Paul Szabo

[Federal Accountability Act, June 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know whether I heard the minister clearly, but Motion No. 5 was ruled out of order by the Speaker. The minister wants to reinstate it in Group No. 1. Are there any amendments? I doubt that it is in order to overrule the Speaker's decision. Perhaps the Table could advise.

[Federal Accountability Act, June 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I know the members are interested in the Wheat Board, which is going to come up, but Motion No. 6 was of some concern to members. Just to remind the hon. member, Motion No. 6 deals with the deleting of lines 4 to 8 on page 80, which is actually deleting a clause.

I think I understand what the amendment is seeking to do, but I wonder if the member could simply confirm to the House the reason the government has decided to move Motion No. 6.

[Federal Accountability Act, June 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. There is a will to get this done, but we have to ensure that we do it in the proper fashion. I do not believe we can move an amendment on question and comment.

Motion No. 9 still stands on the paper with other wording. Therefore, there has to be a motion to delete a sentence in Motion No. 9 and click in the proper line numbers for 3 and 4. That should be moved by someone who is making a speech. I suggest that it could either be the Minister of Justice or a subsequent speaker.

[Federal Accountability Act, June 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the member made some very good points, particularly with regard to the representations made by Mr. Walsh to the committee.

I had the opportunity to work with Mr. Walsh on the government operations and estimates committee when we were dealing with the Privacy Commissioner, Mr. Radwanski. Under our rules and the way matters work, we must seek some advice on how to do these things properly lest we make a mistake that could frustrate the intent of Parliament.

Mr. Walsh came to committee and with the full consultation of his legal team brought these two clauses forward and convinced the committee to accept and adopt their inclusion. I am not sure whether or not the government at the time made any argument whatsoever opposing the adoption of Mr. Walsh's recommendations.

I am a bit concerned about the phrase “that the judge shall consider the committee's report”. I am not sure whether or not we have a problem with the independence of the judiciary. We do have an opportunity to amend any report stage motion, and we could delete subsection 4 if it is the offending provision and salvage the rest of it. If that is the case, maybe other members who wish to speak to Group No. 1 may want to consider that amendment to make the retention of sections 41.4 and 41.5 more palatable to the whole House.

I would ask the member whether or not that is a problem for her or whether she is just prepared to vote against Motion No. 9?

[Federal Accountability Act, June 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for giving a very good summary of his concerns and opinion on Motion No. 9, which seeks to delete proposed sections 41.4 and 41.5 in their totality from the bill as reprinted from the committee.

When I reviewed this, one of the issues I flagged was that it suggests in proposed subsection 41.4(4) that the committee shall provide the judge with a copy of the opinion of the committee and “the judge shall consider...”. That is where I stopped, because the point on the independence of the judiciary certainly was a very important aspect.

I do not think we can legislate that a judge “shall” do anything. We went through a process where there was a review of the sponsorship program by the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. A number of those matters went forward to a judicial inquiry. Subsequent to that, there have been legal proceedings.

Is this the kind of thing that the member is suggesting shall not happen in the future in terms of a committee undertaking at its discretion or being designated to be a quasi-judicial review committee for purposes of identifying wrongdoings that may be subject to prosecution under the laws of Canada? If so, is this in fact changing a practice that already exists in Parliament?

[Federal Accountability Act, June 20th, 2006]

Okay, a substantial number.

The member should know that the government has the unique authorization to make amendments which are out of order for other members of Parliament. It is the minister's bill and he can make those amendments and basically tell the committee thanks but that he does not accept its position and that he will go another way.

I saw that happen in the bill on reproductive technologies where we saw a couple of clauses of the bill totally reversed. I am aware of that.

I do not subscribe to the hijack thing but I would suggest that although a series of speakers over the day may address every motion, I think it is incumbent on the mover of the motion to make a statement to the House at the beginning of the debate on the motion of the intent of the motion, such as, Motion No. 1 is clean up, no problem; Motion No. 2 is translation, no problem; and Motion No. 3 we do not agree with the committee and we have decided to delete that clause and here is another one because it is duplicative.

Those kinds of indications of the basis may help another speaker trying to participate in the democratic process to at least use those as a filter to consider their own commentary that they may have made without that knowledge.

As a courtesy to the openness and transparency of the debate, I ask that the mover of the motions make a quick summary on the ones that are clean up and on the ones that are not controversial and to sum up why it is making changes to others. If we do that I think all members of this place and Canadians as a whole will benefit from the debate.

[Federal Accountability Act, June 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, some things are prima facie and I would suspect that others would share that view, so maybe the answer is no.

In terms of the suggestion that there is a hijacking of the democratic process, I suppose the fact that the Liberals put in two amendments and the NDP, I believe, put in four, that leaves 24 for the government.

[Federal Accountability Act, June 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I want to make some general comments on the debate as a whole.

The speech by the parliamentary secretary was somewhat brief and basically characterized the amendments in this group as being general cleanup. I did not see it that way. As a matter of fact, Motion No. 5 which was deemed out of order raises some interesting questions about the thinking.

Among other things, report stage is meant to allow members of Parliament who are not on the committee to propose amendments and to debate some of the changes that have been made to a bill. They are members who have not had the opportunity to hear all of the witnesses and they may have a fair bit of work to do once they see the nature of the changes coming forward at report stage.

Notwithstanding that the bill was completed at committee last week, the amendments before us today were only put on the notice paper last night at 6 p.m. Of the original 30 amendments, only 24 remain. The amendments were not available to members until after midnight. Until yesterday there was only one report stage amendment relating to the Canadian Wheat Board on the notice paper. If there were only a couple of amendments, we might have been able to do this, but now we are faced with a vast array of amendments, most of them from the government itself.

If there are 20 amendments coming from the government on this bill, why have these been made at this late time? We are talking about the federal accountability bill and if openness and transparency are being encouraged by this bill, then the process we are going through right now does not support the concept of openness and transparency. Proposed subsection 41.4 was deleted in its totality yet this clause was strongly recommended by the House counsel at committee and was adopted by the committee. The government has turned around and put in Motion No. 9 to delete proposed subsection 41.4 in its totality.

Some answers need to be given as to the rationale behind the move the government has made. The House is probably entitled, if I may use that infamous word, to have an explanation from the government or the mover of the motion as to why certain changes have been made. It is interesting that there was absolutely no commentary whatsoever made on any individual motion in Group No. 1, in which there are seven amendments. This basically says that other members of the House are on their own.

The member for Winnipeg Centre has basically said that all the work has been done and everybody should simply accept it. We know that throughout the committee stage, the NDP member took his orders from the government. I am not sure why the member has not raised some of the questions that have been posed by other members about the raison d'être for some of these amendments. I am not sure if he was aware of them. He did not talk about these amendments in his speech. It was more about getting the debate over with.

I do not think there is anybody in this place who does not want to have this bill passed. Before the House starts in the morning, there is a prayer about making good laws and wise decisions. If there are elements within this bill which do not reflect the best counsel that has been made available to committee and the amendments that committee made with all of the benefit of that work, and the government summarily dismisses and deletes whole clauses, that requires some explanation. That is valid. That is not delay. That happens to be good parliamentary practice.

For the member to suggest that questions by any member in this place are somehow motivated by something other than trying to find out why the details are there and why we are trying to make good laws here raises a question about the member's motivation. I would leave it at that.

I am pleased that the minister has offered, and it has been approved by the House, to deal with Motion No. 4 on the five year review. It struck me that as we consider the bill as approved by the committee and reported to the House at report stage and then examine these motions, as we consider one motion and try to determine the effect of the change, and often the entire clause and the wording of the lines is repeated, we have to pick out the nuances. I think the Bloc member was trying to point out that it might be a change of only one word.

Motion No. 4 has to do with whether this matter will be in force from royal assent or from the day on which it is enacted or proclaimed. We had the same situation, as a parallel, with Bill C-11, the whistleblower legislation. In the last Parliament, after two or three years of work by all parties, the bill was passed at third reading and received royal assent. It is the law in the country but it is not in force today because it was never proclaimed by the government. We will find, as we get into further debate on this matter, that some amendments in Bill C-2 would amend Bill C-11, which has not yet been enacted. We will need to proclaim Bill C-11 from the last Parliament before Bill C-2 can be totally in force because it cannot amend a law that is not in force in Canada.

As was indicated by the member who just spoke, the bill has a lot of clauses and many of the amendments have been dealt with. We do know the government has the opportunity and the right, notwithstanding that the matter has been dealt with fully at committee, to make changes at report stage, which is a privilege not available to other ordinary members.

The government can decide to tell the committee that it does not agree with the committee and it can throw an entire clause out, which is what was done under Motion No. 9. I hope, as we move on to the other groupings, if the government intends to be open and transparent on the provisions of Bill C-2, that at least one speech will explain, at least in brief, the purpose, intent or the effect of each of the amendments being proposed in the groupings the Speaker gave us.

Group No. 1 consists of six motions that should have been commented on. If they are just clean up motions then we should have had representation that they were clean up or translation problems.

Group No. 2 consists of nine motions, Group No. 3 consists of six motions and Group No. 4 consists of three motions. It would help the debate along if the government would at least put on the record the nature, the intent and the effect of each of the motions it has posed. If there is not enough time in the 10 minutes available to the movers of those motions, I would be most happy to give unanimous consent to extend the speaking time of the government speaker so that at least the speaker would have two or three minutes on each motion to do a proper job and to be open and transparent in the discussion of Bill C-2.

[Federal Accountability Act, June 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, in fairness, we do have a group of motions to debate and much of what is being said here has nothing to do with those motions. It is not relevant to the debate.

[Federal Accountability Act, June 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the member raised some interesting points. The issue of haste has been a question in this place for some time.

The member raised another question with regard to the motivation behind certain of the changes being proposed. Part of the difficulty is there was no speech given by the government to explain the purpose or the intent of the motions that were provided. As the member will know, these amendments were not even put in until 6 o'clock last night and were not available to members until after midnight, which did not give us an opportunity to do a proper review.

I think the member is quite right. We should encourage the mover of the motions to at least make a statement of intent of the motions being presented to this place.