Dennis Mills

[Lobbyists Registration Act, April 25th, 1995]

Do not ask me to get involved in the changes that were made vis-à-vis the environment or labour standards. The point is that we did make some amendments.

The Reform Party amendment calls for past political or government work or political contributions over $1,000 to be disclosed. That works against getting people involved in the democratic process, not to mention the fact that it creates all kinds of paperwork. Absolutely nothing is hidden because the extent to which lobbyists have to register right now is 1,000 miles of improvement in comparison to the previous bill.

[Lobbyists Registration Act, April 25th, 1995]

We made some pretty good changes to the free trade agreement. Do not forget that.

[Lobbyists Registration Act, April 25th, 1995]

I can tell you right now, Mr. Speaker, that probably not more than 40 or 50 members in the House can claim that they have more than 100 or 200 businessmen and women knocking on doors and doing polls or getting involved in their campaigns. They might come along and go to a fundraiser but they will not actually go out to do the real slogging.

A motion like this only discourages people from getting involved in the political process. One of the reasons it discourages people from getting involved is because we have a situation, regrettably, where because of the concentration of power-and most of the real concentration of power tends to be with the Conservative Party-quite often large corporations do not encourage their employees to get involved in the political process.

We all know what happened during the 1988 election when large corporations not only took out full page ads saying: "Vote for the free trade agreement", they also wrote letters to their employees saying: "Campaign for the free trade agreement".

[Lobbyists Registration Act, April 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, how tough. We all know how tough it is to get businessmen and women to knock on doors and get involved in the political process. It is not-

[Lobbyists Registration Act, April 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, my humble apologies. In fact, I have been in this town since 1980 so I should know better.

I am opposed to this motion because I believe that as members of Parliament our greatest challenge is trying to attract people to participate in the political process. I believe that our responsibility is to attract-

[Lobbyists Registration Act, April 25th, 1995]

Let me tell you why I am opposed to this. What we need to do, and you are eventually going to discover this-

[Lobbyists Registration Act, April 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the member keeps saying do something about it. We are saying that it is in the bill. He has to read the bill and he will see it is there.

I was a little disappointed with one area. I have been campaigning for six years on comprehensive tax reform. Five years later there is one little mention in the Globe and Mail . It is not easy to get things through the House and we do not always get everything we want.

There were some substantial amendments to this bill that I think go a long way in creating transparency. I felt uncomfortable about the declaration of fees. We did not get that one through, but it does not take away from this being a good bill.

I want to deal with Motion No. 7, which I am opposed to. It is a Reform amendment: "Past political or government work and political contributions over $1,000 shall be disclosed".

I am totally opposed to the Reform amendment.

[Lobbyists Registration Act, April 25th, 1995]

That was obviously a contingency fee and in this bill there is a provision to look at contingency fees.

[Lobbyists Registration Act, April 25th, 1995]

I will come back to that. Let me state the three things in the bill which the member did not mention when he said this bill did not have any teeth.

Another thing in this bill has to do with contingency fees. The example the member used about the air bus situation, obviously it was not an hourly fee.

[Lobbyists Registration Act, April 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, no one on this side of the House fears recrimination for standing up and speaking out on issues.

Members have heard the Prime Minister say on many occasions that quite often we have a much better debate within our own party than we have in the House because sometimes the opposition does not get to the complexity and the depths of issues. The member who spoke previously really distorted this bill.

I was one of the most outspoken members in opposition on amending the Lobbyist Registration Act. There were three very specific areas we amended in this bill. I will talk about where I feel I did not get everything I wanted.

We have in the bill now things that make it much better. We now have in the loop all grassroots lobbying. That is important but was not a deal breaker for me. Another thing that really concerned me in opposition was communications techniques used by lobbyists. We knew lobbyists used polling and advertising. They sometimes spent millions of dollars in advertising and no one knew how the mood of the nation or the House was being affected.

This bill was amended to include a declaration of all those communication techniques so those in the House who have to deal with a lobby coming at them not just from a lobbyist but also from the way a market can be manipulated now know the techniques being used.