the country, but it would certainly be unfair to the people who actually selected that person. We must work out a system that will get around that.

There are several good things that could come out of the suggestion made by my hon. colleague. There are some possibilities for electoral reform and they include: making the Senate an elected body; appointing an independent ethics counsellor responsible to Parliament and not the Prime Minister; making members of Parliament the central decision makers in Ottawa once again, which we certainly cannot say we are today; requiring ministers to be directly accountable to Parliament for their budgets and the conduct of their departments; and enhancing citizen participation by the way of referenda on major public issues.

All of these issues have been debated over the last couple of years with most people saying this is the way to go, but we are doing little to implement such good ideas. The bill, which has been put forth by my hon. colleague, would perhaps spur things on to improving things considerably.

The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, at its conference in August of last year in Edmonton, adopted a major parliamentary reform document covering many of the issues mentioned by various parties. It certainly concerns the Canadian Alliance because it was developed in conjunction with a number of people who sit in that party. If people were to openly admit the truth, they would say that we are very close on such policies.

We might ask ourselves why we are not as close on other issues. That is a good question which has to be answered one of these days.

There are a couple of sections in that policy document, one on parliamentary reform and one on citizen involvement. On parliamentary reform some of the things talked about are free votes, confidence votes, party discipline, commons committees and proper representation and control, code of ethics in Parliament to discipline parliamentarians, legislative federalism, power of the purse, relationship between Parliament and the courts, Senate reform, government by regulation, and the list goes on.

Regardless of how much we talk about it, regardless of the document we brought forth, regardless of the cooperation of the Canadian Alliance with us in relation to these policies, regardless of bills brought forward by my colleague and members of the NDP, and regardless of the position of the Bloc, unless we change government we would not get it done. The Bloc and the Canadian Alliance are perhaps the two parties that are already benefiting perhaps from proportional representation because most of their votes are in selected areas in the country and they tend to elect members according to the percentage of the vote, more so than other parties that are spread out or have a wider base of support across the country.

Regardless of how much we talk about electoral reform, unless we change government we would not get it done because instead of trying to reform Parliament to be more open, the present government is just entrenching. We never had a better example than what is happening today.

In a few minutes time the government House leader will stand to invoke closure on a bill that we will be talking about for a few hours today. That goes against everything anybody in the House should stand for. We already agreed a little earlier to take from the budget large sums to go toward the gun registry. It is such an embarrassment. Now from the back door the government opens up the doors again. We cannot go on with that charade.

It is about time that we drew to the attention of the people of the country the financial cruelty that has been perpetrated upon them by the government opposite. In light of that, to create part of that awareness, I move:

That this House do now adjourn.

[Publishing Industry, February 14th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the Department of Canadian Heritage's book publishing industry development program provides financial assistance to publishers for Canadian authored books. Publishers have to recognize the assistance of the federal government by placing the specified text at the front of the books.

Will the Minister of Canadian Heritage tell us why the Government of Canada subsidized the publishing of the best selling Harry Potter series, a series that has sold over 192 million copies worldwide and was written by a British author?

[Supply, February 13th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, now we have taken away the toque, the hockey stick and the tape and we are just down to the cost of the sweater, I guess, in relation to the MasterCard.

Let me say to the member that I do not think there is anybody in the House who would not rather have some kind of secure system that would protect our privacy and identity, if it were possible. However, when the member talks about what the card can do, in order for me or anybody else to be able to access this card for these complexities just imagine the type of complicated back-up technology that would be required to put such a card in play.

Whenever we get into something like this, the first thing we have to do, if we are responsible keepers of the taxpayers' money here, is a cost benefit analysis. It is too bad we did not do it with gun control. If we do it with this and the government can come back with something worthwhile, we might have a different type of debate in the House.