Ken Epp

[Parliament of Canada Act, September 25th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the intervention by the member. He keeps talking about building trust and restoring the confidence of Canadians in their government, and indeed in Parliament.

I agree with him on that because that is the goal. I have been on this so-called ethics portfolio for our party for not quite 10 years. October 25 will be the anniversary of our first election in 1993.

Originally it was brought in because the government, the Liberals who won the wonderful election in 1993, promised in the red book to have an independent ethics counsellor. The reason they promised it was because of perceived, or real, breaches of ethical behaviour in the previous government.

Now, 10 years later, the government is finally coming up with a bill that proposes to have an independent ethics commissioner and yet, when we look at it, we see that it is in word only. In fact, the counsellor would still be appointed by the Prime Minister.

I believe that to restore confidence the Canadian people must see that there is a watchdog on Parliament and the ethics in here, who is detached from the Prime Minister so that his or her word can be totally trusted.

I would like the member to comment on that part of the issue.

[Parliament of Canada Act, September 25th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the speech by our NDP colleague and appreciate her comments. I also remember Mr. Earle, who was here as a member of Parliament in a previous Parliament, and I as well respected and appreciated his work on this particular portfolio.

One of the things the member spoke about on several occasions was the necessity of having two-thirds majority support in the House for the appointment of the ethics commissioner. I would concur with that. In fact, that was originally the intent of our amendment, which we put when we decided we would like this thing sent back to the committee and improved.

However, in discussions at committee, it was stated that this would require a constitutional amendment. We got into a little bit of a hassle about it because that is not entirely clear. It is true that the Parliament of Canada Act states that votes in the House shall be carried by a majority vote. That is why, for example, last week we had for the first time in 40 years the Speaker breaking a tie in order to get a clear vote on one side or the other of an issue.

It is true that the act says this; however, there would be nothing in my view and in the view of our researchers to stop us having a provision that notwithstanding this is what the Constitution says with respect to a vote on this one issue, it is the choice of Parliament to have a two-thirds majority vote so that the individual chosen has a clear and high degree of support among members of the House. That would be one way of achieving this.

However, when we proposed to put that in as an amendment it was ruled to be unacceptable because of that constitutional question. I think the question is still unanswered, but that is really what happened. I thought I just would fill the member in on that part of it.

So our other proposal, in order to hopefully achieve the same result, is to require the Prime Minister to consult and to actually reach a consensus among the leaders of the parties before he puts the name forward for a vote in the House, because if there is consensus from our leaders then hopefully all parties would have support for the individual chosen, and we all know that it is very important for the commissioner to have the support of all members of the House. I would appreciate a comment back on that; I think my remarks were probably more a comment than a question.

[Parliament of Canada Act, September 25th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend my colleague from the other party on the opposition side of the House on a very well documented speech. He gave a number of good examples.

One of the things that we need to keep in focus here is that the government has undertaken to introduce rules of ethical conduct which will govern the behaviour of backbench and opposition members of Parliament. The problems which have plagued the government over the last 10 years in fact will not be addressed by this process, in other words, the issues that have been faced by the various cabinet ministers.

In particular there is the issue of the former minister of public works and government services who did an arabesque not only out of cabinet, not only out of government, not only out of Parliament, but right out of the whole country. That issue still will not be properly addressed in this new procedure.

I am very troubled by that. The government has chosen to solve a problem that does not exist in my view in order to deflect media attention from problems that do exist without offering a solution to the actual problems.

I would like our colleague to comment on this and perhaps to give his suggestions as to how this could be improved.

[Parliament of Canada Act, September 25th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I really am disappointed in the fact that the Liberal members opposite do not express any interest in getting into this debate. They should be responding to the suggestions we are making, either by trying to defend the fact that they are not responding or by giving us an indication that they will support the amendment.

The amendment, as I hope all hon. members in the House know, is to send this thing back to the committee to make some very important and substantive changes to the method of appointment of the ethics commissioner. I really regret that members opposite are not responding to this. I suppose their minds are made up already.

I would like to get down to a question to my hon. colleague, who has given an excellent extemporaneous speech on the spur of the moment. I appreciate his willingness to do that. There is a question to which I would like a response from him. The members on the other side in committee suggest that having the Prime Minister appoint the ethics commissioner, but after consultation with the leaders of the other parties, somehow meets the criterion that the person is independent. It seems to me that such a process could still mean that a very partisan person gets into that position.

One of the objections we have heard is that members opposite feel that if there is a real agreement required among opposition parties, among all parties in the House, it will never happen. That is their only argument. I contend otherwise. I contend that certainly when it comes to having a person who will be making judgments and rulings on the ethical behaviour of all members in the House, we would find an individual who would meet that criterion. I would like my colleague to comment on the possibility of that happening.

[Parliament of Canada Act, September 22nd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Blackstrap in Saskatchewan, that wonderful province in which I was born and grew up. It is a delight to have her here in the House of Commons representing the prairie people. In many ways I think we have quite a different attitude out on the prairies from what we see in Liberal country here in Ottawa.

I fondly remember the years when I was growing up in Saskatchewan where we actually trusted people and had politicians who we respected. They were held in high esteem because they worked hard and were selfless. They served the people. They were not in it for themselves. Unfortunately, over the last number of years we have in Ottawa a growing culture of suspicion and people who are in it for themselves.

I know my colleague will not have much time but I would like her to respond to a simple question. Does she have any confidence at all that the Liberal government, by implementing this series of procedures, including the appointment of an ethics commissioner, will actually fix the problems that have occurred in the cabinet of this government?

[Parliament of Canada Act, September 22nd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to comment also on this presumption of guilt and innocence. It is a dilemma we face in our whole justice system. In a sense when we look at allegations of wrongdoing or presumed wrongdoing, we are basically saying that we are suspicious.

A robbery took place not long ago in one of the towns in my riding. The person was identified by the owner of the place and he reported it to the police. The police went to the guy's house and arrested him. Are we assuming that he is guilty? No we are not. However we are saying that he is the number one suspect because he is known in the community and he has been recognized by the owner so therefore he is on the carpet. This is how the system works. It looks as if the guy is being judged guilty but at that stage the process is triggered to ferret out the truth. When an allegation is made against a person, we are saying we want to have an investigation.

I was very distressed on a number of occasions over the last number of years where we needed to have the light of truth. On one occasion involving the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister said that he would not ask the RCMP to investigate himself, and he has the ultimate authority to do that. The opposition put forward a motion asking that there be an independent investigation, and on command from the party whip over there all those members over there said that they did not want a public investigation. Therefore the light was never shed. It stays in the darkness and the suspicions remain.

I simply say to the hon. member that we should not presume guilt. However when an allegation is made and if in fact there is guilt, that guilt ought to be exposed because that is how the people of Canada will regain their trust in the process of government. If the person is innocent, only a full public inquiry, with the evidence being made public, will totally and properly exonerate an innocent person.

[Parliament of Canada Act, September 22nd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, let me say in responding to the speech given by my colleague from British Columbia that I always appreciate his speeches. He is a great speech maker. We have heard many of his talks in the House and he has a lot of insight into many different issues.

On the issue of the ethics commissioner, the appointment process and the jobs and duties of both the ethics commissioner and the ethics officer for the Senate, it seems to me that the government is, to use an old phrase, barking up the wrong tree.

My colleague alluded to that in his speech, but I would like to enlarge on it. To my knowledge there has not been a single case in the last 10 years of a member of Parliament actually being called on the carpet because of misspending. That is because the only money the member of Parliament has control over, of course, is basically the office budget and travel expenses. I think we have good checks and balances with a good financial officer in the House of Commons who keeps us honest in this regard. Everything is done well.

There has been no reason for Canadians to judge Parliament or government based on backbench and opposition members of Parliament and yet the government seems to be consumed with setting up, at considerable expense, the office of the ethics commissioner. Then it goes a step further and says, “But the ethics commissioner will not be dealing directly on issues with respect to cabinet problems in the same way”. There is a whole different set of rules and basically it is exactly the same as what we have now, with the ethics counsellor investigating on request and basically reporting to the Prime Minister.

I would like to ask my colleague what he thinks about that kind of scheme and why he thinks the government is so interested in solving a problem that actually does not exist.

[Parliament of Canada Act, September 22nd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I value the intervention that my colleague has made today especially because he sits on the industry committee which is the overseer committee that the ethics commissioner presently answers to. He made allusion to the fact that he did not know Mr. Wilson. I would probably put myself into that same classification even though I have been around longer and have probably had more direct contacts with Mr. Wilson.

I must share with the House that I often genuinely felt sorry for the man because I had, and to a degree still have, a lot of respect for the individual. I can say that honestly because even though we felt that there was a real shortcoming in the way some of the investigations were conducted, he honourably conducted himself as required by the Prime Minister. In that sense, he need not hang his head in shame.

As my colleague has indicated, under the present system, the ethics commissioner has his hands tied. He is appointed by the Prime Minister, he answers to the Prime Minister, and even though he may table a report to Parliament in all instances, it is not a requirement to fully divulge the issue that is at hand. This is a very serious flaw.

The thing that I am concerned about in Bill C-34 is that with respect to dealing with charges of conflict of interest of cabinet ministers, it appears to me that nothing has changed and that is regrettable. I have said before in my speech that, if a charge is laid and if in fact the person is guilty, the public has a right to know on what grounds the individual was found guilty and there ought to be penalties. If the individual having been charged is judged to be not guilty, then that person should be fully and totally exonerated. If that were to occur, then it almost would require public disclosure of the facts on which the conclusion was based in order that the public would fully trust the judgment that was been made.

I know there would be some cases where one could say that we were treading into grounds of personal privacy and that some things ought not to be disclosed. I do not know, but it seems to me that if I were a cabinet minister being unjustly charged and part of the investigation went into some of my personal affairs, I would gladly give permission for those personal affairs to be made public if it were to help clear my name. I made mention of that, for example, when we were dealing with the government credit cards being used by a cabinet minister. All these things were whited out and the reason given was that this was private.

I argued that if the individual put charges on a government card, it has moved out of the range of being called private. It is now public. I said at that time, and I would still say the same thing if it were to clear my name and show that everything was done properly. At the present time at least I would have no problem showing my private credit card statements. I have nothing there to hide if people want to know that I went to Pizza Hut. There is other evidence that supports that, too; there is just nothing there to hide.

We need to carefully rethink how important all these privacy issues are and whether or not the ethics counsellor, now the ethics commissioner, should make all of the hearings public and that the amount of stuff that is withheld due to privacy considerations be minimized. I would like to hear my colleague's comments on that.

[Parliament of Canada Act, September 22nd, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I would like to add something to this. The legislation is quite explicit in that it says that if there is an inquiry or a hearing which involves a cabinet minister, it is not subject to the commissioner reporting to and being answerable to the committee that oversees his or her work.

For some reason, the government in drafting the legislation has chosen deliberately to exclude cabinet ministers. It is one of the greatest flaws in the legislation as my colleague has indicated. We have to address this.

To the Liberal members opposite, all those who are listening so carefully to this debate today, our amendment asks that the bill be sent back to the committee for a little more work on the appointment of the commissioner. I would urge them to support this so the whole package can be strengthened.

If they did this, if they were to make the necessary amendments and have opposition parties join with the government side in supporting the legislation, would that not send a strong message? Right now this is such weak legislation with so many flaws and loopholes in addressing the real questions, it is not worth supporting. They should give honest consideration to doing that. They will not be losers in it by having voted for something the opposition put forward because it will strengthen the legislation. Hence they themselves may even look better in the eyes of the electorate in the next 8 or 10 months, however long it is until we go back to the people again.

Would my colleague comment a little further on the fact that the government has deliberately chosen to exclude cabinet ministers from the process?

[Parliament of Canada Act, September 22nd, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I appreciated the intervention by my colleague from Yellowhead. It is a beautiful riding, by the way. Members should visit it sometime. It includes the wonderful mountain town of Jasper and other places. It is a nice place to visit.

I would like to ask my colleague a question with respect to something he alluded to in his speech. He said that the emphasis of the bill seems to be going after backbenchers. That means presumably even backbenchers on the government side from time to time could be under investigation by the ethics commissioner. It is in the area of speculation, but I would like to know whether, in his opinion, the government would actually put one of its own members into such a position in order to deflect attention from perhaps a more pressing issue, maybe a cabinet minister or others where there is more at stake.