House of Commons photoLost his last election, in 2011, with 20% of the vote.
Government Appointments December 10th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, the Minister of the Environment knew that an offer had been discussed and yet he did nothing to stop it. He met with Mr. Kilrea. The provincial police suspect that he also met with Mr. O'Brien and that after that meeting, Mr. O'Brien stood by his offer to Mr. Kilrea.
How can the Minister of the Environment claim that his hands are clean when he did not inform the authorities as soon as he came into possession of this information?
Government Appointments December 10th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, let us be clear. Mr. Kilrea refused the offer. The charges indicate that an offer was discussed and not that an offer was accepted. The Minister of the Environment told this House that he never met with Mr. O'Brien, but the Ontario provincial police seem to think otherwise. The minister is the political minister for the Ottawa area. He is the one who could help Mr. O'Brien make this offer possible.
Will the Prime Minister ask captain accountability to step down until his name is cleared in court?
Hull-Volant Social and Athletic Association December 7th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, on October 20, 2007, more than 400 people celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Hull-Volant Social and Athletic Association. The organizing committee was under the capable direction of Jean-Claude Trottier.
The members and volunteers of the Hull-Volant association, chaired by Émile Sabourin, have demonstrated how social and athletic involvement, dedication and generosity can stand the test of time and make such a difference in the Outaouais.
During the event, Léo Gauthier was inducted into the Hull-Volant sports hall of fame. He is the 27th athlete to join this select group. Mr. Gauthier has been committed to the organization's activities since 1961. Two other members were also recognized for their great social involvement within the association. Richard Murray and Henri Monette were honoured as the 36th and 37th people to become life members.
Bravo and congratulations on 75 years of history. I wish Hull-Volant continued success.
Canada Elections Act December 5th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, the major change would be in Motion No. 3, the amendment, where the original wording on page 5, lines 33, 34, and 35, says:
--the Chief Electoral Officer shall inform the claimant, the candidate's registered association or, if there is no registered association, the registered party of his or her decision.
Now the Conservatives have changed it and it says:
[Then the Chief Electoral] Officer shall inform the lender of his or her decision; furthermore, the candidate's registered association or, if there is no registered association, the registered party becomes liable for the unpaid amount as if the association or party had guaranteed the loan.
This is exactly the point where, in committee, opposition parties underlined the fact that even though the association or the party would not have guaranteed the loan, they would end up with the liability. They would end up having to repay that loan which, as I have mentioned before, they had never approved of, or for all we know, maybe never even had knowledge of.
The majority of the committee voted on this and it was agreed that this was unfair for the association and the national parties, and therefore, it was amended in committee, so that this particular debt would not turn back to the association or the party.
The other change done at committee dealt with financial contributions during a leadership campaign. I said at the start of my presentation that this particular piece of legislation is most certainly going to give the Liberal Party of Canada a hard time. We are the party that had a leadership race. We were the party that had to answer to the new law in the sense that we had to disclose all the contributions, whereas the present Prime Minister did not disclose all of the contributions that were received for his leadership campaign.
The Conservative government is trying to force leadership candidates to limit financial contributions to a maximum amount of $1,100, saying that a leadership race is one event and it would limit the financial participation to $1,100 per that event. At committee we discussed this and it was agreed that it would become a financial contribution of $1,100 per year until the debt of the leadership candidate had been fully erased.
Now the Conservatives are reversing the reversal that had been done and they are planning on saying that, no, in a leadership race it does not matter how long it takes to reimburse, there would be one contribution per leadership race to a maximum of $1,100.
These are the two major differences between what the procedure and House affairs committee had worked on and decided back in the spring of 2007. Now the Conservative government is saying it does not care what the majority of the committee decided democratically, it is ready to impose and change it so that it would be brought back to the original version of the bill. I do not think that this is right.
Canada Elections Act December 5th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party supports efforts to improve the transparency and accountability of the electoral process. Early on, our party was the one that passed the bill to limit the role of corporations and unions in election financing. We also initiated the most significant contribution limit reduction in Canadian history.
That is why Liberal party leadership candidates exceeded Elections Canada's requirements to disclose campaign loans. In contrast, the current Prime Minister is still refusing to disclose the names of those who contributed to his leadership campaign in 2002.
In practice, this legislation would give the last word to financial institutions, not Canadians, when it comes to deciding who can run for office in Canada. This bill would also have a negative impact on Canada's middle class, particularly nomination contestants, at a time when the government should be encouraging Canadians to increase their participation in the democratic process.
If the proposed changes are implemented, it will be very difficult for Canadians, particularly those with limited means who know few wealthy potential backers, to try to get elected in Canada because it is hard to get a loan from a financial institution. Even though we are in favour of a transparent and accountable electoral process, we believe that this bill unduly restricts Canadians' access to the democratic system and that it will prevent them from participating in it.
The Conservatives would have us believe that current legislation enables individuals to walk away from debts. Nothing could be further from the truth. Under the current legislation, individuals cannot use loans to bypass contribution limits, nor can they walk away from debts with impunity. The bill merely reiterates existing provisions. The Conservatives think they can fool Canadians into believing that this bill in some way makes significant changes to the law.
For the record, the official purpose of this bill is to reduce the possibility of undue influence in public life by wealthy interest groups. Obviously, this bill was developed to put the Liberal Party of Canada at a financial disadvantage. The main consequence of this new bill is that it severely restricts the opportunities for people running for office to take out loans, a common practice in the past. The proposed legislation would prohibit individuals from making a loan or guaranteeing a loan to political candidates by restricting contributions to the $1,100 limit currently in the Federal Accountability Act.
Furthermore, as in the Federal Accountability Act, unions and corporations cannot make a loan to political candidates, parties or associations. Of course, the government claims that the purpose of this measure is to reduce the influence of wealthy financial contributors, who apparently used personal loans to bypass the restrictions on donations in the Elections Act.
The fact of the matter is that during our last leadership campaign, all the candidates publicly disclosed all the loans they had received for their campaign and went above and beyond what was required by Elections Canada. If this bill is passed, only political parties such as the Liberal Party of Canada or local riding associations and financial institutions will be able to make loans to candidates, and it must be at the market interest rate.
There are also new disclosure criteria, requiring that all conditions such as the amount, rate, lender's name and address, and the guarantor's name and address, if applicable, be disclosed.
If the Chief Electoral Officer determines that an unpaid amount of a loan to a candidate of a registered party has been written off, the registered association or, if there is no registered association, the registered party becomes liable for the unpaid amount as if the association, or the party, had guaranteed the loan.
The minister referred to the changes in this regard. I should remind the House that, when it met last spring to consider the bill, numbered C-54 at the time, the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs agreed by a majority vote to amend the government's proposal, to ensure that debts incurred by candidates without the consent of their associations or parties not come back to haunt the associations or parties. A majority of the committee did not want this to happen.
Unsatisfied with this majority decision of the committee, the government is now changing the wording of the bill to make this undesirable situation possible again.
The original text of Bill C-29 read, on page 5, lines 32 and 33, “the claimant, the candidate's registered association or, if there is no registered association, the registered party.” It said that these parties shall be informed. Today, the government is seeking to amend lines 32 and 33. At line 32, it is keeping the word “claimant”, but replacing the comma with a semicolon followed by “the registered association or, if there is no registered association, the registered party”, and it adds: “becomes liable for the unpaid amount as if the association or party had guaranteed the loan.”
This reversal of the reversal adopted by the majority in committee in the spring is unacceptable in that the association—or, if applicable, the party—would be held responsible for a loan without previous knowledge of it, without having guaranteed the loan, and without having been informed that the loan was contracted. A national association—or a national party—could quite easily end up in a situation whereby a candidate, without consent from the association or the party, could incur personal debts, under the pretext that it is for an election campaign. Then the party—or the association—without warning, would be responsible for paying back the loan. It is very difficult to accept that part.
There is also the matter of financing leadership races. The minister was honest. He bluntly said that instead of allowing citizens to participate by making contributions on an annual basis, as long as the loan has not been paid back in full, citizens should instead make a single contribution for a maximum of $1,100. The legislation prevents them from participating any more than that in leadership race financing.
Since I do not have very much time left, I want to say that although we are in favour of having a transparent and accountable electoral process, we believe that this bill unduly limits Canadians' access to the democratic system and that it will impede their participation.
Mr. Speaker, as usual, the Conservatives do not answer questions the opposition is asking on behalf of Canadians. The Prime Minister has issued a gag order to try to have this issue forgotten.
What do the Conservatives do when their backs are against the wall? They resort to intimidation.
They have adopted this tactic in mandating a lawyer, working for Conservative staff, to write to the Liberal Party of Canada, threatening legal action if the Liberal Party continues to raise questions about the Conservatives' alleged scheme.
That is pure intimidation.
We will continue to ask questions until the Conservatives give answers, real answers to Canadians.
Why did this party try to exceed the election spending limit, and why did it try to get $700,000 in refunds to which its candidates were not entitled?
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in this House today to finally set the record straight regarding the Conservatives' scheme during the last election campaign.
As we remember, in 2005, the Conservatives neglected to declare donations of $1.7 million, in the form of fees paid by delegates to their party leadership convention. Worse still, the Prime Minister became the first prime minister in the history of our country to be forced to admit that he had personally violated the Canada Elections Act, when his party finally recognized these facts.
We are well aware of the Prime Minister's tactics. When he does not like something, he just brushes it aside. If he does not like a piece of legislation, he just interprets it in his own way. It is very much his way or no way. This way of operating buys him time. When an issue is before the courts, it is so much easier to refuse to provide answers. This is an out of sight, out of mind approach, and it even looks like a lack of transparency.
Then the Conservatives decided to go at it again. During the last election campaign, they allegedly funnelled more than $1 million dollars in national advertising expenditures into the budgets of about 70 of their candidates. This would have allowed the Conservative Party to exceed the national spending limit of $18 million, while allowing its candidates to get a refund to which they were not entitled. If these allegations are confirmed, this would mean that there was an electoral fraud.
The Conservative Party is currently under investigation by Elections Canada for allegedly funnelling over $1.2 million in national advertising costs to regional candidates during the 2006 federal election in order to circumvent federal election spending limits.
Elections Canada rejected the advertising expenditures refund claims submitted by 66 Conservative candidates. We released the names of 129 former Conservative candidates and official agents who may have been involved in the alleged scheme. Then, we asked the Commissioner of Canada Elections to look at nine other campaign teams that may also have been involved in the scheme.
Canadians are concerned because it appears that the Conservatives would have diverted over $1 million in national advertising expenditures from their national campaign books to those of at least 67 of their candidates' campaigns. These funds would have exceeded the $18 million national spending limit.
Canadians are not the only ones who are concerned. The Conservatives themselves are concerned. The proof is that they have resorted to procedural tricks to avoid an inquiry into their electoral financing scheme. They have stalled the work of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs many times, including today. Why? Because we want to get details about potential fraud committed by the Conservatives during the 2006 election campaign. Shame on the parliamentarians who are trying to keep us from getting to the bottom of this.
We have learned that former Conservative candidates and official agents would have been named to federal appointments or would have been hired in high profile government jobs.
In the name of transparency, can the parliamentary secretary deny that former Conservative candidates and official agents were rewarded by being named to federal appointments, or were hired in high profile government jobs, and if not, how can he justify these appointments?
Public Works and Government Services December 3rd, 2007
Mr. Speaker, Brian Mulroney was a member of the board of directors for Cendant Corporation and Trizec Properties.
Has Brian Mulroney or any of his spokespersons contacted his former colleague in the legal profession, the Minister of Public Works, his parliamentary secretary or the cabinet minister regarding Cendant Corporation or Trizec Properties, or any other transaction that could have been profitable for those businesses?
Forestry Industry November 30th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, the president of another paper company, Cascades, wrote this morning that his business will be forced to direct its investments outside Canada in order to remain profitable if the stakeholders, at all levels, do not come together to help the industry. The manufacturing sector is not asking for handouts, but rather targeted, concerted assistance.
The Government of Quebec has already done its part. Why does the Conservative government refuse to help this industry?
Forestry Industry November 30th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, Bowater announced yesterday the permanent shut down of machine no. 3 at its Gatineau plant. The workers who have been laid off in my region have therefore lost all hope of returning to work.
Bowater is also closing down in Shawinigan, Quebec City and New Brunswick. In Quebec alone, 1,000 jobs will be lost just before Christmas. The president of Bowater is not ruling out other closures in the next six months.
How many jobs must be lost before this government will take action?