Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak on Bill C-43, an act to amend the Lobbyists Registration Act and to make related amendments to other Acts, that my colleagues have already commented on extensively. I remind the House of the detailed analysis made by the member for Berthier-Montcalm. He explained the many reasons why the Bloc Quebecois would not support the bill.
Without getting into details, I will sum up the eight major flaws of this bill, as mentioned by my colleague. They concern the types of lobbyists, the requirement to disclose contracts, lobbyists' fees, the contacting of ministers and senior officials, the lobbyists' political ties, coalitions, contingency fees and, finally, the whole issue of the ethics counsellor. In fact, the Bloc Quebecois tabled 60 amendments, as my colleagues have already pointed out. They were all negatived.
The major flaw of this bill, the basic problem, is the fact that the ethics counsellor reports only to the Prime Minister. All those things that could enlighten the public will only enlighten the Prime Minister's office.
Again, as I had mentioned in the case of Pearson airport, it is like having a fox guarding the hen house. We all recall the bill to cancel the privatization of Pearson airport. It contained a clause allowing those claiming to have lost future profits to negotiate arrangements in a private meeting with the minister. That also was like asking the fox to guard the hen house.
This analysis of the bill, which was made by my colleagues much better than I could do it now, shows that the government has chosen to use smoke screen tactics in its bills. It says it will take certain actions, but the resulting bills show no sign of openness and everything will be decided by the Prime Minister's inner circle.
These smoke screen tactics have also been used for events that have occurred over the past 10 or 15 days, in this House, regarding two major problems surrounding Power DirecTv and Seagram.
For the benefit of our viewers, I will briefly outline the case of Power DirecTv. Last August, only two weeks after the CRTC announced its decision exempting Canadian satellite broadcasting companies from licencing requirements, the Liberal govern-
ment announced that it intended to review policies concerning direct broadcasting. A first, Mr. Speaker.
On November 29, 1994, the government decided to create a three member task force to review the CRTC decision, which ran contrary to the interests of Power DirecTv and prevented the company from going ahead with its plans; as we know, it wanted to broadcast from an American satellite, which the CRTC found unacceptable.
The task force received briefs from several groups, including Power DirecTv. On April 6, it submitted a detailed report tailor made for Power DirecTv, which is partly owned, as we know, by Power Corporation and Hughes Aircraft of Canada.
On April 26, the government adopted the report's recommendations, verbatim, and tabled two orders, telling Expressvu, a Canadian company, that it must now apply to the CRTC for a licence, thus delaying its going into operation, which was planned for September 1995. And yet, this company had simply abided by the CRTC decision. After that, the CRTC announced that the government could be liable to prosecution. Expressvu believes it has a vested right and I think that it is legally defendable.
And who is the head of Power DirecTv? André Desmarais, son-in-law of the Prime Minister and son of Paul Desmarais, CEO of Power Corporation.
This happened in the House, right here, and it was raised repeatedly during question period.
There was also the Seagram case which is just as obvious. The Minister of Canadian Heritage went incognito to Los Angeles, with two members of his staff, supposedly to meet major players in the U.S. film industry. He got there on the very day the deal to sell MCA to Seagram was signed. Seagram is a Bronfman company, and it just so happens that Paul Desmarais, the father-in-law of the Prime Minister's daughter, is a member of the board.
They say the minister was in the Bronfman suite while the deal was being signed. He denies he was aware of that transaction, which must be reviewed by the Minister of Industry. This review is necessary, it seems, in order to determine whether Seagram is a Canadian or an American company. If it is Canadian, there is no problem, and the investments are exempt from any further investigation. If it is American, Canada will protect its cultural market and will have to review several aspects of the transaction, particularly the buy-back of Canadian subsidiaries. And at that point, the minister, who just happened to be there, will have something to say on the issue.
The Minister of Canadian Heritage will have to be consulted, and there appears to be a conflict of interests.
Of course, the newspapers played the whole thing up and English Canadian newspapers wrote at length about the events surrounding that problem. I had brought here, to read it in the House, a one page article written in English that traces all the family and political ties, the people the Liberals are working for. And, at the heart of all this, we find Power Corporation in both cases.
And all the Prime Minister could say in response to the many questions, both from the Bloc and the Reform Party, is that he certainly had the right to find a good match for his daughter. We agree. But in fact, what we are finding through all this is that the government of Canada, in its agreement, has now become a branch of Power Corporation. So, it is using smoke screen tactics to explain what is actually going on in the House.
It also uses smoke screen tactics in its statements both in the House and outside of the House. For instance, when the Minister of Finance tells us in committee, with a lump in his throat, that we must absolutely tighten our belts, of course, he will tighten the belts of the poor, he will make cuts to unemployment insurance and social welfare, he will raise all the costs relating to post-secondary education, he will probably go after old age pensions, but the finance minister's ships are still sailing under a foreign flag. And then it dawns on us that those who are asking us to tighten our belts always wear suspenders.
The Prime Minister also makes statements in the House and outside of the House. For example, the Liberals said there were problems in Canada because of people who guzzled beer in front of their television set. But oddly enough, and these are smoke screen tactics again, they never talk about champagne drinkers slumped over in hotel lobbies, those who take advantage of tax havens to avoid paying taxes, about family trusts which they do not want to touch, or ever so slightly, if they have to.
They never talk about the hon. Peter Trudeau, who is getting a $1 million tax credit for the papers he is handing back to the government. That is welfare for the rich, Mr. Speaker. Brian Mulroney did the same thing; that too is welfare for the rich.
They hardly ever talk about Paul Tellier, the chairman of CN, who is getting a huge salary, who is having his mortgage paid off by CN at the taxpayers' expense, and who is laying everybody off.
They did talk a little about the $250,000 for new furniture spent by the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, while cuts are being made everywhere else. The only answer we got from his department is that furniture is expensive. I was a carpenter and cabinet maker before becoming a member of Parliament, and I can tell you that for $250,000, you can get some really nice furniture.
More smoke screen tactics, when the Prime Minister himself tells us that everything is going wrong in Canada because of Quebec. I do not know how many times I have heard him say that since he has been in politics. He started that as soon as he became a politician, even before he was given a portfolio.
Yet, we realize-I have said it before, but this is worth repeating-that is was in a period of political stability, in the years following the rejection of sovereignty by the people of Quebec in 1980, that Canada experienced interest rates over 20 per cent. So that is exactly the opposite of what the Prime Minister said.
It was in 1986, also, that the Canadian dollar tumbled to 69 cents. I remind you that at that time, the Mulroney and Bourassa governments were in office. That was before Meech and Charlottetown, the Bloc Quebecois did not even exist, and the Parti Quebecois was completely out of the picture. Therefore, there is no relationship between the disastrous state of Canada's finances and the political situation in Quebec. Once again, smoke screen tactics.
You will recall another masterminded statement, the one made by the Royal Bank just before Charlottetown, where they said that if Quebecers and Canadians rejected the Charlottetown agreement, it would mean the end of the world. We said no to Charlottetown and the world did not end, but of course this was all orchestrated to scare people. This was also a case of smoke screen tactics.
Let me give you another example of these tactics. The Prime Minister said that Quebec, through its premier, is showing contempt for democracy. I think we should review a bit of our history. Who was responsible for the patriation of the Constitution in 1982? The current Prime Minister. Who was involved in the implementation of the War Measures Act in Quebec? The current Prime Minister. I like to remind people that these measures were taken to scare Quebecers.
I will not say anything more on this issue, except that we also remember the smoke screen tactics used in 1980 when some politicians told us they were betting their seats that there would be some changes. There never were any changes and now, in 1995, our political situation has not changed at all. At the time, they tried to scare us by saying that if we voted yes to sovereignty, we would be crippled with debts, taxes and unemployment.
We said yes to Canada because we wanted to be team players, and what did that get us? Debts, taxes and unemployment. The debt has gone from $90 billion to $550 billion. Unemployment is constantly on the rise. We now have 808,000 people on welfare in Quebec. All this happened within Canada.
We were told it would take us 15 years to get back on our feet. That was in 1980, and now, 15 years later, were are in it up to our necks, and things will only get worse. The Wall Street Journal raised openly the very real possibility that Canada would go bankrupt. All this is part of a smoke screen strategy.
