Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to debate Bill C-2 today. We have before the House a very important piece of legislation which outlines in finite detail the democratic process in Canada. It outlines for Canadians how we should be electing our representatives in a democratic way, in an inclusive way and in a transparent way to represent the interests of the House of Commons in issues which pertain to all Canadians.
We have seen the Liberal government opposite continue on its anti-democratic path. It is very unfortunate but it continues to crush debate in the House of Commons. This is parliament. We have been sent from all parts of the country to speak about issues which are important to all of us.
What do members of the Liberal government do? They spend hour after hour strategizing on how to reduce debate and reduce the importance of parliament. They do this by time allocation. They are implementing a shortened debate period.
We will be sitting for seven or eight hours in the House of Commons on this bill and 301 members of parliament will have maybe three hours to debate it. The government has used time allocation to shorten the debate from a natural progression of spending a few days to hear the views of other members on the bill, how to improve it and make it better. It has spent all its time taking democracy away from Canadians. Time allocation is when the government invokes a time period of two or three hours to debate a bill which is hundreds of pages long.
I am not sure whether the Prime Minister or the government House leader had time to read the bill. It is 258 pages long and they want 301 members of parliament to speak no more than 10 minutes and condense that into three hours of debate. This is anti-democratic. It is an indication of Liberal priorities. They do not want any debate on democracy because they like the closed system. It is a very closed system where very few people are elected to the House of Commons to represent 30 million Canadians. When we get here they shut down debate because they do not like exactly what has been going on.
We in the NDP are very concerned about that. We object to the strategies and the terrible lack of democracy Liberals are pushing on Canadians. We feel the motions we are debating now have some problems, but some of them are very good.
We believe there are five cornerstones of democracy and we want to apply those cornerstones to Bill C-2. The government House leader knows exactly what those cornerstones are. That is why he is suppressing debate. They are responsibility, accessibility, accountability, inclusiveness and transparency. We put Bill C-2 to the test on those five cornerstones and the bill fails in many ways in each and every one of them.
With respect to the particular grouping we are talking about, the issue of numbered companies contributing to political parties and candidates was put forward by the NDP as an amendment. We are asking all parties to embrace and support it because it provides additional transparency with respect to who is giving money to political parties and candidates. Concerning transparency, the way it works now is that if a numbered company makes a contribution to the constituency of the industry minister or to the Liberal Party in general, it only has to provide its number, for example 651391 Canada Inc. There is no indication who that represents or who is behind that contribution.
Our amendments make it more transparent by calling upon the numbered company making a contribution to outline who is its chief executive officer or its president and to outline their addresses. Many Canadians may not know but the addresses of numbered companies are primarily those of law firms. Lawyers are the legal bodies behind the entities and they just use their law offices as the head offices of numbered companies. It is very difficult to obtain this information. We feel this is one amendment that should be supported.
In addition there is the issue regarding voting hours in British Columbia. My three NDP colleagues from Vancouver East, Burnaby—Douglas, and Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys, believe very strongly that the hours in the act should be changed. The amendment in this grouping makes that suggestion. They are calling for the hours in British Columbia to be from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. instead of 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. because the lower mainland is a very congested area and the transportation system is not as up to par as it should be. People in the lower mainland tend to work far distances from their residences and therefore will have difficulty voting by 7 p.m.
As critic on Bill C-2 they asked me to make that recommendation to the government. They had many instances and anecdotal stories about how people were unable to exercise their franchise in the last election because the polls in the lower mainland closed at 7 p.m. We are asking the government to consider supporting this amendment.
I have put forward amendments with respect to numbered companies which would apply not only to candidates in political parties but to third parties as well. We hear that the Reform and the Conservative parties are very cautious about this amendment. They want third parties, which could be the oil companies, the prescription pharmaceutical corporations, the banks or the National Rifle Association in the States, not to be transparent in terms of contributions made to them in order for third parties like these organizations to attack, personally, individual candidates or members of parliament who are seeking re-election.
We find that to be unfair. Third parties should qualify and follow the rules of Bill C-2 with respect to numbered companies and the transparency of political contributions so that when the oil companies attack my colleague from Acadie—Bathurst in an election campaign we will know where the moneys came from. We will know whether they came from corporations, Imperial Oil or Shell, or from third parties which feel we have been fighting these issues to defend consumers, that we have been taking and holding accountable the oil companies which have undertaken to gouge consumers. We feel that the contributions which are made to these particular organizations have to be crystal clear and transparent.
We in the NDP also support the notion of regular, fixed election dates. We would like to see the federal election held in the middle of June every four years. The writs would be issued on the second Monday of May, every fourth year. The election would take place in the second or third week of June, depending on the season and the calendar. We feel that regular election dates would take away a lot of the politicking that members opposite are so inclined to participate in, rather than deciding on what kind of action they are going to take on behalf of Canadians.
The biggest problem we have was mentioned by the member for Mississauga West a few minutes ago: “What shall I oppose today?” That was his line about the opposition. Some members of the opposition get up every day to oppose things. New Democrats get up every day to make recommendations as to what actions we could take to solve the problems of the country. The Liberals do not seem to get it. They do not listen to our recommendations, which, by the way, are embraced by the majority of Canadians in many ways.
For example, today in question period I stood in the House to ask the Prime Minister what action plan he was instituting to defend the Canadian economy, consumers, truckers and agricultural producers from the OPEC oil cartel and soaring energy prices. Rather than saying that we have a plan or we are working on a plan, I said that maybe the Prime Minister should look to the Americans. America is the home of capitalism and free enterprise, where this sort of thing was born, and it has undertaken a 17-point program to support its consumers, truckers and farmers. Yet all our government does is pass the buck to the provinces. Rather than saying that we oppose what the Prime Minister is doing, we say this is what he should be doing with respect to oil prices. He should be calling together the provinces and the oil companies to figure out what can be done. They should look at the recommendations of the U.S. to know how it is helping its consumers and business people.
The Liberals only listen to what they want to hear. They do not want to have any debate on issues like Bill C-2, as we have proposed. We feel that it is unacceptable to have this kind of suppressive government. It suppresses debate and discourages members from putting forward alternatives. It does not like the views of the grassroots in the House. It does not even like the views of the majority in the House. It tends to discount this, say that it will deal with that, and it just calls the opposition names. I think that is pretty low class. On behalf of the NDP, I put forward our opposition to Bill C-2.
