Ken Epp

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

Madam Speaker, that is actually fairly interesting. In committee, we had a good debate on this particular question of how long the appointment should be for and whether the person should be eligible for reappointment.

I think I actually had some influence on this decision. I will claim, as I have always done, that I personally do not believe in limitations on how long a person can serve in office or how many terms they are eligible for re-election; hence I feel the same about this particular position.

I believe there should be a review. In the case of members of Parliament, of course, there is an election from time to time and that is when we are accountable to our electors. I believe that the position of ethics commissioner should be reviewed, just as he is selected in the first instance, I would hope, by an all party committee and with approval of the House and a very strong majority, showing the approval of the person's work. Then, after a minimum amount of time, the person would go through that again. If that individual is doing a good job, we should not be disqualified from reappointing him or her simply because they have been doing a good job too long. I do not care whether it has been for two or three terms. If he or she is doing a good job and people trust that individual, then let us reappoint the person.

That is why the legislation states that the ethics commissioner will be appointed for five years. The committee came to the conclusion that a five year term is adequate to get everything in place and have a smoothly running organization to handle the portfolio, yet to have a re-accountability every five years without limitation says that if the person is doing a good job we can ask the individual to continue. If not, the all party committee would then be in a position to search for someone else.

With respect to the Senate, it has basically given us notice that it will not have any commoners telling it what to do. That is basically the executive summary of the message from the Senate. The Senate has said it does not want to have any part or parcel of either the ethics commissioner from the House of Commons or our own code of ethics. The senators say they will have their own. When the codes of ethics finally are written into the Standing Orders of both Houses, it really will be quite interesting to see what the differences are and which standards are perhaps a little more strenuous and more rigorous.

The Senate has chosen to have a Senate officer of ethics for a seven year term. I guess probably it is because the average age over there is a little longer, so seven years to them seems like five to us. That was a little bit of a joke there, Madam Speaker.

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

Madam Speaker, the answer to that first of all derives directly from the controversy which erupted with the then minister of public works and government services. It was a scandal in which contracts in Quebec were being let which obviously were not done properly. They were not properly tendered. Money was paid for work that was not done. That was subsequently documented and proven.

I think Canadian taxpayers have the right, in fact even the obligation, to rise up in protest and revolt when their hard-earned money is spent for some unknown reason in such a frivolous and unaccountable way. We have many taxpayers in this country who are struggling to make ends meet, yet they are obliged to pay their taxes month after month or every two weeks, whatever their pay schedule is, and they deserve to have full accountability.

When the minister was involved in giving money that for all intents and purposes could be said to be a straight funnelling of money to the Liberal Party the way it appeared, I think the government actually admitted that this is what happened. Otherwise, the behaviour of the government in sending the minister off to Denmark is really bizarre. He was a sitting member of Parliament. He was a cabinet minister. Why was he suddenly pulled out? Not only was he pulled out of cabinet, he was pulled out of Parliament and pulled out of the country. Why that urgency to get him way over there in Denmark? I think it was that the government did not want him easily available for investigation because when the facts became known it would be very damning to the government. That of course is a supposition we make, but we come to conclusions based on the behaviour of people. I have said the same thing about O.J. Simpson. His bizarre behaviour in that Ford Bronco is unexplainable if we assume he is innocent.

That is what happened. The government, taking quite a bit of flak on this issue, then decided, “Now is the time to make it look as if we are doing something”. I really almost hesitate to draw this charge, but I cannot help but be suspicious that it is just a considerable amount of smoke and mirrors designed to give the perception to the public that this is a government that has a much higher standard of ethics than it actually has.

Now, that puts me into a little bit of a dilemma. Do I want ethics to be improved? The answer is yes, absolutely. There should be a code. The Prime Minister's code for cabinet ministers should be public. The inquiries with respect to complaints on that should be made public. If the person charged is guilty, Canadians have the right to know. If the person charged is shown to be innocent, Canadians have the right to see the evidence and the basis on which the conclusion of the evidence was reached. It is not sufficient for the Prime Minister to stand up in the House here on questions and simply say that nothing has ever been proven, because of the fact that the investigation has been stonewalled or whatever, but that is what happens. The investigation is not concluded and then in fact it is accurate to say there were never any charges that actually stood.

I believe that the timing is tied in with damage control for that specific instance to try to give the appearance of doing something tangible to improve ethical behaviour in government. Of course it is also leading up to the next election, which the Liberals will of course use. This is one thing that really frightens me. They have made such a mess of the bill that even though it uses the word ethics, it is way too weak, so we are obliged to not support it because it is all a façade. It does not go deep enough, it is not solid enough, and the commissioner is not independent. Unless those things are fixed, we have to vote against it.

I can just see these Liberals in the next federal election campaign saying, “We are the ethical ones. We brought in the ethics package. We have the ethics commissioner now, a 10 year old promise, and the Canadian Alliance voted against it”. It is going to be a real challenge for us to communicate to Canadians that the reason we voted against it is due to the fact that it was not adequately handled.

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

Madam Speaker, it is certainly true that we live in a time warp world. It is difficult for me to believe that at 10 o'clock I was at the Edmonton airport and now I am here rising to speak on this important bill.

Because of the fact that I could not get away earlier, I would like to thank all of my colleagues in my party for carrying the debate. I knew that things were in good hands even though I am supposed to be the chief critic on this particular issue.

The question of ethics is one that has permeated discussion about Parliament and our government for as long as I can remember. Long before I had any interest directly in politics, I remember there being charges and countercharges of scandals, misdoings and misbehaviour. As a matter of fact, it was a general conception in the minds of people about the misconduct of certain members of the previous government that gave the Liberals the government in 1993. Perhaps some of those perceptions were misplaced. According to the records now, when we look at the court decisions and the appeals that were made, it looks as if some of that was ill-founded and that is sort of a bright light.

Yet, it is true that as leaders in our country--right now 301 of us, soon to be 308 members of Parliament, and over 100 senators--Canadians deserve to receive from us a highly decent, ethical behaviour. The member for Edmonton North was here before 1993, but most of us arrived in 1993 and many of us have continued to be re-elected because we still stand for the same things.

Our message over those years has been that we want to contribute as much as we can to improving the ethical behaviour of parliamentarians, certainly of the government, that is, the Prime Minister and cabinet, and also of members in the other place, as well as bureaucrats and civil servants. Very frankly, it has been my observation that most people in those different categories that I have named do want to do what is right. I know I do.

I sat beside a young lady in the airplane today and we talked just briefly about this issue. She was surprised to find me in the economy section of the plane. I said that in 1993, when I was first elected, I pledged to the electors in the riding of Elk Island that I would spend the taxpayers' money as if it were my own. I made perhaps a rash statement. I had no idea I was going to gain 30 pounds on this job, but I made the rash statement that I would never spend $1,000 of my own money to sit in front of the curtain. Now, of course, it is sometimes a little uncomfortable for the people who are right beside me and some people have encouraged me to get into the wider seats, but I have held my ground on it and I intend to continue to do so as long as that is physically possible.

I am going to do a little free advertising for WestJet. Last week I travelled with WestJet and saved the taxpayers well over $1,000 just by going with WestJet instead of Air Canada. It was a perfectly fine flight with almost a new airplane, and a wonderful and exuberant staff happy in their work. It was really a joy to fly with WestJet. The only difficulty is that the scheduling is still a little thin because it is a smaller company, so to get the connections at exactly the time when it is most suitable is a difficulty, but I thought that if I could earn the taxpayers $150 an hour, maybe I should consider doing that. Actually it would be quite a bit more than $150, I just pulled that number off the top of my head.

It is something we should all have, first as a guiding principle so we will do what is right and what is fair to the taxpayers, voters, and citizens of our country irrespective of any rules or regulations or codes that are put our way and irrespective of people who are appointed, like an ethics commissioner or ethics counsellor, or ethics officer, as the position is referred to in the Senate.

I believe one should do what is right irrespective of whether or not there are regulations that say it and irrespective of whether or not there are people out there who are going to catch individuals if they do not do what is right.

Speaking of that, I had a very interesting interview with some of the media last week. They talked about the government operations and estimates committee, of which I am a part. One of the reporters asked me if I did not feel that this committee was feeling its oats; we got Radwanski and now we were going after the Governor General. I said no, they had it wrong. I could not speak for all the members of the committee, but I was greatly saddened by what we found when we investigated Mr. Radwanski's expense sheets.

It is so sad when people who should have the trust of Canadians breach that trust. I said that to the reporters. Of course they chose not to use that particular clip on television. When they interview someone for five or eight minutes, they get to choose the six seconds they use and that particular cut did not make it. However it is very critical. We should never, ever feel happy when we find somebody doing wrong. We should always feel sad and remorseful that that actually happens.

My whole perspective in working in the ethics portfolio over the last 10 years, first in the reform party and now Canadian Alliance, is that we need to do basically two things. First, we need to ensure that those who are ethically challenged, that is, they do not have a strong built-in moral compass, know what the rules are. Most of us rely on our common sense, but every once in a while there is something that is a little marginal and people will ask if that is wrong and what is wrong with it? Let us spell it out then so that it is clear, so that an individual who is working on behalf of Canadians knows what is expected.

The second thing, and this is equally important, is that there ought to be a method of accountability. One of the great strengths of a democracy is that there is a continual chain of accountability.

I regret that I cannot use a board here. I was a teacher and an instructor for some 31 years and I like blackboards, chalkboards, whiteboards, overhead projectors, and nowadays, PowerPoint presentations and all these things. I like visual aids, so I will have to draw this in the air.

When I meet with students, as I guess all of us do frequently as members of Parliament, I like to draw a big circle on the board. I tell them this is how democracy ought to work. The electors elect the member of Parliament. Whoever gets the most seats forms the government and chooses the Prime Minister and the cabinet, indirectly of course. We have all the people in government who are responsible to the cabinet and then through the minister. That is called ministerial responsibility. It is a great responsibility that ministers have and, again, it is regrettable that in their departments things happen that ought not to happen.

I know the HRDC minister went through the wringer when she tried to correct errors that occurred in her department. She was responsible for those serious problems in her department even though she inherited them from a previous minister. However in our kind of government it is the ministers who bear the responsibility for the whole department.

The voters elect us and then we are accountable for the people we select to work for us and in our departments. In the end we make a bunch of rules and laws so that the very citizens who have elected us now become subject to those rules and laws. Therefore they cannot do whatever they want either.

I would like to indulge in a little aside here. I am concerned when our society loses the decency of good debate. I was at a pro-marriage rally yesterday and some of the young people who were there did not even like the fact that we were discussing it. I had a young lady standing next to me. I think if I had had a dB meter her screams in my ears would have been up over 100 decibels. It literally physically hurt. I asked her to please be quiet so that we could have the respect of listening to the person who was speaking. She would not stop. She looked right at me and she kept screaming in the loudest of her voice, “Stop preaching hate. Stop preaching hate”.

Anyone who knows me knows that I do not have any hatred for anyone, including her, but she would not stop long enough for me to even express it. If we do not have those elements in our democracy, that mutual respect, that care for one another and certainly the honesty to deal with financial and other matters forthrightly and honestly, then our democracy is at risk and we will trade it for anarchy and a system of government that will be much less effective.

I would like to say that over the 10 years that I have been working here, those are the premises and the circle of accountability on which I have worked, that we are responsible to the taxpayers and the citizens, and they in turn are responsible to obey the rules and laws of the land.

In every area, because of the nature of people, we have to build in some checks and balances. There are rules. If people collect employment insurance and receive benefits to which they are not entitled, the rules require them to pay the money back. That is how it has to be.

I would venture to say that most people who find themselves in a position where they need to collect some of these benefits would do so honestly. They would do the paperwork correctly to the best of their knowledge. They are not interested in ripping off the system. However, for those few people in our society, and I suppose in the House of Commons, who do not have the standards that are accepted and expected, we need rules and we need enforcement.

One of my colleagues, in his earlier speech, said that if there was never any enforcement the rules become ineffective. I sort of think that is what has happened in Ontario with the speed laws. It is incredible how blatantly people break those rules and a whole bunch of other rules. However it certainly is true that rules have to be enforced in order to be meaningful, just because there is some proportion of our population that needs that restraint.

The ethics measure that the government is now promoting is, I believe, a response to that expectation. Unfortunately, it is a little too late and it is being done in a way that really causes me a lot of concern. The real authority of government is on the front benches of the government. The Prime Minister, whether we like it or not, has a virtual clear say on whatever he wishes to have a say. He appoints the members of the Senate. He appoints the judges. He appoints over 2,000 top level bureaucrats. He has a lot of influence and a lot of control.

As we all know, there have been a number of breaches of ethical behaviour on the part of different individuals, but all of them have involved those people who have the power to give a government contract.

I know that individual members of Parliament on a very small scale do the same. We rent office space, we hire staff and we buy certain amounts of equipment. We have room on a very small scale to fail the ethical tests. However, compared to the billions of dollars that fall under the responsibility of cabinet ministers, it really is minuscule.

What does Bill C-34 do? It sets out to establish an ethics commissioner for the House of Commons. I am distressed by the fact that the ethics commissioner would be appointed by the Prime Minister. The bill explicitly states that if there is a conflict between the rules as applied in our internal code of conduct for members of Parliament and the code that is set out by the Prime Minister for cabinet ministers, then the latter shall prevail. I have concerns about that.

Any investigations that we have called for have pretty well been stonewalled. I do not want to go into the list. I find it repugnant that the number of different questions that have legitimately been asked by Canadians and, on their behalf, by the opposition and all the parties here, that those investigations lead nowhere or do not get off the ground.

Even the involvement of the Prime Minister and the fact that there was interference with the Business Development Bank, there was never any answer given to that. It was just dropped. We do not know the answer to that. Records were taken that were never accounted for. We need system of accountability.

This code and this commissioner will be consumed with, I believe too often, petty little complaints about individual members of Parliament, which often could be politically motivated. There is concern of what would happen during election time when there is no time to get out all the facts and defend oneself against a false charge. To have that commissioner appointed by the Prime Minister is an item of great concern to us in the official opposition.

I tried so hard in committee to persuade my colleagues, namely the Liberals who have the majority on that committee as elsewhere, that in order to make this work so that all members would have an absolute clear faith in the ability of the commissioner to do his or her job that there should be all party involvement in the selection of that commissioner. In their wisdom or, in my view, their lack of it, they decided to not go that route.

Instead, the legislation simply states that the Prime Minister will choose a name. It is required that he consult with the leaders of the parties but consultation is not defined. It could be just a phone call that says, “We have decided to appoint so and so as the ethics commissioner. What do you think?”. There is nothing that says that if the opposition leader says, “We do not think that is a good person to choose” or if the opposition leader objects, the Prime Minister is under no obligation to change his mind and look for someone else.

We would like to see an all party committee that would make that selection. There would be agreement of all parties. There are people who have the confidence of all members in the House. All we have to do is find them. We need to make sure that the individual has a proven track record of absolutely non-partisan fairness. If that is left simply in the hands of the Prime Minister, in investigations involving cabinet ministers, the commissioner would still report to the Prime Minister.

We have not progressed at all on the problems that have plagued us. All we are doing is engaging in a little side activity which, unfortunately, from time to time will be used to deflect valid criticism from the government at a time when it should be held accountable.

I have much more to say but I am sure some members in the House will have some questions for me. I certainly urge members to support our amendment.

[Acadians, September 19th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I had not really intended to speak to the motion, but a number of thoughts have gone through my mind in the last few minutes and so with your indulgence I would like to share some of them.

First of all, I remember seeing the film Roots a number of years ago. I do not know if any of the older generation here remember it. I remember how brutally the black people in Africa were treated as they were captured and taken as slaves. I remember the next day when I went to my job at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology as an instructor. We had a number of foreign students there and when I saw a black student there I had this urge to just go up to him, hug him and say, “How can you ever forgive us white guys for doing that to you?” I really felt that way, yet I was not there and I did not do it. I had that urge to say, “I am sorry that happened and I want you to know that”.

I thought also in the last few minutes of my own family experience. In a way, I guess, I would like the Russian people to apologize to me and to my family for having shot three of my grandfather's brothers, but I also remember my grandmother, the sister-in-law of the men who were shot, saying, “We have to get on with our lives. We can do nothing but forgive. We need to move on in our lives”. Her theme was always one of gratitude that they were able to make their way to Canada. I believe in my heart that my grandfather and grandmother genuinely had no ongoing hatred or rancour toward the Russian people because of what they did.

In all of this we need to keep a balance. It is true that we cannot rewrite history. It is probably true that those things happened, but I think we need to in all candidness say we are sorry these things happened and we hope they never happen again. I think we definitely need to focus on the future and to do so with great respect for our fellow man.

[Questions on the Order Paper, September 19th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have a few minutes to speak to Bill C-49. It should be obvious to everyone in the country that this particular bill has only one purpose and that is to allow the new boundaries to be in place by April 1 instead of the day in August which it would normally be.

To have this bill in front of us now is simply a concession to the wannabe Prime Minister so that he can call an election early before people have a chance to really look at him and examine what he stands for and what his performance has been in the House of Commons. It is about an early election. That is really what it is about.

I certainly cannot object on the grounds of the fact that it gives Alberta a little more of the representation that it is entitled to by population. But I would like to talk about what is actually happening in the re-drawing of the boundaries.

I am in the Edmonton area and in Edmonton we were very distressed, all of us, when we went to the committee. I went the day of the hearings in Edmonton and I sat there all day to hear the presentations. Every presentation, save one, was against what the committee was doing. That one was from a town nearby that used to be in the Elk Island riding before the boundaries were changed in 1997. The only reason that presentation was put forward was so that the riding would have a member of Parliament who would now be physically closer to it. It is impossible to have all people close to their members of Parliament.

Instead of hearing all of those individuals, including the presentation from the city of Edmonton that said it would rather have six members of Parliament in the City of Edmonton who would represent the city than eight members of Parliament with divided interests, instead of listening to that message which it heard over and over, the committee decided in its report to give reasons why it should not hear this and so it was ignored.

Furthermore, it has changed the boundaries in such a way that we will now spend hours and hours sitting in our vehicles. Instead of having compact constituencies, it has divided them up into long, narrow constituencies so that we will spend hours in our vehicles instead of doing our work. I object to that very strenuously.

I will support this motion and vote for it in the end, but I want to urge the government to look seriously at this process because it seems to me that what is being done is politically motivated. How else can one explain arranging the constituencies so that it makes it more difficult for the member of Parliament to be an effective member of Parliament and spend good time with people in the riding? This is what has happened in this particular case and I really deplore it.

On the other hand, Elk Island will disappear. No longer will you be able to say, Madam Speaker, “the hon. member for Elk Island”. That riding will be gone according to the new boundaries and the new one will be called Edmonton--Sherwood Park, which is the main town in my riding. I may put in a suggestion to add another town which is not insignificant.

The fact of the matter is that we will do our very best as members of Parliament in the Canadian Alliance to represent the people in whatever ridings we get. We will work hard to do that, but I am really sad that this commission did so much damage in our effectiveness.

The riding where I now live extends 200 miles. It goes right alongside another one that is 200 miles long. Why should we have two members of Parliament waving at each other on the highway as they go back and forth to meetings in their ridings? That is a useless waste of a member of Parliament's time to just sit in a vehicle and drive. We have no other means of transportation there that can be used.

[Petitions, September 19th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition I wish to present to the House today is signed by 222 individuals from my riding, mainly from Sherwood Park, who are concerned about the defence of marriage.

The petitioners are concerned about the lack of legislative and democratic process and about what is going on in Parliament. They urge Parliament to use all possible legislative and administrative measures to preserve and protect the current definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. While thumbing through this petition, I also noticed that my wife's name is on it.

[Petitions, September 19th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions to present to the House today pursuant to Standing Order 36.

The first petition, signed by people in my riding of Elk Island, has to do with the abhorrence that my constituents have about the issue of child pornography. They call upon Parliament to protect our children by taking all necessary steps to ensure that all materials which promote or glorify pedophilia or sado-masochistic activities involving children are outlawed.

[Government Appointments, September 18th, 2003]

Well, Mr. Speaker, it is payback time. As the Prime Minister ends his 10 year exit strategy, he is looking after his friends. Patronage abounds.

Mac Harb is off to the Senate. His credentials? He helped the Prime Minister with the Liberal leadership 13 years ago and has stuck by his man ever since.

We all remember Georgette Sheridan, the Liberal MP whom the Prime Minister appointed as a Liberal candidate. Well, she lost her seat in 1997 and now is on the tax court at a cool $200,000 per year.

How about defeated Liberal cabinet minister David Dingwall? He collects $250,000 a year from the Mint. Hey, what is a quarter million between friends?

The prime minister in waiting keeps hinting at fixing the democratic deficit, but I will not hold my breath waiting. If I were a betting man, I would wager that he will do the same. That is, if Canadian voters let him.

[Parliament of Canada Act, September 15th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to stand here on the first day of the resumption of this session. I would like to again say welcome to all of the new pages. It is wonderful to see these young people here. They keep us old fellows thinking young and we always enjoy the wonderful service they provide to us as members.

I would also like to say that it was a brutal summer because of the issues before the House. I believe that we need to do a great job as parliamentarians in representing those people who sent us here and in every way reflect the values and the expectations our constituents have.

I would like to address this question, because this whole thing regarding the ethics commissioner has to do with meeting the expectations of our electors. Our electors want parliamentarians to act in such a way that they are above reproach. The expectation of our electors is that we will act ethically. Because of tremendously large breaches of ethical behaviour by the government, the Prime Minister brought forward this multi-faceted package in which one of the facets is the creation of an independent ethics commissioner.

Mr. Speaker, I do not know if your memory is as good as mine, but I clearly remember when I first ran for Parliament. Way back in 1993, the Liberal red book said, “We will establish an independent ethics commissioner”. Here it is 10 years later and we now have a bill that says they want to establish an independent ethics commissioner, so I do not know whether the protestations of the Prime Minister in the intervening 10 years are now suspect, because all the time he was saying that we have an independent commissioner. We have raised many questions about the fact that the commissioner answered only to the Prime Minister and hence was anything but independent. I think those protestations over the last 10 years basically are now confessed by the government to have been misleading. The Liberals are saying that now we are going to have an independent ethics commissioner, but when the bill came forward we found out that it is really much of the same.

I would like to assure members that I am leading up to the actual discussion of the amendment before the House.

The ethics commissioner must be totally independent of the government. I am going to say to the Liberal members opposite, all listening so intently as I speak, that they should pay attention to this, because in the next Parliament, when they are sitting on this side, they will want the protections we want now that we are on this side. They should think ahead a little about the next move and whether or not they should support the bill, as they are now refusing to amend it, because it is going to apply to them in opposition as it applies to them now as the government. I am speaking especially to the Liberal backbenchers.

The issue before us is very clearly hinged upon the independence of the ethics commissioner. I would be inclined to oppose this motion, just as the parliamentary secretary said, if in fact we had assurances that both the appointment of the ethics commissioner and the ethics commissioner's work were truly independent, if that were really true. We asked for it in committee when we were debating this issue day after day. Our party put forward amendments that would require all members of Parliament from all parties to actively be involved in the recruitment and the appointment.

We went so far as to say that there should be agreement among the party leaders. We suggested that there be a two-thirds majority vote in the House. Of course the House leader for the government said no, that cannot be, because the Constitution says there can only be a 50% majority. The fact of the matter is that our research shows we as a Parliament can say that on a certain question we need a two-thirds majority and, notwithstanding anything else, it could apply to that particular issue. We would like to apply that to the appointment of the commissioner.

We live in a very hostile political environment here. The Liberals have shown us in the last 10 years that winning elections is motivation number one. Everything else becomes secondary to it. If they can utilize an ethics commissioner bringing charges against members of the opposition at the appropriate time, that can become a very important factor at election time. So it is absolutely mandatory that the ethics commissioner behave in a totally independent way.

Had the government accepted our amendments in committee, which as we know we cannot bring here now because they were dealt with at committee, if the Liberals had accepted those amendments at committee, then we would have been very pleased to move forward with this new act to establish the role of the ethics commissioner.

As a matter of fact, the way it is going to work will be the same as always. The Prime Minister and his office are going to come up with a name. The legislation says all that is required is that there be discussion with the House leaders or the leaders of the other parties. I do not even remember now which it is, whether it is House leaders or leaders, but there will be discussions with the other parties. It does not say an agreement has to be reached. It does not say anything about consensus. Presently we have five parties in the House and the legislation does not even say that a majority of the parties must agree.

Consequently, the Prime Minister could come up with a name of a person that is unacceptable to those of us on this side of the House and to the Liberal members in the next Parliament when they are on this side of the House. Let us think about it: they will not be there forever. No government has ever sat for 100 years, being re-elected and re-elected. There will come a time when the Liberals will be relegated to opposition status, and they must think of this in the long term.

This motion we are debating here today is one which unfortunately covers only half the issue, I think, but at least it is a step. It says that if there is a ruling by the commissioner, then the member of Parliament affected, or for that matter someone else, can appeal it to a presumably more independent body: the courts of our land. Sometimes we have a little apprehension about the true independence of the courts and their way of thinking as well, but be that as it may, at least it is better. This amendment would carry that.

I would like to, however, put out a challenge to the government. The parliamentary secretary has spoken and I would like to ask him a question; I am sure the staffers are listening and I would like them to answer a technical question. Clause 38 states that only if such-and-such happens, and I will not read the details, “then section 7 of this Act is replaced by the following”. I have read this thing 18 times and what it replaces is identical to what is here; it says that if this thing in the Courts Administration Service Act comes into force, then replace section 7 with what is already there. This is just a notice to the people out there in the legal services department for the government that they should really think about this, those fellows and gals, whoever they are, to make sure they have it right.

I will be supporting this motion on that account.

[Canada Elections Act, June 9th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, in listening to this last round of speeches, I have been thinking that there is something fundamentally at the root of this problem we have, especially hearing from those people from the different parties who support the government on this, including Bloc.

It is a curiosity to me that those people who promote themselves so rigorously as being democratic, and I do not question their sincerity in doing so, do not recognize that this bill is very antithetical to true democracy. Instead of giving people the freedom individually to work for and to promote the party of their choice that represents their values, we will simply with this bill pass into law that the parties can exist whether they have the support.

I know people on the other side will say that is not true because if the parties do not represent the people, they will not get the votes and then they will get less money. That also is anti-democratic.

I wish they would stop to think about this. If their vote count goes down, how will they ever fight back? How will they once again come to a place where they can offer a true alternative to some other government that has come into place?

Let us say, for hypothetical reasons, that the Canadian Alliance forms the government next time and the Liberals are reduced to two seats. Now that is not entirely without its historical precedence in this place, that a majority government has disappeared down to two seats. It happened in 1993. It could happen again where the electors will just simply say that they have enough of that crew, that they waste money on boondoggle after boondoggle, that they have no program to solve problems in the justice system and that they keep wasting taxpayer money on a very ill-conceived gun registration system. It goes on and on, and they will be defeated.

Let us say the Canadian Alliance forms the government and the Liberals are down to two votes, having had their electoral balanced in total, because this bill apportions money based on the number of votes collected in the previous election. Let us say that the electoral share of the Liberals went down to one-half of what it is now. That is a possibility. I wonder whether they would be singing this song today if they stopped to think that is a possibility.

I do not think it would be good for Canada. I do not think it would be healthy if, from now on, there would be a totally dominant Canadian Alliance Party running the country without a viable opposition. I would like to see a Canadian Alliance government. I know we could do much better than that crew over on the other side. I still think, for the purposes of democracy, that Canadians are well-served if there is a strong opposition, and we have tried to be that.

In fact just as a little aside, I have had people tell me that since we came here in the last 10 years, it is the first time Canada has ever seen a real opposition. Until now the two parties have just changed sides and, because basically they are the same, there is not really much difference. It did not matter which one was on which side of the House. However we came here with some truly new ideas, some really creative ways of working within our economic systems and reducing taxes. We actually made it politically correct to talk about balancing the budgets, reducing taxes and reducing government interference in our lives.

Now that party is saying that from now on it wants whichever party has had the dominance in the last election to thrive and any new party which comes along will really have a difficult time raising money. This bill prevents the party from raising large amounts of money from individuals and from businesses, and makes it dependent directly on the taxpayers based on how many votes it has received in the previous election.

The amendment we are debating in this group talks about reviewing this. I favour the amendment. It is important for us to review the legislation after it has been in effect for a while, particularly after the next election. However I am really fearful because the party in power, the party that has had the majority of votes in the last election, will continue to have the most amount of money and the other parties will be disproportionately and negatively affected by it. I think that is wrong.

I think the Canadian people say that here is a party they support. It represents better than any other party on the horizon right now the true values they have, the true aspirations they have for their country. Surely in a government, in a democracy like Canada's they should be free to support that party to their heart's content and not have the money squeezed out of them to support the party that received the most votes in the previous election.

We are talking about the next election now; where will we go from here, not where have we been. It is like driving a truck gazing only into the rear view mirror. One cannot keep the thing going straight by doing that. One must look out of the windshield and judge where one is going. One can use the rear view mirror when backing up. I guess maybe these Liberals are taking our country into distant places in the past, where we have been instead of where we want to go.

I am very concerned about one aspect of the bill and I am sure we will want to revisit it. That is the reporting requirements.

Every time there is a general election, we have a very busy bureaucracy in Elections Canada and in our taxation department. Even now it is required that every candidate file returns. If they get more than 15% of the votes, then they are eligible for a rebate of 50% of eligible expenditures in running the campaign. That is an awful lot of book work.

Think of 301 members of Parliament presently, soon to go up, and 300 returns. However the fact of the matter is that very few ridings have fewer than four candidates. Many of them have six, eight, some up to ten, and even more I guess. How many returns are we processing in an election? If it is an average of five, and there are 300 ridings, that is 1,500 returns that have to be processed and expenses determined and evaluated.

The bill proposes to expand that to nomination candidates. It is feasible that each of the parties could have four contenders for the nomination for each of the parties. If five parties are contending in a riding and four people for each party, there are now 20 individuals per riding. With 300 ridings that means 6,000 returns to mull through, just as a result of getting the candidates, prior to the election even being held. We would have 6,000 returns from candidates and another 1,500 when the election is called. That is absurd. All we are doing is saying to people to go out and support the candidate of their choice, give him or her a cheque for $100, $200, $500 or whatever they wish. It is no big deal.

The other thing is the fundamental question of integrity here. We have these limitations, but I am saying that a person of integrity cannot be bought for $500 nor can he be bought for $5 million. It is just a matter of degree.

I remember one time when I made a very blatant statement in our staff room. I said I would not smoke a cigarette for $100. It took a matter of seconds and one of my colleagues said he was putting down $10 and another guy said he was putting down $10. It took less than a minute, there was $100 sitting on the table and then one of my smoking colleagues offered me a cigarette. There is the money, he said. I said, “Oh no, you guys are missing something”. Obviously smoking one cigarette was not going to harm me if I never smoked another one after that. This was back in the days when we made $400 a month and $100 was a lot of money. But I told them they had made a mistake, that it was no longer about whether or not I would take the $100 to smoke a cigarette. It was about my integrity and I told them they could not buy that for any price.

That is why the whole basis of the bill is flawed. What we are trying to do by putting arbitrary limits on how much one can be bought for is to say that somehow that will produce integrity. Very frankly, if one does not have it in the first place, one does not have it all. I do not think this bill is going to solve that problem. People who are going to be subject to being influenced by people who donate money to their cause are going to do it anyway.

I think this bill is as directionless as the registration of long guns is in trying to reduce crime. I am going to support this amendment because the bill needs to be looked at again. I wish it would be defeated right now, but it looks like the Liberals will push it through. They have closure. They are saying no more debate on this thing and they are going to push it through, so then we had better look at it afterwards.