Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to participate today in the debate on the accountability act, Bill C-2. I very much appreciate the opportunity to speak and to express some of the concerns of my constituents from Burnaby—Douglas on this important topic.
I think it is appropriate that this is the first bill before the House of Commons given the concerns many Canadians had about the corruption scandals of the previous Liberal government, but I am going to take a little more conciliatory attitude than some in the House. No government or party will be without its scandals. We all make mistakes. We are all human in this place and we make mistakes from time to time. I think the test for us is how we deal with those mistakes and what systems we put in place to handle them. I think that is what has been lacking recently.
I am glad this Parliament will have the opportunity at the beginning to take note of some of those important issues and to make some important changes, debate them and improve the legislation that is currently before us. Accountability and transparency are buzzwords that we often hear around here, but I think this legislation puts them squarely on the agenda of the House and gives everyone here the opportunity to make some progress toward both those important goals.
As an aside, I wanted to mention that this morning I came from a press conference that dealt with another issue of transparency and accountability, and that is the issue of security certificates in Canada. Right now, four people are being detained on security certificates here who do not know the charges against them and whose lawyers have not seen the evidence. The trials are held in secret. The detention goes on indefinitely. I think that is a real issue of accountability for our government.
This is a process that merits re-examination. The Conservatives, to their credit, made some proposals during the last campaign and said they were prepared to look at some changes. I think more needs to be done than what they have proposed, but we need to hold the government accountable for moving on those changes.
The security certificate process is something that has caused particular concern in the Arab and Muslim communities in Canada. Amnesty International has spoken out very directly about the flaws and the injustice of the process. I think it is one that we here in the House need to address without delay. I am proud to have a motion on the order paper that would call for the abolition or repeal of that section of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
To go back to the bill at hand, there are some important changes in the legislation. I would like to mention a few of them. There are important changes on lobbying, including something that we in this corner of the House call “Ed's clause” in tribute to Ed Broadbent and the work he did on this issue, which would ban contingency or success based fees paid to lobbyists. It means that profit related to success based fees should be illegal to pay and those making them should be brought to court. It should also be illegal for a lobbyist to accept those kinds of payments and the penalties for doing it should be significant. I am glad that is included in this legislation.
There are also changes to ethics enforcement, to budgeting and to government appointments, although I would prefer that this did not remain in the Prime Minister's Office as it does. There are changes in regard to whistleblowing, although there is a concern, as was raised by the previous speaker, that the whistleblowing provisions of this legislation still include a cash reward, although it has been reduced significantly. I do not think that is an appropriate way to go.
I am sure that most public servants do not need to be rewarded for what they understand should be an integral part of their job. We are well served by public servants in Canada. They understand these important concerns about accountability, transparency and ethics in government. I think it is inappropriate to say they deserve or require some kind of cash reward for acting on those important understandings.
There is a lot in this bill about the internal workings of government, but there is very little about democratic accountability. I think that is the significant failure of this legislation. I am hoping that New Democrats will propose changes to improve that failure in this legislation but also that there will be other legislation before the House, either from private members or from the government, to address some of those things.
Those are the things I want to focus on this morning.
There are some things in the bill and there are some things not in the bill. In the bill there are bans on corporate and union donations, which I think is a good thing. There is an attempt to clean up the use of trust funds for election campaigns. That is a good thing. There are limits and rules set for gifts given to candidates. That is also a very good thing. However, there is a whole list of things that are not included in this legislation.
I think we are all aware that Ed Broadbent, the former member for Ottawa Centre, made some very clear and important recommendations in the last Parliament for what he said was an attempt to clean up politics. Those have been very instructive for me and for other members of the House.
First, I want to talk about the lack of floor crossing legislation in the bill. It is a serious failure and it was the first major accountability challenge of the new Conservative government. Sadly, I think most Canadians feel that the government failed miserably in that first challenge. The defection of the Minister of International Trade, the MP for Vancouver Kingsway, from the Liberal Party to the Conservative Party and to a cabinet position was extremely disappointing and has justly angered many people in Vancouver Kingsway.
Earlier my colleague from Nanaimo--Cowichan talked about the power of the people and that the vote is where people express their power in our system. To see the expression of the votes of the people of Vancouver Kingsway so early quickly and cavalierly disregarded shows a major flaw in our system.
Over 80% of the people In Vancouver Kingsway voted for a party other than the Conservative Party and now they have a member of Parliament who is a representative of that party. The member in question ran a very partisan election campaign. In fact, he was one of the most partisan of all Liberals in British Columbia and his attacks on the Conservative Party were direct, relentless and sometimes very personal, yet only days after the election he changed his stripes and announced he had decided to be a Conservative.
There is no wonder why right now in Vancouver Kingsway there is a de-election campaign. There is no wonder that protesters follow the minister wherever he goes in the Vancouver area to denounce this change that he has made. I can understand why people of Vancouver Kingsway are so disappointed in their member of Parliament. I was proud to stand with members of the de-election campaign recently at one of their demonstrations when the Prime Minister actually visited my constituency of Burnaby--Douglas.
There is no excuse for this. We could have been dealing with this now as part of Bill C-2. We need floor crossing legislation. We have a good example already on the books. My NDP colleague, the member for Sackville--Eastern Shore, has had a private member's bill on this issue for many years and it came to a vote in the House of Commons in the last Parliament. Unfortunately, it did not succeed but there were members of the current government who supported it at that time and I hope they will continue their support for that kind of legislation. We will have a chance to vote on it again in this Parliament. We are going to ensure that comes before the House at some point but it should be part of the legislation we are debating today.
My colleague's bill would require any MP who wishes to change parties to resign his or her seat, seek the nomination of the new party and run in a by-election or sit as an independent. These choices could have existed for the member for Vancouver Kingsway. He could have considered and could still consider any of those options and I would encourage him to do so. At this point I happen to think that he should resign and seek re-election, seek the nomination of his new-found party and put that to the test of the people of Vancouver Kingsway so they can be sure that their wishes are clearly represented by the person who represents them here.
Most of us here run as representatives of political parties, although there is one independent member of the House and that is a different circumstance. We function here in caucuses of political parties and we must honour the decisions of our constituents who pay attention to what we say on behalf of our political party, who pay attention to the platforms of our political parties and who make that part of their decision making process.
Again, the absence of this provision in Bill C-2 is a serious failure. It causes me great concern and I wonder about the government's interest in dealing with issues of democratic accountability when I see its absence.
Many other issues are not in this legislation, such as electoral reform. The New Democrats believe there should be a mixed proportional system where we maintain constituency representation but we ensure that the House better represents the overall voting pattern of Canadians, and that has not been the case of our House.
There are no spending limits or requirements for disclosure on party leadership contests. We have seen some incredibly big spending moments in leadership contests over the years from parties. It is particularly important when that person exercises the responsibilities of leadership, the discipline functions of his or her caucus and when often he or she is the person who becomes the prime minister. We need to ensure there are those limitations.
Those are some of the concerns I have but I have many more. I do look forward to questions from other members and to further discussions with my constituents on this important issue.
