John Bryden

[Lobbyists Registration Act, June 4th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, you know how much I admire and respect the member for Elk Island and his prowess as a debater in the House, and with the regret that I must feel in telling you that he has spoken for nearly an hour on the issue before the House, this amendment, and he clearly has demonstrated he has not done any homework on the amendment.

He never addressed what the amendment was all about and regrettably missed in his speech addressing an issue that is before the House, because of Bill C-15 and this amendment, that is vitally important on two fronts, and especially important to an opposition member.

What we have before us is the Senate improving an amendment that was brought in at report stage on the Lobbyists Registration Act by a government member, against government wishes, that was put in the House to a vote. The government voted against it and backbench Liberal MPs joined with opposition MPs and passed that amendment. I believe it was the first time in possibly more than a decade, if not longer, that an unfriendly amendment passed at report stage in the House.

What is so remarkable about what we have before us now is that this amendment amended the Lobbyists Registration Act to require that in-house lobbyists, when they registered with the registrar of lobbyists, had to declare whether they were former public office holders. It addressed an extremely important issue. We are familiar with the high profile lobbyists who might have been former politicians, and they are usually obvious out there when they act as lobbyists and lobby the government.

One of the problems in the lobbying industry, one of the problems of transparency, one of the problems of fairness has been the fact that sometimes mid-level bureaucrats, people who are relatively anonymous, leave their employment and within a year, which is according to the conflict of interest guidelines, suddenly appear as lobbyists and wind up lobbying the very people who were their former colleagues. The problem that arises when this occurs is that these people obviously have significant advantage when they lobby.

One of the difficulties in the industry and among people who hire lobbyists to lobby government, because lobbying government is a legitimate enterprise, and one of the problems is that if one company hires a lobbyist and another company hires a lobbyists and that second company hires a lobbyist that includes a person who formerly worked for the department in which the company is seeking a contract, then that particular company has a tremendous advantage. In order to even the playing field it should be made possible, and this was done by my amendment, that anyone can refer to the list of lobbyists that is cut by the registrar of lobbyists to determine whether a person who is lobbying was a former office holder.

I point out that there is anecdotal evidence that this is a major problem in contracting out. It has been a problem in the Department of National Defence. Indeed, I acted on this issue because of complaints in my riding where I had a firm that was competing for a contract, a federal government defence contract, and after that contract was won by another firm, it discovered that other firm had employed a lobbyist who had been working with the very people who were deciding on the merits of which firm would get the contract and which would not. Therefore, it was an unfair playing field.

Unfortunately I was never able to bring this issue adequately before the committee. I had reasons why I was unable to bring this issue before the committee at the committee stage of debate on the lobbyist registration bill, so I introduced at the last moment a report stage amendment that would require in-house lobbyists to register as former office holders when they applied for registration to the registrar.

Anyway, the point is this, and I regret that the member did not deal with it in his speech, is that I introduced the amendment and the government circulated a note to the effect that it did not support the amendment. Nevertheless many of my colleagues on this side of the House and of course the opposition supported the amendment and it passed.

The really good news, and why the amendment that is before the House is so important from the Senate, is naturally the bill passed third reading and went to the Senate and the issue of this amendment came up. What was pointed out to the Senate committee that studied the lobbyists registration bill was that my amendment only dealt with in-house lobbyists and it did not deal with consultant lobbyists, the one being professional lobbyists and the other being people who would be hired by a firm and so employed.

The Senators listened to debate from witnesses that argued for my amendment and the expansion of my amendment to consultant lobbyists and those who argued against.

The Senators in their wisdom sided with my original intent and what they did was they composed an amendment of their own that brought in not only in-house lobbyists but included consultant lobbyists. I should add that they not only made this change and proposed this change in committee, they also convinced the minister.

The minister appeared before the committee, and we can read the Senate Hansard to see this. The Minister of Industry, having first opposed the amendment when I introduced it in the House, told the Senators that on reflection and based on the evidence that the Senators had heard from the various witnesses they dealt with, he now supported it.

What we have now before the House is an amendment to the Lobbyists Registration Act that builds on the initiative of a backbench MP who used his opportunity, his privilege in the House to move an amendment, and got the support of his colleagues, got the support of the Senate and now it is before the House and will undoubtedly pass.

I think what is so important to bear in mind here is the demonstration that backbench MPs on the government side and opposition MPs when they have a good amendment and can get the support of the House can get it into law.

Even more important than that I think, is the story I have just told is a fine demonstration of how the Senate, that other place, can work effectively. If we read the Senate Hansard , we will see that the Senators did due diligence and in one sense they did better due diligence on this issue than was done in this House. The result is an amendment that is before the House which increases the transparency and levels the playing field among lobbyists.

I say only one other thing. In fairness to my friend, the member for Elk Island, I share his feelings that much more work has to be done with the Lobbyists Registration Act. It is a very imperfect piece of legislation even as it stands.

One of the reasons why I felt obligated to move an amendment of my own was because I did not feel that enough was being done to the legislation to strengthen it, to increase the level of transparency, to actually improve our ability as members of Parliament, as the media and as ordinary citizens to see not only who the lobbyists are but to see who are being lobbied.

Really lobbying is a legitimate enterprise as long as it is done openly, above board and with transparency. However what we also need very badly is to be able to see who, particularly in the lower levels of the bureaucracy, are being wined and dined with the intent to influence them.

I feel that while the lobbyists registration changes that are the entire package of Bill C-15 are an advancement, there is still a long way to go. In that sense I agree wholeheartedly with the member for Elk Island and some of the criticisms he presented in his speech. I only wish that he had dealt a little b with the amendments at hand because really, as they say in the media, it was truly a good news story.

[Petitions, June 4th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, the third petition has come to me, oddly enough, from people in British Columbia. They pray that Parliament pass legislation to recognize the institution of marriage in federal law as being a lifelong union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.

Madam Speaker, as you know, that legislation already exists. The problem is that some courts have challenged that legislation. I can assure the petitioners that it is the law of the land now. I sincerely hope it will continue to be so.

[Petitions, June 4th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, the second petition asks the government to not do anything to change sections 318 and 319 of the Criminal Code which would introduce homosexual as part of the definition of hate crime. I believe that arises from Bill C-250 that is before the House. The petitioners are very concerned about that legislation.

[Petitions, June 4th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I have three petitions.

In the first petition the petitioners request that the government do everything it can to prevent child pornography.

[Colin Gibson, June 3rd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, today in the Senate chamber the Canadian Association of Former Parliamentarians held its annual assembly to honour those former MPs who passed away during the previous year. Among those so honoured was Colin Gibson, my Liberal predecessor.

He was a fine man. As good as they come. He had an unwavering faith in his country that he demonstrated as a soldier during the second world war and in democratic battle in this House of Commons. As I came to know him, I also appreciated that he had an unflinching belief in the basic goodness of all human beings. That, above all else, was his great strength.

It is a privilege and an honour to attempt to follow in his footsteps in this House.

[Lobbyists Registration Act, June 3rd, 2003]

Madam Speaker, on a point of order, the member for Elk Island seems to be going on indefinitely. Is there no limit on the time he has to speak?

[Public Service Modernization Act, June 2nd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to read from the House of Lords Hansard , when Lord Laird on January 3, 2003, asked Her Majesty's government:

Whether any new appointees to the Civil Service in any part of the United Kingdom are required to take an oath of allegiance; if so, which parts of the Civil Service require this...

The minister for the cabinet office and chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Lord Macdonald of Tradeston replied:

Under the terms of the Civil Service Code, members of the Home Civil Service owe their loyalty to the administration in which they serve.

No civil servant in the UK is required to take an oath of allegiance.

I also note there is no oath of citizenship in the United Kingdom to the Queen or anyone else. Why should Canadians be more monarchist than the British?

[Supply, May 13th, 2003]

Madam Chair, I rise on a point of order. I would like to elaborate on the point. Perhaps the way to proceed is that every time the minister answers a question, the next question should be half as long as the minister's answer.

[Library and Archives of Canada Act, May 13th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great attention to the member opposite. While time is running out on this debate, I call his attention to clause 12(3) of the bill which suggests that the records held by the Privy Council Office, cabinet confidences, that is subsection 69(1) of the Access to Information Act, would not be accessible by the national archivist. That means there is going be a body of records that will be unavailable and out of reach of historians should the Privy Council Office refuse to give permission for the chief librarian archivist to access them.

Does he have a comment on that?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2003, May 12th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly did not want to jump ahead of one of my colleagues from the opposite side who I know have been following this legislation very closely and who I think have been contributing mightily to this debate.

I did want to involve myself on two points, Mr. Speaker, first and foremost, Motions Nos. 14 and 15 that deal with the disability tax credit. What the government was trying to do by sections 74 and 75 of the act was to clarify the eligibility for the disability tax credit in the context of individuals being able to feed and clothe themselves.

One of the things that was very noticeable when the government moved on restricting access to the disability tax credit was that quite a few people came into my constituency office and reacted negatively to it. There are two categories of these individuals. The first is that category of individuals who I could see really were unfairly affected by the tightening down of the definition of what constitutes eligibility for the disability tax credit.

For example, I remember vividly one lady who came into my office. She was arthritic and quite crippled. Her hands were completely twisted around. She had a lot of difficulty just moving, but this was an individual who had tremendous joie de vivre. She did not let this crippling illness prevent her from doing as much as she possibly could, but because she was perceived by the bureaucracy as being mobile and able to move around, she was declared ineligible for the disability tax credit. The reality was that because of the very twisted condition of her hands in particular, she genuinely had a real difficulty in feeding herself and she had to have assistance. So it was very important for her to be brought under the disability tax credit even though in every other sense she was mobile in society, or as mobile as she could be.

On the other hand, there were people who came in and complained that they were eliminated from the disability tax credit because they had a food allergy. This food allergy caused them to spend all kinds of time searching for the right foods, as a matter of fact, so much time that they could not effectively work or hold down a job and this kind of thing. Not wanting to categorize all of those people, there was a reality. One gets this sense when one is a member of Parliament in one's constituency office and deals with a lot of people. There was a sense that this category of individual was willing to surrender to their disability rather than fight it.

In comparison to the lady with the severe arthritis, these people seemed to be, to all appearances, very capable of moving about and contributing to society and contributing to their own care and looking after themselves. But there was a Federal Court ruling pertaining to the disability tax credit which basically suggested that people who spend an inordinate amount of time trying to look for the foods that they need in order to satisfy their allergies should be brought under the disability tax credit.

The government, in amending the legislation we see before us now in clauses 74 and 75, attempts to distinguish between these two realities, one a disability that genuinely does make it impossible to feed and dress oneself. I can assure members that it is very difficult, and I know this from experience, to do the most elementary things when one's hands are crippled.

Just briefly as an aside, I should say that I have some passing knowledge of this because on my 21st birthday my friend and I jumped the neighbour's hedge and I came down on my hands on a concrete sidewalk. While neither of my hands were fractured, all the ligaments on either side were strained. For about six weeks I could not use either hand, so I can sympathize with people who might have severe arthritis about how this makes it very difficult to do simplest things like feeding and dressing oneself.

While the original amendments in this section make this distinction, and they are good amendments, unfortunately the motions that are proposed would scrap both clauses 74 and 75 eliminating, in my view, this very necessary distinction between being physically crippled to do something that is essential and being what I suppose one could call emotionally disadvantaged or even emotionally crippled. Sometimes it is not wise to use the government's ability to assist people financially to address issues that are basically emotional. Sometimes it is better if these people delve into their own resources to find their own ways of dealing with these emotional disabilities.

I will leave that for a moment and take advantage of the few minutes that I have to comment on something else in the bill which I have not had an opportunity to comment on before. That is the introduction in this legislation of a first nations goods and services tax.

It is ironic because of course the goods and services tax is one of the most hated taxes in Canada. Although it is not being debated very much these days, I guess after almost 12 years in which it has been in place, people have given up on it and it is no longer the source of negative comment that it once was. However it is a very important method of raising revenue for the federal government.

Bill C-28 brings the goods and services tax into native self-government. It is a very positive step in that the government has been attempting, as a matter of policy, over the past five or six years, to bring in aboriginal self-government and make aboriginal communities as independent as possible. One of the ways to do that is rather than aboriginal governments, Indian governments and band councils being totally reliant on money coming from the federal government, they should be able to raise money by themselves within their own communities. This legislation introduces the ability among first nations to raise money through a goods and services tax within their own communities.

What is so relevant and so timely about that is the government has before Parliament, as we speak, a complementary bill called Bill C-7, which brings in self-government, provisions of transparency, accountability and standards of governance to some 600 Indian bands and communities across the nation. This legislation has been somewhat controversial because I realize some of the opposition parties are opposed to it. However most of the country, most aboriginals and anyone who has any familiarity with the problems that exist on our Indian reserves will appreciate this is extremely important legislation.

I point out that if one is to enable Indian bands and communities to raise money on their own, one has to have a coherent scheme of transparency, accountability and standards of governance in those band councils. It is all part of a package, Bill C-28 and Bill C-7. These are two very positive things on the part of this government.