Joe Clark

[Foreign Affairs, February 12th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is curious that information is available freely to parliamentary committees in the United States and it is denied here to Parliament and the House of Commons.

Since shortly after September 11 Canadian security intelligence officers were part of the international search for Osama bin Laden.

I have two questions for the Prime Minister. First, do Canada's security agencies know where Osama bin Laden is? Second, do they believe--

[Foreign Affairs, February 12th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, United States experts told their senate armed forces committee yesterday that North Korea has an untested ballistic missile capable of reaching the western United States. Such a missile then would also be capable of reaching western Canada.

Could the Prime Minister tell us if his intelligence officers agree that North Korea has a missile capable of reaching western North America?

[Canada Elections Act, February 11th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from South Shore. Earlier I neglected to answer the question about trust funds. I do not believe there is a provision in the bill and there should be.

The key is transparency. The public has to be able to look at what we are doing and have some confidence that we are behaving in an appropriate way.

The sprouting of trust funds, in particular in the amounts mentioned by the hon. member, only leads to cynicism and suspicion. That is deadly to a democracy like ours. We have to find ways in committee, among other challenges, to build in transparency with regard to circumstances that led trust funds to be developed.

[Canada Elections Act, February 11th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I believe there should be caps on contributions. As I said in my remarks, I think that some of the caps being proposed should be looked at.

I hope the Canadian Alliance does in fact have proposals that it will bring forward as amendments, but let me say that I am not putting words in its members' mouths. I am quoting from the amendment that was just introduced by their leader. Their leader's amendment states that “This House decline to give second reading...”. That is pretty categoric. The position of the Canadian Alliance is to kill the bill. The position of the party previously known as Reform is to kill reform. I find that odd, but they are entitled to their position.

[Canada Elections Act, February 11th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the question by the hon. member for Brandon—Souris.

Certainly past practice would suggest that the government will clamp down on members of other parties and members of its own party who want to reform the bill, but this is a rather unusual bill. The Prime Minister claims that it is a matter of great importance to him, a question of principle, a reform that needs to be introduced. He admitted in his remarks, as I heard them, that there are imperfections in the bill, that it needs to be changed.

I hope he will not succumb to the bad habit of limiting debate and limiting the ability of members on his side of the House and this side of the House to improve the bill that is brought before us. This is too important a matter to let fall victim to the party whip or the party whim of the Liberal Party. It can make a significant change in the way the political system works and the way the political system is seen.

I would hope that there will be, particularly among members of the Liberal Party themselves, an insistence upon a right to amend the bill and not have Parliament's capacity to debate it limited.

There is one other point. I think I heard someone from the Alliance saying they are not against the bill. They have introduced an amendment that would kill the bill. That seems to me a fairly dramatic way of indicating that they are against it.

[Canada Elections Act, February 11th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to follow the member for Palliser. I was particularly interested when he was speaking about his intimate knowledge of horse racing. That would suggest to me that he is not a member who would parade his piety before the House. Unfortunately, sometimes his party does.

Hearing him refer to the bill of 1972-74 and the role of the hon. David Lewis, I must add that I had the privilege of serving on that committee at that time and, not to make too much of a point of it, one of the amendments that we were able to get adopted despite rigorous opposition from the NDP was an amendment which would have covered contributions by governments to political parties. The reason the NDP was so opposed to that amendment was that it was then briefly in government in the province of British Columbia. But sanity prevailed and the bill survived.

My caucus and I support the principle of campaign finance reform. We agree that there is an urgent need to modernize the rules. However, we believe that the bill, Bill C-24, may well create as many problems as it purports to solve.

I know the debate at this stage is on the amendment and let me be clear about the amendment. It asks the House to decline to give second reading to the bill; in other words, to kill the bill and stop reform. That is a very interesting position to be taken by a party that was originally elected to the House by embracing principles of reform.

When the Leader of the Opposition spoke he outlined several concerns of detail, consequence, and inadequacy of the drafting of the bill that we share. I think members on all sides of the House are concerned about the implications of what is in the bill and also implications of things that are not. We want to take a very close look at that in committee.

However, the amendment proposed by the Canadian Alliance would kill the bill and that would be wrong. What Parliament should do is improve the legislation that is here. Consequently, we will be voting against the Canadian Alliance amendment.

I find it strange that a party that was so proudly populace in its origins would defend a status quo which better serves the interests of the National Citizens' Coalition than it does the interests of free democracy.

Everyone knows the bill was introduced in haste and with a hidden agenda. Had the Prime Minister believed in the principle of party finance reform, he would have consulted broadly and acted long ago, acted early enough that the new rules would have applied to him too and not just to others. What we have here today is one more instance of the Prime Minister lunging after a legacy as he leaves his position in public life. In fact, his legacy in Canadian public life is the double standard and this is just another example.

I was struck that the Prime Minister began his remarks by attacking the system, not in this country but in the United States. There is almost a pathological anti-Americanism about the Prime Minister that is particularly inappropriate at this time.

We have a bill that offers a chance for reforms the country needs. Our task now is to make this careless bill significantly better. Canadians are understandably concerned about the role of money in politics.

Last Friday, the public works minister revealed that the RCMP would widen its investigation into Groupaction and related cases. The government tries to blame these events on public servants, although no one believes that public servants would have acted without clear direction from political ministers.

If we were truly interested in the good reputation of politics, the House would find a way to hold those ministers to account. What is at issue here is that the Groupaction scandals are a tip of the iceberg of impropriety which accumulates when political influence and political favours are for sale. There has been a pattern of abuse starting in the government with Shawinigate, leading to resignations, cabinet shuffles, and appointments that are an abuse of our diplomatic service. In all cases the core issue has been the relationship between the public official and backroom financial supporters.

Of course, not all public officials are susceptible to this kind of influence, but the system is weak on two levels. First, it is too open to temptation and, second, these days, perception is an important part of politics. Canadians believe that money can influence the course of events. Even without an experienced minister, like the Minister of Canadian Heritage, saying that money held up the Kyoto accord.

Solutions are twofold. We can legislate with respect to donors and contribution amounts, and we can legislate how these amounts are spent and publicly disclosed.

When I responded to the government House leader's statement introducing the bill I noted that my colleagues and I would be taking a very close look at the details. It is a good thing that we did. It is always the case that the devil is in the details, but there are a number of concerns in the bill, many enumerated already in the early moments of this debate.

What I hope is that all members of the House will be free to consider seriously the weaknesses of the bill and will be free to improve it. The worst thing that would happen in the name of parliamentary reform would be if legislation were rushed in, have party whips imposed upon it, and there would be an inability on the part of the House to build on reforms that would be more effective than are in the present bill.

Let me deal with four serious weaknesses in the proposal as we see it that were introduced by the government House leader and by the Prime Minister today.

The first weakness concerns the regulatory burden on parties and local riding associations. That regulatory burden is simply impossible to bear. These provisions have the odour of regulations written by people who have never personally participated in political campaigns and may not even recognize what babies they are throwing out with the bathwater. I doubt that any party is strong enough in all 301 constituencies in the country to file the reports to Elections Canada that this new bill would require.

The second is through a question, why ban corporate and union donations to parties outright? Why not, instead, tighten disclosure rules and cap corporate and union donations, possibly at the same level as those allowed for individuals? That would ensure transparency and accountability, but it would maintain the freedom of organizations to support the political party of their choice.

During my party's annual meeting in August, we proposed substantial improvements to the system's transparency. We proposed that parties disclose their incomes every quarter, like any other business in Canada, that contributions received by riding associations be included in these quarterly reports and that the internal party leadership races be subject to more or less the same rules as political parties in general.

Third, the government is introducing rules governing political activity at the national level through the national party, and at the local levels through the riding associations, but most parties have regional conglomerations of riding associations, youth associations, campus clubs, women's associations and other such groups that are neither the main party nor a riding association. On all of these, Bill C-24 is virtually silent. The government therefore is either creating a number of loopholes or it is creating a bureaucratic and regulatory nightmare for those who will be responsible for monitoring and enforcing such provisions.

Fourth, the political parties would get an allowance to compensate for losing the financial support of businesses and unions. However, internal leadership races would be subject to different rules.

Members of this House simply have to consider how parties would conduct leadership races. We cannot pretend they are unimportant. This Government of Canada has been stopped in its tracks by a leadership race in its own ranks, a race that is being decided not by a healthy competition among contending candidates but by the fact that one has been able to accumulate immense amounts of money and consequently has an unfair advantage. This is public business. It is a matter of public interest. We in the House have to find some way to look at the conduct of leadership races.

There is no question that the means of financing political parties needs drastic reform. I have spoken in the House, as others have, of the influence of big money. That danger exists in fact and, as important, and we would be fools to ignore it, it exists in perception. There is a very strong sense among ordinary Canadians that the political system, the party system, does not merit their confidence or support because it is controlled by powerful interests.

But I want to make another case. There has been another growing and significant change in our system that has made reform of party financing more urgent: the growth over time and the power of special interest groups. Special interests have always been part of politics, always a legitimate part, from labour unions to business to organizations mobilized to fight a particular cause. But in an earlier time, when the present system of party financing took root, the influence of special interests was balanced and often overweighed by a powerful sense of the common interest.

Many individuals and organizations that contributed to political parties invested in a democratic system. They demanded accountability. They wanted to be able to chose between the parties. They thought that one candidate or another had a good chance of making a contribution to public life. They knew that all this would cost money and their donations were motivated in part by the feeling that they were doing their civic duty.

That of course was not the whole story. There have always been interests and individuals who sought to buy influence for themselves or for their views, but when the present system was built, one of its foundations was a sense of a public interest that was more important than private interests.

That balance has changed. Our political system has changed. The weight of private interests has grown. The sense of public interest has declined. That is why the lobbying industry, which virtually did not exist in Canada 30 years ago, is so powerful today. The reality now is that in this capital city good lobbyists have much more influence than good members of Parliament.

That raises a very serious question for the Canadian political system. Special interests, by definition, fracture community. They put particular interests ahead of the whole.

Historically in Canada, two institutions performed the function of knitting together different claims and putting the public interest first. Government itself was one of those institutions. The other was political parties, particularly political parties that were national in their reach and in their ambition.

It is not healthy for the public interest to have the role of parties decline and the role of lobbyists and special interests fill the vacuum. That is a large issue of which this question of party funding is one important element, because the present situation allows the enfeeblement of political parties. It makes it much more difficult for them to perform their task of drawing together the interests of the whole community.

These reforms outlined here today would allow us to make a step in the direction of reasserting the public interest. These issues are central to the health of our democracy. It is clear that the status quo does not work. It invites very real cynicism in the country. The Minister of Canadian Heritage testified to that effect the other day when she said that financial considerations and the interests of contributors held up the timetable on Kyoto. There is no doubt that the present system invites abuse.

This bill is only a beginning. It is hasty. It was introduced without adequate consultation. It is incomplete. It is badly drafted. It needs substantial amendment. However, that is the business of this House. My party and I will support the bill at this reading and encourage the widest possible opportunity for members of all parties in the House to improve it in committee and elsewhere by considering and debating amendments.

[Canada Elections Act, February 11th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would ask the Prime Minister why he waited until he was leaving to introduce the legislation.

[Iraq, February 11th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister continues to avoid answers on these questions. The House can only conclude it is because there is no plan in the government; it has no sense of what it is doing.

I want to make very clear to the Prime Minister that I am not asking him to divulge the details of any discussion in cabinet, but may I ask the Prime Minister, have contingency plans for a possible war against Iraq been presented to cabinet, either during today's meeting or at any time in the last few months?

[Iraq, February 11th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, in 1991 the present Prime Minister's position on Canadian troops in the gulf was that we should send them, but once the shooting started, Canada should bring its troops home.

He has now sent Canadian troops to work with the Americans in Qatar. There would be a contingency plan for the role those Canadians would play in the event the United States acted against Iraq outside the United Nations auspices.

What is the contingency plan? Is it the Prime Minister's plan that those Canadian troops would come home?

[Firearms Registry, February 7th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I very much regret that position and hope that when the Prime Minister comes back, it will be reconsidered.

Earlier this week, the supporting documentation on the long gun registry report was published in English only. The government leader in the other place said it is a legitimate position to ask that official documents be published in both official languages. It is more than a legitimate position; it is an obligation under the Official Languages Act.

Why did the Government of Canada abandon the spirit and perhaps the letter of the Official Languages Act in this case? May we have a guarantee that the government will begin again to respect both the spirit and the letter of the Official Languages Act?