Mr. Nowlan:

Mr. Speaker, I rise on the same point of order. There have been consultations here in the power comer and there was also the mental telepathy with the opposition House leader. In this comer where there were not consultations beforehand there is agreement that the vote on the motion we just disposed of will apply to all their motions and the main motion on division.

Mr. Nowlan:

Madam Speaker, the reason I am rising on a point of order, even though you did read the motion

slowly, is that I heard .1 hour. I am not sure if that is six minutes or what. However, I was more interested in the third reading. How much time does the motion the House just passed provide for?

Mr. Pat Nowlan (Annapolis Valley-Hants):

Madam Speaker, I have the highest respect for the mover of this amendment, the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands, who I said earlier is one of the hardest working members in the House and has certainly been very involved in the committee.

However, showing my independent stance, while I have agreed with him on a couple of his amendments and disagreed with him on another one which he moved earlier today and felt more in favour of the government bill on an earlier matter, I can understand what he is trying to do on this one.

My hon. friend for Gatineau said a couple of things in his oration which really stimulated me to rise in debate. It is the very fact that we are in a democracy that this amendment gets into one of the most contentious items in this electoral reform bill. That is the right of third parties, people who are not members of a registered party, not Liberals, Tories, NDPs, Bloc Quebecois, Green, Rhinoceros and not necessarily multinationals, who just happen to be Canadians. They just may not be too happy with any of the parties, people, issues or candidates.

I give full credit to the member for Kingston and the Islands for moving this amendment because I can see he is trying to tighten up what is in the present bill. The present bill has no logic to it in that as long as it is not directly for or against a candidate it can be an open sesame and the money can pour in, the way my friend from Gatineau explained and as happened in the 1988 election. There is no doubt big money was behind the government move for free trade. The newspapers were flooded with supplements and a lot of advertising. That

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was multinational. Yes, that is an odious thing. It is the interesting red herring to move on something like this.

I just happen to have a very interesting Canadian in my riding who was basically a Liberal from a large family and very uptight on the free trade issue. I am not going to embarrass him by mentioning his name, although I do not think it would matter. He phoned me at the height of the campaign long before the multinationals became involved to try to help the polls for the Tories in the last three weeks. We all know how the polls went up and down like a roller-coaster in that 1988 campaign.

This elderly gentleman is very involved in the apple business, trucks his apples to Boston and has been doing it for years. He said: "Patrick, I am very disturbed. Yes, I used to have a heritage on the Liberal side but I believe in free trade". Quite frankly I had a lot of difficulty when I was a Conservative at that time on the free trade issue. It was the toughest election I ever fought.

I knew what free trade opened up. There was a lot of imprecise language, certainly nothing on subsidies or the question of the dispute settlement mechanism. One turkey producer in Pennsylvania produces more turkeys than all of Canada. It is the same for the vertical integration of some of the chicken farms in Arkansas, to mention a state that has become famous recently, and/or in the deep south. It makes our chicken production pale by comparison.

My farmers were very concerned about free trade, about having an open floodgate. In any event I fought the fight. I supported the party line and I had difficulty. This gentlemen wanted to put an ad in the paper and he put it.

This is why this House is almost irresponsible in debating this issue on a Friday afternoon before the Easter recess when there is only a handful of us here, and other members are doing their thing. We all know we have to get home on the weekends.

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This is an issue that should be debated by all members. We know more than the national coalition. I have no love or no hate for the national coalition. Frankly I think it does focus on a lot of interesting issues affecting Canadians.

This is an issue that affects Canadians. They may not want this closed club of parties to say they are not going to be able to spend $1,000 with some friends and put an ad in the local weekly or daily and say that they are either for or against. I know this opens up perils to candidates and to members, because then we might get the single issue candidates. Let us forget about the multinationals. That was free trade, and I agree with my friend from Gatineau. Who knows, it might happen again but we have other issues in Canada.

It could be abortion, pro-life or pro-choice. It could be the gun lobby. There are many different interested Canadians who because of their frustration with the political process and because they think their members are not serving them certainly do not want this Parliament to take away their right to place an ad.

The member for Kingston and the Islands is facing the issue and points a finger not at the duplicity but at the double standard in the bill that the government has brought forward.

It says that there can be a restriction on direct advertising but if it is indirect then it is wide open. The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands is doing a service in that people either believe in the principle or they do not. I do not happen to believe that we should cut Canadians off from their potential choice.

For my friend from the Gatineau and members here, we are members of Parliament, members of registered parties. We have a few advantages going into an election. There is something called an incumbent advantage, an incumbent benefit. Most of us send out householders. If we do not we are rather crazy. We do that at public expense four times a year. We have free mailing privileges.

We have a lot of privileges long before the campaign begins to help plant little seeds with our constituents, our electorate, that hopefully will sprout into support during a campaign.

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I really was quite surprised-and that is really what got me on my feet today, although I think I was going to speak on the motion anyway. Frankly I wish this House would adjourn, because then the House could come back after Easter when the House is full up with members.

On this basic issue members should stand up and speak and give their views. I respect their views. I know the Lortie commission wrestled with this. We have to wrestle with the rights of free speech and the fact that members and candidates in an election have limits.

How can we have Canadians come in the back door and get around the limit that confronts parties? My answer is that this is democracy. When I heard a colleague in this House say that no one should influence the electorate I was absolutely horrified. I do not think it was intended the way it came out, because that is the whole purpose of an election.

I will have propaganda and I will have subtle propaganda before an election through my householders, my mailings, and through keeping in touch with my riding. That is proper, and it is proper for every member here.

Goodness gracious to them. Kitty bar the door when the writ is issued and Canadians cannot do what they may want to do. The important point is one that the amendment does not address. Frankly, I wish the bill would address it and I think the Lortie commission debated it.

To me it is not the money. Yes, that could be a factor. I could fall by the wayside because of what I am saying here today, giving the potential of single interest groups to get involved in a campaign and still not be involved in a party.

Madam Speaker, you know from your experience the answer is disclosure. I think that is the matter in this proposal by the government for a hybrid restriction of no more than $1,000 for direct advertising against or for a candidate. If it is an issue then it is open season. Disclosure should be in that bill. If there is a supplement in the newspaper or an ad, they have to disclose who the people are who put the money up.

If it is the multinationals-and that has been raised as a bogeyman here; it was real in 1988,1 agree-well then okay. Canadians are not stupid.

Madam Speaker, you sat in the chair during the referendum debate when there were about six or eight of us back here who voted no on the referendum. We know what the Canadians did. We know as of yesterday or the day before, under the Access to Information Act, $7.4 million was spent for the yes side.

Mr. Pat Nowlan (Annapolis Valley-Hants):

Madam Speaker, now that we are back to the amendments to the Canada Elections Act, Bill C-114, I am in the unusual situation I was in when the amendment of my friend from Saskatoon-Humboldt was put.

I agreed with my former colleague who spoke before we got into Private Members' hour. I was looking forward to some explanation for the amendment from the hon. member and whether he intends to participate now in the debate.

This raises some interesting questions again in this very fundamental change in our election laws, which will affect all Canadians and hon. members. This particular amendment, as I understand it, not having had the explanation from the hon. member who moved it, is a change in the government bill that says the deposit will

April 2, 1993

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be $1,000. This amendment is a change from the present $200. I gather that $200 has been there for some time. Neither the government clause of $1,000 nor the amendment, as I understand it, conforms to what the Lortie commission reported in the royal commission that is the basis for this phase of election reform. It made no suggestion of a dollar amount.

I certainly have filed the $200 deposit but there is the question of whether $1,000 is too much for democracy. The $500 seems to be a little more equitable for people who may want to run. Under this law we are already changing the number of people who have to sign the papers from 50 to 100, which is most likely a good thing. The nomination papers will have to be signed by 100 electors, however the real question is whether $1,000 is just a little too much.

Perhaps the hon. member's amendment is what he considers to be a compromise between $1,000, $200 and $500 and that may be reasonable. However I did not have an explanation from the member. This is an interesting question, but then we get into this whole other area of $1,000 to be allotted to third parties for advertising.

I gather from what the government House leader said earlier, the issue interests a lot of Canadians, especially Canadians who are not in this Chamber but certainly not the three registered parties in this Chamber, the Conservatives, the Liberals and the NDP. As I said, there were hon. members doing the committee report. I read what the Lortie commission said about third party advertising and trying to weigh the question of free speech. It makes sense that members and parties have restrictions on expenses. Yet third parties can come in under the present law as it has been interpreted by the courts and flood the airwaves, newspapers and post office boxes of electors if there is no restriction or limitation on the amount a third party can spend.

I do not know if I want the tax system they have in the States or these political action committees that pervert almost all the laws for election expenses. I think in most cases they are supposed to have a $5,000 limit, so they just create another committee. They can have a multitude of committees to get around their election expense laws which are really pretty horrific in terms of not really

setting any limits. Thank God it has not happened here yet, but money in the United States is almost fundamental. Unless one has millions of dollars do not even think of running for an election. Certainly in the House of Representatives one needs hundreds of thousands of dollars and in the Senate in the United States it is in the millions. I forget one of the figures but I think $2.4 million was the average for Senate races. Some people spend that much in the primaries.

Fortunately we in Canada have not quite been devoured by the need for dollars for a person to participate in our political system. This comes back to the amendment of my hon. friend that $500 sounds more reasonable than the $1,000 that is in the present bill.

We do not have the numbers to put this or so many of the amendments this afternoon to a vote. I think this is a veiy poor reflection on the whole state of Parliament. On a quiet Friday afternoon before a long break we bring in this type of legislation where there is a lot of public interest in some of these areas that affect the people and the body politic out there. Yet we have a perfunctory debate under our rules at this stage in our debate and there are not enough members to actually force a vote on some of the amendments. A lot of this is going to slip by. Members who should be taking an interest are not here and the people really do not know where they stand.

Fortunately, with extended hours today we will perhaps conclude report stage, which we are on now, because we have fairly tight limits on it and I understand that. It helps move bills along as it should.

This is where we get the problem of reform of the rules to help governments move legislation along. Understandably from a government point of view on a quiet afternoon you can get a contentious bill really sliding along. Frankly, if there had not been a few members around here today, I imagine this whole bill on electoral reform might have gone through the report stage and by unanimous consent third reading and the whole thing would be over perhaps without even a cry of division.

There may have been a cry. The member for Kingston and the Islands who has been very active in this whole

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process of electoral reform and working on the committee says that at least there would be a cry of division.

As far as I am concerned, as long as there is going to be a vote on third reading, some of my interest on some of these amendments pales. I do not really have that much conviction on whether it is right or wrong. As I said, I think the government bill is better than some of the amendments. The problem is that in terms of the multitude of members in this thing, there is not the process to have members vote on something that gets pretty fundamental and to the core, and this is one.

I understand from the newspapers that some parties are concerned, those that can give tax receipts like the Rhinoceros Party and the Green Party. They can give tax receipts because they had 50 candidates in the last election. They are very concerned about this $1,000 deposit. In effect, if they had to put a $1,000 deposit into all the 295 ridings, this would be a very onerous financial burden that they might not be able to meet.

As an Independent, certainly as a Conservative member, even as a Liberal member, and probably even as an NDP member, I would most likely be happy as the devil to say that $1,000 should be the deposit because then you will not have as many so-called fringe candidates. Sitting where I am now as an Independent, I cannot really say they are any more fringe than perhaps some people might say that I am a fringe candidate. Therefore, I come down on the side of my friend's amendment even though he did not explain it.

That is what I really am disturbed about because at least he is here. I really think he owes it to the House to explain what he is trying to do because I may have misinterpreted what he is trying to do.

Again, there is an issue here that the House should divide on at the right time to see where we all stand on it. But I also understand the realities of life at 3.55 on a Friday afternoon with the number of members here and the rules. We most likely will not have a division on this matter, which I think is pretty important.

I hope I have not misinterpreted the member from Saskatoon-Humboldt who moved the motion. I think it is laudable and I would like to support it if I interpreted it correctly.

Mr. Pat Nowlan (Annapolis Valley-Hants):

Madam Speaker, I must say that my whole purpose today at report stage, as I unfortunately was not here during the debate on second reading, is to focus some attention on the plight and problems of Independent members.

This is obviously for registered parties. I congratulate the Lortie commission. I know the committee of parliamentarians has worked hard on producing this phase of the electoral reform. I was just informed by the government House leader that the second phase, which definitely has some more areas of very real critical interest, may be coming and perhaps will be a priority once we come back from the Easter break. It is really the reverse side of this amendment. I do not really have any problem with this amendment because it concerns registered parties.

I have a real problem with several sections in the present bill that are silent about the status of Independent members. The fundamental one is the inability of Independent members to give tax receipts. Members of a registered party, be they Conservative, Liberal or NDP, can and that is understandable. However members of the Green Party, the Rhinoceros Party or parties that had 50 candidates in the last election can get a receipt.

Sitting members in this House who have stated they are Independents and are going to run in the next election are not able to get a receipt before the writ is issued. This puts that Independent candidate in a very unfavourable situation against candidates who are members of registered parties.

I understand the need for registered parties. I belonged to a registered party for years. For certain reasons, which we will not repeat here, I am no longer a member of a registered party but am quite happy to be here as an Independent.

The only two negatives to that situation are getting recognized by the Chair, but I will leave that aside, and with regard to elections Independents cannot give a tax receipt as their competitors can. That puts Independents in an unfair disadvantage.

The government House leader just told me this is going to be corrected in phase two. I have been following this debate with interest. I have correspondence with the government House leader going back to 1991 on this problem, which he recognizes and the Lortie commission recognized.

I give full credit to the Lortie commission. I presented a brief before the Lortie commission and its chairman, Pierre Lortie, an eminent Canadian. He and the interesting group on his commission produced an $18 million to $20 million report that produced a wealth of changes. I am sorry that we are not going to change many more things.

I know the wish of the government and the Chief Electoral Officer has indicated to the committee that he wants this phase passed so that forward planning can be done and implemented in time for the next election. We all know that is going to come some time between now and the early fall, September or October at the latest. We are hoping to use the referendum list. Surely the government would not call an election and not utilize the referendum list that cost $125 million to produce.

We know there is going to be an election. I do not want to impede the work of the Chief Electoral Officer, Mr. Kingsley, who has taken over from that other great Canadian, Jean-Marc Hamel, who came into this scene as the Chief Electoral Officer almost at the time I did some 25 years ago.

I do find it difficult being co-operative this afternoon when I know the government and the committee have looked after the problems of lunatics and have looked after the problems of prisoners voting in jails, perhaps not very well, but they have not looked after the problem I have raised.

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I wish I could get some assurance from the government House leader and that might change my obstinance at the moment because I understand the reason and I do not want to be difficult. Someone could say that people who are Independents must be lunatics. I suppose that might be the answer of my colleague, the government House leader. I said someone might say that. J'aifait une blague, une petite blague.

I would like some assurance on this question because I have some problems with extending the vote to lunatics. This problem affecting Independents has been well known by the government House leader for three years. It was described in the Lortie commission which provided a remedy and in the draft bill set up a draft wording that could be used.

I am very disappointed that the committee did not recommend and the government House leader in the introduction of Bill C-114 has not dealt with the problem in this phase so that an Independent member could start to issue receipts just like some of the people he will be running against who are issuing them today.