HAFF Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON PROCEDURE AND HOUSE AFFAIRS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA PROCÉDURE ET DES AFFAIRES DE LA CHAMBRE

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, November 23, 1999

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[English]

The Chair (Mr. Derek Lee (Scarborough—Rouge River, Lib.)): I call the meeting to order.

Colleagues, we're continuing our review of Bill C-2, the Canada Elections Act. We have three witnesses before us this morning: from Democracy Watch, Mr. Aaron Freeman; Mr. Patrick Boyer, former member of Parliament; and Mr. Nick Loenen.

I will follow the order on our agenda, colleagues, and invite the witnesses to make submissions of approximately ten minutes. After the witnesses have made their submissions, we will go into five-minute rounds of questions and answers.

Let's begin with Mr. Aaron Freeman.

Welcome. The floor is yours.

Mr. Aaron Freeman (Board Member, (Democracy Watch): Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before the committee.

Democracy Watch has closely followed the issue of political finance. Our coalition of 38 organizations advocates a set of recommendations to make Canada's political finance system democratic. These recommendations are based on a survey of every jurisdiction in North America.

Democracy Watch fears that Bill C-2's provisions will do little to make the federal electoral system more democratic and to reduce the potential for wealthy interests to influence the democratic process. The problems are well known. A long series of reports from Canada's chief electoral officers and even a royal commission have examined the issues thoroughly and looked at the loopholes and abuses of the current regime. But Bill C-2 suggests that the government is content to let the worst of these abuses continue.

Under Bill C-2, the tax credit, which currently reimburses the first $100 donated at a rate of 75%, would be increased to 75% of the first $200 donated, significantly raising the public subsidy on donations.

The House leader, in presenting the bill, has made no effort to determine how much this increase would cost taxpayers, but given current tax expenditures for the credit and the number of donors, the cost would likely be about $1 million per year in non-election years and significantly higher in election years.

With regard to expenses, parties could continue to withhold the costs of polling, research, training, and volunteer labour from their disclosure forms. The bill fails to place a limit on contributions, as has been implemented in Quebec and Ontario. Limits could serve as a key component of a more democratic system of political financing in Canada, serving to break the parties' reliance on high-end donors.

We would also advocate prohibiting donations from such non-voting entities as corporations and unions, as is also in place in Quebec.

To make up for the shortfall in party revenues that would occur if these limits were implemented, the current reimbursement mechanism should be replaced by a system that distributes parties' subsidies based on a more democratic formula. Special provisions for new parties, similar to those in place for allocating free broadcast time, should also be put in place. The revenues for any increased public financing could easily be raised by removing the corporate business deduction for lobbying expenses, which we estimate costs Canadian taxpayers more than $100 million annually.

Other reforms would also help make Canada's electoral finance system more democratic. The Official Residences Act should make it illegal to use Stornoway or 24 Sussex Drive for party fundraising purposes.

Perhaps the most important element of reform of the Canada Elections Act is the closing of the loopholes in the disclosure regime. Canada has what can best be described as an optional system of donations disclosure. Bill C-2 makes little effort to close the most egregious loopholes in the disclosure regime and even proposes raising the threshold above which donations have to be reported.

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The bill fails to require registration of constituency associations, described as the black holes of the electoral finance regime, and MPs remain outside the disclosure regime at all times other than the five-week election period.

While U.S. laws require disclosure of the donor's full name, occupation and employer, address, and the date of contribution, Canadian law requires only the donor's first initial and last name. Bill C-2 would add only the address of the donor to these requirements. Donations to candidates during party leadership campaigns are also not disclosed except under voluntary regimes run by the parties.

Donations disclosure means little if what is disclosed is not made public in a timely way. In Canada, the record of a particular donation may not be available to the public until up to 18 months after it's made. Annual party filings are not due until June 30 of the following year. An electronic filing system, as is in place in Ontario and the United States, where candidates file on a monthly basis, would facilitate more timely filing obligations.

In addition, given the fundamental role played by Canadian financial institutions in financing all of the major parties, not to mention the enormous stake the banks have in government decision-making, the key terms of bank loans made to parties and candidates should be disclosed.

Bill C-2 proposes third-party spending limits at both the national and riding levels. Canada needs a law that ensures fairness in elections by limiting third-party spending while at the same time providing citizens with a reasonable opportunity to express themselves on important issues during an election. It is clearly undemocratic to allow one person or one corporation to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat a particular candidate who's limited to spending about $60,000 on his or her entire election effort.

Bill C-2's riding limit is a positive step in that it would limit the impact of wealth as the determining factor in how loudly any one person can speak during the vote. But if individual Canadians or organizations are unable to pool their spending with others, official parties and candidates will maintain somewhat of a monopoly on advertising of opinions during elections.

We propose a system that balances limits with freedom of association. This is how that system would work.

First, each individual would be allowed to spend a certain amount—$2,000, let's say, for the purposes of this example. Second, each individual could pool a small part of their funds—10%, say, or $20, as in my example—through such organizations as non-profit groups, unions, or corporations. However, before such organizations could spend any money, they would have to demonstrate that they have the support from their members for spending funds in a particular way—for example, to defeat a particular candidate or to advocate a particular point of view on an election issue.

For example, if an organization with 40,000 members sent a form to its members asking for support to advocate a position, and 10,000 members returned the form endorsing the position, the organization could spend $200,000. That's $20 times 10,000 members. For companies with shareholders and unions with members, the system would work the same way.

All third-party spending should also be subject to disclosure requirements, including spending between elections intended to influence the democratic process.

The coalition also recommends that government advertising be limited leading up to and during an election campaign, except in emergencies or for administrative reasons. Such a ban is effectively in place for provincial elections in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

In addition, just as Canadians have a right to complain about false advertising by businesses, they should also have a right to complain about false advertising by governments and parties leading up to elections.

In conclusion, while some may argue that Canadian politics are clean, any system that is so full of loopholes cannot be clean, especially when one considers that preventative measures would be so easy to implement. Business as usual will not close the loopholes. Business as usual will not reduce the cynicism of the Canadian electorate.

Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you.

We'll now go to Patrick Boyer.

Welcome back, Mr. Boyer. You've been back many times, I know.

[Translation]

Mr. Patrick Boyer (Individual Presentation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for inviting me to participate in your committee proceedings this morning in order to discuss Bill C-2.

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It is always important that a guest reciprocate, and this is why I have brought along six copies of my book on the Elections Act as a small gift for you, Mr. Chairman, and for the members of the committee.

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral (Laval Centre, BQ): Are they autographed?

Mr. Patrick Boyer: Not yet, but I will do so after the meeting.

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: You will have to do that.

Mr. Patrick Boyer: That's the kind of writing that authors prefer.

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: Yes.

[English]

Mr. Patrick Boyer: I should also say that 10 days ago, Mr. Chairman, I presented my books on election law, those same six volumes, to the Speaker of the National Assembly in Bulgaria, where I was doing some work. They're looking at creating a national ombudsman's office, and we were drafting the law.

It was a very humbling experience, of course, for a Canadian going to these darker corners of the world where we're helping others to enhance their democracy, to meet members of the National Assembly of Bulgaria, all of whom are elected on the basis of proportional representation, and to come from a country with an electoral system that is roughly 77 years out of date in terms of the way that the votes are counted and members returned to the House of Commons here.

So this draft bill, the new Canada Elections Act, is a very important subject. This book is in fact probably the most important book in a self-governing, democratic society, because it contains the rules by which people acquire and lose political power and the control of government in our country. It is this law that civilizes the power struggle. It is this law that is really, more than any other, an embodiment of the values that we as a self-governing, democratic people wish to express.

So this morning I want to speak not just to some of the details that are in this updating and modernizing of the Elections Act, but also to three or four of the more fundamental issues that need to be addressed.

In the brief time that I have, there are three such issues to deal with: one, the nexus between political power and money; two, the timing of our national elections and the need to establish a fixed term and a known date for national elections in our country; and three, a change in the system of electing members, which currently is on a plurality system and does not accurately reflect in our national Parliament, our national legislature, the diverse and popular expression of votes across the country.

If there's time, I would also enjoy discussing with you the so-called “black hole” that relates to constituency association budgets and between-election spending.

I met this morning with the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, Jean-Pierre Kingsley, who I know was speaking to you yesterday. We discussed some of the possible reforms in that area that are also part of your concern.

Let us begin with the first of these points, the connection between money and political power. It's now a quarter of a century since the Election Finance Reform Act was passed under the Trudeau government, but that work was really begun under the Pearson government, with the Barbeau commission in 1966.

It languished until one MP, Hyliard Chappell, a Liberal MP from near Ms. Parrish's riding, a bit north from where you are, took up the cause and pressed, as an individual MP, to bring about the reform of Canada's election finance laws. Since 1974 we have the rules you're well familiar with, relating to the funding of elections.

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Thereafter, with more control over that process, we saw a rise in Canada of lobbying activity. In other words, what could not be achieved in the former methods of funding the political system were now being pursued through an alternative channel. With the rise of paid professional lobbyists in our nation's capital, it was the Mulroney government that brought in the Lobbyists Registration Act. It was not a complete regime to deal with the situation, but it was a beginning.

After election finances and professional lobbying, the third most important area that relates to the interaction of funds and the exercise of political power is governed by the conflict of interest regime that governs public office-holders.

So we have these three separate areas all dealing with different dimensions of the common phenomenon in our country.

In concluding this first part of my submission, I have a suggestion that the committee may want to look at, but I don't believe it is fully possible to deal with it in the Canada Elections Act.

In our evolution of dealing with these problems as a country, the time has come to bring together those three areas—election finances, the control and regulation of paid lobbyists, and the regime that governs conflict of interest issues for public office-holders—under some umbrella. We would be dealing with common administration, common definitions, common forms of transparency for all three, so that the issue that has always been part of the Canadian political culture, how we deal with open government and decisions openly arrived at for the benefit of the people, can be part of the conclusion of this first chapter that I wanted to talk about.

The second point is the importance of having fixed times for our national elections. As we know, under the Constitution they have to be held within a five-year period. The practice has been, of course, to hold them any time short of that, and our experience has been anywhere from three to five years. Generally speaking, a four-year term has evolved as a sort of Canadian norm.

The reality is that the extraordinary power is placed in the hands of one person, the premier of a province, the prime minister of a country, in this case, with the Canada Elections Act, to decide herself or himself when it is most opportune to call the election, according to economic conditions in the country, party standings in opinion polls, or the disarray of rival party forces.

I've seen from different perspectives in the work I've done over the past years how dislocating and costly this uncertainty is to our country. Many business transactions that ought to go ahead, that are functioning within the economy, are put on hold pending an election and the outcome in order to see who's in power or if there's going to be a change.

The amount of time spent by the journalists of our country speculating on when another election is going to take place, rather than reporting on the activities that are more germane to health and other issues in the country, is a consummate waste of time. It is the inevitable run-up that we always have to national elections because of this uncertainty.

We're used to fixed terms for our municipal governments across Canada; it seems to work very well within the Canadian political tradition. Nobody is saying it's difficult to cope with.

Therefore, I would recommend that clause 57 of Bill C-2 be amended. You'll find that on page 29 of the draft bill. Basically, Mr. Chairman, I would recommend for consideration a Monday in June in the year 2001 to be the fixed date for the next national election and at every four-year interval thereafter.

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In picking which of those Mondays in June...it doesn't have to be June, but that is a great time, because the days are so long in all parts of the country. Of course, as Mr. Solomon is saying, there's always the question of seeding. There has to be consideration for the various national holidays and religious observances in the country. That alone is a conundrum we often face going into elections and when a leader chooses to call an election. I can remember one election when not only the date of the election but also the advance polls were all on high holy days in the Jewish community.

We don't have to keep reinventing the wheel every time it's necessary to elect a new national assembly for our country. By bringing clarity to this once and having the attention focused on it once, we would smooth the road for a much more orderly series of elections and concentration on other issues that are more important than when the election is going to take place and who's being offended by that particular date.

A corollary, of course, is that by-elections ought to automatically occur within 10 days of the date of the vacancy occurring, whether it's by resignation or death of the incumbent.

Mr. Chair, we've also had the experience very often of by-elections not taking place in a timely fashion because they are for the interest really of the party that can call when the election takes place. The right to representation rests with the people. Therefore, the automatic holding of by-elections when there's a vacancy could also be included.

The third area is about the electoral system. I've given a lot of speeches about the need to change, before I was here as a member of Parliament and after. I was often advocating a form of proportional representation. Even now when I'm teaching at several universities, talking with political scientists who are immersed in all the concepts of proportional representation and all the changes you can bring on that, from single transferable ballots to weighted voting and all the rest of it, you're about two or three minutes into the discussion and people's eyes glaze over.

The problem we have with proportional representation in the systems that exist out there now to choose from as models is not that they may not be good theories. The problem is getting them in place and working in Canada, in practice. That's why I have a very specific, simple, made-in-Canada solution that I'm going to recommend to you. It would take the form of a wording change in clause 313 of this draft bill.

Before I state what that change would be, Mr. Chairman, I do think it's important for all of us as Canadians, and especially for those of you who have carriage now of this draft legislation as members of this committee, to stand back and see what's been happening in the country in terms of dissatisfaction with the present electoral system.

It was, for example, on May 9, 1984, that Jean Chrétien, when he was running for leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, made a promise in Brandon, Manitoba, that he would bring in a system of proportional representation for federal elections. He was quoted as saying, “If I were the Prime Minister, I would do that right after the election”.

There is a commitment to a change in the electoral system, and the Prime Minister now, Mr. Chrétien, explained the reasons he was advocating that, for reasons having to do with alienation among western Canadians under the existing system of voting.

Not only there, but within the province of Quebec the Parti Québécois has adopted as official policy a system of proportional representation. It's part of the policy of the party, although again, as with the national Liberals in office, they are not able in fact to implement it.

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We see this problem that once people are elected to office, they tend to favour the rules that allowed them to form the government. Therefore it's important, in coming on with this reform, to establish a broad base of support across the country by all parties and all people who are interested in it.

When I was here in Parliament, it was as a Tory MP. Well, after the Tories were significantly defeated in the 1993 election, I heard from two successive leaders of the party calls for a system of proportional representation. It seems all party leaders and all parties at various times are interested in this, and it's most particularly when they're not in office. If it's good at some times, it ought to be good at all times.

That indeed is why there are things coming that I just want you to be aware of.

In Toronto a new centre for constitutional law has been established at the University of Toronto law school. They are preparing a constitutional challenge to the Canada Elections Act and the electoral system, based on the lack of proportionality within the existing system. This is a document that's been prepared by that centre as the basis for the court challenge that will be coming. They talk particularly about a challenge under the charter because of the fact that the values of democracy explicitly infuse the charter, and those values of democracy have not yet been revisited upon the electoral system of the country.

Nobody should think these kinds of fundamental court challenges under the charter to something like the electoral system of Canada will be frivolous or set aside readily. All we have to do is remember that in the province of Saskatchewan two elections ago, just as the election was about to begin and the writ was about to be issued, a challenge was made on the redistribution of the constituencies in the province, on the basis that there was no proportionality. The court not only upheld that application but put the election on hold and sent them back to rewrite the election map.

That's the extent to which, armed with the charter, Canadian courts, when hearing about and being asked to rule on the democratic application, are prepared to go. So it's an important heads-up for all of us to realize these kinds of things are coming down the pike. It's out there.

This Friday in Ottawa the Canadian Study of Parliament Group is holding its annual meeting. The topic is “The Eclipse of Parliament”. It has to do with the electoral system as part of it.

Next Monday at Wilfrid Laurier University—and I'll leave copies of this for members of your committee, Mr. Chairman—I'm conducting a colloquium on majority MPs and effective democratic representation.

So these things are happening across the country. I'm sure you're all aware of many more of them.

The final point I'll make in concluding is one about majority MPs. This is my strong and urgent recommendation to you with respect to the electoral system.

The present electoral system is called the “first past the post”, as you know. It's a sports metaphor. It's like in the races of track and field: whoever gets past the post first wins. Well, if we're going to use a sports metaphor for how we conduct the elections, I would just say let's call it the runoff.

What I'm suggesting is that on election night, in any of the 301 electoral districts, any candidate who receives 50% plus one or more of the votes is declared elected as a member of the House of Commons of Canada. In other words, anyone who gets a majority on the first round of balloting is a member of Parliament.

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If nobody has a majority after the first day of voting—that third Monday in June 2001—then the returning officer will conduct a second round of balloting one week later, and on the ballot will be the two candidates who achieved the largest number of votes. In other words, it's a runoff ballot one week later.

The merit of this system, first of all, is that it is very simple. This is not a complex system of proportional representation with weight of ballots or anything else. This is something we already know as Canadians, because that's how we're running our elections today. You go back to the polls a second time, you take the same kind of ballot, and you mark it, but there are only two names to choose from.

Secondly, we're very familiar with this, because that's how most of you got nominated. That's how I was nominated at our conventions: runoff balloting. That's how party leaders in this country are chosen: runoff balloting at national conventions. Every Canadian understands runoffs, because we all understand the Stanley Cup and the playoffs in hockey. This is not a foreign concept. It fits within the norms and practices of Canada, our political culture, and our existing electoral system.

Another fact that is important is that there has been a significant decline from the 1950s to today and the 1970s to today, in any of the polls you want to track, in the attendance, the voter turnout, the credibility people give to members of Parliament, and the belief in the role of this institution. You have to ask why. Are those the real problems, or are they simply the symptoms of a deeper problem?

It may very well be that under our present electoral system, a lot of people, quite legitimately, quite intelligently, just shrug and say “Why bother?” We have seen a turning away from a system that has been designed not to produce a really accurate reflection of the popular vote.

There are several other points. I don't want to take more time to explain this, but I'll make just a few broad-brush comments. I know a lot of us feel disturbed by the negative tone that has come into campaigns in the past number of elections and the rather personal attacks against a number of people seeking public office. This isn't a good thing for Canadian democracy. It doesn't help our system of self-government ultimately that these personal attacks are going on. A lot of people say this is an importation from the style of American politics, and I believe that to be the case.

Well, if you have an electoral system where next week you may in fact need the support on the runoff ballot of those who were behind another candidate up until voting day, I believe it would have a very salutary effect on the way people comport themselves in an election campaign. They'd begin dealing much more with what they stand for and what their policies are, and with attacking the policies and programs of their rivals, rather than the personal attacks that have unfortunately crept into our system.

These are some of the many spinoff benefits that would accrue from this system. I would enjoy saying a lot more to you, but I know there are other witnesses, and I know members here will have additional questions.

The form of this can be a fairly simple modification to the present wording of subclause 313(1), which you'll find at page 122 of this draft bill. It says now:

The returning officer...shall declare elected the candidate who obtained the largest number of votes...

Just replace the phrase “the largest number” with the phrase “a majority”, so it would read:

The returning officer...shall declare elected the candidate who obtained a majority of votes...

And if there is no such candidate, then seven days later you would hold a runoff ballot between the two candidates having the largest number of votes.

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In that seven-day period, I think candidates would be entitled, subject to the discussion you would have, to spend an additional amount, perhaps one-quarter or one-fifth of their fixed budget for the overall campaign. There are a number of details like that which are important.

In terms of the overall cost, the fixed costs are already there by Elections Canada. So it simply means renewing the voting stations for one more balloting, and printing one more set of ballots, and the pay of the election officials. Overall, those numbers can be produced. Overall, the outcome will much more accurately reflect the healthy diversity of the country and the fact that our political parties do have support, in the main, right across the country.

In concluding, I'll say only these five summary thoughts, Mr. Chairman. Unless we can change the present system, these are its five fatal shortcomings:

First, it does not represent majority rule in a self-described democratic country.

Second, the present system does not accurately reflect the strengths our various political parties have right across the country.

Third, the present system discourages independent thinking and subverts the authentic voice of people's representatives to the party line in order to maintain support in the Commons, which is part and parcel of living with the constitutional myth that the government of the day has majority support.

Fourth, it denies to voters the effective choice needed in selecting, through a process of runoff voting, a single candidate from a field of four or five or more strong contenders.

Fifth, the present system prevents the healthy political diversity that manifestly exists in Canada from percolating up through local representation and here into the House of Commons.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Boyer.

Now, Mr. Loenen.

Mr. Nick Loenen (Individual Presentation): Mr. Chairman and honourable members, I too want to thank you for the opportunity to address you on something that is indeed very significant, not only to the political actors but to all citizens of Canada.

I too, like Mr. Boyer, would like to stay away from some of the details and look at the most significant rule under which we play the political game. That is indeed the first-past-the-post rule, the rule we use to translate votes into seats.

It's astounding that this rule is not part of the Elections Act. It's not really part of Bill C-2. It really wasn't part of the Lortie commission studies. Yet that is the most fundamental rule.

Now, that rule—that first-past-the-post system—was designed for a society that is basically homogeneous and that is a two-party system. Canada has neither one of those two features. Therefore I believe, and many others believe, we are very ill served by that particular system. I want to not duplicate but perhaps reiterate and very briefly state why that is so.

First-past-the-post wastes most votes. It does not assign equal weight or value to votes. In 1993 a Liberal vote was 34 times more powerful than a PC vote. It's absolutely astounding.

First-past-the-post exacerbates national unity problems. It does not permit accurate representation of Canada's social mosaic. It does not permit accurate representation of Canada's political diversity. It contributes to low voter turnout. It prevents MPs and political parties from having a significant role in developing public policies. It favours large parties at the expense of small parties. It contributes to excessive and even harmful party discipline. It encourages public policy-making that is shaped more by the short-term partisan interests of the party in power than the long-term public interests. It probably, as Mr. Boyer indicated, violates section 3 of the charter. That's not an empty threat. That is, in all likelihood, the case.

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All of that is true; it's well documented. It's been stated by many people, including, as Mr. Boyer said, the Prime Minister of Canada before he was Prime Minister. You don't hear him talk about it now, but he certainly talked about it before he was Prime Minister. All of that is true and it's documented.

In my remaining time, I want to speak to you briefly about one additional evil that first-past-the-post visits on our system of governance. That is the enormous concentration of power in the Prime Minister's Office. That excessive concentration means the destruction of responsible government.

In order to see that, I want to just take you back in history for a minute to the 1850s, to John Stuart Mill, a great political theorist of the last century. John Stuart Mill was a democrat. He wanted to extend the vote to all classes, including women. He believed that was right. He also said it's inevitable, so quit bickering about it, just do it.

He had one big worry, one big concern. He said when we extend the vote and franchise to all, mass political parties will start to form and mass political parties will lay claim to the MPs, and MPs will become party property. When MPs are thus beholden and lose their independence, you have destroyed the possibility of responsible government. Why? Because Parliament must be able to be an effective check on the powers of the executive. That requires MPs who are independent.

John Mill, with great foresight, foresaw the predicament we're in today and he offered a solution. He was worried about this until he discovered Thomas Hare's scheme, as he called it, his invention: the single transferable vote, which yields proportional results, maintains the local connection, and at the same time keeps parties in their place. He wrote to Hare:

You appear to me to have exactly, and for the first time, solved the difficulty of popular representation; and by doing so, to have raised up the cloud of gloom and uncertainty which hung over the future of representative government and therefore, of civilization.

Move to 1892, to Toronto and a famous Canadian: Sir Sanford Fleming of Greenwich time fame. He held a speech in Toronto. His address was entitled “On the Rectification of Parliament”. It's a very important document. He shared the fears of John Stuart Mill about the influence of parties. In addition to that, he saw how the power that was once Parliament's was shifting to the cabinet, and he thought that was the beginning of the end of responsible government. He said:

It has been established that in place of the supreme power being exercised by the people's representatives, the whole power of the State is absolutely possessed by a minority, and practically an exceedingly small minority. Thus we utterly fail in attaining what is understood to be representative government.

It is easy to be seen that the source to which we may trace our political difficulties is an incomplete, if not absolutely false, electoral system. The method which we follow, in its effect disenfranchises half the population entitled to representation in Parliament, and, without any doubt whatever, it is this great defect in our political system, which throws all our constitutional machinery out of gear.

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We have Fleming and we have Mill. They both said the answer lies in a more proportional voting system. In particular, they wanted the single transferable vote. These people foresaw what our problem is today. Mill was concerned about parties, Fleming about cabinet. Today, even cabinet has been bypassed in favour of the Prime Minister's Office.

Don Johnston writes in his memoirs:

The imposition of party discipline in the House of Commons has eroded the value of the institution. It has turned intelligent, vigorous, creative members into eunuchs. It has depreciated the value of the standing committees. It has permitted cabinet to arrogate all meaningful policy development. Worse, it has permitted the Prime Minister's Office to emasculate even cabinet.

This excessive concentration of power is our biggest defect. We all know it, and the country increasingly knows it. You read Don Savoie's book, Governing From the Centre, and think about some of the other things that were mentioned earlier. We need to address that, and there's no way of addressing that distribution of power without looking at the electoral system.

Mr. Boyer has suggested some steps that you might take. I suggest you should put these kinds of questions into a public forum and let the people decide, because any time you, as politicians—particularly those from the party in power—involve yourselves in changing the rules under which you form government, under which you gain power and keep others from having power, you are in a huge conflict of interest situation. Let the people decide. If there was ever an issue that ought to be decided after public debate and discussion through popular ratification in a referendum, this is it. That is how New Zealand changed its system. That is the process that Tony Blair has promised the people of England, and I urge you to do likewise.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you. These are interesting issues that you've raised, some philosophical and some practical, but all of them political.

We'll now go to five minute rounds, and we'll start with Mr. White.

Mr. Ted White (North Vancouver, Ref.): Mr. Freeman, you mentioned third-party advertising. Can you give me a specific example during an election in Canada in which a candidate or party lacked the resources necessary to adequately respond to a third-party advertising campaign? In other words, give me a specific example of when this third-party wealth that you're talking about unfairly defeated a candidate.

Mr. Aaron Freeman: In the last federal election a number of candidates were targeted by the National Citizens' Coalition, which ran about $250,000 worth of ads in twelve ridings across Canada. Jim Hawkes was targeted in particular because he was the MP who implemented the third-party spending limits.... I'm sorry, Jim Hawkes was targeted in the 1993 election. But in the last election twelve additional candidates were targeted by the National Citizens' Coalition. Two unions spent $200,000 each targeting the Liberals for their promises. In her by-election, Sheila Copps was also targeted by the National Citizens' Coalition in a series of billboard ads. And probably the most famous example was in the 1988 election, which focused on the free trade agreement, when business organizations outspent the foes of the free trade agreement ten to one. They spent roughly $13 million, according to an estimate by Donald Macdonald.

Mr. Ted White: But you haven't given me a single example of a candidate who lacked the resources to rebut the arguments or who was not elected as a result of the third-party advertising.

Mr. Aaron Freeman: Well, you raise two points. As I'm sure all of you know, candidates have in the neighbourhood of $60,000 to run their entire election effort. With that budget, given other expenses like overheads, rent and so on, they can't afford to run, for example, TV ads to counter TV ads that are run against them.

Mr. Ted White: Yes, I'm aware of all that philosophical aspect.

Mr. Aaron Freeman: I'm getting to your point.

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Mr. Ted White: I'm just asking you for specific examples of candidates who were unfairly tossed out of office because of third-party advertising.

Mr. Aaron Freeman: The point you're raising is whether third-party spending buys elections. Is that essentially the root of your question?

Mr. Ted White: No, I'm asking you for specific examples of candidates who were unfairly defeated by third-party advertising.

A voice: Diane Brushett.

A voice: [Inaudible—Editor] ...about third-party advertising. It's nonsense.

Mr. Aaron Freeman: In terms of spending in general—and television advertising is really what we're talking about in terms of the big-scale spending—it's very difficult to point to an example and say that spending bought this election. And that's not the relevant question. The relevant question is whether spending influences election. If it does, if it's influencing the outcome of the election, then you have a very serious problem for the democratic process.

You can find countless examples in which spending influences elections. Probably the most famous example in the world is the campaign of Ross Perot. Ross Perot didn't buy that election, he didn't win. However, if you look at the issues that he raised in that election, all with his own private money, he changed the entire course of the election, the entire course of the political discourse in the United States.

Mr. Ted White: We're going to have to agree to disagree on whether that's unfair or not.

Mr. Boyer, I actually disagree with your opening statement that Bill C-2 updates and democratizes or modernizes the Canada Elections Act. I don't think it does. In my opinion, that's about as close to a renumbering of the paragraphs as you can get. It reinstates the gag law and it reinstates an illogical fifty-candidate rule, both of which have been struck down by the courts. It maintains the political patronage that's rife throughout the system.

Maybe the question I'll ask you is about fixed election dates, because New Zealand did institute a system that is pretty close to fixed election dates. Associated with that, the government has to produce a fiscal report on the country six months ahead of its election, so there is in effect a six-month notice of the election date.

What happened down there prior to the election that's just been called is that all of the commercial activity stopped. People wouldn't make decisions about development, new projects, new businesses. Actually knowing when the election is going to be called has had the same effect as not knowing—the speculation that continues here. So although it's Reform Party policy that there should be fixed election dates, I'm not sure the evidence proves that one way or the other is better. I'd like you to comment on that.

The other aspect that I'd like you to comment on is the constitutional challenge to the first-past-the-post system. The Prime Minister made his promise to change the system. He also made a promise about the GST, and we know what happened to that. And you've been in this place before, so you know the chances of getting amendments through are pretty slim. But why not a single transferable ballot?

It seems to me the process that you have suggested would disrupt the lives of candidates and voters, whereas the single transferable ballot system utilizes the votes that are already there and simply reallocates them. It gets the job done the same evening, so that you end up with somebody with over 50% of the vote. As you know, a lot of the MPs in this place were elected with under 50%, and some with under even 40%, so there is a need to somehow get that majority position in place. I agree with you, but the single transferable ballot is perhaps a better way of doing it.

Can you comment on those two aspects, please?

Mr. Patrick Boyer: Thank you.

On the first question about the fixed date for a national election, I simply believe it is a very important point to establish for our country because of needs in this country.

You've cited another example of another country. I think we could probably observe that there is uncertainty in all countries when elections are pending. It depends a bit on how radical the changes are when elections occur. In some countries an election is held and you simply change the government. In other countries, elections occur and you end up changing the country because the policies and the program are so radical and so different. In our case, I think the uncertainty that exists now—the cost to the system, the opportunity cost of simply not knowing and being able to predict things—is something that we've lived with long enough to know all the problems, and it's certainly not beyond our capacity to fix it.

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On a lot of these things—it's in your second question too, about the transferable ballots, and so on—other countries use different systems. There may be things we can learn, looking at where other countries have succeeded or where they have gone off the rails.

I was always struck by the importance of something John Robarts said, when he was Premier of Ontario. He wanted to have made-in-Ontario solutions for made-in-Ontario problems. I think at the national level, we should be looking for made-in-Canada solutions for made-in-Canada problems, and trying to sort out for ourselves what will work.

What will work in terms of the balloting is a system we now know. People know about going to the voting stations and marking ballots. People know the runoff system. We have to be mindful of the political culture of our country and work within those norms. After 1974, when we had the Election Finance Reform Act, it took two elections in some parts of this country, where the political culture was not up to speed with that, for it to work through.

People were rejecting it, particularly in two or three provinces in Atlantic Canada that I had direct experience with. People just said “Fine, you can pass that we have to report on our expenditures, but we're just not going to do it. That's not how we do elections here.”

We have to do elections here as we do elections here, and that's why I'm saying a runoff ballot one week later between the top two candidates is so easy; it's a roll-out. We have to keep it simple if it's going to work.

I've looked at all the different systems. In the three times I ran for Parliament here, I always got the same vote—about 44% to 45%. The first two times I was returned as an MP. The third time it was about the same vote—at least, the person who won had even less than 45%. So in no case did any of us coming from Etobicoke—Lakeshore in those days have anything more than a plurality. We weren't majority MPs. We now have what's called a majority government, only because there's a majority of MPs in the House of Commons with about 38% to 39% of the popular vote, overall.

When you look at why people are disenchanted with the parties and the system of government, it's the result of the cumulative effect of this system over many years and the fact that we've had consecutive minority governments in Canada. The reason I'm advocating this simple system—the runoff ballot—is because it is something we can do.

Why have two people who have been very powerful leaders in this country—Jean Chrétien as Prime Minister of Canada, and René Lévesque as Premier of Quebec—both committed to a system promising proportional representation, been unable to bring it in? It has to do with the fact that once people are in office they are surrounded by office-holders who kind of like those rules. We all can understand that. But more than that, there's a complexity in all these other systems that defies their effective implementation.

That's why I would strongly urge the runoff ballot one week later between the top two candidates. It's so simple. We can make it work, and the country and members of Parliament will all benefit.

Mr. Ted White: Do I have any time left?

The Chair: No.

Mr. Bergeron for five minutes.

[Translation]

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron (Verchères—Les-Patriotes, BQ): We are in politics here and we play politics, but I feel that, when we listen to witnesses, we should take their experience into account in order to broaden our own perspectives on a bill, and not try to convince the witnesses that our opinion is right.

Having said this, I have a few questions that I'd like to ask which are primarily intended for Mr. Boyer. However, I would like to thank the other witnesses for their contribution, particularly Mr. Freeman, who covered questions which I feel are very important with respect to the funding of political parties.

I would like to go back to three points that Mr. Boyer made in his presentation. First of all, as far as party funding is concerned, I must say that you have left me a bit hungry. You set the table, gave a brief explanation of the process and described what led to the current system, but without really reaching any conclusions because you stated that we should perhaps amalgamate the various pieces of legislation. Aren't you turning a blind eye to the real problem, which perhaps revolves around the way that elections are funded in Canada? Yesterday, the Chief Electoral Officer reported that, within a few years, the corporate funding system will no longer exist. I would like to hear your thoughts on this issue in conjunction with the Quebec model.

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On the issue of elections being held at predetermined dates, I would simply like to know what you think would happen should a minority government be defeated in the House. How would this proposal for predetermined elections deal with this situation?

As for the issue of proportional representation, I understand your suggestion. I agree that this proposal would probably ensure that we have members of Parliament who are more representative of their riding, in that they would be elected by absolute majority, but how would this system eliminate the distortions inherent in the current electoral system and ensure that small parties or slightly more marginal ideologies would be better represented in the House? I fear that an election of this type would only accentuate the bipartisan nature of the British parliamentary system. At any rate, this is my initial impression. I would like to hear your thoughts on the matter as well.

Mr. Patrick Boyer: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

These are three deep questions. As for the first question, I believe it is possible to set up an office, a commission or an organization that would audit the funding of the political process in Canada and would cover various aspects, including the funding of political parties and electoral candidates, the role of lobbyists within the government itself, financial issues related to members and other officials of the public service as well as non-financial matters that pertain to their activities. Our democratic system has matured to the point where we need to establish certain institutions to govern the political process and to have a better perspective of what exactly is going on within the government.

We are all very conscious of the need for political funding and for openness on this matter. My proposal is very simple. First of all, we must acknowledge that we currently have three functions and that the same situation is treated different ways. We find ourselves with legislation containing varying definitions on the registration of lobbyists and on the reports required to monitor the funding of political parties. I believe that it would be preferable to have a structure and some amount of integration, which would promote the openness and transparency of Canada's political and governmental process.

Your second question pertained to the predetermined date for elections. Since several of my suggestions are very simple, people are afraid that they may entail some major consequences. You are right to point out that this recommendation may have an impact on the House of Commons in the case of a vote of confidence against the government. I think that votes of confidence played a major role in the past but no longer reflect our modern-day government. Such votes are the product of a system where it was necessary to exert some control over the legislature. As Mr. Loenen explained, control is now too tight and this prevents the members from doing their jobs.

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If the House of Commons could operate without these regulations governing votes of confidence against the government, except in the case of essential measures such as the budget, and if members could vote freely without being subject to party discipline, Canada's national legislature would come alive again and our Canadian democracy would survive. Right now, the national legislature of our country is controlled totally by the executive. Fortunately, our courts are independent. However, because of the way powers are divided in our country, the legislature is practically non-existent.

In my opinion, we must establish a predetermined date for holding elections along with measures that would be required by the House of Commons, including a review of the rules governing votes of confidence, in order to give Canada a much needed parliamentary revival.

What was your third question about?

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: Proportional representation.

Mr. Patrick Boyer: Right. During the last elections, when you were elected to the House of Commons, Maclean's announced, on the first page:

[English]

“Canada, A Country Divided”. Macleans showed it on the front cover—all Reformers in the west, all Liberals in Ontario, all Bloc in Quebec and Tories in Atlantic Canada, and said “This country is divided”.

Well, this country is the most united country anywhere. Canada, at the levels of cultural values, social practices, communication systems, and financial and economic integration, is more united than the so-called United States of America and the so-called United Kingdom. We're very united.

What we don't have is an electoral system that shows that diversity in the way members of Parliament are elected here. Macleans magazine held it up to the country and said “Canada, A Nation Divided” because of the outcome of the last general election. That is such a pathetic form of journalism. You would expect no more from a child going into the hall of mirrors at the sideshow at the circus, seeing the convex and concave mirrors that make short people look tall and thin people look fat, and coming out and saying “Gee, we're fat and tall”. We're not fat and tall; we're who we are, and we need to have an electoral system that isn't made up of convex and concave mirrors that distort the reality of what this country is all about.

That's why I believe the runoff system will not be a perfect translation of the popular vote, in terms of being a totally flat mirror, like some of the systems of proportional representation, but it will come so much closer and we will get there so much easier. It will be so simple that the proportionality and balance will come.

In those runoff votes, we will find that in some ridings it will be a Liberal and a Conservative; in some it will be a New Democrat and a Liberal. You will get all the different combinations. All you have to do is look at the numbers from the last number of elections and see who came first and second. It's quite diverse across the country.

Nobody will be able to say what the outcome will be. Take, for example, the Spadina riding in Toronto—a very strong Liberal riding represented by Peter Stollery. When Jim Coutts, who was working in the Prime Minister's Office, wanted to enter the House of Commons, it was arranged that Mr. Stollery would be appointed to the Senate, creating a vacancy in which Mr. Coutts ran as the Liberal candidate in Spadina. He was a shoe-in, except that the New Democrats persuaded everybody in the riding they were in the second spot. They didn't run saying they were going to win; they said they were number two.

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A lot of people just took exception to the way that by-election had been orchestrated because it seemed to be more interested in the careers of a couple of individuals rather than the representation of the people in that riding in Toronto. People looked for another choice, and that was how a lot of Tories voted for Dan Heap, the New Democrat candidate, and how Dan Heap ended up in the House of Commons as an MP, representing a traditionally Liberal riding.

The point of this is that nobody can say, by looking at past voting patterns, what the outcomes in future elections will likely be when you have the runoff system. When I was running for election, we had nine to eleven candidates on the ballot—always four or five very strong candidates. I think it's quite an invidious thing in a democracy to ask people to make their final choice on who they want to represent them out of those five people.

It's nice, sensible, democratic, and workable to say fine, you make the preliminary choice, and if one doesn't get a majority—if one does, great—let's have a second ballot, let's have the runoff. This will be the Canadiens, the New York Rangers or whoever, and we'll see which one of them gets to take the Stanley Cup home, which one of them comes to sit in the House of Commons.

The Chair: On that note, we're getting good questions and answers, but they're all a little on the long side. We have to try to get somewhere within the next 15 minutes. We have a number of members who want to ask questions.

I'll go to Ms. Bakopanos for five minutes.

Ms. Eleni Bakopanos (Ahuntsic, Lib.): Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for your comments. I'll start first with Mr. Freeman.

I find this type of advertising very disturbing, and I'll tell you why. How much does a referee in the NHL make?

Mr. Aaron Freeman: I have no idea.

Ms. Eleni Bakopanos: Certainly more than a member of Parliament, I think.

How much does an NHL member who plays hockey make? He makes millions of dollars more in salary than a member of Parliament. So when you say we don't allow it in sports, you also have to balance out exactly what actually happens.

I know you're trying to make a point in terms of donations, but I think that's taking sledgehammer force to something that has been discussed. When you don't value a job in its proper perspective, in terms of what society pays for doing that job, there is a problem in society also. So you haven't addressed that. I don't think any of the speakers at the moment have addressed the fact that we do not really have an appropriate money value on the job of being an elected representative in this country. The more we devalue the job, in both money terms and other terms, the less people of credibility will apply for the job. That's my comment.

You also say in your press release that we don't know who donates to riding associations, to candidates between elections, or through bogus organizations. As far as I know, in the Quebec Liberal Party and the federal Liberal Party, both of which I have worked with for many years, the donations that are given are accounted for. I don't receive any money in my association that is not accounted for. When I get a donation, a receipt is issued by the party and the amount is split, with one-third going to the party, one-third going to my riding association, and one-third being put in trust for the election. But every single one of those donations is accounted for.

Within my riding association there is a treasurer who reports to the association on a regular basis and presents a report, again on a regular basis, on what money has been spent and which way it has been spent. They also account to the party once a year. There is no auditor, I agree, but an accounting is done.

Again, when you make a comment that we don't know who donates, that's relative. I don't know what you're referring to, but in terms of my experience and my association there is an accountability, because every donation is accounted for in terms of the process.

That's the first question. I'll go to Mr. Boyer next. I'll ask all my questions at the same time.

On fifty plus one, let's assume you have seven people running in an election and the first voter turnout is 49%. There is no clear majority. So seven days later you ask the same voters to go back, and there is an apathy in the system, so there will be a lower voter turnout. I'm speculating, of course. There may be more, but I'm speculating there will be fewer. Say 10% show up—I'm exaggerating obviously. The person who had, let's say, 49% or whatever first loses, because those people decided they didn't want to go and vote a second time. So the second best wins the election. Is that a possibility in terms of your runoff voting?

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The third question is to Mr. Loenen. I found your diagram very interesting. How do I interpret it? Is it to say that the two seats that were won by the PCs in 1993 each had a million votes, and that my seat in the House of Commons as a Liberal only had 31,000? I find it very disturbing to show diagrams like that without putting it all in perspective.

Those are my questions, Mr. Chair.

The Chair: Well, let's see what the answers are here. Is there a response? Mr. Freeman.

Mr. Aaron Freeman: Thank you.

You've asked two questions of me, which I'll address separately. The first had to do with a press release in a one-pager we put out that makes an analogy to money to the referee in hockey. I think it's a very appropriate analogy. We don't address, and the Elections Act does not address, the salaries of members of Parliament. That's really not the issue—the salaries of referees, the salaries of NHL players, or the salaries of members of Parliament. We can sit here and debate whether those salaries are adequate or reflective of economic conditions or political realities.

Really, the point here is if a team in any sport, no matter how much the referees or the players are making, in minor hockey.... Maybe the NHL is a bad analogy. We don't actually talk about the NHL in our one-pager. But in little league, in a house league in any neighbourhood in Canada, if one team was found to be giving money to the referee, or if both teams were giving money to the referee—maybe one team is giving more than the other—there would be outrage. It would be on the front pages. To our mind it's a very appropriate analogy. As members of Parliament, as a governing party, you are acting as a referee in the political sphere.

Would it be more outrageous in sports than it would be in politics? Do sports impact on our lives more than politics? I think it's a very appropriate analogy, and I'm quite prepared to defend that analogy.

I don't have an opinion on whether MPs are making adequate salaries or not. The point for me is when those with the greatest stake in government decision-making are bankrolling the decision-making process. That is happening in Canada. That is reflective.

If you look at the top donors to each party, they are the interests with the greatest stake in government decision-making. We're talking about regulated industries. We're talking about Canada's big five banks. We're talking about the biggest government contractors in Canada. These are the names that come up consistently. Almost every one of the top donors you can link back to that. You don't see, for example, very many provincially regulated industries on the list. These are the names that you don't see on the list.

Your second question dealt with what we term loopholes in the disclosure regime. Perhaps it would be useful to go through some of those loopholes. You've basically asked me to take your word that you haven't been exploiting these loopholes. I mean, I don't know you—

Ms. Eleni Bakopanos: I just used that as an example. I don't think I'm unique.

Mr. Aaron Freeman: Well, the point is that I don't know if you're unique, and neither does any Canadian.

Ms. Eleni Bakopanos: It can be checked. That's exactly what I said. You can check.

Mr. Aaron Freeman: Well, I can check to see the names that you have disclosed. But I have no way of knowing whether, for example, you've exploited a constituency association loophole.

If you look at, for example, two former MPs, one of them is a former minister, Doug Young, for Acadie-Bathurst. In his filing in the last election, you would see essentially one donation from his riding association, and you wouldn't see anything else. His entire budget virtually came from his riding association. So we have no idea who contributed to that riding association.

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We also have no idea if people made contributions to any of the MPs between elections, because MPs only have to file during that five-week period. Leadership races are completely outside the disclosure regime, other than under a voluntary system—a “trust us” system—run by each of the parties, which of course have an interest in sweeping any irregularities under the carpet.

I was speaking with a candidate who was running in the Tory leadership race, who informed me that when his party was informing him of the rules, they said he had an option. If he was going to issue a receipt, he'd have to disclose. If he wasn't going to issue a receipt, he wouldn't have to.

Now, for some this is adequate, and many of these loopholes fall under that rule—yes, you can exploit the loophole, but the person won't get a receipt. Now, there are a few problems with that. Number one, the Lortie commission found that only one-fifth, one in five, of the corporations who were eligible for the tax receipt actually claimed it. So people don't care about it. In the case of individuals, it ranged between one-third and two-thirds. So people aren't claiming the tax credit to begin with.

Secondly, you can claim the tax credit only up to a maximum of $500, and that would be for a donation of $1,150. It would also be for a donation of $100,000. Once you've achieved that maximum, you can make an additional donation through a loophole. Otherwise, you wouldn't have received any additional tax credit. So there are several problems with having the receipt as the check on assuring disclosure.

The other problem with disclosure, of course, is the timing. If I make a donation this year of $100,000, nobody knows about it until next July. So if I make the donation in January, nobody knows about that for 18 months. Not only do they not know about it, but they don't know when it was made. They don't know if it was made in January or July or December.

So, for example, if Onex Corporation—a past top donor to the Liberal Party—makes a donation to the party next year, we will find out in July and we will have no idea whether Onex made that donation before the merger bid, during the merger debate, or after the merger bid was thrown out. These are the kinds of loopholes in the disclosure regime that I'm talking about, and thanks for the question to allow me to clarify them.

Mr. Patrick Boyer: My answer is no. The apathy that you're rightly concerned about exists under our present system, which is partly why I'm suggesting this improvement. Indeed, I think that if there is a diminishing turnout at the polls, which is happening election after election, that trend would be reversed under a system where people could go to the polling station a week later and actually make a real choice between two candidates. And in that intervening week, the two candidates on that ballot would be doing a lot to stimulate interest and focus attention within the riding, the result being, I think, a turnout by voters who would know that they were having a real choice.

So in the final thought, you're saying wouldn't it be a possibility—you said yourself you were exaggerating the numbers—that we'd be electing the second-best candidate. This isn't about who's first best, second best, third best, etc. This is democracy. This is an election. This is about who gets the most votes; this is about counting. This is that part of democracy where numbers matter.

We're not talking about democracy as a theory or ideology, or about the institutions and procedures that carry it out. This is the part of democracy that comes down to counting the numbers that are in the ballot box. So it's not who's second best, it's who gets the most votes.

What would be second best is the present system, under which many people—myself included, in the two times I was elected here—could come and be a member of Parliament and speak in our national assembly without ever having received a majority support of the people they were ostensibly representing and speaking for. I just don't think that's a tenable system, and that may be one of the reasons for the eclipse of Parliament.

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The Chair: Mr. Loenen wants to reply.

I just want to point out that each of the parties has had the benefit of an expandable, “cascade-able” five-minute round. We're now at noon—

Mr. Patrick Boyer: What a chairman!

The Chair: —and Mr. Loenen will have an opportunity to reply here, but the best we can do now, colleagues, is this: for those members who wish to put questions, I will allow one question with virtually no preamble from each of the other members. That will allow us to at least address this group of witnesses and then move to the next fairly soon.

Mr. Loenen, you have a reply to that last question.

Mr. Nick Loenen: I was asked to give an interpretation to the particular chart under which I claim that a Liberal vote was 34 times more powerful than a PC vote. It was the 1993 election. What happened in that election is that over 2 million Canadians voted for the PCs but only two seats were acquired. It is a breakdown of how many votes per seat. It is not directed at your individual locality or at what happened in your riding.

You said you found it astounding. I find it astounding too.

If I may, Mr. Chairman, I know you like to cut everybody off, but nobody's listening, so....

The Chair: Mr. Loenen, I just want to point out that I haven't cut anyone off. As a result, the time has expanded. So I'd ask you to please change your view of what I have or haven't done.

Mr. Nick Loenen: I'm sorry.

The Chair: Do you still maintain that I cut people off?

Mr. Nick Loenen: I apologize. I misexpressed myself.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Mr. Nick Loenen: I do apologize.

The Chair: I'm not going to cut you off. I'm going to let you continue with your answer.

Mr. Nick Loenen: I do apologize. When it came out, I realized that I shouldn't have said it that way.

The Chair: It's okay. Carry on.

Mr. Patrick Boyer: I think he was referring to me writing while he was speaking. It was no reflection on the members of the committee.

Mr. Nick Loenen: I just wanted to say this. There has been considerable discussion about different alternatives. I have been in this business of finding alternatives for a long time. The minute you start looking at different systems, everything becomes rather complex and difficult.

I think you should look at what the Parliament in Britain did. They instructed the Jenkins commission. They said, look, these are the goals we have, and you now go and find a made-in-Britain solution—or if you will, a made-in-Canada solution—to fit our unique geography, our unique political history, etc. They said they wanted a system that is broadly proportional, which is another way of saying they wanted a system under which most votes count. They wanted a system that would provide stable government; they didn't want instability. They wanted a system that maintains a connection between an MP and a local geographic area, and they wanted a system that would extend voter choice.

A committee such as yours should follow that kind of example rather than debate all the technical details about this system, that system, or somebody else's system, because those are the general policy decisions that I think most Canadians would adhere to.

Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you.

Now I'll go the route of one question per member. That would be my preference. Seeing no objection, I'll do that: Mr. Harvey, Mr. Solomon, Mr. Wappel, Ms. Catterall, and Mr. Anders.

Let's try that, Mr. Harvey.

[Translation]

Mr. André Harvey (Chicoutimi, PC): It's too bad that we are pressed for time, but I will respect your schedule. I can understand the underlying political interests of this approach, but I feel that we are going very fast, we are going at almost a marathon clip. Surely this is not the best way to deal with our concerns. Don't worry, I will ask only a brief question. We always have witnesses that are of a very high calibre and I dare say that, by proceeding in this fashion, we are being somewhat disrespectful to them.

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Nevertheless, I would like to ask one brief question intended for Mr. Boyer and I would like to congratulate the other two witnesses. If I understand correctly, Mr. Chairman, in politics as is the case elsewhere, we can't think that we can do everything. We have to leave something for those who follow us, don't we? Consequently, the corrections that we make will only be partial corrections.

I would like to ask Mr. Boyer a question. I had the pleasure of sitting in the House of Commons alongside him. In particular, I would like to congratulate him for his continuing interest in parliamentary reform. The number of members who continue to concern themselves with the Canadian parliamentary system are few in number.

The issue of electoral campaign funding is one that concerns us all and we always appear to be afraid to follow through on ideas, except perhaps in the case of people's funding in Quebec.

Since Canadians are, at times, suspicious of the reasons motivating some big donors to give money, do you think that they would be prepared to see the government increase its participation in election campaigns in order to ensure that the democratic process respects all the interests of Canadians, and not just certain elite interests? That is my only question, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Patrick Boyer: Are you recommending that we adopt an Elections Act similar to the one in Quebec?

Mr. André Harvey: Yes.

Mr. Patrick Boyer: Yes, where only the citizens....

Mr. André Harvey: No. Even if we did not fully implement the Quebec model, do you think that Canadians would agree to have the federal government take an even more active part in national election campaigns? Remember, an election campaign does not cost a billion dollars.

Mr. Patrick Boyer: I don't know what Canadians think, but I do know that candidates and political parties need money to operate. We have two sources of funding: government contributions and private-sector contributions.

In the past 25 years, we have managed to strike a balance between the two. In my opinion, there can be a greater role for public funding of parties and candidates. In the bill, we suggest that certain amounts be doubled. We should also continue to exercise real control to ensure that all those engaged in the process are protected against major expenses that might disrupt their private lives, the parties' role, and the country's political system.

Mr. André Harvey: Do you have a comment, sir?

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Freeman, a short reply.

Mr. Aaron Freeman: I just had a very brief comment in response.

If you took all of the current subsidy out of the current system and replaced it with full public financing—which we don't advocate, but just to give you an idea of the scale—it would cost roughly $30 million a year. That's about $1 per Canadian per year. We think that's a very small price to pay for fair elections.

But even if you didn't want to eat into current revenues at all, it would be very easy to recoup those costs by ending the business deduction for lobbying expenses, which costs Canadians $100 million a year, or by a check-off system on people's tax forms. This of course doesn't include the amount of money that we could raise through small contributions and through other measures such as increasing the free broadcast allocation.

[Translation]

Mr. André Harvey: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Wappel, Mr. Anders, and Ms. Catterall.

Mr. Tom Wappel (Scarborough Southwest, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm obviously brand new, but I do have a question.

Democracy Watch has a list of recommendations. Recommendation 11 says “Leadership races should be brought under the purview”, etc. Well, I was in a leadership race, so I have first-hand knowledge of what went on in the discussions behind closed doors, but that is a party matter.

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Each individual party has its own rules, and I would suggest to you that the nomination of each individual candidate of each of the parties is, in microcosm, a leadership race, in 301 ridings across Canada. Are you suggesting that recommendation 11 should also be applicable to individual nomination races in the individual parties? How do you justify interfering with the private rules of a private organization?

Mr. Aaron Freeman: I'll address each of your issues separately.

You've basically asked, if I understand you, two questions, that is, one, given that the parties are private organizations, how do we justify overseeing their activities, intervening in their activities? The second question would be whether we advocate closing the leadership race loophole for local races.

With regard to your second question, the coalition does not have a position on whether that rule should apply at the local riding level, but I don't see why not. The issue you're really raising here is that it's one thing to apply that rule to a leadership candidate, but for a local riding race that's quite a burden to place on an individual candidate who has very limited financial and time resources. I don't see why some level of disclosure—what we're really talking about is just a list of donors—shouldn't be applied at the local level. We don't have that as a formal recommendation. The coalition doesn't have a position on it.

Your second question is a more philosophical matter, and it comes up every time political finance issues are considered by members of Parliament. As a Liberal fundraiser once told me, these are basically private organizations and it's hands off: they regulate themselves and they police each other.

We feel that the role played by political parties in the democratic process justifies a level of transparency in those organizations. Following the logic that says you can't regulate these organizations because they're private entities, we shouldn't have any disclosure obligations on them at all. I don't see any difference between closing the leadership race loophole and, for example, the current disclosure obligations that we have on candidates and parties; this is merely extending the disclosure obligations to an area that's just not covered by them right now and should be.

There's no reason, given that we have these disclosure obligations on parties and candidates, not to extend them to leadership candidates. These are the people who will be the country's leaders. Should Jean Chrétien step down tomorrow and there is a leadership race to replace him, is there any doubt that the people who finance that leadership race have as important a role as anyone who donates to a political party or candidate during an election? This is the leader of the country that we're talking about.

The Chair: Mr. Boyer did indicate he wanted to respond, but we're so tight for time.

I'll give you ten seconds, Mr. Boyer.

Mr. Patrick Boyer: In answer, it's not entirely a non-public activity in which the parties are engaging in leadership selection, because all three parties, the Liberal Party, the Progressive Conservative Party, the New Democratic Party—at least those three that I know of—have used the receipts under the Canada Elections Act for donations that were made. The way those contributions were funnelled into the leadership campaigns of candidates meant that there was in fact public subvention of the process. And what goes with the bargain comes from the bargain: the ability to give those receipts during a leadership selection process also brings back in it a public interest.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Gee, I wish I'd known that.

The Chair: Mr. Anders, with a quick question, and then Ms. Catterall.

Mr. Rob Anders (Calgary West, Ref.): My question is addressed to Mr. Freeman. I agreed with a number of things he talked about, but I'm going to go after one aspect of it.

• 1215

You gave an example of the National Citizens' Coalition targeting one of the members in this place, Sheila Copps, yet she won her election. You gave an example of business organizations that were pro-free trade, yet the majority of people voted for parties and candidates that were opposed to free trade. My party was pro-free trade, by the way. So I note that example.

The third example you gave of third-party funding was that of Jim Hawkes, who used to be the member of Parliament for Calgary West. Are you alleging that it was third-party money that contributed to the defeat of Mr. Hawkes? Are you saying there were no other factors?

The last aspect of it is, should somebody like a Ross Perot or the NCC or anybody, for that matter, not be able to contribute to or influence debate in this country?

Mr. Aaron Freeman: I won't repeat my earlier comments on this in response to Mr. White's question. But I will repeat this aspect of it, and that is that the question is not whether money buys elections. That just isn't a relevant question. The question is, does money influence elections? What we've seen time and time again is that it does.

In addition to my earlier comments, I'd refer you to a study by Donald MacDonald, the former chief of the Ontario Commission on Electoral Finances, as well as extensive studies that have analysed voter behaviour. What they find again and again is that in most elections the number one influence on voter behaviour is television advertising. This is when they ask voters unprompted or prompted and when they give them a set of options—for example, leadership debates. In the MacDonald study, leadership debates tied with television advertising at about 37% as the number one factor. This is the number one influence on voter behaviour, and that is also the number one expense of parties in an election. This more than anything else is what allows interest groups and parties to influence the election, and it's what you need big money to do.

So that's really what we're talking about here when we talk about third-party spending. We're talking about advertising, and in particular TV advertising. What the studies show is that this is extremely influential on voter behaviour.

With regard to the second part of your question, the model we advocate—and I won't go through it again, because it does take a couple of minutes to do that—balances the interests of electoral fairness with that right to participate. We recognize that people have a right to associate with other people in expressing their opinions. Quite often the parties in an election will not address issues that are still of importance to voters, and voters and individuals should have a right to raise some of those issues. I believe our model allows for that, depending on the level of popular support that view enjoys.

The Chair: Thank you. Ms. Catterall.

Ms. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West—Nepean, Lib.): Mr. Chair, because you're limiting me to one question, I will ask that question to all three. But maybe I could make a comment and ask for some additional information.

I know most of the organizations that have appeared before us. I don't know a lot about Democracy Watch, so I would like you to provide us with some information on when your 36 member groups last met, how often they have met in your six-year history, and who elects the board of directors. I see only the founding directors listed here. I'm trying to get a grasp on how broad-based your organization is. I know several of these member groups, but I don't know about their involvement in Democracy Watch.

My main question to all three is as follows. As interesting and as esoteric, to some extent, as these discussions about the electoral process have been, to me there is one significant weakness in Canadian democracy after 133 years, which is that the 52% of the population that are female are so seriously underrepresented by a ratio of five to one in our Canadian Parliament. If all three of you are concerned about democracy, as I believe you are, I'm absolutely astonished that you haven't addressed that issue. I really would like to hear what you have to say about it and what recommendations you would make, so that we don't go another 133 years without improving that situation.

• 1220

The Chair: Let's just go across the panel. Since Mr. Freeman spoke last, I'll start with Mr. Loenen, if you'd care to comment.

Mr. Nick Loenen: Thank you very much.

It's a very important question. The reason I didn't mention it, although I alluded to it, is that time is so limited.

I know that a number of representatives have suggested to you, as did the Lortie commission, that you would increase the number of women and attain gender parity through the use of financial incentives. I do not believe the use of financial incentives is an acceptable way to go. In the first place it's demeaning to women. It's a reverse form of discrimination. Secondly, it will not attain the goal you seek.

Endless academic studies have looked at this very carefully, and there's absolutely no doubt that it's the electoral system itself that is most determinative. When they changed the system in New Zealand, the number of women went up. In Scotland it was dramatic. It almost doubled. It went up to 37% in the Scottish Parliament because they changed the first-past-the-post system.

Why did the Lortie commission not come up with that? It's because its mandate restricted it. They were not allowed to look at first-past-the-post or any alternatives to it, so they had to muck around with all kinds of trivialities.

But there's absolutely no doubt that is the key prohibiting factor. Everything else is trivial. You have to ask yourself, why is first-past-the-post an inhibiting factor? The reason is because first-past-the-post reduces election questions to just one main issue. Everything is funnelled down, and voters' choice is very limited. You have one X, and now you have to express who you want for your local candidate, which party you favour, and which party would make the best government. All of that has to be reduced to one X. When you place that X behind that name, you thereby say that you agree 100% with that candidate, with that party, and with that set of policies. You also say that you totally, completely, and absolutely disagree with all the alternatives. That is a very unrealistic way of voting, because in fact Canadian political life is far more nuanced.

If you enlarge voter choice by using different systems—and I don't want to get into all the different systems—voting becomes more meaningful, and you can express an opinion over a much wider range of issues. For instance, under the New Zealand system, the German system, and the Scottish system you have two ballots. That already is a great step forward.

When you reduce everything to one choice, what happens to the gender issue is that it's never important enough. It's the same with the Green Party issue. There's always another issue—jobs, reducing the deficit, whatever—that on balance is more important than promoting women or the gender issue or the green agenda. A lot of people are environmentalists and would support the Green Party, but if you are not given more choice in the way you vote, then you must reduce everything to your most significant item, and gender is not one of them.

The Chair: Thank you.

I would ask the other two witnesses to reply as briefly as they can. Mr. Boyer.

• 1225

Mr. Patrick Boyer: I can be very brief on this, because I believe Canada will be better governed when our national government and our national legislature truly reflect this country they are governing and legislating for, and that would include a roughly equal number of men and women in the House of Commons, reflecting in proportion our population.

It would certainly mean a lot of the issues I'm currently dealing with—ovarian cancer research and treatment, violence against women, and those kinds of issues—would have long ago been much higher on the national agenda if people who were at the seat of power and in great numbers in the legislature were able to give voice and political pressure to having those issues on the agenda. We know from our own experience what was possible, for example, when Monique Bégin was Minister of National Health and Welfare and brought many of these issues to the forefront, where they hadn't necessarily been.

The two concluding points I would make are the following.

This constitutional challenge to the electoral system of Canada that's being prepared by the centre for constitutional law at the University of Toronto—which a week or two ago I was invited to advise them on and participate in—is a charter challenge based on proportionality. The lead applicant and plaintiff is Joan Russow of Victoria. There is a great deal in this about women, about aboriginal peoples, and about geographically dispersed minorities. That is part of what is coming down the pike, whether it's dealt with in the Canada Elections Act or not.

The final point is, I do believe under a runoff system the possibility is real that more women would be elected to the House of Commons, but it doesn't necessarily follow. But the choices that are there right now are invidious choices, not only for who gets to be a candidate but for who gets to be chosen as an MP.

The selection process is one I'm hoping, through that runoff system, would bring us closer to that goal. But I'm not advocating it as the only or the best means to see that a lot of the gender issues in national politics are at the forefront of our agenda, because it is not the only way to do that. The way to do that is multifaceted. This is part of a much larger program.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Freeman.

Mr. Aaron Freeman: I'll be very brief on the second point you raised. Our recommendations only deal with political finance issues and reducing the influence of moneyed interests in our political system, so none of the sixteen recommendations we've outlined touch on that issue, for that reason.

On the first question you raised about our coalition, Democracy Watch has been around since 1993. We just celebrated our sixth anniversary. We have about a thousand supporters from across Canada. We don't solicit money from government or corporate sources, so all of our supporters are individuals. We do receive a small amount of foundation funding for some of our project work.

Our coalition has 38 members from across Canada, and they really span a very wide political spectrum. The reason is that many organizations from across Canada, large and small—we have major national organizations and we have small community-based organizations—realize that as long as wealthy interests have the kind of influence they have in the political process, whatever issue they care about is that much harder to deal with.

We have written confirmation, and I've certainly spoken with every member of the coalition. We sent out a solicitation to groups we're familiar with that we saw as potential allies on this issue, and all of them agreed to sign on to our recommendations and join our coalition.

Ms. Marlene Catterall: I have to make one comment. For decades, men have not found it demeaning for political parties to accept billions of dollars to elect thousands of them. I don't see why women should find it demeaning.

Mr. Aaron Freeman: I would add one thing. We have several women's organizations in our coalition, including the National Action Committee on the Status of Women.

• 1230

Ms. Marlene Catterall: And I'm asking what kind of power they have in your organization.

Anyway, I've had my say, Mr. Chair.

The Chair: Thank you.

In concluding this part of our session, your chair just wants to make one comment on statistics.

During our hearings last night, one of the witnesses used a figure of, I think, 12.9% to describe the representation of women in the House of Commons. She realized later that she was describing the representation in the federal cabinet, not the representation in the House. The statistic reflecting participating of women in the House of Commons was referred to here today as five to one, when it's really four to one. I think we're all agreed that 20% of the members of Parliament are female, and the ratio is properly described as four to one.

Ms. Marlene Catterall: You're right. My mathematics failed me this morning, Mr. Chair.

The Chair: Mr. Freeman, in relation to the copy of the advertisement that preceded your appearance here today, and in your testimony, you described members of Parliament as something equivalent to referees. While I appreciate that Canadians send members of Parliament here in the belief that they will use their judgment to resolve disputes and make good judgments in the public interest, none of us was elected as a referee when we were elected. Referees need to be impartial. They are seen to be impartial in sport. As members of Parliament, we are definitely not elected as referees, we are partisans. We always were and always will be. We are not impartial when it comes to politics. We are partisans, we are warriors, and one way of looking at this makes it unfair, in my view, to suggest to Canadians that we must style ourselves and act as judges and not accept political contributions to our campaigns.

So I understand where you are coming from when you try to characterize donations to political campaigns, but I don't accept that we should be painted as impartial judges or referees. We are in fact partisans.

I should allow you at least five or ten seconds to reply, if you wish.

Mr. Aaron Freeman: The use of the referee is an analogy, it is a metaphor.

The Chair: I know that.

Mr. Aaron Freeman: As you've raised it, MPs certainly are elected to be impartial and to resolve issues among Canadians. They are partisan, but they're not partisan to the interests that bankrolled them, or they shouldn't be. That's really the point. They are partisan, but the point of the referee analogy—and I don't want to get hung up on the analogy, because I'd much rather address the substance of the recommendations—

The Chair: I don't want to get hung up on it either.

Mr. Aaron Freeman: —is that the level of partisanship is not to the wealthy interests who have funded your campaign. We'd like to limit that influence, and we just don't see a legitimate role for large donations and for donations from entities that don't participate in the democratic process by voting.

The Chair: I kind of agree with you, because I didn't see any of that in my own personal campaign—and most of the members around the table are nodding their heads.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

The Chair: Anyway, we can only wish.

Thank you all for attending. Colleagues, we're just going to suspend for about one or two minutes while the new witnesses take their places.

Thank you to the witnesses that are here.

We're now suspended for a couple of minutes.

• 1234

• 1242

The Chair: I'll call the continuing meeting to order. We're continuing today with our review of Bill C-2, the Canada Elections Act.

We have witnesses with us now. Appearing at this second half of our meeting are Mr. Stephen Best, Ms. Liz White, Ms. Monique Deslauriers and Mr. Gerald Chipeur.

I will ask each of the three presenters, who are divided into three groups—Environment Voters; Mouvement pour la Démocratie dans les Villes; and Mr. Chipeur, who's here as an individual—to make a ten-minute presentation. Following those presentations, we will then go to five-minute rounds of questions from members of Parliament.

I will stick with the order on our agenda, so we'll start with Environment Voters, Mr. Best and Ms. White. Welcome. The floor is yours.

Mr. Stephen Best (Director, Environment Voters): Thank you, Mr. Lee. I'd like to thank the committee for allowing us to appear. I just want to say a special hello to Mr. White—

Mr. Ted White: Hello.

Mr. Stephen Best: —because I spent my youth up and down the streets of Lonsdale and Keith Road. It's been a while since I've been back to the west coast, but it's nice to see him here.

My name is Stephen Best. As you can see by the sign, Liz White and I are both directors of Environment Voters.

The committee has heard a number of witnesses speak about third-party political advertising. To offer another perspective, we would like to provide the committee with a case study of one group that does nothing but third-party campaigning in elections. The organization is Environment Voters, and that's all we do. Environment Voters' campaigns are exactly the kind that have caused the greatest concern to some members of this committee, the Supreme Court of Canada, the Lortie commission, the Chief Electoral Officer, and clearly the drafters of Bill C-2.

• 1245

Our goal today is to explain, again using a practical example, that third-party campaigns like those of Environment Voters are not a perversion of democracy or elections, but rather quite the opposite. They are one way, perhaps the only way, for Canadian citizens to overcome the anti-democratic aspects of our current electoral system.

Over the next ten minutes I'll touch on the environmental situation that caused the founding of Environment Voters, the political reasons we have become involved in the electoral process, our campaign strategies and tactics, and one option left available to Environment Voters if Bill C-2 is passed in its present form.

Since 1970 the environmental movement has grown by about 5,000%. Estimates of public contributions to Canadian environmental groups vary between $100 million and $250 million per year. This voluntary voting with their wallets shows an extremely high level of public concern about the environment.

Yet contrasting the growth of the environmental movement since 1970 with the change in the quality of environment reveals a disturbing political picture. Since 1970, while the environmental movement was growing by 5,000% the quality of the Canadian environment was declining by 38%. Today Canada has one of the worst environmental records in the developed world, and the question is, how is that possible?

Despite widespread public support for strong environmental and wildlife protection laws, and the urgent ecological necessity, governments—with only a few notable exceptions—have not only actively resisted passing the laws necessary to protect Canada's environment, they have also worked to undermine the few that still exist. Environment Voters was founded in response to this failure in public policy.

For the record, this failure is killing people and is destroying ecosystems that we all depend upon for our health, our social security and our economic well-being. The environment is not a frivolous issue, and failure to protect the environment has had and is having dire consequences.

Public policy is the result of pragmatic political calculations, and it is always made with one eye on the ballot box. Making public policy is generally not an exercise in making the right decision—politicians are not referees—but rather in balancing the demands of politically relevant actors. The hoped-for outcome is more or less good government, but, more importantly, re-election. And by politically relevant we mean the capacity to influence votes. Homeless people don't vote, so their demands are less politically relevant than chemical producers'.

Before Environment Voters existed, environmental issues also, like the homeless, had less political relevance than chemical producers. A good environmental record would not help in the re-election of the governing party's candidates in their electoral districts, nor would a poor one necessarily hinder it.

The reason for this can be found in our antiquated, constituency based, first-past-the-post electoral system, which distorts the political relevance of issues and interests. Interests that have a strong geographically discrete component, such as oil extraction, fishing, and mining, have more political relevance than interests that are geographically diffuse, such as the environment. And this has been alluded to by the earlier witnesses.

Indeed, this systemic bias works in almost all cases to the detriment of the environment. The new Canadian Environmental Protection Act, Canada's position on the Kyoto global warming initiatives, and the current Canadian seal hunt quotas are just recent examples.

Environment Voters was formed to give environmental issues political relevance. It's important to note that the strategy that will be outlined here would not be necessary if Canada had an electoral system based on modern concepts of proportional representation. In countries that have adopted proportional representation, environmental policies tend to be much better than Canada's because in those countries the environmental vote matters.

To make environmental issues politically relevant, Environment Voters campaigns in elections to provide a political benefit to a party for having a good environmental record while in government, and to exact a political cost for a poor one. The benefits and costs are measured in votes and seats won or lost.

• 1250

Environment Voters' first campaign was in 1999 in the Ontario election. The Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario had one of the worst environmental records in North America. To exact a political price for this record, Environment Voters campaigned in seven electoral districts. Of the seven targeted PC candidates, only three returned to Queen's Park. However, if the current Minister of the Environment is able, as he has promised, to improve Ontario's environmental record, Environment Voters will be campaigning in favour of PC candidates in the next Ontario election.

Environment Voters campaigns at the electoral district level. From experience, we know we can on average shift 4% of the vote. With this in mind, Environment Voters selects electoral districts for campaigning that, based on the voting history, will likely be decided by this amount or less. Environment Voters only campaigns in electoral districts that are held by members of the governing party. They are the only politicians voters can hold accountable for the government's environmental record. Whether campaigning in favour of the governing party's candidate or in opposition, the process is generally the same and the latest political campaign techniques are used.

To find out where to campaign in an electoral district, we do a three-election poll-by-poll voting history analysis. Core votes and swing areas are identified. To find out who we'll be talking to and what to say, we acquire demographic information and conduct detailed opinion surveys in the swing areas. We prepare extensive dossiers and profiles on the incumbent, which include press clippings, still images, and video from the House of Commons. We also gather similar information about the challengers, as they become known.

From the research we develop our political messages. Videos are used to carry the message. They are distributed door to door, and other direct media, such as the telephone and the mails, may also be used.

It has been asked in this committee if there is any evidence of damage done by third-party campaigns. and, Mr. White, I put this in particularly for you. Elections are a zero sum game. One candidate's damage is another's good fortune. A poll-by-poll analysis done after the Ontario election showed an average of a 5.46% decline in the PC vote, the targeted candidates' vote, in the polls where Environment Voters campaigned compared to a 0.95% decline where we didn't campaign.

As for the Liberals at the provincial level, who are the major beneficiaries of the Environment Voters campaign, in the Environment Voters polls the Liberals increased by an average of 14.31%, compared to 8.81% in polls where Environment Voters did not campaign.

Environment Voters campaigns, which are highly targeted and research based, using modern communication techniques, tend to work. Untargeted generic political advertising about issues have little, if any, effect.

Third-party spending restrictions in Bill C-2 are designed to end the kinds of campaigns Environment Voters runs. Bill C-2's $3,000 spending limit on third parties makes it impossible to effectively communicate with the thousands of voters necessary to have an influence in an electoral district, a fact that is well understood and intended, I would add, by the government.

Nevertheless, Environment Voters can still campaign in the next federal election in the manner described above without contravening any of the provisions of Bill C-2 and spend, if the moneys were available, unlimited sums. Bill C-2 will not prevent that. The drafters of Bill C-2 have cherry-picked those elements of the Lortie commission and Libman v. Quebec that can best be used to restrict political speech during elections and best serve the electoral fundraising and patronage interests of the major political parties.

Consequently, there are a number of strategies left to Environment Voters under Bill C-2, but the most obvious one is either to run or support a slate of independent candidates who distribute Environment Voters campaign materials under their spending restrictions. If a campaign calls for more funds than could be spent under one candidate's limits, then multiple candidates can be run. Registered and eligible political parties are restricted under Bill C-2 to running one candidate in an electoral district. Third parties such as individuals, businesses, unions, organizations and Environment Voters, however, can contribute to as many independent candidates as they choose and with as much money as they see fit.

In practical terms, then, Bill C-2 will have minimal impact on Environment Voters' election plans except to slightly increase the accounting and paperwork involved.

• 1255

The electoral system in Canada seriously distorts how issues are prioritized by the government. This has meant that Canadians now suffer under some of the worst environmental conditions in the developed world. Environment Voters was formed to correct this problem by raising the political relevance of environmental issues, by making government's environmental policy matter, for the first time, during elections, the most important event on the democratic calendar.

We would like to ask the committee to recommend to the government that the provisions in Bill C-2 that restrict third-party spending be removed. It is only through third-party election campaigns that many issues, such as the environment, have any hope of being properly and fairly considered by the government until such times as Canada reforms its electoral system.

We ask this in the same spirit as the minister expressed at his appearance before the committee, when he talked about “the importance of what is incumbent upon us—perfecting our democratic process”.

Since preparing that paper, we've had one other option open to us: a court challenge. When the legislation is passed, or in fact going into the campaign and deliberately breaching the provisions of Bill C-2 to trigger a challenge in that regard.... If we went into the campaign, as we would normally do in a campaign, and we were involved in 20 electoral districts to the level we would become involved, we would probably wind up with 20 elections that were null and void and had to be run again.

We retained the services of Clayton Ruby and asked him to prepare a one-page letter, which I would like to read at this moment. It will only take me a moment.

The Chair: We have the letter.

Mr. Stephen Best: Then I would like to close by thanking the committee.

The Chair: For the record, you might want to give the gist of the letter without reading it.

Mr. Stephen Best: Let me just read the last two paragraphs, where it says:

If this government thinks that it can sustain such limits,

—meaning the $3,000 limits—

it is about to receive a rude shock. It cannot take a regime approved in theory for one context,

—which is Libman v. Quebec, the referendum challenge, I guess now—

and apply it to another that is far more complex, far more shaded, and far more nuanced.

By relying on Libman, the government is putting itself into a precarious situation legally.

In that regard, I would like to give our sincerest thanks. On behalf of Environment Voters—and I know I speak for Liz White on this—we have, in our organization, an enormous respect for our elected officials. These are the people who have actually put their necks on the line, have gone out there and dealt with very difficult issues. I wish there was some other way that we could find of bringing environmental issues to more prominence in our system.

Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you.

Now we will go to Monique Deslauriers, who is with the Mouvement pour la Démocratie dans les Villes.

[Translation]

Ms. Monique Deslauriers (President, Mouvement pour la démocratie dans les villes): In Quebec, we have legislation to control election funding and spending. I would like to comment on municipal elections, for which we have no legislation.

[English]

We don't have any law at the municipal level. There is 84% of the territory that doesn't have a law. This creates some problems. Right now there is an inquiry on groups, an electoral machine that has been manipulating the election.

[Translation]

We have evidence—and the newspapers have published evidence too—that these groups cheat during the election process and they attempt to have their candidates elected.

Let me give you an example. Our movement was contacted by the mayor of a municipality. We have records and proceedings to back up what we are saying. This mayor had had his campaign funded by interest groups. After the election, he was offered padded professional fees, which he refused. He was asked to follow up on public projects he questioned. He was asked to grant permits which he refused to grant. He was asked to carry out needless studies, which he refused to carry out. His political handlers then told him that he was not showing much gratitude. So if a man buys me a fur coat, I may have to go to bed with him. That is what we see here: the interest groups were expecting something in return.

• 1300

What happened then? The groups began to attack him on a personal level, questioning his integrity, engaging in character assassination by calling him a pedophile, a homosexual, and attacking his wife and children. He was shut out of a group that included the other councillors. Here in my hand, I have a copy of the minutes of a meeting, which show that one of the council meetings suddenly became public, after the council agreed in camera on the contracts that would be awarded to some companies for the construction of a public building.

As the newspapers have revealed, this is not a rare occurrence. As a movement, we have contacts in many municipalities. We have seen that the system is like a machine, a vertically integrated industry that manufactures billboards and posters and finances elections with unlimited funds.

[English]

that we don't know where it's coming from.

[Translation]

The groups arrange to have flexible candidates appointed, so that once the candidates are elected their political decisions and priorities will promote the groups' activities and interests, and particularly so that the groups can dip into the municipal coffers.

Mr. Harvey asked whether Canadians were ready to fund elections.

Mr. André Harvey: That was the best question.

Ms. Monique Deslauriers: And it is a very important one.

Consider this: this mayor has made statements on tape indicating that he could save each of his fellow citizens $200 in taxes without the shenanigans of these political organizers. That's great—our property taxes are fairly high. If you multiply that amount across a large number of municipalities, you will arrive at considerable sums. Let me try to give you an idea of how much money we are talking about: the consolidated capital budget of Quebec municipalities stands at $10.92 billion, while the debt is even higher than that, standing at $11 billion, or some 30% of Quebec's entire budget.

Imagine what we could save if clean, transparent and controlled elections were held, where cheaters would be punished and where citizens, who hold democracy in their hands, would find recourse with the Chief Electoral Officer.

As I said, there is currently a public inquiry underway, and we hope that the network's organizers will be indicted. But it's clear that the whole thing is backed by as yet unknown financial interests.

I would also like to remind you that there are OECD guidelines on how countries can strengthen their codes of conduct and of ethics in view of market globalization and the increasing ease with which foreign capital moves across borders.

I would also like to state that influence-peddling, the manipulation of elections, attacks against a person's integrity and the control of the public purse have nothing to do with our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms or with any other such agreement

[English]

and international agreement on rights and freedoms

[Translation]

which applies to Canada. Under our Constitution, do we have a right to clean elections?

[English]

Mr. Gerald Chipeur (Individual Presentation): I think we do.

Ms. Monique Deslauriers: Is it written in the Constitution?

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: Yes, in section 3.

Ms. Monique Deslauriers: Thank you very much.

[Translation]

I ran as a candidate and must say that the people working against me also had federal connections. But for now, we must do everything we can to control this trend before it cannot be contained anymore.

If the federal government impedes this access, it will just be another way of limiting that which directly attacks our democracy and our right to hold elections.

• 1305

The Chairman: Thank you.

[English]

Now it's over to Mr. Chipeur for 10 minutes.

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I am here today in my personal capacity as a lawyer who practices in the area of constitutional law. I have an interest in this area because I've represented three or four different political parties in the Court of Appeal of Alberta, the Federal Court, and the Supreme Court of Canada on various issues, everything from the Reform Party through the Natural Law Party to the National Party and the Progressive Conservative Party. All have had various issues that needed electoral counsel, and it's in that context that I'm before the committee.

I'm not representing any particular perspective other than that of a lawyer who looks at Bill C-2 and sees that many of the decisions of the courts have not been reflected in the bill as it currently is drafted. I'm here to take this committee through the clauses that are particularly problematic from a constitutional perspective. I don't have any policy views. This is purely free legal advice to hopefully put some lawyers like me out of business, so that we don't have to take those actions referred to earlier by Clayton Ruby and Stephen Best.

The first point I'd like to make is that there is some good news. Paragraph 4(c) of Bill C-2 is clearly constitutional. Not only is it constitutional, but Parliament seems to now have much greater discretion than we thought it may have with respect to the issue of prisoner voting.

I am going to leave with the committee here a report from the Alberta legislature on the subject of prisoner voting. I am not suggesting that you should change what is there, because the Federal Court of Appeal recently upheld the ban on prisoner voting that is currently in the Canada Elections Act. It said that such a ban is not only constitutional but it is also necessary in order to preserve and continue to maintain many of the principles that underlie the charter.

I would refer you to the Sauvé decision of the Federal Court of Appeal, and it's docket number A-68-96. Justice Linden said something that is important for parliamentarians to keep in mind. This kind of committee process and the debate that you're going through is critical to the success of your legislative work product in court. The things you've done in the Lortie commission, the things you're doing here today, are absolutely critical to the constitutionality of this legislation, regardless of whether we are talking about prisoner voting rights or anything else in that legislation.

This is what Justice Linden said:

In my respectful view, Parliament need not examine the finest details of each and every option open to them in order to warrant deference.

He's saying the courts should defer to your opinions, to the parliamentarians' opinions, on important electoral issues such as, in this case, prisoner voting.

He continues:

Nor must Parliament choose the absolutely least intrusive means of achieving a legislative goal, particularly where one objective of the law is to loudly denounce [in this case] serious criminal behaviour.

He then went on to say that Parliament was aware of all of the options before it because it received advice. It had the report of the Lortie commission and other cases before it. In his view, in the case of prisoner voting, Parliament did not act arbitrarily and actively debated the issue.

I won't go into any more details. It's a 63-page decision, but I would recommend that any parliamentarian concerned about the issue of the proper balance between the courts and Parliament.... This is one judge who says the responsibility lies with this group and that there should be deference on the part of the courts to Parliament when it makes decisions with respect to important electoral matters.

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I'll go on, then, to some of the other clauses in the bill. Notwithstanding this deference, I think you do continue to have some problems, and I don't think you should unnecessarily bring problems upon the Attorney General of Canada and Parliament when it comes to electoral laws when simple amendments, which I'm going to review here, will resolve some of the constitutional imperfections.

Clauses 253 to 256 suggest that polls be established in prisons. This is not a constitutional matter, but I would urge this committee to seriously reconsider that. As a lawyer practising in the real world, I think that if you were to talk to not only your electoral officials but also the people who work in your campaigns, I don't think they'd like to be in prison during a campaign working through some of these issues, being scrutineers and otherwise.

I don't think this is a wise recommendation. Number one, it's a serious security risk. Number two, it's disrespectful of the electoral process to have people that have violated the rule of law so actively involved in the voting process. It's an undue and unreasonable burden on the candidates and their supporters, and number four, it creates an opportunity for intimidation.

I would strongly recommend that this committee have all voting, where prisoners are allowed to vote, for example, when they're on remand or if they have sentences under two years, done by mail ballot, not through polls in the prisons.

Clause 323 creates significant ambiguity, with the kinds of communication tools available to individuals today on the web and on television, and with so many mail and courier services available to candidates. I would suggest that this committee seriously reread clause 323. There is ambiguity created with respect to what a sign is and what kind of advertising must not take place during the period in question. Number one, I think this kind of restriction is totally ineffective, but also, it creates the kind of ambiguity that the courts will likely strike down.

On clause 328, I agree with all of the previous presenters who have said that a ban on polling just doesn't make sense. The Supreme Court has made it clear that there can be no justification for a ban on the publication of information that is within the knowledge of the political elite—the political leaders, those with the money to finance the polls—but that the average person can't access. You might be able to give it to them in person, but it can't be published.

It is an illogical clause, and it's a clause that I have no doubt the Supreme Court will strike down. And if it strikes that clause down, then probably clause 323 will not survive either. I understand the intent of those two clauses. The intent is that you don't want to have people misled by certain statements at the eleventh hour. But the approach here, I think, will not achieve that objective, and I think the courts will see that and will strike it down.

Regarding clauses 332 to 348, while it appears that the decision of the Alberta Court of Appeal has been respected with respect to the question of allocation of political party advertising time and the ability to buy that advertising time, I don't believe the clauses adequately do that. In fact I think the Alberta Court of Appeal was a five-person court, a three-two decision. I think the minority decision would have been upheld had it been appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

My opinion is that if these clauses are again attacked in the courts, the approach in the Figueroa case, the Communist Party case, will be followed, which is that absolute fairness and equality is required between parties, particularly when, as with these clauses, there is a result for smaller parties, with respect to free time from the government, where they would get less free time if less time were allocated to them by the broadcast arbitrator.

My suggestion is to go back to the Lortie commission approach, where everybody gets the same amount of time. There's no need for us to spend money on a broadcast arbitrator. It's an anachronistic approach that's based upon history and tradition, but it is not necessary, and is in fact, in my view, unconstitutional.

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Regarding clauses 349 to 362, a $3,000 limit versus a $60,000 limit is not a balanced or proportional approach, and a $150,000 limit versus an $11.4 million limit, again, is not proportional. I'm referring to the limits on the campaigns of third parties versus the campaigns of candidates and parties. I have no doubt that this will not survive constitutional review. I think there are obviously ways around it, as you heard earlier, but more importantly, it's just not fair. It's not democratic, and I would strongly urge this committee to rethink clauses 349 to 362.

Clause 385 is obviously problematic. The courts have said when you associate, and you have two people associate, you're a party. You can have a party with two people. And clearly, that's what the courts will ultimately conclude again. To come back with 50 candidates just won't fly. My guess is that the Communist Party will just come back to court the day after this bill comes into force and ask the court to reconfirm its earlier decision.

Finally, under clause 496—and this relates to the third-party advertising rule—a strict liability offence is created here. I don't think the rules in the third-party advertising clauses, clauses 349 to 362, are natural. It's not a natural approach, and therefore it's not intuitive that one would be subject to these rules. My recommendation would be that you change clause 496 from a strict liability offence to an offence where there is some mental culpability necessary—you have to know you're breaking the law before you can be convicted of breaking the law.

Those are my submissions on those sections.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Mr. Chipeur, I want to thank you for putting on the record the view that our deliberations in Parliament, both in the House and at committee, are increasingly becoming more important in how the legislation we produce is assessed afterward by either the public or the courts. I'm pleased you have put that on the record.

You did make reference to clause 385 and the recent court decision in relation to the Communist Party of Canada. On behalf of the House, I have to say that while the House looks to judicial decisions for guidance from time to time, we don't accept at all that any judge has the ability to legislate out there. I take great umbrage in that particular case—and I'm saying it for the public record—that a judge had the temerity to go beyond her mandate and dare to legislate the definition of what a political party would be. That wasn't her job. She was out of line. I simply invite her to get out of town and get back to doing her job.

I say that as respectfully as I can, knowing that it doesn't sound very respectful. But when things don't go right out there, it seems that people want to go to court and re-legislate. Well, it's not going to be that way. Parliament has a job to do, and my colleagues in the House will legislate. Your remarks in that context simply allowed me to restate something that I had stated in more polite terms at an earlier meeting.

We'll now go to a series of five-minute rounds. There have been some very good submissions and issues raised here.

I'll go to Mr. White for five minutes.

Mr. Ted White: Thank you.

I have a question for Mr. Best and also for Mr. Chipeur. I'll ask them both now.

I'm not saying this just because you used to hang around on Lonsdale Avenue, Mr. Best, but it was one of the best presentations we've actually had, in my opinion, on both a situation like the Libman case and third-party spending.

I agree. Contrary to what has just been said by the chair, I think the decision in the Libman case had the correct elements in it, that it's improper to take an arbitrary 50-candidate rule. There's no logic to it. All of the smaller parties that have been here have agreed with a private member's bill that I put forward, which suggested 12 as at least having some logic in relation to the House procedures.

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I believe also that your lawyer, Clayton Ruby, is correct when he says the Libman case, in referring to a referendum, has absolutely nothing to do with an election-type scenario, and the minister is clutching at straws trying to reimpose this.

I'd like to ask you a bit now about the third-party spending, because I think you gave the best presentation we've heard in terms of giving some data to back up the position. You're claiming credit at least for helping defeat some PC candidates, so I'd like to ask you specifically if you think your intervention was fair or unfair. Give a reason why you think it was fair or unfair, in light of the results you claim.

Mr. Chipeur, your presentation definitely reflected the experience and knowledge you have from practical application in the courts, and I thank you .very much for that. Unfortunately, although your comments here on clauses 332 through 348 say it's logical that the Canada Elections Act should reflect the results of lawsuits, it hasn't happened in several areas of this act, as you can clearly see. I see no sign whatsoever that the minister is listening.

I would say you have some more business coming your way pretty soon. In fact, I'd say there's a 99.9% chance we will foist a whole bunch of problems on the Solicitor General of Canada. I have no doubt about that, the way this places works.

In terms of my specific question to you, I'd like to ask about clause 323, where you talk about the advertising signage as being a problematic area. I didn't quite catch the examples you were giving. I'd like you to give me some specific examples of where that would be misinterpreted or problematic.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Mr. Stephen Best: There is something I left out. One of our options was to look at becoming a registered party. We would campaign, not to get our candidates elected but purely as a way of enjoying the fundraising benefits of party status, and so on. One of the figures we came up with was four, for party status. Our argument was that if you can have a Bloc Québécois, because they have enough seats, and have a provincially based federal party, you ought to be able to have a provincially based P.E.I. party. So you should be able to have Bloc P.E.I., which would then make that four.

At the 50 level, you couldn't even have Bloc Atlantique. There are only three provinces that could have provincially based federal parties. With the balkanization, if you will, of Canadian politics, that would be better representation.

The question of fair and unfair is interesting. We play entirely by the rules. I think the way we deal with this is a bad way; it's an unpleasant way. I know enough about politics and political campaigning that this first-past-the-post system is so vulnerable to the kinds of things we do.

The model we used was the National Rifle Association in the U.S. It is an organization that targets congressmen, senators and representatives from the House of Representatives. They have created a public policy in the U.S. that's 180 degrees different from public opinion. Public opinion is interested in gun control in the U.S., but the NRA—less today than maybe a few years ago—basically controls that policy, because of these problems.

Our basic research in this country shows there are about 35 seats that could be won or lost by 4% of the votes. It doesn't take a lot to move 4%. It doesn't even take the $60,000 figure people are talking about, if it's targeted properly. So I think it's a bad thing.

It's fair because it plays by the rules. It's unfair because it really distorts the will. We can have more power than the environmental movement probably should have. Environmental policy needs to be balanced. So it's a bad thing. It's a wrong thing, and I think it could be corrected by the systemic changes Mr. Boyer was talking about, for example.

You were making the point earlier that the Liberal Party is a private organization. Well, so are Environment Voters. We're both political organizations and we deal with the system to get our points of view across. The Liberal Party has a platform and we have a platform. Bill C-2 is a rule book, and Parliament is telling us that if we want to play in electoral politics, we have to deal with the rules. So we deal with the rules.

I think it's a bad thing we do, in the sense that we shouldn't have a system that is so vulnerable to this. But that's the system we have, and I wish there were another system.

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Mr. Gerald Chipeur: I did speed through clause 323, and I apologize for the vagueness of my submissions on that. There are three points.

There are exceptions to the ban on advertising in clause 323, and it's the exceptions that create the uncertainty. Number one, the description of what is a sign is very specific. Therefore, in regard to a political sign, the plastic one you put on the lawn, is that a banner? Is it a billboard? Is it a poster? I don't know. I think it's very unclear. If you said something like “signage”, I think that would be clearer, but right now I'm not sure the average political sign that people put on their lawn is included within the exception in clause 324. In fact, I think it's so unclear that I can't predict which way the courts would go on that one. I'm not sure about it, and I don't think a judge would be clear on it either. I would therefore urge you to clean up the signage language. Make it clear about what kind of signs you are banning and which ones you aren't.

The other two points on ambiguity were related to the fact that everybody communicates over the Internet. I know all of you do, and everyone I know does. They do so from the age of 6 up to the age of 106. I'm sure the Internet is going to be the main way in which we communicate in the next election. It's just reality. If you watched the CTV news this morning, people are living on the Internet, so the Internet is it. By making an exception for the Internet, you've basically cut out 90% of electioneering for the future. I think that's the way the brave new world is going to be.

Finally, I think another section that really guts any limit on advertising is the ability to transmit commentary, to transmit a speech. If you put together a pamphlet that has a speech of a political leader or a commentary from a political leader, what else is out there that this would ban? I can't think of anything that doesn't fit into one of the exceptions in paragraphs 319(a) through (d). If someone could tell me, I would be happy to address it, but my view is that, one, clause 319 is too ambiguous; and, two, the exceptions are so broad that very little is actually prohibited.

Mr. Ted White: If you had the opportunity to choose one out of all the parts that you've noted here on your presentation sheet, which would be the single, easiest one to bring down, in your opinion?

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: In court?

Mr. Ted White: Yes.

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: It would be the ban on polling, because you have a precedent already, right on.

With all due respect, I do agree with parliamentary sovereignty, Mr. Lee, so I agree with your sentiments. Notwithstanding that you may not like what the judge did, my guess is it would be very simple to go to court on that clause as well. That's notwithstanding that I might agree with you that Parliament should be supreme with respect to some of these issues.

The Chair: We'll go to Madame Dalphond-Guiral, but, speaking personally, I just want to say the chair doesn't have a problem with the courts disallowing legislation for charter reasons, but the chair does have a problem with judges in-filling and legislating at the same time.

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: I would totally agree with the chair on that particular issue.

The Chair: Thank you.

Madame Dalphond-Guiral.

[Translation]

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: I have a question for Mr. Best and I would like an explanation from Ms. Deslauriers.

Mr. Best, during your presentation, you demonstrated clearly that Canadians were concerned with the environment. When you can raise between $100 and $250 million, that's a lot of money.

Furthermore, you chose to campaign in several ridings, which is fair enough. And your fight for the environment regards us all since, as you said so eloquently, the environment knows no borders, even the one separating the north from the south. As a consequence, I'm very surprised that you did not allude to the proportional system. Of course, under such a system of proportional representation, everybody knows what's at stake. For instance, if the Green Party got 10% of the vote, they would be represented in Parliament. So I was astounded. It's one thing to talk about removing restrictions, it's a nice thought and can be done, but there are larger implications. Would democracy really be better served if Parliament was split between 25 or 30 political parties, each with its own ideals which would not necessarily be as lofty as protecting the environment?

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[English]

Mr. Stephen Best: I did talk about proportional representation in the paper. In fact, the whole premise of Environment Voters is because of the distortions that are created by our first-past-the-post system. I refer to it in the paper, specifically that proportional representation would solve that problem.

We see it in Germany. We see it all through the European Union, where not only does the Green Party take seats from time to time—we have a red-green alliance in Germany—but the fact that there is an environmental vote means that the parties have stronger environmental legislation because they're trying to attract that 10% to 12% to 15% of the people who will vote that way. Under proportional representation, a few percentage points can mean an extraordinary difference about who forms the government and who doesn't.

Personally, I'm all in favour of 25 or 30 or 50 political parties, because I think what happens then is that rather than having a geographically based member of Parliament, it's an interest-based member of Parliament. The member of Parliament may be representing feminist issues or environmental issues, and you could certainly see somebody wanting to represent industry. So you wind up with the interests being represented as opposed to geographical areas.

In Germany, for example, of the two Houses, one is constituency based, so you can deal with your sidewalks and your sewage system, and the other one is proportional representation, so you can work with the ideologies and things that are more at a national level. So I don't see that as a problem.

What I like about a large number of political parties is that it forms coalitions. In other words, the smaller parties can negotiate and have better representation because the larger parties need them to put together coalitions. I think it's a healthier system, and it allows for a more dynamic kind of democracy and one that's more representative. It's also cumbersome as well, but I think it's a better system to have more parties, more representation. I don't think two parties or three parties can adequately represent the diversity.

[Translation]

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: That's not bad!

[English]

Mr. Stephen Best: Yes, the more the merrier.

I think it should be a very representative system, and no one like Environment Voters should come along and say we're not enfranchised by this system, which is what the environmental community feels now. Everybody should know that they can campaign and have representation.

[Translation]

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: I have a comment and a question for Ms. Deslauriers.

In my view, and I don't believe I'm mistaken, municipalities are creatures of the provinces. I don't quite understand why you asked to speak before this committee. You told us about terrible situations, but I still don't understand why you are making your presentation before a committee studying the federal Elections Act.

Ms. Monique Deslauriers: I wanted to tell you about these unfortunate situations to highlight the necessity of a bill controlling election spending.

[English]

I lived in Italy for 12 years, so I'm quite familiar with the problems related to corruption and to the Mafia. The only way they found to stop it was to make

[Translation]

public funding of elections. It's the only way. I think there once was a bill, and I don't know if it was passed, which authorized the government to skim off 3% of Canadians' income tax returns, which would then be directed towards political parties.

Therefore, it's a real problem. The fact that we don't have a law opens the door to corruption, particularly, as I said a little earlier, when the problem is not only internal, but external as well, given the ease with which money is laundered, specifically through municipalities: public works, permits, real estate projects, etc.

I simply wanted to tell you about my perception of the problems facing Quebec's municipalities today because there is no law.

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We have lobbied the government a great deal up until now, and it has listened to us on two occasions.

[English]

The government has made reforms two times, yet it's not enough. We want more at the municipal level. It's really a necessity to stop corruption.

Am I clear. Is that what you wanted?

There should be no enterprises, no firms, no businesses giving money to the candidates and linking their hands so that they can feel embarrassed after being in power. They must be free. This is my testimony.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Is that all?

Ms. Monique Deslauriers: Yes.

The Chairman: Thank you.

[English]

Mr. Wappel, for five minutes.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you, witnesses, for your excellent presentations.

I'm interested in asking Mr. Chipeur a few questions here. You began with paragraph 4(c). If I understand your recommendation, you want to change “serving a sentence of two years” to “serving a sentence of ten days”?

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: My submission there is that this committee should, in light of the latest decision of the Federal Court of Appeal, understand that the two year-limit has been upheld by the Federal Court of Appeal and that a ten-day limit has been approved by the Alberta Court of Appeal. This committee should realize that it does have the flexibility to reconsider anything between ten days and two years. I'm not saying you should, I'm just saying this committee should realize that the courts are now saying that Parliament, and this committee in particular or any other committee that is dealing with this particular statute, is free to do what you think is best if you wanted to, without fear that the courts are going to come along later and say you don't have that as one of your options.

I think that's what I was quoting from. It's from the decision of Justice Linden. He was saying Parliament has a number of options, and that the courts aren't going to tell you which option you have to take.

I was going to leave with you the report of the Alberta MLA committee that reviewed prisoner voting generally. I'm not suggesting this time that you should do it, but you should feel free to do so if you wanted to.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Sorry, but I have five minutes and I have a few questions.

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: Okay, sorry.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Suppose we felt like including every person who's imprisoned in a correctional institution and serving a sentence, period.

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: You couldn't do that. There's a decision of the Supreme Court that says—

Mr. Tom Wappel: We could do that.

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: You could do it, but you'll be struck down under the precedent from Sauvé. Sauvé says you can't do an absolute ban. It has to be something less than an absolute ban. Alberta's Court of Appeal said ten days, and the Federal Court of Appeal has said that what you did last time is just fine, at two years.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Well, I can see the two years, because this is a federal act. If you're in a federal penitentiary, you have to be sentenced to two years or more.

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: That's true, but remember that we're not talking about federal prisons here, we're talking about federal elections. Anyone, whether they're in a prison that is operated by a province or by the federal government, is affected equally.

Mr. Tom Wappel: That's my next point, because “correctional institution” is not defined, so presumably it includes provincial—

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: Provincial and federal.

Mr. Tom Wappel: And city jail, as well?

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: Absolutely.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Turning to paragraph 65(g), at what time is a person ineligible to be a candidate while they're imprisoned in a correctional institution? Suppose they're released after the election is called, but before the time for submitting nominations.

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: They could. As long as they were not imprisoned at the time they submitted the nomination papers, I believe the Chief Electoral Officer—I'm not him, so you'd have to ask him—would accept them and would have to accept them.

Mr. Tom Wappel: I'm not interested in asking the Chief Electoral Officer. I'd like to know if the law we're proposing to pass says anything about it.

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: I think it says that if you are in prison when the election is called but you are let out before you must submit your nomination—

Mr. Tom Wappel: Where does it say that, sir?

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: —the Chief Electoral Officer would be faced with some nomination papers, he'd look at the act, see you're not in prison, and he'd accept them.

Mr. Tom Wappel: I found that somewhat interesting.

I wish to agree with your point on the ambiguity of clause 324 with respect to electoral signs and signage.

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: Clauses 323, 324 and 319.

Mr. Tom Wappel: I certainly think there's ambiguity there, and I can't for the life of me think anybody would expect us to take our election signs down the day before an election. I put mine up right in front of the polling stations.

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: The appropriate number of feet away.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Of course. Duly measured, indeed.

Voices: Oh, oh!

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Mr. Tom Wappel: I have a little difficulty with your submission with respect to clause 385. I tend to agree with the chair that it is for Parliament to decide what is a registered political party. Nobody is prevented from running for election. What this is talking about is registered political parties. Yes, I know all the nuances of money and all that stuff, but the reality is that it's a line-drawing exercise, it's not a matter of law. I would suggest that if you say 50, if you say 40, if you say 10, or if you say 2, it's a question of line-drawing. Who draws the line? Is it the judges or the elected officials? I would suggest it's the elected officials. I guess eventually that will be a battle, but I really do think that's ultimately within the purview of the House of Commons.

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: I would agree with you in principle that it is the proper approach. You do have a precedent that you should be concerned about, though. You may say you'll come back and litigate that again. That's fine if you want to say this is where you're drawing the line. I would say you would be stronger if we weren't talking about the ballot.

On all these rules relating to finance and other election rules other than the ballot issue, you're probably going to be stronger with respect to having a 50-, 100- or 12-candidate limit. But when it comes to the actual ballot itself, I think that's where the Figueroa decision is really focusing. Because you are saying to a candidate that he or she can't identify to the voter an association with someone else in another constituency who shares some political views, you are limiting that person's ability to communicate, and that's a violation of sections 2 and 3. That's the real problem. It's the ballot that creates the thing that you should be concerned about.

But I have no problem with going back to court and saying that you want to really talk this time, that you've looked at it and really like 50, and that you want to have a dialogue, as the Supreme Court has suggested.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Wappel.

I'm going to recognize Mr. Solomon, for at least five minutes.

Mr. John Solomon (Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, NDP): Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chipeur, regarding your suggestion on the blackouts of polling, many people I've talked to over the years—most of them voters—like to have a period of time to reflect upon what's happened in the campaign before they cast their ballot. One of the things they've raised with me over the years is the fact that there have been occasions when rogue polls have been published with no comeback opportunity for the parties affected. If you support the abolition of the blackout period for polls, would you also support the blackout period for announcing the real poll results on election day? How do those square with each other?

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: No, I don't think we should have a blackout period. In fact, what I would say is that it would probably be better just to have the polls open across the country to the same hour regardless, and avoid that particular problem. But if you don't have the polls open the entire time, I have no problem with someone in British Columbia knowing what the vote is in the Maritimes. That's my personal opinion, if you're asking me personally. I don't know what the courts would say.

I don't think the courts would rely upon that distinction to say that because we limit the ability for people to tell the public what happened in the Maritimes, it's going to allow us to ban polling from public opinion polls. If you have a rogue poll, if you actually have someone who is guilty of election fraud, I would much rather see you prosecute them. If someone is publishing something that is fraudulent, a poll that is untrue and skewed purposely to be untrue, there are rules in here. And you could even toughen them up if you want to.

However, suppose I'm a multi-billionaire and can afford to track the polling views of people across the country. If I'm entitled to do that because of my money, to say that someone who doesn't have the money can't rely on the Globe and Mail to tell him or her the same thing I know is just not fair or democratic, and I think the courts will strike it down.

Mr. John Solomon: The media representatives who were here said polls do not influence how people vote, and they backed their statement up with some judge's comment. I'm wondering whether you have that same thought, considering the fact that thousands of people have told me over the years—thousands—that enough is enough already, and that they want us to give them a couple of days to think about this. That goes particularly for those who are undecided, and it even comes from those who are committed voters.

• 1345

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: I would say go to Algonquin Park, go to the Gatineaus, stay at home, turn off the television. If you don't want to know, you are in control of yourself. You don't have to control other people in order to control your ability to sit down and reflect over the weekend before the vote. I think that's a wise approach, because you should take voting seriously. But I don't think that's any reason to limit free speech in a democracy.

Mr. John Solomon: With regard to Mr. Best's presentation, which I think is a very good one, the political party I represent, the NDP, has been a very strong environmentalist party over the years, both nationally and in Saskatchewan as well. We could do better, but we are very strong on it. I would support an organization like yours providing educational material to voters as to what the real issues are in terms of the environment, because it really affects us all.

However, I do have some concerns about lifting third-party limits, mainly because your organization is outweighed by thousands of other organizations with a lot more money and resources that have other interests at stake. It would skew, in my view, any presentation your organization might make if there was no limit on the expenditures.

Mr. Best, you have four years less five weeks to get your message across to those of us who are in elected office and to lobby governments, official opposition parties, and every other political party, the 12 that are registered in this country. Why isn't that enough time?

Plus you have the $160,000 during the five-week period that you're actually being held accountable in terms of your expenditures. You have no accountability prior to that. Why should we consider that? Why do you think voters would want that? When an election period is to weigh the four years of lobbying by your organization and the thousands of other organizations and the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on influencing politicians and parties and the public, why should we not give the public rules of the game that would hold you and other organizations accountable for that five-week period? The parties are held accountable for that five-week period as well.

Mr. Stephen Best: The public is educated about the environment. I don't think there's probably very much I could say here about the environment that every member of Parliament here didn't know about.

Mr. John Solomon: You give us more credit than you should.

The Chair: We'll take it.

Mr. Stephen Best: Public policy is made, as I said earlier, with one eye on the ballot box. Those issues that have political relevance are the ones given the most credence. For environmental issues to take precedence or to have a negotiating currency, if you will, around the table, there have to be votes involved.

With regard to that five-week period, let's talk about environment voters specifically. To me political parties are private organizations that happen to have as their mandate taking control of government. There's nothing special about them. They're not entrenched in the Constitution. People got together and came up with Reform. A bunch of guys sat around a table, ordered some pizza and some Pepsi, and said, we're dissatisfied, so we're going to start a new organization and go crazy and take over government. They've done a damn good job, it seems to me.

Mr. John Solomon: So far you're right.

Mr. Stephen Best: For environment voters it's the same thing. We're a political organization just like you are, but we look at the rule book differently from the way you do. We're not interested in taking power and controlling all the strings of government.

A voice: That's like the NDP federally.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Stephen Best: We also don't like a moral defeat.

Our job is to influence public policy. Politicians work in a vote economy. If you influence votes—and I don't mean in terms of public education and all those sorts of things, which we've had 30 years of and which haven't done that—and in actual fact you move votes, we now can sit around with that currency and begin to negotiate public policy. So we just look at the rules differently.

I don't mind sitting down and doing up all their forms. We're totally transparent. I don't have any trouble saying where we get our money, what members we have, who gives us money, and all that stuff. In my opinion, 99.99% of the public never looks at it anyway. People don't pay attention to politics the way the people around this table do. It is just the nature of politics.

So we just play it differently. I don't mind having the rules. If you want to put in all the rules about saying where we're going and what we're doing, I don't mind that. I just don't think the government should be telling me how loudly I can speak, when I can speak, and how I can say it. I think I should be able to yell as loudly as I want as long as I want and in the way I want.

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Mr. John Solomon: But why would political parties be any different? We're restricted from doing that.

Mr. Stephen Best: Take your restrictions off. Allow as much as you want, or create a system—

Mr. John Solomon: So the golden rule would apply. Those who have the gold make the rules. That's what you're saying.

Mr. Stephen Best: That's what happens now. I would say you can fix it. If you want to fix your political system—and I would applaud that—you go to proportional representation. Then you don't have the problem.

Mr. John Solomon: That's another platform of the NDP, by the way.

Mr. Stephen Best: Yes, I've been told that.

If you think you can tinker with this system a little bit here and a little bit there and come up with a democratic system, it just isn't going to work. You need to go back and say we need a modern political system that represents that we are no longer geographically segmented but segmented by interests. Now you can have a decent system. The rich parties will have a certain amount of power, but the smaller groups can come together and have influence over it.

I have no trouble with rich people. I have no trouble with industry. I think industry is wonderful. I just think they need to be constrained in the environmental area. We can have a much more dynamic situation. I think you're tinkering with something that's fundamentally flawed.

Ms. Liz White (Director, Environment Voters): Since 1994 I have worked on getting Canadian endangered species legislation in place. I've talked to every party. I've talked to the Minister of Industry and the Minister of Agriculture and all the people in cabinet who have a vested interest in how the endangered species legislation moves forward.

I think the most telling experience prior to our putting Environment Voters in place is when I went to visit the Minister of Agriculture. He said, “Ms. White, I have all of these hog farmers over here and all of these wheat farmers over here, and they all create an economy. From my point of view, in the community where the grain farmers are, I know they can deliver votes to me. What can you do?” At the end of the day, the truth of the matter was that I could say nothing, because I wasn't playing in the democratic process, other than at times, other than going to talk to people during an election.

Where people are approached by all sorts of interests and have to balance them around the table, the environment loses out every single time. I've been down the road for many years now on many environmental issues at the federal level and the provincial level, and when there's a balance to be made, the environment loses every single time.

I would suggest that's true in Saskatchewan and that it was true in Ontario when the NDP was in government, because I lobbied there as well. I would suggest that isn't just the Liberal Party, the Tory party, the NDP, the Bloc, or the Reform. Everybody has interests they have to deal with, and they have to measure those interests according to votes. If no votes are attached to the issue you're working on, you don't count. It's just as simple as that.

Mr. John Solomon: I think that's a very cynical view, because in my experience that has not always been the case. It has been the case on many occasions.

But it seems to me, Ms. White—I don't mean to advise you, but it's free advice worth every penny—that maybe a third party should be running candidates and putting forward their agendas, and then they can spend $60,000-plus per riding. If you can muster 301, you'll have lots of money. I think maybe that's the route to go if the political parties are such failures. I would welcome 100 different parties running in my riding. I think it would be a wonderful democratic experience. In particular, in a proportional representation system it would be great.

Ms. Liz White: I don't think of myself as being cynical, just practical.

I've just looked at the political experience. I've looked at the environment as it stands now, where there's a 38% decline as reported by all of the most conservative organizations and outside organizations that measure these things. I look at what parties have to offer in terms of the environment. I say that unless we are part of the political process as a third party to influence the political agenda in that regard, we're not going to be at the table and we're not going to be political players.

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It isn't that people don't come.... I mean, I come to Ottawa and people invite me into their offices, we have a wonderful hour-long meeting, I present my case and I go away, and that's it. It doesn't go any further. I'm just looking at a very practical aspect of it, that's all. It's not cynical.

The Chair: We appreciate your empathy for those who work in the political process.

As the chair, I'm going to recognize Mr. Anders here momentarily, but if I'm not mistaken, I think the thrust of the legislation is to allow a group like yours full participation with respect to candidacies. By all means, go and run. Volunteers? By all means, marshal the volunteers. Advocacy, by all means. Where the bill wants to a draw a line is at the use of money for third parties: it's that you can be in the game, but you have to be there, and you can't spend your way through it. I think that's what the bill is trying to do.

I appreciate that you can see other implications. The money restrictions actually may serve to impair some types of participation in the process. You're obviously thinking a half a step ahead of where a lot of the rest of us are, and that's very healthy.

I'll recognize Mr. Anders.

Mr. Rob Anders: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I have three questions. As for the nature of the questions, I think I'm probably going to direct them towards Mr. Chipeur and his presentation.

The first question is with regard to prisons. You refer to clauses 253 through 256, which deal with actual polls in the prisons. You mentioned a potential security risk.

The things that come to my mind are things like drugs, potentially. There are problems we have in our penitentiaries currently with smuggling and what not; maybe this would open a bigger loophole for that. Maybe you can comment on that. There is potential for injury or violence either between the inmates or to the people who go in as scrutineers for the parties. I would like you to comment, because I think you probably have a better understanding of that situation.

I just want to touch on the other two questions, because I have five. The next question is on the issue of polls and the banning of the publication of polls. For the recent Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar by-election, just as one example, I tried to track it on the Internet. I think that, like you say, is going to become a bigger issue. I wonder really how effective any ban on the publication of polls could possibly be—or on any of that type of information—when we have such proliferation of information on the Internet.

For that matter, the last aspect of it is the third part of the question, which deals with the blackout. There was a question raised about a blackout with regard to publishing the results of the elections.

I remember well 1993, when I sat behind a cameraman who had all the results of the elections coming in from Newfoundland and the rest of the country. He knew well what the results were. The announcers, in terms of the way they were editorializing their comments, knew what the results of the election were in 1993. I knew because I was sitting behind the cameraman and could observe what was going on at the election post and at the headquarters for the Reform Party at the time. So I think we're kidding ourselves to think that these things actually work in our modern day.

Anyhow, those are three questions I'm going to put towards you for your comments, Mr. Chipeur.

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: Having litigated the question of prisoner voting and having gone to prisons as part of that to work with prison staff, I can tell you that I was intimidated—and I'm a lawyer and I practise in the system, so I know what it's all about.

I would not choose voluntarily, even for my candidate, to go to prison and be a scrutineer, because it is intimidating to be inside a place where you know that other people are not treated with the same human dignity and are not free to do many things. They're locked in. They are currently being forced to be there against their will. You don't know what they might do if they have access to you, and they could physically hurt you. Probably 999,000 out of a million times it just wouldn't happen. You have a very small chance of being assaulted. But the fact is, because of the nature of the prison, I would not want to be a scrutineer.

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I'm sure everyone here has participated in a political process. You know what scrutineers do. They are right there watching everything that happens. I just think it's an unnecessary situation, both for just intimidation and the actual problem of a physical threat. Obviously the people who drafted this were trying to go out of their way to create administrative convenience. I think they are going to open up a Pandora's box if this is implemented.

Just quickly on your last two questions, on the polling issue you've made the point—that is, if I go to a website in the United States or somewhere internationally, there's not a thing this bill can do about it. We can track election results. We can track polls that were done just minutes before the polls open on the Monday morning. It's just not something that's practical.

What was your third question, again?

Mr. Rob Anders: With regard to the blackouts—for example, even on the publication of election results—we attempt to do that here in the law. Actually, I think technology has surpassed our ability to even practically enforce that aspect of the law.

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: But basically you're going to be penalized under the statute for being technologically incorrect. You've made the point, and I think the courts are not going to ignore it. I think this legislation has some serious problems, because, although the objective is positive, it's not going to be supportable in the courts.

Mr. Rob Anders: I'd just like to wrap up with one last question, Mr. Chairman. This is to Mr. Best and his organization.

There was some discussion last evening on whether or not 10 copies of the voters lists should be produced in each riding for all of the candidates. Just rough numbers would tell me that 10 voters lists times 5 candidates, on average, times 300 ridings, results in over 15,000 voters lists. Mr. Solomon for the NDP was insisting yesterday that candidates have access to numerous copies of the voters list.

I know that in my riding we used an electronic list predominantly, and if we ever needed to have a copy we only needed one, and we made photocopies, not of the entire thing but of a given page or poll number or street. I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that whole thing. I personally think it's better for and my volunteers and me to make copies as we so require and not put the burden on the taxpayer. By the way, it costs $6 million a year.

Mr. Stephen Best: I don't worry about the voting list. Our Ontario campaign was cruder than when we were doing the federal campaign. We're identifying swing areas now in the constituencies and then just using commercial lists to get names and addresses in the phone book so that we can begin to build up a demographic base of the people in the swing areas. I don't care about the voters list. It comes so late that in terms of planning what you're going to do and in terms of the demographics and psychographics of the swing vote, it really isn't an issue for us at all. Really, the voters list is neither here nor there for us.

The Chair: Mr. Wappel and then Mr. White.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you. Very briefly, Mr. Chair, I want to go back to this prison thing again.

Wouldn't you agree that clauses 253 to 256 are identifying correctional institutions that are not federal?

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: It's possible. If you have a high-risk inmate who is subject to a sentence of two years or less, they could actually be in a federal institution.

Don't ask me to explain it in too much detail, but I do know there are individuals with a sentence of two years or less in federal institutions, just as in provincial institutions there are some individuals who have sentence of more than two years. It's not a clean cut. But I'll tell you that a provincial institution is just as frightening to me as a federal one. I don't think there is a lot of difference.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Well, I don't know.

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Mr. Gerald Chipeur: I've been to both and—

Mr. Tom Wappel: The Kingston Penitentiary is pretty frightening.

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: Come to the remand centre in Calgary.

Mr. Tom Wappel: I take it that the reason for clauses 253 to 256 is some perceived notion that the courts think people in provincial institutions should be able to vote.

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: I think it's more than that. The majority of people who are in jail today, regardless of whether it's federal or provincial institutions, do have a sentence of two years or less. That's just the reality of the numbers. So there are going to be a number of people incarcerated on election day who are going to be able to vote regardless of subclause 4(c). So if you have that many people who can vote, they're saying let's set up, let's facilitate that. This is easier than doing the ballot approach.

I'm suggesting you don't change the current approach. Continue to use paper. It's safer and there's no reason that it can't happen. It doesn't prevent any inmate from voting. They can still vote just as easily, and in fact I think it's safer for staff, for the candidates, for society generally, to continue with the current approach, which is that you just get a ballot and send it in through the courier process.

Mr. Tom Wappel: Thank you.

The Chair: I would point out that Mr. Wappel is just now, along with colleagues, finishing up what we call a five-year review of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, so the two issues overlap here, it appears.

Mr. White.

Mr. Ted White: Yes, thank you.

Ms. White, although Mr. Solomon said that he felt your presentation on the voting situation was cynical, I think it was reality, so I thank you for it, certainly.

Mr. Chipeur, regarding the voting in the prisons, the Chief Electoral Officer has been asking us, or actually I should say begging us, to include in the act a provision for him to begin looking at new technologies, electronic methods of voting using the Internet and touch-tone telephones and so on, provided he can get to the point where he can convince us that it's secure and nobody is compelled to use it and so on.

In listening to your presentation, it seemed to me that maybe the prisons might be a very good environment for the Chief Electoral Officer to consider using that type of technology if he can get permission from the rest of the group around this table to do it.

How do you feel about that? Could you see problems with that or would you still say that a mail-in ballot would be the best way to handle the prisons?

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: No, if you're going to allow prisoners to vote...and I would urge this committee to read Justice Linden's decision, because he says it's an affront to victims to allow people who have broken the rule of law and are in prison to vote. So I think this judge is saying he thinks the original legislation was just fine ten years ago.

So I would urge this committee to seriously consider whether or not you might want to move closer to ten days, and therefore, if you go closer to ten days, then virtually no one is going to be voting except those who are just in the final stages or in transit. I would personally, based upon what Justice Linden has said and what the Alberta Court of Appeal has said, suggest that it's probably contrary to our democratic values to allow prisoners to vote. Therefore, to facilitate it through electronic means I think is not good policy when one is considering the charter.

In terms of policy, if you want to allow prisoners to vote—you in Parliament—you're certainly free to do so, but from the charter's perspective, I think it does actually harm the democratic process to say that if we in this room were on a deserted island and we decided to put in place a legal structure for ourselves, and the majority of us decided to violate that structure and then we had to put the majority in jail, the majority could vote themselves out.

That's what happens in the third world. We've seen it recently in Pakistan, where, depending on who is in power, everybody gets out of jail free.

I just don't think this is the way a country that has a rule of law should be governed. If you have violated the fundamental principles that govern the way society operates, you should not be exercising the levers of political power. And that's the word Justice Linden uses. You should not be exercising the political levers of power if you are not respecting the result of that political process. And that's why people should not be voting.

Mr. Ted White: I hear your answer—

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: Yes, sorry.

Mr. Ted White: —to the problem is by reducing the time allocation, but my point really was pertaining to the victims—

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: I agree with you, yes.

Mr. Ted White: —by not having to be in contact with the possibility of danger.

Mr. Gerald Chipeur: What you are saying works. I obviously had an emotional response.

Mr. Ted White: Thank you.

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The Chair: I want to thank this panel and the previous panel. We've had some wonderful interventions, good questions and good answers, and it's been very helpful to the process.

Thank you all very much.

We'll now adjourn.