Monique Guay

[Canada Elections Act, September 18th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, at the outset, I would like to say that even though Bill C-16 is not perfect, the Bloc Québécois will support it because it is a big step in the right direction.

It is very important to have fixed election dates. I would like to give you some examples and talk about my own experience upon entering politics.

In 1993, we did not have fixed election dates. The Bloc Québécois was founded in 1990. We formed committees, and many people sought nominations to become Bloc Québécois candidates back then. In 1993, I was on several boards of directors, including my regional Chamber of Commerce. Such boards are apolitical. I organized a major event for the Chamber of Commerce, the Gala des Zénith, which was the biggest event of the year. We did not know when the election would happen, but we had to hold the nomination process, so I had to resign. My decision to enter politics made things difficult for the Chamber of Commerce because they had to replace me at the last minute.

Secondly, I was in business and had an eight-month contract. When the election was called, I had to break my contract, which was very costly and difficult for me. Not only is failing to fulfill our commitments costly and difficult, it can tarnish our reputations.

Fixed election dates would enable women and men to plan and prepare for elections. Knowing the date in advance, they can take leave from their jobs when they have to. They can seek the nomination when they choose, as close as possible to the election, so they do not find themselves in a difficult position. They will not have to make hasty decisions involving elections that will not even happen until eight or ten months later. That is what we have been dealing with since 1993.

This is an untenable situation that often prevents people from running: business executives, business people, and others who would like to be in politics.

A business owner does not close their doors overnight. It takes time. We do not want to be in conflict of interest with our role as member of Parliament. It is very complicated. This bill will encourage people from all backgrounds, women and men, to represent Quebec and Canada.

The third week of October is a good time. As you know, we had an election on June 28 with one of the lowest voter turnouts because people had already left on summer vacation. In Quebec we were celebrating our national holiday. That was an extremely difficult election. Then we had an election on January 23. Going door to door on January 23, in the middle of winter, when it is -30°C, is not so easy. How do you reach people and how do you motivate them? People do not go out in a snowstorm to vote.

I think this will allow for higher voter turnout because by knowing the election date in advance, people will be able to plan to go out and vote.

We currently have a minority government. This is a good initiative being presented to us, but it does not change anything for now in a minority government. If ever the government is defeated in a confidence vote, this bill would not work. However, if the government decided to cooperate with the House, which it has done so far, it will have the honour of holding its first fixed-date election in 2009. I highly doubt that will happen.

When the next budget is tabled, we will see what the government has to offer our voters. The government has been in power for nine months now, and many things that were supposed to be settled by the fall have not been settled. We have no plan for the Kyoto protocol and no plan for the environment. It has been nine months, and we were promised a plan by the fall. The Minister of the Environment has not even appeared before the committee yet, even though it passed a motion calling on her to appear. A number of promises were made. The fiscal imbalance still has not been corrected.

We will see what the government has to offer us and will vote accordingly. However, it would be worthwhile to pass this bill for the future. In my opinion, it would also save the office of the chief electoral officer a considerable amount of money.

I was talking recently to the chief electoral officer for my riding, who told me that he was being kept on the alert. That means that he has to be ready for an election at any time, which means additional costs, because he has to hire people to keep a minimum number of offices open. If a snap election is called, without a fixed date, he has to hire additional staff. This represents nearly 20 house of work a day. It is crazy.

With a fixed date, this chief electoral officer could plan. In my opinion, this would save a substantial amount of money. A federal election costs $250 million to $300 million. I think that people would appreciate politicians more. I have to say that I have never completed four years here. This is my fifth term since 1993. I have never sat for four years. I have sat for three and a half years.

The election date is always based on polls, on which way Canadians are leaning or on the party's chances of being re-elected. It is extremely partisan and unfair. With fixed election dates, the government will have four years to prove itself. In any event, there will always be partisanship. On the eve of the election, whether or not it is on a fixed date, goodies will always be handed out, but this will allow our organizations to be ready.

Our volunteers who work during the elections are exhausted. There was an election in 2000, another one in 2004, and another one in 2006 and, who knows, there may be another one soon. Without a fixed date, these people cannot plan their schedule. People truly do take time off work to help with election campaigns and volunteer to help us. If they do not know in advance, they cannot plan to take a month or two of leave without pay. We are constantly keeping them on the edge.

There is also the whole issue of funding our political parties. It is very difficult to find funding in 10 or 17 months to conduct an entire election campaign, when we normally have four years to collect the money needed to do so. That means that those elected to this House in 2000, 2004 and 2006 may have astronomical debts because they did not have enough time to get the necessary funding for a good election campaign in their riding. A number of them had to go into debt. They will not even have time to pay that bill before they end up in the next campaign, when they will have to borrow more money. It is an unbelievably vicious circle.

Fixed-date elections will also allow our ridings to be in good financial health at election time. We could have truly good campaigns in our ridings and it would be more fair for everyone.

As I was saying earlier, in five elections I have not sat for more than three and a half years. During the two elections between 2000 and 2006, it was not easy for anyone, the new MPs or the older ones—those of us who have been here for a long time—to collect money and to get organized. It was not easy. Our people and our volunteers get exhausted. Then they no longer want to work on elections that are not planned in advance and they are not necessarily available every two years.

That is what happened in 2004. It was a very difficult election for me because my volunteers were leaving on vacation and I could not stop them. In Quebec, the national holiday is very important. People often go on holidays because it is a long weekend. Sometimes they leave for two or three weeks. We face that situation. Fortunately, you could vote any day; but not everyone is interested in going to vote in the office of the returning officer. For this reason, only 50% of the population voted. This is a very low percentage. I don't believe that election was justified. The government had decided to call an election at that time because the polls were in their favour. It appears that things change.

Quite frankly, this bill is a good thing. I know that it does not affect the Constitution. However, I do not see the government or the Prime Minister dissolving Parliament by arranging for us to vote against a motion and turning it into a vote of confidence. He would then see the Governor General to inform her that he no longer had the confidence of the House. He would be despised. The voters would not forgive him as they are fed up with repeated election campaigns. After this bill passes, the Prime Minister would need a major reason for asking the Governor General to dissolve Parliament because he had lost the confidence of the House. It would require something extremely important. People are not stupid. They follow politics and they would discern the government's ploy. Rest assured that the dissatisfaction would be expressed in the voting.

It is a good bill. Many other countries already have such legislation, as our colleagues mentioned earlier. Other countries have also adopted other measures. The National Assembly in Quebec is also considering holding elections on fixed dates in future. I support the idea. But I warn the government never to go to the Governor General and, without reasonable grounds, ask that Parliament be dissolved on the pretext that the government no longer has the confidence of the House. The government must act responsibly and respect the opposition, because we are working here and have ideas to share.

I find it inconceivable that the Prime Minister would announce his foreign affairs program at the UN and not say a word about it here to us, the parliamentarians, who represent all the voters in Quebec and Canada. We are going to find out about it at the UN. It is unimaginable, but that is how he has decided to operate. I hope that there will be much more transparency so that parliamentarians can work together and benefit from each other's ideas.

All political parties have good ideas. The government could benefit from them and, at the same time, obviously, fulfil its mandate as it is supposed to do. It must respect the fact that we have a minority government. It must not shock the voters by calling an election on any old issue or because it is high in the polls.

That is what I have to say. We are modernizing with this bill, and that is important. I hope that, like us, the other parties will support this bill. I know that it will be studied in committee. Consequently, perhaps, some amendments could be made. Witnesses will be heard. It will be important to listen to them to try and craft the best possible legislation.

[Federal Accountability Act, June 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I will say first, regarding my colleague’s concerns, that Mr. Walsh has no political affiliation. He is really the official responsible for our rights and is a lawyer. Yes, he was at the committee with a number of legal advisers who were there to help him.

To re-assure my hon. colleague, I will read subsection 41.4(4):

In any prosecution under section 41.1, the prosecutor shall provide the judge with a copy of the opinion of the Committee, and the judge shall consider the opinion in determining whether an offence was committed.

The judge shall consider. He is under no obligation. He determines whether or not an offence was committed. Personally, I do not see any problem with that.

The problem is that we are losing our rights as parliamentarians. The judge, though, is free. If we provide a report, it does not mean that the judge will not be free to decide whether or not an offence was committed. At this point, we get into the legal aspects of the legislation.

A committee is perfectly capable of studying a case and seeing whether there really is a problem. We are not lawyers; we are parliamentarians. As such, our first duty is to determine whether there is a case or situation in which ethics were broken, or a mistake was made, or someone intentionally did something that was unethical. When the committee reports, a copy is given to a judge. The judge decides, not us. We do a rough draft; we take a quick look at a situation. A committee can easily determine that no offence was committed. There is no need in that case to go before a judge.

This will be less expensive because it is part of our work as parliamentarians. If every time there is a possibility that something is unethical it has to go directly to a judge, there will be no end. A host of lawyers will get involved. We have to consider the cost of all that. We have to see things as a whole, and not just little parts of subsections.

I would like this section to remain in the bill so that parliamentarians can do their job and do it fully. There is no conflict between the two, quite the contrary. I think they are complementary. As I said earlier, I would like to keep this section in its entirety.

The same is true of Motion No. 6, which deprives us of our rights as parliamentarians. I am opposed to that.

[Federal Accountability Act, June 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, as the second member of the committee representing my party, it is truly important to me to take the floor today on Bill C-2 and the amendments we were presented with very late yesterday evening.

I must also speak about the process of the committee. In more than 13 years in the House of Commons, I have never seen so hurried a process as in the committee studying the Accountability Act. I can also add that certain people are very unhappy at not having been able to testify before the committee. I have received many letters from many witnesses writing me to say that they wanted to testify to the committee, but it had been impossible for them to do so in so little time, impossible to draft a brief in 24 hours. And so, for all sorts of reasons, many individuals, groups and associations have been unable to come and testify before our committee, because of the enormous time limits imposed on them. As my Liberal colleague was saying earlier, certain groups were brought together, but they were given so little time. For example, five different groups had a total of 10 minutes to make their presentation. And they were keeping such a close eye on the stopwatch when we asked our questions that working under such conditions was terribly stressful. I had never seen that here.

As you know, this is a rather bulky bill: that is obvious. We were told at the Library that a bill of this size normally requires some 200 hours in committee, and we did the job in two weeks.

So I am very, very pleased that the President of the Treasury Board has withdrawn Motion No. 4. It must also be understood that this motion was strictly concerned with the ethics portion, which will have to be reviewed in five years. So I am very pleased that he has withdrawn it. I am certain that by the time five years are up we will have found a multitude of problems in this bill, because it will have been passed at top speed.

All the same, we have cooperated. We have contributed some important amendments, and all the political parties have cooperated. However I do not know why we were sent amendments at the last minute, again, yesterday evening. One might say it was to hurry us up. We have a number of them to examine, to study, and we are still working at top speed to get this bill passed at once.

That is deplorable, because we are supposed to be doing important, serious work, and we are going to do our best. At the same time, I note the size of this bill and I want to express my concerns regarding its eventual implementation. For in fact, we studied it so quickly that I fear we may encounter certain difficulties in applying this legislation.

In time, we may find that parts of this bill are not working because we may not have had enough time to study them thoroughly.

That said, I would like to discuss the two motions that the Bloc Québécois finds problematic. In Group No. 1, which includes Motions Nos. 1, 2, 3, 6, 7 and 9, Motions Nos. 6 and 9 are problematic. Let me explain why.

I will begin by reading Motion No. 6, which is on page 80 of the bill in clause 80, subsection 11.2.

Every report to Parliament made by the Commissioner shall be made by being transmitted to the Speaker of the Senate and to the Speaker of the House of Commons for tabling in those Houses.

This section would effectively remove our parliamentary rights.

Furthermore, in Motion No. 9, an entire paragraph, paragraph 41.4(1) is removed. It reads as follows:

Any person, including the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, who has reasonable grounds—

I will not read the whole thing to you, but at the end, once again, it states that this situation would never come before the House of Commons. It mentions judicial and parliamentary roles and says that we should not place ourselves in conflict of interest situations. Pardon me for saying so, but we were elected to the House of Commons to legislate with the full confidence of the population and we are here to make decisions.

We are not here just to hear ourselves talk. The committees are extremely important and the work they do is normally done apolitically, if I can use that expression, particularly in a situation where there is a question of ethics. I think that the members of this House are capable of setting politics aside and considering what may sometimes be a complex situation.

And then if we remove this subsection altogether, we are leaving ourselves open to lengthy, expensive legal proceedings when we could have gone through one of the committees of the House of Commons. We will decide which one. That committee could already assess the situation. That is what we are elected to do, we are here precisely to ensure that things are done properly. Let us first consider it in committee. If the committee believes that there are grounds for prosecution, it may make a recommendation. However, that recommendation would have no legal effect. It would be the opinion of a committee of the House of Commons. Then, if there is a prosecution, the judge will make his or her decision based not only on the opinion of a committee, but based on actual facts, because we too will have done an initial examination of them.

There cannot be one without the other, and neither interferes with the other; on the contrary. It is an opinion and the judge could ask for other people’s opinions. The judge could ask a committee to meet and could have private studies done. That will cost us even more money when we can very well, here, find the body that could examine such a situation.

This raises quite an important question. Mr. Walsh, who is the guardian of our rights as parliamentarians, testified before the committee. He made some extremely important recommendations. He told us that this section would interfere with our rights as parliamentarians and would take away rights that we now have. And so if we remove those sections, parliamentarians will have nothing more to say about the bill. We will no longer have any role to play in this House. In terms of ethics, it means that we parliamentarians are not intelligent enough to make recommendations.

In the past, we have proved that we were capable of doing serious work in committee and considering important matters, including these. There are actually still a lot of things in this bill. Ethics is not the only subject. There is the part about political party financing. I therefore think that we are having rights taken from us, and that is why, in our view, Motions Nos. 6 and 9 should not be before us.

Mr. Walsh did not make his recommendations on a whim; quite the contrary. He came to see us. In fact, we had to press the matter to get Mr. Walsh to sit on the committee, for three years, so that we could get to the bottom of things. The Conservatives did not want that. It was Mr. Walsh, when he came to the committee, who alerted us to it. He told us that he was the guardian of the rights of parliamentarians and the rights of this House. He warned us that we were going to be taking away fundamental rights of parliamentarians. We are doing that again. I very well recall that in committee we had voted against amendments of this nature because we thought that it made no sense to take away our rights as parliamentarians.

Today, with these two new motions, we are bringing something back before the House that we did not agree with in the first place.

Obviously, I would have liked the President of the Treasury Board to withdraw these two motions, so that we could have worked together and kept—and I do mean kept—our rights as parliamentarians and could have continued to do our work here, as responsible, elected individuals and honest people.

[Kyoto Protocol, June 16th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, when asked about the $328 million Quebec is seeking, the environment minister's press secretary said that the issue was closed.

Are we to understand from the environment minister's press secretary that she has totally given up on signing a bilateral agreement on the transfer of funds to Quebec for implementing the Kyoto protocol?

[Kyoto Protocol, June 16th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, Quebec has assumed its responsibilities. It acknowledged the Kyoto objectives and presented its plan to reduce greenhouse gases. This plan was lauded by a number of groups as a step in the right direction. However, the question remains whether the federal government will support this effort financially.

Can the Minister of the Environment promise today to grant the $328 million Quebec is asking for? It is a question of fairness, since according to the Premier of Quebec, Ontario has already received its share.

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 9th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I will respond quickly. I had said that I would not take too much time.

Serious work has to be done in committee. It is true that we tend to get hurried along. Some amendments have significant consequences to certain sections of the legislation. We absolutely must take this work seriously.

I totally agree with my colleague. We will continue to work in a serious fashion. We will take the time we need to do so.

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 9th, 2006]

How wonderful it is to be young, Mr. Speaker. It is obvious from listening to the member that he completely missed the point. He did not even listen to what I said. I wish he had listened, though.

What I said was that we do support the possibility of extended hours. His deputy House leader understood me clearly. Now the Bloc is being accused of not wanting that.

Let me offer an elementary lesson to the hon. member: before rising and putting a question to another member in the House, one must first listen to what the other member has to say, in order to then ask a sensible question.

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 9th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague from the NDP gave such a speech that I would have almost believed he had switched to the Conservative Party. I am very surprised that he paid such a special tribute to the party in power.

Nevertheless, since we have such a motion before us, it is important to examine it very carefully. The hon. member knows this, since he and I sit on the same committee, which is examining Bill C-2. We must come up with a good bill that will be effective and that contains all of the necessary elements to properly administer Parliament. By adopting this bill, we will be able to ensure clarity, while preventing any new mischief or sponsorship scandals. That is the intent of this bill.

The Elections Act must also be very clear, but it needs work. We must review over 200 amendments. This will therefore be a long process and our work must be meaningful. The committee has extended its sitting hours.

Furthermore, I know that here in the House of Commons, we also have considerable work to do on various bills. For four days, June 19 to 22, we may have to extend our hours of work, as the government has requested.

That is entirely reasonable, especially since we arrived in Ottawa later than usual. In fact, since Parliament began much later, it is only logical that our sitting hours may be extended.

As for Canadian unity, I assure you that we in the Bloc Québécois are very united and stand firmly behind Quebec.

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 9th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I will take a few minutes of my time to explain our party's position.

We support the government's motion, because we feel that the debates must take place. We see that there are a number of bills before the House, and we also believe in members' democratic right to voice their opinions. We therefore need time to do that. Extended hours will enable many members to speak on bills that are very important to the House of Commons, such as Bill C-2, which we are currently looking at in committee.

We must also consider that the House began sitting much later than usual. It is only natural, then, that we should need a little more time to do the work of the House and finish what we started.

As I mentioned earlier, the Bloc Québécois supports this motion. I hope that all the parties will understand. Bill C-2 still requires an enormous amount of work in committee. We will not likely complete that work before the end of next week. The bill will then return to this House for further debate.

We are in favour of the government motion.

[Natural Resources, June 9th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, they are cutting programs one after the other. What will that do to the environment?

The moratorium on the wind energy incentive causes uncertainty and holds up development of this energy system.

Can the Minister of Natural Resources promise immediately to lift the moratorium and free up the money needed to relaunch the program?