Ken Epp

[Supply, April 3rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order concerning the motion about the expiry of government business. In the sense that the vote was already deferred, should we not have continued our debate until 5.30 since we knew there would be no call for a vote on the motion?

[Supply, April 3rd, 2001]

I am allowing the hon. member to get at me by heckling. I need to ignore it, so I will do that. The hon. member campaigned on that. We put forward a motion which used that campaign promise word for word and then he stood and voted against it. My question would be why he voted against it.

[Supply, April 3rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, if we had a chance to debate between the two of us, I would simply challenge the member. In the 1993 election he campaigned for an independent ethics commissioner. The vote that he is referring to—

[Supply, April 3rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I beg your indulgence as I am having trouble with my voice today. I guess I will not be able to do what some other members have done, which is to yell louder when the argument is weak. Since I will not be able to do that today, I had better make sure my arguments are solid. I will be sharing my time with my colleague from St. Albert.

I have a very difficult chore today. Actually I am asking for a miracle. My chore is to persuade enough Liberal members to vote for the motion. I think that all or most opposition members will vote in favour of the motion. My chore is to persuade enough Liberal members that the motion has sufficient merit to vote for.

The reason my chore is so difficult is that the Prime Minister, who is actually the subject of the motion today, has the authority by the traditions of the House to tell those members how to vote. I have an idea. I do not have any evidence for it, but I have a strong suspicion that all Liberals on command will vote against the motion. I am aware that the vote has been deferred and will be held tomorrow night. We will see what happens.

We should begin by looking directly at what the amended motion says. It would state:

That this House calls for the immediate establishment of an independent judicial inquiry to determine if the Prime Minister is in breach of conflict of interest rules regarding his involvement with the Grand-Mère Golf Club and the Grand-Mère Inn; and that the inquiry should have broad terms of reference with the power to subpoena all relevant documents and witnesses.

I will now argue in favour of the motion. Many of the speeches today on both sides of the House have been arguing the various aspects of the case, which I believe should be argued in front of an independent judicial committee.

What has happened so far is that accusations have been made from this side that the opposite side vehemently denies or refuses to answer. As a matter of fact, from my point of view it adds credence to the suggestion that there is guilt on the other side. When one evades the answer it is because the answer is self-indicting. I should not use quite that strong a term, but that is what happens.

When we ask questions of members on the other side, whether it is the Minister of Industry or the Prime Minister himself, they do not answer the questions at all. They talk about something else.

It actually reminded me of when I was a youngster decades ago. I remember one in vogue joke that was going around. It was a little riddle that asked how many flapjacks it took to shingle the roof of a doghouse. The answer was 24 because a cow does not have feathers. If you can make sense of that, Mr. Speaker, I will give you the highest mark. It was just the weird sense of humour we had in Saskatchewan when we were youngsters.

However the House can see my analogy is that the answer had no relevance at all to the question. Even the question did not make any sense. Who knows anything about using flapjacks to shingle the roof of a doghouse? Both the question and the answer were nonsensical.

Liberal members say our questions are nonsensical and so they give nonsensical answers. On the other hand we think our questions have great merit. We ask our questions, but the perception on the other side is that they are nonsensical questions and therefore deserve nonsensical answers. Then we hear the nonsensical answers and we say they totally evade the facts.

I appeal to about 50 Liberals today. I know I will not get them all. They say they trust the Prime Minister. They believe he is clean in this matter. They are tired of this mess. Therefore they feel it is high time to put this matter to rest and to make sure it is put to rest they need somebody who is independent.

I was involved in the joint House of Commons-Senate committee in the 35th parliament where we talked about producing a code of ethics for parliamentarians, for MPs and senators. I had quite a bit of experience at that time. We were talking even then about the necessity of having an independent ethics commissioner, which is vastly different from the ethics counsellor we have now.

It just so happens that in the 1993 election campaign the Liberals campaigned on having an independent ethics counsellor, one who would report to parliament as the auditor general reports to parliament. Instead we got a non-independent ethics counsellor.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister actually quoted me when I said that we trusted Howard Wilson. He is a good man. I probably said that. I know that was my thinking at the time. I presumed he quoted accurately that part of my speech.

Even at that time I was adamant that person should be independent of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister has shown over and over again an almost unseemly level of loyalty to his ministers. I do not know whether it is at the Prime Minister's instigation or whether they did it by themselves, but I think of the minister of immigration who during the election campaign said things that were totally untrue. She laid accusations at the feet of members of our party that were just not accurate. Did he hold her accountable for that? No.

The same could be said for the junior minister responsible women's issues and whatever else. I do not remember all of her title. She also has made statements lately that categorize people in a most unseemly way. The Prime Minister stands and defends that person.

The Prime Minister says that his ministers can pretty well do anything they want and that his job is to defend them because the Liberal Party can never make mistakes. That weakens the position of the counsellor. Even if the ethics counsellor says things which are accurate, they are not believed because of the relationship the counsellor has with the Prime Minister.

Many people believe that part of the role of the ethics counsellor is to be on the damage control team. That is very unfortunate and neutralizes a lot of the benefit that we could have if we had a true, independent ethics commissioner with the right to look up documents and to ask people to give accurate information. Instead, we have an ethics counsellor who occasionally conducts media interviews but other than that answers only to the Prime Minister.

It is interesting that the ethics counsellor questions his role. I was intrigued to read in some notes that were prepared for us that he gave a speech in Australia a little over a year ago. It is interesting that when asked about his role he basically said that he had no legal status and no powers of investigation. He answers only to the Prime Minister and sees himself as his defender. He said in his speech in Australia in February 1999:

The system has evolved so that I would be expected to publicly defend the decisions of ministers. I have had to do so to explain the Prime Minister's interests in a golf course.

Basically he was saying that because of his relationship with the Prime Minister he was expected to do that.

I appeal to Liberal members that we do not have an independent ethics commissioner. We have an ethics counsellor. We basically have a spitting match between opposite sides of the story, even between the different media. The Globe and Mail says one thing. The Toronto Star joins in and then the National Post says just the opposite. We are all talking to one another.

It is time that we have an independent judicial inquiry as proposed in the motion so that it is able to get at the truth by having the ability to subpoena witnesses and documents and that when it gives its report it will be believable because it is truly independent.

[Supply, April 3rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured that the Liberal member would quote from one of my speeches back in 1994 when the ethics counsellor was first appointed.

I probably said what he quoted. I do not have a total recollection of what I said that many years ago. I can hardly believe that he quoted everything I said because I would almost certainly have said “too bad that he is not independent”. I trust the ethics counsellor as a person but he is not independent as promised in the election campaign.

I would like the hon. member to comment on the fact that the ethics counsellor was hired by and is answerable only to the Prime Minister and not to parliament directly.

[Supply, April 3rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, that member, as well as others before him, continually use the term ethics commissioner, which, as we know, has much greater power than an ethics counsellor. The person we have at the present is an ethics counsellor. Why do they deliberately use the other term which is not the correct one?

[Financial Consumer Agency Of Canada Act, March 30th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I am both pleased and somewhat distressed to speak on the bill today. The reason I am distressed is that after a long week of sleep deprivation I am not my usual bubbly self. I am struggling with a sore throat and other things. I feel sorry for myself and I am sure the Speaker does too.

Today we are dealing with Bill C-8. I have estimated that to read the bill would take 15 hours. If one were to read it with meaning, in other words read it to understand what is going on and actually verify some of its claims, it would take many more hours.

It is a huge undertaking for us today to go through Bill C-8, an act to establish the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada. The bill would basically set up the way financial institutions in the country are run.

On balance I support the bill, although I definitely have concerns. Ever since 1992 when the then Conservative government changed the rules for banks, there has been a need for revisions and for our banking sector to, if I can use the phrase, get with the times and be able to compete in the international market.

In a sense the bill is much overdue. The government moved very slowly in that regard. To make matters worse, in June 2000, not quite a year ago, the government introduced Bill C-38 in first reading. The bill then sat there and the government basically did nothing about it. It did not call for a debate on the bill in the House. It was a very slow process.

Then, to our chagrin, there was a totally unnecessary election in the fall which caused a great number of bills to drop off the order paper. The bills were enveloped into nothingness with the call of the election. The election was called for only one purpose, and that was a political purpose. The business of the country and helping our financial institutions with a new bill took a secondary position to the Prime Minister's overriding goal of getting yet another mandate. That seems to be so important to the Liberals, hanging on to power.

In retrospect we see that it was a good strategy, politically speaking. It is very much in keeping with a cartoon I saw in which the Prime Minister is shown reading a newspaper that says “Liberals have overwhelming third majority government”. The Prime Minister is saying to the people reading the cartoon “That is the best $200 million of your money that I ever spent”.

It is incredible that the government could drop all the business of the country and hold an unnecessary election one and a half years early, an election which cost the taxpayer $200 million and was conducted strictly and totally for political reasons. The Prime Minister wanted to win and did not care what it cost.

This bill along with many others was dropped and has now been resumed. It is interesting that Bill C-38 became with a few technical changes Bill C-8. If I wanted to reluctantly compliment the government I would thank it for bringing the bill back to the House with some urgency and allowing us to debate the issues in it.

Previous speakers, including my colleague from Prince George—Bulkley Valley, have spent quite a bit of time talking about the structure that is involved. It comes under the broad topic of having a bank we can trust. I really think that is important.

From my life experience and from having been on the finance committee studying this bill and other issues, it is my view that Canada is richly blessed with a financial system that is strong and trustworthy in the big picture.

In other words, we do not have a great deal of fear about our banks collapsing or about financial transactions not being completed in a timely fashion. As a matter of fact, and I do not believe this should be addressed in legislation, we should have a website where people can post their complaints about the banks for everyone in the country to see, unfiltered by the press. That would give huge accountability to the banks.

As a member of parliament I receive complaints, not many but some, about the banks. It says something about our post office that these days I receive more complaints about the banks than about the post office. Neither type of complaint is huge in number, although some are of significance to the people who visit their members of parliament on an issue. However by and large our banks are trustworthy and we can count on them.

We have a banking system in which we can conduct financial transactions and know that everything will work clickety-clickety-click. It is all very smooth. It is a well structured organization. That is due to the combined efforts of the Bank of Canada, which has been well run during the last number of years, and the individual banks that have taken their responsibilities very seriously.

I have a question for the banks if any of them happen to be listening. If I get a cash advance on a Friday it is posted within two seconds, but if I make a payment on that same advance I do not get the credit until the next banking day. Sometimes it takes two days if it is a weekend. I wonder why that is.

The banks should be consistent. If I bring a cheque to the bank I know it has the capability of cashing it and doing the electronic transaction immediately.—

[Financial Consumer Agency Of Canada Act, March 30th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I listened with interest to the member's speech. He has perhaps a confused view of the role of government in protecting the rights of people who deal with banks.

He used an analogy of grocery stores and people who own apartment buildings being forced to provide facilities. If I am not mistaken, the legislation does not address that question with respect to the low cost accounts. It does not state a specific amount. It simply says that the bank shall provide a low cost account for people who have limited financial means. He has perhaps to some degree not fairly represented the purpose of the statement that was put in the bill in this particular regard.

Would he care to clarify that and perhaps correct his small error?

[Financial Consumer Agency Of Canada Act, March 30th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I wonder whether there would be unanimous consent, since the member used only 10 minutes of his 40 minute allocation, to allocate the 30 minutes to a speaker from the Bloc if he gets here from the scrums, or to me since I have a lot to say on the bill. Would there be unanimous consent for that?

[Division No. 42, March 28th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I request that for Motion No. 2 only my vote be recorded as being in favour.

(The House divided on Motion No. 2, which was negatived on the following division:)