Ted White

[Canada Elections Act, November 25th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the government House leader has wasted a once in three decades opportunity to modernize the elections act.

Instead of guaranteeing freedom of expression, we have a gag law. Instead of encouraging participation by new and smaller parties, we have an illogical 50 candidate rule for a party to get its name on the ballot. Instead of returning officers being appointed on merit, we have a blatant political patronage system for the Prime Minister. Instead of planning for the future, we are denying the Chief Electoral Officer the opportunity to develop and utilize new voting technologies.

The bill has been opposed by newspaper publishers and broadcasters, small and emerging parties, anyone and everyone who is interested in freedom of expression, the Chief Electoral Officer, the official opposition and the voters themselves.

The very best thing the government House leader could do, even at this late stage in the process, would be to simply throw the bill away and start again from scratch.

[Supply, November 22nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, if we are talking about voting machines it is on the government side of the House where members are told what to do. They may as well stay home, frankly, and phone in their votes.

The crux of the debate today is whether or not people believe this treaty will work to the benefit of everyone involved, not just the Nisga'a but everybody.

Let us just look for a moment at the Nisga'a and whether it would work for the benefit of them. If we look at a band with a treaty, the Stony Plain band or the Samson Cree band, the Samson Cree has annual income of close to $100 million. Yet 85% of the natives on that reserve live in poverty and are on welfare. The Squamish band in my riding has $31 million in annual income. If we compare the standard of living off reserve with on reserve there is no comparison.

Can the minister name a single reserve in Canada governed by a treaty where the standard of living is as high as it is off reserve?

[Canada Elections Act, November 17th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the minister was not paying attention to the questions yesterday.

Bill C-2 slaps a gag law on voters, prevents the Chief Electoral Officer from testing new voting technologies, reinstates an illogical 50 candidate rule, perpetuates an offensive system of patronage appointments by the Prime Minister and cannot prevent cats and dogs from being registered as voters and candidates.

The bill fails every reasonable test for political neutrality and fairness. Why does the minister not just throw the bill away and start again from scratch?

[Canada Elections Act, November 17th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, an elections act should be politically neutral, supported by the public, the chief electoral officer and all the parties in this House. But the government House leader's new elections act is politically biased, opposed by the official opposition and criticized by the chief electoral officer as unfit for a third world country.

Why is the government not modernizing the elections act, making it more democratic, instead of persisting with a patronage ridden, gag law contaminated piece of yesterday's legislation?

[Canada Elections Act, November 16th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the Chief Electoral Officer said that it is critical that he be given the power to appoint his own returning officers based on merit, but the government insists on appointing its own political friends to those crucial positions.

The official opposition cannot support the bill and the Chief Electoral Officer says it is not fit for a third world country. Why exactly is the minister so enthusiastic about it?

[Canada Elections Act, November 16th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the House leader for the government was wrong when he told the editorial board of the Vancouver Sun that the official opposition supports the elections act.

Bill C-2 is supposed to be fair and non-partisan, but it slaps a gag law on the voters, it reinstates the unfair 50 candidate rule and it is riddled with patronage appointments for the government's friends. Even the Chief Electoral Officer said he would not recommend it to a third world country. No one except the House leader seems to like it.

I would like to know why he is publicly exaggerating support for the bill.

[Canada Elections Act, November 15th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the government is once again trying to impose an election act gag law on the voters of Canada.

The House leader for the government says that he needs a gag law because the parties and candidates have limits on what they can spend. The real reason for the gag law though is to try to prevent organizations like the National Citizen's Coalition from bringing the voting records and performance of MPs to the attention of voters during election campaigns.

But third party advertising would simply vanish all by itself if parliament was a place of the people where MPs voted the way their constituents told them to. The minister could put a stop to third party advertising simply by working to reform our dysfunctional parliament so that it is no longer a place of the parties where the outcome of every vote is known before the debates begin.

The minister's efforts are misdirected against third party spending. He should stop trying to treat the symptom instead of the cause and abandon his ill-advised gag law before the courts do it for him yet again for the third time.

[Plain Language Act, November 5th, 1999]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-311, an act to promote the use of plain language in federal statutes and regulations.

Mr. Speaker, I am sure that many members of the House, and perhaps all members of the House, have from time to time been asked by constituents to provide copies of bills. Some of them are very complicated and lengthy; for example, Bill C-2, which is presently before the House.

The purpose of this bill would be to get those bills into plain language that the folks who vote for us can actually understand, and which would make it clear to the courts that we do not want judicial activism.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Statutory Instruments Act, November 5th, 1999]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-310, an act to amend the Statutory Instruments Act (disallowance procedure for statutory instruments).

Mr. Speaker, this enactment would establish a statutory disallowance procedure that would be applicable to all statutory instruments subject to review and scrutiny by the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations.

In doing so, this enactment would ensure that parliament would have the opportunity to disallow any statutory instrument made pursuant to authority delegated by parliament or made by or under the authority of the cabinet. This would bring us in line with the standard practice used by the rest of the Commonwealth.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Supply, November 4th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to get clarification of one aspect of the hon. member's speech.

The member mentioned MMT. I missed the start and whether or not she mentioned the banning of MMT. There is a common misconception with the public, which has unfortunately been advanced by groups like the Council for Canadians, that MMT was banned by the government. That is not actually the case. By reviewing

Hansard

and the act, the record will show what happened. The government banned the marketing and transportation of MMT. There is a huge difference.

I apologize because I did not hear the member's particular sentence, and I do not know whether she made that error in her speech.

The record will show that at that time the Reform Party warned the government that banning the transportation and marketing of MMT would result in a NAFTA challenge. We urged and begged the government to institute an independent health study of MMT to determine whether it was in fact harmful because all of the Health Canada documentation said that it was not. There was no justification for banning MMT on health grounds. The only way we could see that it could be done would be to have an independent study that could then be used to justify if indeed it was unhealthy.

Could the member confirm that she understands that MMT itself was not banned, but it was its transportation and marketing, and that the government was foolish in not having an independent study to determine its health risks?