Joe Comartin

[Canada Elections Act, June 16th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I can do this really quickly. It is a simple answer.

It is not a problem for the other three parties. It is a problem for the Liberal Party. We do not have problems finding enough money to run our leadership campaigns. The Conservatives do not and the Bloc does not either. We can get it from individuals. We do not have to go to the big corporate world as the Liberals always have.

[Canada Elections Act, June 16th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I will say for my colleague from New Westminster—Coquitlam that there are some major protections in the bill. Again, as I said in my speech, I am not sure that it covers all the bases, but the major protections are there to avoid what we saw in the Liberal leadership campaign.

I think we would have seen it if we had ever received any adequate and accountable reporting from the current Prime Minister in regard to his leadership run. We will be doing away with the ability of individual candidates to borrow from individuals. Basically we are focusing in on only financial institutions being able to lend money to candidates.

Why this is important is that, again, it takes away the ability of the wealthy private sector to come in and buy a leadership or a nomination. We have a cap on what candidates can spend. Then we make sure that they do not get around the cap by taking out loans they never repay.

One of the inadequacies of the current law on the books now is that Elections Canada in effect can extend the time to repay the loans. The loans are supposed to be repaid 18 months after the fact. Elections Canada can extend that time.

Quite frankly, I am concerned that the criteria for Elections Canada to make decisions on whether it is going to allow the loans to be extended for repayment purposes are not as clear or perhaps as tight as they should be. It is one of the areas where at some point we may need to have some additional reform.

[Canada Elections Act, June 16th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, once again, I thank my colleague for his question.

Encouraging a candidate to stand for election when it is not certain that they will actually be elected is not only scandalous but also unlawful.

I will put it another way. In the case of our candidate in Outremont, who won that riding in the September byelection, he spent a lot of money because he was allowed to borrow money. In fact, the banks were willing to lend him money.

However, in other situations, some Bloc, Liberal or Conservative candidates do not stand a very good chance of winning and therefore cannot borrow money from the banks. They cannot do it.

That is the simple answer.

[Canada Elections Act, June 16th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup for his question. Our federal NDP staff have looked at this and they have come to two conclusions.

First, we have responsible candidates. They will not take out loans that could pose a problem to the federal party.

Second, and this is a really pragmatic answer, if a candidate's chances of winning are slim so will his chances of securing a loan from a bank or financial institution.

For these two reasons, we are satisfied and prepared, as a party, to accept our responsibility should it become necessary for the party to assume liability for loans taken out by individual candidates.

[Canada Elections Act, June 16th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to the bill, as opposed to some other times when I rise in the House and really wish I did not have to speak. The bill is definitely a step forward in the reform of our democracy overall, specifically the reform we are pursuing in political financing of election campaigns, both general campaigns and leadership campaigns as well as nomination meetings.

In that regard, this type of reform has been needed for quite some period of time. Prior attempts to reform the system have been made. We saw the Federal Accountability Act passed in this current Parliament. We saw significant reforms, which I think we all applaud, in the prior parliaments of 2000 to 2004 in particular.

However, this was an area where there was a glaring loophole left. We saw that, particularly in the last leadership race by the federal Liberals. A large number of candidates took out very substantial loans to finance their campaigns, in some cases approaching as much as a million dollars, loans that were left owing when the campaign was finished. Although there are mandates to repay those loans, there is no provision of any serious consequence where the lender on the loan had opted to forgive the loan.

We can see where the huge potential for abuse can lead. In most cases, we have very clear guidelines on how much can be spent in campaigns, including leadership campaigns. This is one of the areas where we need further reform, so there is a clearer accountability of where the funds have come from and how they are spent. In fact, we need more detail in those accounting reporting functions.

However, what this left opened was people could come forward as candidates for leadership or running for the nomination in a riding association and could borrow extensive amounts of money to fund those campaigns from family or close associates, business associates perhaps. Then when the campaign was all over, the limits that we had imposed on donations, the cap we had put on donations, could be easily exceeded by the people who had advanced the loans, saying, “I understand you're in dire financial straits, I'm not going to ask you to repay the loan”.

We saw that repeatedly happen. I often wondered, even prior to some of the reporting we now have in place, how often it happened of which we were not aware.

Therefore, we are taking a significant step forward under Bill C-29. We are placing very clear guidelines on from whom funds can be borrowed, and that is primarily the lending institutions of our country, not private individuals. There are limits on how much can be borrowed as well. It is a major step forward. I do not think it is the end of the day.

I remember sitting in committee one time and listening to two delegations, one from the province of Manitoba and one from the province of Quebec. They had started the program of financial reform in political financing and political donations in particular, much ahead of where we did at the federal level. It was interesting to listen to them. In both cases they said that what we had to do was continue to monitor, at least after every election and leadership campaign, to see if some creative person had come forward with an idea, a way to get around the restrictions and legislation, which thought we had put in place and which we thought were solid and absolute,

We are seeing that to some extent in the scandal of the Conservative Party's in and out scheme, which Elections Canada clearly found improper and contrary to the legislation. That was the Conservatives' creative attempt to get around the financing laws during a federal campaign. Hopefully at the end of the day they will have their wrists severely slapped, they will be penalized, et cetera, and we will put an end to that one.

In this case, what happened with the accountability act and some of the reforms we saw under the Liberal administration was that the issue around the loans was not dealt with. We are now dealing with it in Bill C-29. I think we have covered all the bases on it, but it will require ongoing monitoring. If we do not have that, we can be almost certain that someone will figure out a way around it and we will then have to move back in as a legislature to close whatever loopholes are found.

In addition to this legislation, we have additional democratic reforms. The current Prime Minister was very strong in opposition and in both federal campaigns in arguing for all sorts of democratic reforms.

We know we need reforms within this House to deal with the decorum problem we have in this House and to deal with the problem of actually democratizing the institution. In particular, right now we can see the need to deal with democratizing our committees. We need to deal with making them stronger and more independent of the party in power in particular, but also of the leadership of the parties, so that we as members of Parliament can act more independently and also more representatively of our constituents. Those reforms are needed.

We expect that we are going to need additional reforms once we see how the Federal Accountability Act works in the next federal general election. I expect additional reforms will be called for.

There are certainly reforms that need to be made to the electoral process. As members know, the NDP has been a strong proponent for a long period of time of a form of proportional representation so that everybody's vote counts the same. This is another reform that needs to be undertaken.

The point I am trying to make here is that although this is a relatively small act, it is another step along the route we have to take, that we as members of Parliament have a responsibility to take, to see to it that as much as possible we make our country, our electoral process and our democratic institutions as absolutely democratic as possible.

Attached to this is something that one would almost say is just so obvious that we should not have to say it. There has to be accountability in the process and there has to be transparency. The average citizen has to understand how the process works, both in terms of election financing and in terms of the process here in the House and during the elections.

The point I want to make as well with regard to Bill C-29 is what we hear more about from the Liberal side of the House, which is that we really do not need this kind of restriction. We hear that we simply could put in place a regime that would set out how much money a candidate has spent, with no cap on it, and how much a candidate still owes, with all of it just being an accounting process. The accountants in the country would love that, I am sure.

All we have to do is to look to other jurisdictions to see where they have followed that type of regime. I am going to point to the United States in particular, where there are no caps on what a candidate can spend, from whom a candidate borrows, and whether a candidate pays it back. There are very few restrictions.

What we see there is that if someone wants to be a senator, for instance, he or she starts from the fact he or she is going to have to raise millions and millions of dollars to get elected. Quite literally, and I know the Americans hate it when we say this, a person can buy an election at the senate and congressional levels in the United States, because effectively there are no limits on how much one can spend.

On paper it looks like there are some limits, which goes back to the accountability. The reality is that there are none because of the political action committee fundraising methodology they employ there.

We see this even in small states. Members may remember the incident in New Jersey involving an individual who was a multi-millionaire, almost a billionaire, and who spent something like $60 million in trying to buy his senate seat. And he did win it.

He swamped the opposition with advertising, with people working door to door, and with all kinds of promotional material. He was able to use all the things that we could use if we were allowed to spend that amount of money. However, anybody who does not have access to those sources of funds, either personally or through contacts, is in a totally impossible position in regard to making the democratic process function.

It really is important that we pass Bill C-29. I believe from the comments we have heard that it obviously is going to go through.

I want to finish with the caution I heard in that committee from both the province of Quebec and the province of Manitoba. We have to be eternally vigilant.

After the next election, we will have to look at this piece of legislation. We will have to look at the Federal Accountability Act, other political financing acts and other electoral processes to see if somebody has figured out a way to get around the rules. If so, then we will have to move again to close any loopholes that have developed.

[Main Estimates, 2008-09, June 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I just have one word: yes.

[Main Estimates, 2008-09, June 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, that is good to know because it means I do not have to worry about responding to some of the questions that might come particularly from the Liberal side.

I rise in strong support of this motion that we have moved to undermine in a very effective way an undemocratic institution that has been foisted on the Canadian people for 141 years now.

We heard from my colleague from Timmins—James Bay the type of abuse that goes on there in terms of the senators not performing any valuable function whatsoever, or at least the vast majority of them. I recognize that some of the people who are there are decent people; they are probably the exception, but there are a few.

The reality is we believe in democracy. I believe in democracy. I believe every constituent of Windsor—Tecumseh believes in democracy and they do not believe in an unelected Senate, a Senate that has consistently, and I saw it at a very personal level very recently, gone out of its way to thwart the democratic process in this country. We saw it a number of times in the period from 2004 to 2006 when the unelected Senate, in protecting big financial interests, thwarted legislation that was designed to protect wage earners in this country where their employers went bankrupt or into receivership and where priority was given not to the labour side of the equation but all priorities were given to the capital side.

We saw repeatedly that legislation was stalled, oftentimes by Liberal Senators, so that it would expire in the course of the upcoming election. Other times legislation was amended, or it simply sat there literally for a year, or a year and a half in one case.

That is simply not tolerable in a country that prides itself on being a democratic country, one that is a beacon for democracy in the world and one with every right to be proud of that reputation, but for this blight that we have in the other chamber.

I saw it very personally and it was so offensive, the work that a cadre within the Senate did to prevent the passage of legislation to protect animals in this country. It did it repeatedly. Not once but on three different occasions the Senate has been able to manipulate the constitutional framework of this country to the benefit of a very small segment of people that it wanted to take care of. The end result is that there have not been amendments in the animal cruelty area for well over 100 years, in spite of passage of bills in this House on two separate occasions. It was the Senate that prevented that.

I looked at some of the letters and petitions that came into my office from across the country. There were two things that showed up. One was outrage that it has taken our level of government this long to deal with the issue. The other thing that showed up was a combination of shock and sadness that after all this time an unelected Senate, an unelected body, an unresponsive body to the needs of the country could thwart the votes in this House, could thwart the desire right across the country of the need for this legislation to go through.

As I said earlier, there are any number of other pieces of legislation we can look to. Inevitably when we look at legislation that has been stalled, it has always been stalled, stopped or prevented from going ahead in the Senate because members in the other place were taking care of their buddies, always, every single time. It has never been done on principle. it has never been done on ideology. It is all about whom they are going to take care of. It is always their friends. It is always the big financial interests in this country that they take care of.

Today, we have the opportunity to send a very clear message. The Bloc members are going to be with us, but I invite the Conservatives to take a look at this. Bill C-19 and Bill C-20 are not going anywhere. They have a chance here tonight to send a message to members in the other place that we are sick and tired of them, we are not going to take it any more and we are going to shut them down. There will be no more wasting money.

The Senate costs us over $90 million a year. It is not in the motion that we have before us this evening but it costs us $90 million for absolutely nothing, other than to destroy parts of our democracy.

[Business of Supply, June 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I heard the comment as well. I do not see this expanding in any way the traditional freedom of speech we have had, and those very special privileges. It is not taking anything away from them, but I do not see them expanding.

The concern the member had, and again I may be misinterpreting, was whether this would somehow influence the judge and the jury in the civil suit. I believe there was a response. Anything that comes out in the House or in committee cannot be used in the courtrooms of the country. I do not know what the concern is there. That seemed to be the route he was going, but that is an unfounded fear.

[Business of Supply, June 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, let me give two quick answers.

For me this is not a short debate. I have been analyzing and debating this issue within my own intellect since the report came out from the Ethics Commissioner, so it has been going on in my mind for at least a month now.

In terms of the issue of public interest versus the private interests of individual members, I do not know how we can perform our jobs here in the public interest without doing that with an absolute maximum of freedom of speech. The essence of parliamentary democracy is the Westminster model. I do not think we can separate that.

Maybe I will finish with this. As politicians, we all see the polls where we stand. Lawyers are in a much different category, but the reality is it is always the other politician, not the one who represents me.

My constituents expect me to stand in this chamber and in committee and argue for their interests and to do it as aggressively and as strongly as I can. This resolution would allow us to continue to do that.

[Business of Supply, June 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I practised criminal law for seven or eight years at the start of my career. Criminal lawyers see themselves as a bulwark of defence of our liberties and our criminal justice system. Within that context, they are very protective of any impingement on their ability, even in the extreme, to defend their clients from the power of the state. This is the approach at which I tend to look.

I am not willing to suggest we are taking any power away from the Ethics Commissioner. Her role is to make that interpretation of the rules. It is our responsibility to set those rules, collectively as a Parliament. The resolution before us today does that. It gives her, or any subsequent commissioner, a clearer guideline as to how to handle this kind of fact situation.

I would not go any further than that. The resolution is appropriate, as it stands, to give her that clearer guidance.

There are other disciplines here though. There is party discipline for a member who is prepared to abuse his or her role as a member of Parliament. It behooves the party leaders, the House leaders and the whips of their respective parties to consider that. In my short time here, less than eight years, I have seen a number of times where I thought there should have been that intervention. I suggest for all whips in particular, but for party leaders as well, that if they have somebody who needs to have the reins pulled in, that they do so.

The final control is the electorate themselves. If members are so blatant in abusing their powers here, they need to pay the penalty in a subsequent election.