Monique Guay

[Taxation, November 24th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the government continues to rake in surpluses and is obviously trying to bury the issue of the fiscal imbalance among other budget issues.

Can the minister assure us that he is not simply trying to buy time so that, at election time, he can say that he wanted to but was unable?

[Taxation, November 24th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, on September 22, 2006, the Minister of Finance said that the budget statement planned for early October would report on the progress of negotiations with the provinces concerning the fiscal imbalance, and that there would be an indication of the direction that everyone is taking, in his own words. Yesterday was November 23. The minister made his budget statement, which included nothing concrete about the fiscal imbalance.

How can the minister justify this spectacular flip-flop in just one month?

[Federal Accountability Act, November 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I will try to be brief.

As I said, I do not think that this bill is perfect. However, I think that accountability is part of it and that we have to start somewhere if we want to make progress. As I said earlier, the Bloc Québécois will support Bill C-2.

[Federal Accountability Act, November 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I answered the question.

The member is talking about destroying the Canadian Wheat Board. But wait a minute. The Canadian Wheat Board still exists and will continue to exist. The only thing we reject is simply that it is included in this bill. That is all. The members on the other side of the House should calm down.

We decided that the Canadian Wheat Board had no place in this bill, but it will continue to exist and operate, nonetheless. In addition, we have the UPA. We will vote based on what works for us.

If the Canadian Wheat Board is not working, we will not vote in favour of including it in Bill C-2, especially if Ottawa starts encroaching on jurisdictions that are very important to Quebec.

My job and that of other members of the Bloc Québécois is to defend the interests of Quebeckers. I repeat, the Canadian Wheat Board will never disappear. It will continue to exist, except it will not be included in Bill C-2. That is all there is to it.

[Federal Accountability Act, November 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, in Quebec we have the UPA, which does extraordinary work in the agricultural markets. Our fear was that with this access to information, Quebec's toes would be stepped on yet again. Quebec is very well served by the UPA. In that regard, hon. members will simply have to accept our position. We have a different way of doing things in Quebec and we find this is an encroachment into our existing jurisdictions.

Nonetheless, as my colleague who loses his cool quite easily—I guess that is his nature—can see, we will never have unanimity here. There will always be someone complaining that something does not work in Bill C-2, that something—an article or a comma—should not be included in it. We did this work in committee and this was done in the Senate. Nonetheless, I believe that we can still discuss this and see whether there are still some things that can be settled. Through working on this bill we know it well and have assimilated it. We made some recommendations, as did the Liberal Party and the NDP. Even the Conservatives made recommendations because they themselves realized that some things did not make any sense in this bill. But we worked very quickly.

Members know my concern about passing this bill too quickly. There are still 158 Senate amendments. We are trying to pass it very quickly here in the House of Commons. In my opinion, we need to take the time to go over this thoroughly. Maybe the senators proposed other amendments because they met other witnesses who raised red flags like Mr. Walsh did for us. We have to take the time to consider this and make all the necessary improvements.

That being said, it is clear that the accountability act will never get the full support of the House. There will always be something someone does not like or some small problem. If it includes most of the Bloc Québécois' amendments, most of what we asked for, as it does now, we will vote in favour of the bill. However, we cannot ask for the moon. I think that everyone has found something in this bill that is worth supporting. I know that we will vote in favour. The NDP will probably vote in favour, but in the end, the important thing is to have a good law. We have never had a good accountability law, and it is high time we did.

Once again, we must proceed with wisdom and knowledge. We must ensure that it is well-written and that we do not end up with legislation that will cause chaos in the departments or clash with other bills. That is extremely important. So let us take our work seriously, as we have done from the beginning. Obviously, when things are different for Quebec, we will act accordingly. That is why we do not support this amendment.

[Federal Accountability Act, November 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a minute to remember my former colleague, Benoît Sauvageau. He worked on this bill with me, bringing much wisdom and many improvements to it. I would like us to take a moment to remember him because he devoted a lot of time and energy to this bill.

He and I worked together for an unprecedented number of hours during that time. I have never seen such a thing here in Parliament. In 13 years, I have never seen a legislative committee sit for so many hours over such a short period of time because the government insisted on passing this bill.

The reason it was so adamant is clear: it s well aware that the Liberal convention is looming and that this bill contains detrimental provisions—provisions that affect, among other things, the $1,500 convention registration fee. Jean-Pierre Kingsley made it clear that such fees are considered donations. The bill puts a $1,000 cap on donations. It was clear to us that this would apply to the Liberal Party convention and that this was why the government wanted to ram the bill through.

Nevertheless, the important thing for the Bloc Québécois is to improve it as much as possible because we need an accountability act. As my colleague from Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine said, we fought incredibly hard for the word “responsabilité”. We had to go to the Office québécois de la langue française. We had to make use of every tool at our disposal to make the government understand that the word “imputabilité” was clearly an anglicism, not a French word at all. Eventually we won. We made the government understand that the appropriate French term was “responsabilité”. Unfortunately, a lot of time was wasted just on that, even though there were other extremely important issues in the bill.

My hon. colleague referred to this earlier, and I think it is worth mentioning because it is true: many witnesses wanted to appear before our committee. Many had things to tell us, many wanted to improve the bill and noticed flaws in it, but did not get a chance to appear because they only had 24 hours notice. They did not appear because 24 hours was not enough time for them to draft a brief, in both official languages, to satisfy the requirements of our legislative committee. These people were left empty-handed, and we can imagine that, today still, they are extremely unhappy about not having been heard. While ours is supposedly the greatest democracy, these people did not get to be heard by the committee. It is extremely important to point this out again.

I have been told that the Senate heard more than 140 witnesses and that a number of amendments will have to be taken into account because they were made in a structured fashion and make some sense.

As we have been saying since the beginning, we have never filibustered at committee and we have no plans to do so here, but we have things to say about this bill.

The merit-based appointment of returning officers is a fantastic gain. It is well known that the process for appointing returning officers was a partisan one. I know this for a fact because it happened in my region. When the Liberals were in government, a good Liberal would be appointed, a guy in charge of overseeing our campaigns. Very often, in several ridings, this caused partisanship problems to such an extent that the system did not work. In addition, being a good Liberal and a decision having been made to make partisan appointments, efforts were made to thwart the candidates from the Bloc Québécois or other parties. But no more; from now on, returning officers will be selected based on their merits, not on their political allegiance, which is an excellent thing.

We were even consulted. They actually consulted members of Parliament, asking us if we were happy with our returning officers. This is a step in the right direction to ensure the legitimacy of the selection process for someone who is, after all, appointed for a ten-year term.

This is someone who is in office for a long time. He or she must be appointed on a non-partisan basis and in light of his or her ability to play that role for the next 10 years, especially since, with a minority government like the one we currently have, we have repeated elections. We had elections in 2004 and 2006, and we could have another one next year or even this year. These people become extremely important. They have non-partisan training and have to provide services for all the candidates in their riding.

There is also the whole issue of the political party financing legislation. The Bloc could not disagree with that, because we already comply with the legislation in Quebec.

Personally, I do not have many donors who give me $2,000 during the course of the year. I receive far more $5 and $10 donations than $2,000 donations during an election campaign or a fundraising campaign. There are people involved, party members, people who do not write cheques for thousands of dollars. There are no such people in my riding, and I would be very surprised to receive such an amount. In Quebec, we already comply with this requirement, and we will continue to do so.

I feel it is time to make major changes at the federal level, because the parties could receive donations of thousands of dollars from companies. This is not conducive to non-partisan work by members or ministers.

If someone gives me a $25,000 donation, I will feel indebted. But if I receive relatively equal amounts from my various constituents or party members, I feel much more at ease. I am indebted to everyone because I am elected, but I do not feel particularly indebted to someone who gave me $25,000 or $30,000.

There was also the whole issue of whistle-blower compensation, which was discussed at length. Several witnesses testified that it was not a good idea to pay a whistle-blower $1,000, $2,000 or $5,000. That could lead to informing, something that must not be encouraged.

In any event, public servants are duty-bound to report any wrongdoing, any mismanagement in the department where they work or anyone who is not doing his or her job properly.

It does not make sense to begin rewarding whistle-blowers. It should be part of the duties of a public servant who learns about an instance of wrongdoing, work not being done properly or mistreatment to report it. How that person learns about it is not important. That person should report it without a reward. In our opinion, it did not make sense to offer a reward. The government realized this, so this is a good point.

As I mentioned earlier, the Senate heard from 140 witnesses, calling certain witnesses back to clarify certain clauses of the bill.

Some clauses are good and others are not as good. I cannot list all of them here, but one in particular is very important and the Bloc Québécois condemns the fact that the government rejected this amendment because it was an important one. The Senate proposed increasing the ceiling on fees for legal counsel from $1,500 to $25,000, or removing the ceiling altogether, at the commissioner's discretion. I would like to explain why the Bloc supported that.

We saw in committee the number of hours legal counsel spent working, yet could not keep up. The maximum of legal counsel were hired, but they could not keep up despite crazy hours.

These people deserved additional remuneration. That was part of it. The government does not agree with this. I do not know how this is going to play out, but I thought it was a good measure.

The Senate also proposed removing the $10,000 limit on awards for pain and suffering. Depending on the situation, I think the Senate was right to propose this measure. We cannot put a limit on a sum of money for pain and suffering. Each case must be examined to determine how much the individual was affected and to then decide the amount of the award. But the government rejected this amendment.

I must explain what happened during the committee's hearings. This is very important. Things were going so fast that, at one point, all committee members, from all parties, received a notice from Mr. Walsh, telling us to stop. Mr. Walsh is not just anybody. He is a very important official in the House of Commons. He is the guardian of the rights of members of Parliament and senators, in other words our rights as parliamentarians. At one point, Mr. Walsh alerted us. He told us that this bill would restrict the rights of members of Parliament and senators, that we were mixing legislative and parliamentary issues. We wanted him to appear before the committee, but some Conservative members had a fit and asked who that person was. As we can see, there are people who do not really know how things work around here. Everyone knows who Mr. Walsh is.

We said that we absolutely wanted him to appear before the committee, because what he had to tell us was very important. We were playing with our rights as parliamentarians. We were mixing judicial and parliamentary responsibilities. The work that we do here, in Parliament or in the Senate, could have been challenged. That did not make any sense. So, he brought important amendments to the committee to protect our rights as parliamentarians and elected representatives. Most of these amendments were accepted.

This proves one thing: when we try to go over something too quickly, when we try to run faster than we can, this compels the primary guardian of our rights, here in the House of Commons, to react very strongly. Indeed, the way the bill was drafted did not make sense.

Obviously there were some extremely serious problems. We solved a few of them, but there are still some left. This is not a small bill. What I find reassuring is that we demanded, and the government accepted, that the bill be reviewed in five years. At first they wanted a review in 15 or 20 years. Imagine what it would be like to work with a piece of legislation that is not reviewed regularly because it was decided that the act would be implemented for an unlimited number of years.

We agreed to support the bill on accountability. We understood that the government wanted this to go quickly, but this legislation needed to be reviewed in the next five years. This is new legislation and it is extremely complex. When it is implemented it will need to be reviewed as soon as possible in order to correct any mistakes in it. I am certain that when it is implemented we will realize there are some aspects that cannot be put into effect. We will have to go back to the drawing board and do it over.

As far as access to information is concerned, the Conservatives refused to budge. The Access to Information Act was passed in 1983. Since then, despite a number of requests for its revision, it has stayed essentially the same. The Conservative government chose not to include reform of the Access to Information Act in its Bill C-2. We would have nonetheless appreciated the government agreeing to this. If we are going to have legislation on accountability, why not include the Access to Information Act? It is complementary and we could have had a truly complete piece of legislation.

However, this did not happen because we were told there was not enough time, we were told that 100 recommendations were needed to revise the act, we were told that the accountability bill had to be adopted before the year-end, we were given 100,000 reasons save one—the real reason why we were unable to confirm all of this.

There is still a lot of confusion in this bill. We will have to see how the senators' amendments that are accepted fit in with the bill as it stands. Our legislators will be able to tell us.

This is extremely important and it cannot be done in five minutes. I know that the Conservatives want this to move along very quickly. However, so long as the two bills—the one here in Parliament and the one in the Senate—are not similar, there will be no law and we will not be able to promulgate this law. We will play ping pong for who knows how long because we will send the bill back to the Senate, the Senate will again make its recommendations that will come back to the House, we will then make our recommendations that will go to the Senate, and so forth.

It is important that we find a way to not delay unduly the implementation of Bill C-2 and we will not be the ones to do so. We have said it from the very beginning. My colleague for Repentigny at the time and I were accused of filibustering and delaying adoption of the bill. That was not our intention. We wanted the bill to be a good one. For it to be good, such an important piece of legislation on accountability must be well written and properly implemented.

I will say it again. Mr. Walsh made some very important recommendations. If Mr. Walsh had not sounded the alarm, all of us in this House would have lost fundamental rights that we cherish, our rights as parliamentarians here in the House of Commons. Mr. Walsh finally got his message across to the other side of the House. Mr. Walsh is a non-partisan individual and he is there to protect the rights of all members. If Mr. Walsh had not been there, we can just imagine what might have happened to us.

This is a very significant, important and broad bill. In my opinion, some people also raised the alarm in the Senate, and we should look at this carefully. It goes without saying that we should not engage in filibustering for no reason, but we can definitely not pass this legislation at full throttle. We must be absolutely sure, and so must our researchers and the legislators. All those who worked on this bill find it complex. They know that once it is enacted, it will become the law. We must not create conflicts of interest with already existing laws, because this bill amends a large number of them. So, things must be clear and we must do serious work. This is what we have done in the past, and this is what we will do in the future. We will support this bill, while taking into consideration the points that I made.

If some people, some experts feel that major changes should be made to the bill, because it impacts on another act, or because it completely destroys it—and this could well be the case—these people should have the time to thoroughly examine this bill in order to propose the necessary changes to improve it, change it and amend it, so that in the end it will really work and we will have a true accountability act, a true piece of legislation that will compel us to be responsible as parliamentarians, ministers and elected representatives.

[Federal Accountability Act, November 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, we have to pay attention to the words being used when we talk about obstruction. In my opinion, the Bloc Québécois has never been obstructionist. I have never seen a committee sit for so many hours in so short a time to try to get a bill passed. This is the first time that has happened here in the House of Commons.

We have cooperated and we have made gains that we consider to be important in relation to the bill. Serious work has got to be done. We have received 158 amendments from the Senate. I think that we have to take a serious look at them. We cannot say in this House that everything is fine and we will pass it all right away. That is why there is an amendment by the Liberals and a subamendment by the Bloc Québécois, to study the question and meet each of our requests as best as can be done.

I would like to know whether the government is at all open to trying again to improve this very important bill, which we support and which, in our opinion, is in need of a few changes. We know that the bill will go back to the Senate and we would like the government to say whether it is open to these changes at all.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, November 10th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today about the Act to amend the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act (Northern Ontario).

I would like to start by saying that we will vote against this bill, because we believe that every voter has one vote and that this bill would change that. This is unacceptable to us.

As I said previously, the principle is one person, one vote. I think that the member who introduced this bill, the member for Sudbury, has a problem in her region, and we understand that. We also have a problem in Quebec. When the commission did its work, we lost two ridings for the 2004 election, one in Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean and the other on the North Shore, because of population migration to larger centres. We no longer had four, but three ridings in Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean.

This causes problems, obviously. We went through it, and we are living with the consequences on the parliamentary and human levels, because we lost a member and this is causing a problem in those areas. Obviously, everyone would like to be re-elected, but that is the situation we are faced with.

There is another issue I would like to talk about, because it is important and my colleague did not mention it earlier. We have a mechanism that works and is fairly flexible. It is a system of representation that provides for reviewing the process and readjusting electoral boundaries every 10 years.

I have been in Parliament for 13 years, but every 10 years a census takes place and the electoral boundaries are readjusted. A commission is formed for each province, a judge is appointed and commissioners tour all the ridings to hear what the people and the members think should happen.

There are criteria to be met with regard to population density and the area of the riding. In my own case, I had a riding known as Laurentides, which I think was one of the largest ridings in Canada. It included about 80 municipalities, and I represented it for 10 years. Major changes had to be made because of population growth in the southern part of my riding. It was therefore divided up.

In some regions, ridings were removed, while in others, like mine—the Laurentians, Laval and Lanaudière—population growth has led to the creation of new ridings, such as Rivière-du-Nord. Rivière-du-Nord, which covers one RCM, covers a lot less territory than Laurentides, but a new riding was created, so there is now a new member for that riding.

When the commissioner visited our region, I had the opportunity to make representations. In fact, anyone who wanted to submit a brief could do so. We had 30 days to meet with the commissioners and provide feedback. I felt it made sense to redraw the boundaries. The riding had so many people that it was difficult to represent given the population density. So we broke it into two ridings, which made it much easier to get the work done. And we got a new member of Parliament for the region.

Obviously, other regions have problems too. Some populations are growing and others are shrinking, which means that in some areas, there are geographically huge ridings. One of our colleagues from the North Shore is dealing with just such a situation. Nevertheless, the criteria for making representations to the commission are fairly flexible. The commission has offices in every province. I would therefore invite my colleague from Sudbury to make representations.

This also enables us to make representations about how to name our ridings. It is important for names to represent the ridings, so we had the right to change the riding names if necessary.

I personally did so. Rivière-du-Nord is the full name of the RCM. The name was quite appropriate especially since Rivière du Nord flows through my entire riding.

Representations may be made to the commission. There is that flexibility. In some regions, important representations have led to significant changes. These representations were made by MPs or by means of submissions.

The redistributions do not always follow the lay of the land. They are made by public servants. I am not saying that they are not doing a good job, but they have to take into account all the ridings. In our ridings, there are a certain ways of looking at things and we know very well that it will not work to put such and such a municipality with another one and that it makes no sense to make certain changes.

So we can make our representations, and then the commission makes a decision. We have an important role to play when commissioners visit our regions, and I think they listen to us. At least, they did in our case. Even among colleagues, we had problems. Some of our colleagues wanted to keep some municipalities in their ridings, but in the end, we reached an agreement.

I think the member for Sudbury is having the same problems we had in Quebec, because we, too, lost ridings. She will have an opportunity to make representations in a few years the next time the commission convenes. I am sure she, too, will see major changes in her riding. There is bound to be growth and decline. In my riding, the population grew so fast that decisions had to be made.

I would therefore invite my colleague to make representations to the commission, which will convene during the next census, rather than try to change electoral boundaries here with this bill.

I should add that this would be unfair to the other provinces and Quebec because we would be solving problems in Ontario, but not in other provinces, such as Quebec and, I imagine, British Columbia and Alberta.

The process has to be fair for everyone, and I am not seeing that in this bill. My colleague had a good idea, but she knows perfectly well that our system is already pretty flexible, and that we have the right to make important representations to bring about necessary changes during electoral boundary redistributions.

[The Environment, November 10th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, they invited the minister, then turned around and muzzled him. That is just great.

Given that the environment is a shared responsibility, that Quebec has a realistic green plan, and that we are leading Canada in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, how can the government justify muzzling Quebec like that?

[The Environment, November 10th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, in an interview yesterday, the Minister of the Environment said that Canada, not Quebec, would be represented in Nairobi. Despite the fact that Quebec is recognized as a leader in environmental issues, it is being relegated to the role of bit player.

Does the government acknowledge that it missed a perfect opportunity to demonstrate the open federalism it promised Quebec on December 19 of last year—a promise that, among other things, was supposed to give Quebec a voice on the world stage?