Joe Comartin

[Parliament of Canada Act, September 17th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I think if you ask the House you will find that I have unanimous consent for the following with regard to my report stage amendment to Bill C-34.

In the report stage amendment to Bill C-34, I moved the deletion of clause 38 of the bill. Clause 38 is a coordinating amendment to Bill C-34 that replaces clause 7 of Bill C-34 in the case where a section of the Courts Administration Service Act comes into force before clause 7 of the bill.

My report stage amendment should also have deleted clause 7 of Bill C-34 to cover the situation where the section of the Courts Administration Service Act does not come into force before clause 7 of the bill. That way it would have been clear that any point in time clause 7 of Bill C-34 should be deleted.

For the sake of clarity and consistency, I ask for unanimous consent to amend my report stage amendment in order to delete both clause 7 and clause 38 of Bill C-34.

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

moved:

That Bill C-34 be amended by deleting Clause 38.Debate arose on the motion in Group No. 1.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to this particular amendment to Bill C-34. In its simplest form, the amendment would withdraw clause 38 from the bill.

While I suppose one could argue that clause 38 is fairly technical, its ramifications are really quite serious. In its simplest form, by withdrawing that clause we would open up the ability of both individuals and members of Parliament to challenge the ethics commissioner in court.

The effect of clause 38 as printed and now before the House is to include the ethics commissioner in the provisions of Bill C-34 that in effect precludes the commissioner at any time from being challenged in the Federal Court of Canada.

We know from the provisions in the rest of the bill that the federal ethics commissioner, if the bill is passed and becomes law, will, for all intents and purposes, be chosen and appointed by the government.

In spite of our attempts at the committee to have the appointment approved by a vote of two-thirds of the House, that was rejected by the government. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, as long as we have a majority government it will be appointing the ethics commissioner.

I will not spend a lot of time in terms of the concerns that have been expressed over the role the commissioner has played up to this point but it certainly has not been a satisfactory role.

The role played by the ethics commissioner, who would be appointed by a majority of the House of Commons, which is the government, would simply not be enough. The role would not be satisfactorily performed. The independence that is required from that person playing the role would certainly not be guaranteed at all unless we had that two-thirds vote.

If we were to take out clause 38 it would give both individuals and members of Parliament the ability to bring the ethics commissioner to account. To a great extent that is what the amendment is about. The amendment is about the accountability of this person.

The effect of the amendment, if clause 38 is not amended, will be to equate to a great degree the ethics commissioner to the role and privileges that we have as members of Parliament. The House has been critical, even to the degree that the government has attempted to push that role, that privilege.

We currently have outstanding litigation that will in effect say that the privilege extends to human rights and that the privilege of the member even overrides human rights in the country. That is a position that we have been opposed to but it is one that the government is pushing at this point.

Also, if clause 38 is not repealed, that role, authority or privilege, as wide as it is and as historically based as it is, would extend to the ethics commissioner.

I and my party believe that clause 38 does not have a role to play in the role that the ethics commissioner should be playing in this country. We should be saying to the ethics commissioner that we expect him or her to be responsible to the House and to the Canadian people but unless clause 38 is removed the Canadian people will have absolutely no role to play.

If there is concern on the rulings of the ethics commissioner in the future, if he or she take positions to the House that are not satisfactory to individuals, groups of individuals or communities within the country, they will not be able to do anything about that unless clause 38 is removed.

The history of the use of judicial review, because that is the process that would be allowed if section 38 were repealed or removed, has been one of checks and balances. We have a government system that generally sees Parliament as being supreme but it is not in all cases.

It was quite clear in 1982, when the Constitution was repatriated and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was introduced, that we were putting limitations on the role of Parliament. If it were appropriate to use judicial review at that time vis-à-vis the ethics commissioner then it is appropriate at this time.

Section 38 is in effect a throwback. It states that the ethics commissioner would, in many respects, be above the law. Yes, I recognize that person would ultimately still have to report to the House but that individual would be above the law with regard to anybody else. It is not an acceptable position in this day and age.

As elected officials we call upon our constituents to be more involved. We are concerned about the lack of participation at election time. We are also concerned about the lack of participation in the democratic process on a number of other occasions. I suggest this would be one of them. If we pass section 38 unamended we will be precluding that participation from the public.

It is also worth noting, and almost as a warning to other members of the House, what would happen if we had an ethics commissioner. I am not going to suggest for a moment that the government or any other would appoint a commissioner who was not expected to do a good job. However I would point out that whoever that person is he or she will be human and will have eccentric behaviour and personality clashes from time to time. That individual will also make mistakes from time to time. Rulings from the ethics commissioner could have a very detrimental effect on individual members of Parliament. I would suggest that members of Parliament having the ability to resort to an independent tribunal in the form of the federal court would be an appropriate thing to have built into the legislation.

It is not only individuals or groups who would like to make the commissioner more accountable. By removing section 38 we would also be permitting individual members of Parliament to press the commissioner if they were not treated fairly or the commissioner makes a mistake.

In spite of some of the paranoia that we have heard from the Leader of the Official Opposition in the last couple of weeks about our judiciary, the reality is that Canada has a very proud tradition in terms of its independence and the quality of our judiciary. By removing section 38 and relying on our judiciary to be the final arbitrator or final decision maker if the ethics commissioner does not perform his or her job appropriately is something of benefit to individual members of Parliament but, more important, it would give average Canadian citizens the ability to make the commissioner accountable.

[Antarctic Environmental Protection Act, June 13th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I also appreciate the opportunity to speak to Bill C-42. It is one of those times that we stand up in the House and say that it is about time.

The Madrid protocol, which Canada agreed to in 1991, is basically the reason this bill is before the House. However, as in so many other cases, it has taken us a full decade to bring forward supporting legislation for commitments that we made at the international level. It is all too typical of the government in the way it has avoided its responsibility to the various countries on this planet in terms of meeting our responsibilities. Again I repeat, it is about time.

Having said that, I want to address a couple of points with regard to the Madrid protocol and this legislation. I would indicate that the NDP is prepared in principle to support the bill. It is one that in its overall context and direction we do support.

The bill has encompassed to some degree the protocol but I do have some reservations and I want to mention those. It does address the protocol in the sense that the protocol had various principles that underpinned that agreement at the international level. It was making sure that the Antarctic would never be militarized and that neither nuclear weapons nor reactors would ever be placed there. It has a number of provisions in it which encourage further scientific research in the area to identify the ecosystem in many respects and hopefully ways of being able to identify needs that we and the rest of the planet may be able to maintain.

It was interesting to listen to the Alliance's attack on the government with regard to how Kyoto will be a disaster, according to them. The Antarctic, as is our Arctic, is the first victim of the global warming that we are seeing. I remember about a year ago there was a huge chunk that separated off the ice patch there that was larger than Newfoundland. It has completely broken up and is no longer part of that continent. Therefore, we badly need Kyoto in place as quickly as possible to forestall further damage like that to the Antarctic.

Going back to this bill specifically, the final point I would mention in terms of one of the underlying principles of the Madrid protocol is that all countries that signed on to the protocol would, in effect, abandon sovereignty claims. Not all countries have and so there is still an issue in that regard, but it certainly behooves Canada to take part in this.

Once the bill goes to committee we will have a greater opportunity to explore this but I do want to raise a couple of cautions. There are concerns about whether the bill goes far enough to implement the Madrid protocol and protect the Antarctic. I just want to mention a couple of sections. One is clause 5.

I am not sure how one would ultimately interpret this, but clause 5 of the bill as printed and presented to the House leaves open the possibility of the military having access to the sites. In fact, it specifically says that the bill would not apply to the Canadian military. I do not understand that and we will have to explore that.

The other one is that the prohibition in clause 7 prevents a number of activities but specifically allows commercial fishing. That is a great concern to us in Canada given the devastation that we have seen to some of our fishing stock when it is uncontrolled, as it would be in the sense that there are no controls in this legislation in that regard.

[Canada Elections Act, June 10th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I want to address a couple of points that have been mentioned and specifically address some of the commentaries with regard to the motion from my colleague for Winnipeg Centre. There was some debate about this particular motion requesting the amendment which in effect would simply reinstate clause 71 which was in the original draft of the bill. The debate seems to have focussed around whether this would accomplish what it was designed to do because we use the term “may”, which would make it permissive rather than mandatory.

It goes essentially to the very nature of the funds that we are addressing here and how they came into being. As we all know, the member for Trinity—Spadina, the former defence minister on the government side, and the current Deputy Prime Minister have all been pointed to as members from that party who in fact have these trust funds. We are of the opinion, and it can only be an opinion because we do not know where these funds came from, but we believe that a good deal of the money would probably not meet the requirements of donations under the proposed bill.

What clause 71 would do if it were passed and became part of the act, is it would give members a choice. They could do what I would say is the moral thing, because a good deal of the money is probably improperly raised, and donate it to charity or to some other community endeavour. We can think of any number of those that would benefit, especially when we hear that one of these trust funds in particular is in excess of a couple of hundred thousand dollars.

This clause would have given members of Parliament a choice. They could give the money away or give the money to a charity which, in effect, would be the proper thing to do because they should not have raised the money in the first place and should not be using it for their riding associations or for the next election as a candidate.

However if they feel they can justify where the funds came from, then fine, they can donate it to the riding associations or to the candidate within the riding in the next election, and we would accept that. However, and this is very important because it goes to the essence of what we are trying to do with the legislation around accountability and transparency, if the money is to be donated to the riding association then they should tell their constituents and the country where the money came from.

If the bill is going to have real meaning it is essential that this provision be passed. I strongly urge all members of the House to accept the bill with this amendment in it because without it the bill would have a fundamental flaw.

The other point I want to make has to do with the issue of trust funds. As we have heard from a series of speakers, there is no specific provision on an ongoing basis prohibiting the use of trust funds. The government's argument is that we do not need a specific provision because if those trust funds were set up as they have been, as we know in the past, any of the money that was used to go to riding associations, to candidates, to leadership or nomination campaigns would have to be accounted for by the riding association, the party, the candidates who were seeking nomination or a leadership candidate. The government has argued that it has covered it all.

It causes us some concern when we look at some of the very serious abuses that have occurred in the United States around the political action committees and the millions of dollars, I think it is actually up to billions of dollars now. We know those funds have been used improperly in all sorts of ways.

It would be much safer for the electoral process in this country if there were simply an outright ban on any trust funds, in that none of those funds could ever be used for political purposes.

I wish to make a couple of other comments in response to what we have heard from other members of the House. We heard from one of the Liberal members that there is accounting around these trust funds. I do not believe that is accurate. I do not think the member understands the nature of the trust funds that have been established and that are so scandalous. There is no accounting and no requirement under existing legislation for those funds to be declared, to show their source or to show how they have been used. I do not know what point the member was making in that regard.

One of the questions we on this side of the House have with regard to these trust funds is that if they are earning, and they obviously are, especially the largest one, such levels of income just from basic interest, does our income tax laws require the interest to be declared? One of the questions we have always had is whether the trustees of those funds are declaring this and providing some accounting under the Income Tax Act. We have never had a response to that question. It hangs out there as to whether that law is being complied with.

The additional point I wish to make is with regard to how funds are used and raised. We have heard figures, particularly from the Canadian Alliance. The point I want to make is that our party raised more than 50% of our funds from individuals, something for which we are quite proud. In fact we raise a little more than 60% of our funds from individuals. We have done that historically for a long period of time.

I was recently at the committee reviewing the bill when the president of the federal Liberal Party came forward and acknowledged that the federal NDP had a much greater ability, and I have to say the same is true of our provincial wing, to raise funds from individuals than the Liberal Party did.

It is part of the need for us to get back to the grassroots of our party, for us to be able to say to our party members that we need their financial support, that we will be in touch with them, and that we will be engaging them in the democratic process. The two, although not exclusively, go hand in hand. We are very proud of our record in that regard.

Some members of the Canadian Alliance talked about the huge amounts that we receive from the labour movement. First, I want to be very clear that we have, for quite some period of time, felt that it was appropriate for this type of legislation, which does not go the whole distance that we wanted it to go, but for us to say that all funds should either come from individuals or from a subsidy from the taxpayer. We believe that is the safest way to protect democracy.

We do raise in excess of 60% of all our dollars from individuals. We raise approximately 10% of our dollars from small corporations. We raise about 30% from labour unions.

We are very clear on this. It is our position that the bill does not go far enough, that in fact all donations from small corporations, large corporations, the corporate sector and the labour sector should be eliminated as possible sources of donations to parties in the country. That is our position and it is one we are proud of having taken historically for quite some time.

[Canada Elections Act, June 10th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the one motion in Group No. 2 that we are speaking to is one that the NDP supports, although we have serious reservations about several other sections of this bill. This motion would allow us the opportunity at some point in the future to review the bill. We expect the bill to be law, subject to whatever amendments may go through before it gets to third reading. so in that regard, we think the motion is appropriate.

There has been much criticism that this legislation has come on too quickly. Detail that should be in this bill in a number of fairly critical and crucial areas is lacking. We have heard that from all sides of the House. We have heard it from a number of members on the government side. We have heard it from the Liberal Party, for that matter, to a great degree, both in the public and in committee.

What it speaks to is the division within the Liberal Party over this bill. However, it also reflects negatively on the Prime Minister for having insisted to push this through as rapidly as he did, including what just happened a few minutes ago in terms of the Liberals cutting off debate once again in the House on an issue that is of significant importance to not only the House and the political parties, but to democracy in Canada.

There is no question that the bill addresses concerns that we have expressed as a political party over the dominance of big money on the political process in a number of ways. Probably the best example we have ever seen was in the 1988 election when the free trade agreement was being debated in the country as the principal issue. I do not think it goes beyond the pale to say that big business helped buy that agreement by pressing the issue so strenuously as it did and using its financial means to do so. It jumped out very clearly at that point that reform was needed.

The other point that would be made with regard to reform is to look to the United States and see the way big money there has come to totally dominate the electoral process. It calls out for the need for reform. The Americans have been totally unsuccessful, at least from my perspective, at the federal level in that reform. This bill would go some distance to at least addressing the issues.

This particular motion would allow for a review of this legislation six months after the next election. It would allow us to look at the points that we believe have not been properly addressed or addressed extensively enough in this legislation.

I want to speak to at least a couple of those issues, assuming the bill goes through with either no amendment or very minor amendments by the end of this week and then comes up for its final vote. We believe these are issues that will have to be addressed because they have not been properly addressed in this legislation.

The one that is at the top of the list concerns the use of private trusts. They are a scandal, quite frankly. We are hearing of literally hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting in these trusts to be used at the whim of the particular member of Parliament, or his or her trustee.

Part of the problem is that there is no accountability for these funds. From what we have been able to ascertain, the funds clearly were raised to assist in the electoral process, whether it be for a nomination meeting at the riding association level, for leadership runs by various candidates or whether they were donated during the course of an election or between elections for local riding association purposes. In each one of those cases the money was clearly raised. The people who donated it knew that the money would be used for the electoral process.

There is absolutely no accountability, no transparency and no regulations as to how the money can be raised and how it can be used. The bill does nothing to deal with that problem. The wording in the original bill attempted to address it; I will give it that much credit, even though I do not know if I believe it. That prior wording has been completely removed. There is no attempt at all now to regulate the trusts. The attempt to simply roll them over with no accountability and no transparency is a scandal and should not be allowed.

When the legislation comes around for review, if that particular section is not changed and nothing is done about the trusts, we are saying to the government that we will have to look at this again. We will have to put into place a methodology that will totally prohibit the use of those trusts.

Another point I would like to make that will require a review if the legislation goes ahead as prepared is the ability of franchises to donate money under the corporate heading. Earlier in the day I had an exchange with the minister on this point. I want to reiterate very clearly that the federal NDP's position is that there should be no donations allowed whatsoever from the corporate or labour sector. There should be an absolute ban. The government has rejected that position, in spite of the fact that it touts across the country that it is eliminating them. The reality is it is not and it will still allow for reasonably significant contributions coming through the corporate sector. It is not providing a level playing field.

I want to quote some numbers in this regard. Today there are in excess of 1.2 million corporations registered in this country at the federal level. There are a lot more of those at the individual provincial level. At the same time there are 16,000 unions and locals in existence in the country. That is the ratio we are talking about.

We are saying we will allow for those donations of $1,000, but with regard to labour unions, we will only allow in effect the federal labour union to donate $1,000. As opposed to that however, in the corporate sector, Tim Hortons and franchises of that nature will each be allowed to donate $1,000. I counted the number of Tim Hortons in my riding. There are 10 or 11; I am not quite sure about one small one. I also have a good number of locals in my riding because Windsor is a heavily unionized city and we have a number of local unions.

The Tim Hortons franchise alone can donate as much as the whole labour movement. If the labour movement in my community was able to say to the national headquarters that it wants to donate the $1,000, all of the labour unions in my area would only be matched by the Tim Hortons. Then there are all of the other franchises.

We have to go back to the principle behind the legislation. If the Liberals really believed in the principle behind the legislation as they have enunciated, they would close the loophole. The principle is it is a question of where is the directing mind, who controls? The answer is that the franchise agreements in this country at times have been heavily criticized by our courts as to how restrictive they are, the individual franchise owners versus the corporate conglomerate that controls.

I have looked at a number of those franchise agreements in my professional career. The reality is that control is exercised at the upper corporate level, not at the local level.

In that regard, we need to look at this again. When this legislation comes up for review, we have to have monitored and we have to be able to show that labour unions donated certain amounts and the franchises, as a separate sector of the corporate world, donated hundreds and hundreds, if not millions of dollars. I am sure we will see that a great deal of that money is still going to go to the Liberal Party. I believe when one looks at the facts, that will call for a change. When the review comes up, that is one of the areas that will have to change in this legislation.

[Canada Elections Act, June 10th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP's position was that there be no contributions allowed whatsoever from the corporate or labour union sector of our society. If we will not do that, and the government has rejected that, then we need to have a level playing field. The opening the government has left with regard to franchises does not provide a level playing field for the labour movement if it wants to contribute. The government was given the option.

Why did the government reject this? Why did it not take the definition of labour unions if it was stuck on letting the franchises make their contributions? There is an issue here about the directing mind. Anybody who has practised law and has looked at franchise agreements knows where that directing mind comes from, and it is no different there than it would be within the labour movement. There is as much independence in labour movement locals as there is in franchises, or as little, depending on how one looks at it.

Why did the minister reject the position the NDP took, that if the government was to go this route, why not use the definition of what a trade union was as contained in the Canada Labour Code?

[Lobbyists Registration Act, June 5th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, with regard to the legislation specifically, my colleague for Windsor West pushed very strongly at the committee stage when the bill was going through for full disclosure. My colleague from Winnipeg raised that in her address to the House today. She pointed to specific donations that were made to the Liberal Party.

I wonder if she could comment on whether the disclosure provisions that should be in that legislation should include disclosure provisions of donations made to leadership candidates given that we have at this point minimal disclosure from the leadership candidate for the Liberal Party, the member for LaSalle—Émard, and whether this might be a way of having those donations made public, if there were full disclosure under this particular legislation.

[Lobbyists Registration Act, June 5th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I just want to say to my colleague from Winnipeg that the comments she made at the beginning with regard to the Senate are ones that I share and I share the ongoing concern that we are involved in any way with legislation that is being held up or in other ways affected by that unelected, not responsible House and also very expensive House.

In this situation it sent back an amendment that might arguably be an improvement. Is it worth having it when occasionally it does something that is worthwhile?

[Petitions, June 4th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36 I am pleased to present this petition on behalf of residents on Toronto Island who are very concerned that the Toronto city airport is about to be expanded without the proper assessment for environmental and health effects.

They call upon Parliament to request that the project be referred to an environmental review panel by either the Minister of Transport or the Minister of the Environment.

[First Nations Governance Act, June 3rd, 2003]

Yes, one of those, as my colleague for Winnipeg Centre points out, was the minister himself. That is the type of support the bill has in the country. The opposition from the first nations was overwhelming, as it was from the bar associations, constitutional experts and the list goes on.

I also want at this point to take the opportunity to recognize the work done by the member for Winnipeg Centre from my party and the member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot from the Bloc. Their work was supported throughout by the first nations' people, supported in a way that it is impossible for me to use words to describe. They were there and were very clear on what their positions were. They were denied access to the table, even though one of the resolutions put forth to the committee on aboriginal affairs was that representation should be sitting at that table.

There are precedents for this. We have done this before. Again, the government denied that to the first nations in spite of that specific recommendation from the member for Winnipeg Centre.

The first nations were in great numbers. We set a record in terms of the number of hours that was spent on this committee, and they were there right to the very end, showing their opposition consistently, forcefully and also with great dignity, much more so than we saw from the chair of this committee and most of the representatives on the government side.

The legislation itself is so thoroughly wanting. Not only will members know that through the group of amendments we have put forward but they also will hear that repeatedly from those of us who have analyzed this bill to any degree at all. It misses the essential point that we are not dealing with an inferior group. That is in fact the way the first nations are treated in the legislation.

The government approaches it on the basis that the Government of Canada is superior. It approaches it on the basis of a very paternalistic attitude toward the first nations. We have heard that the basic rationale behind the legislation is to do away with the paternalism contained in the Indian Act, paternalism that is very clearly out of date. It was out of date at the time when it was first used back in the 1800s, when the Indian Act was first passed. The reality is it has been perpetuated in this bill.

It is quite obvious from the attitude we have from the government that it is quite prepared to shove this bill through as is. We saw that in the committee in the way people were treated: members of Parliament, witnesses and people who were just there as observers. We have no doubt we are going through a process that, to a great extent, maybe to a total extent, is a farce as far as the first nations are concerned. We have not treated them with the respect and with the rights that we have accorded and have recognized in Canada. They are not being treated that way at all.

If we go back and look at some of the Supreme Court of Canada decisions, this and preceding governments have been told very clearly that there are inherent rights and the government has no right to interfere with them, none whatsoever. The government does it repeatedly in this bill.

We were told in the committee that this bill would not survive challenges in the court. Whole sections will be thrown out. What does that mean? It means that again the first nations will spend millions of dollars in legal fees to fight this bill all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. It is quite obvious, if the government's attitude does not change, that is where it will end up. Ultimately, in large part it will be struck down, and therefore we are going through a process.

We have spent all this time fighting this, trying to get the message through to the government that the bill cannot go anyplace. It does not have the support of the first nations, of the aboriginal people across the country. We repeatedly heard that. The minister has deluded himself into saying that it is only a few of the leaders. We heard him say that repeatedly in this process.

A few weeks ago thousands of people from the first nations were in his riding trying to get the message finally through to him. This does not have the support of the first nations, of the aboriginal community, but he is going to push it ahead. What are we going to find? Five to ten years from now we will be back here again, and hopefully at that point we will do it right.