This is meeting number 34 of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.
The order of the day, under “Committee Business”, is the motion from Mr. Hubbard, as well as the amendment by Mr. Van Kesteren and the subamendment by Mr. Tilson, and we are resuming debate.
Madam Lavallée, were you calling a point of order?
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Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
This is the fifth meeting on Mr. Hubbard's motion about ethical practices in the Conservative Party's campaign financing. I will not list them, because I want to make my points quite quickly.
This is the fifth meeting today. We have had four others. At two hours each, that is eight hours. Last time, last Tuesday, our Conservative colleagues demonstrated, in my view, that they have no new arguments and that debate was no longer helpful. They talked about the committee's mandate from every possible angle. They talked about who was a public office holder and who was not. They said that other parties did the same things they did. We showed that that was not so. They said that the things the Bloc Québécois did were worse. We showed that that was not so either. They said that the Liberal Party's financing was shady. We said that it was not the time to talk about that.
Then someone said that the Conservatives had not been accused of anything. To be perfectly honest, I will say that he was quite right. But Elections Canada did refuse to reimburse campaign expenses and did carry out a search with the help of the RCMP. That is what we are talking about at the moment.
Then, as they had nothing more to say, they threw out a bunch of suggestions: we could do this, we could do that, we could pass this or pass that.
Enough already.
Mr. Chair, as I told you last week, I am fed up. Either they come up with new arguments that will convince us or...
I did not say that the RCMP conducted a search. I said that Elections Canada asked for the RCMP's help in conducting a search. Perhaps something was left out in the interpretation. That would not be unusual. That really is what I said and I am perfectly aware of the difference in meaning.
My argument is that you have run out of arguments. You just raise points of order about things that perhaps you did not understand correctly or you keep going over the same ground. I heard nothing new at our last meeting and I do not think that there is anything new to hear. I am telling you that I am not going to put up with repetition at all today. Each time I hear repetition, Mr. Chair, I am going to bring it to your attention.
The Conservatives must face the fact that they have no more case to make. They have tried all their arguments. Now we must call the question. They cannot keep hiding behind procedure and delaying tactics in order to prevent us from voting and from investigating their ethical practices in campaign financing.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I do respect...or at least I hear the member opposite from the Bloc threatening to shut down debate. Again, Mr. Chair, this is exactly why this committee isn't qualified to hear the original motion.
The member opposite from the Bloc has demonstrated without a shadow of a doubt her inability to hear repetitive testimony, not to mention that she was mistaken on a number of her facts. I am absolutely sure that any court of law, even the smallest court in Canada, would have far more expertise, training, and patience to listen to all the evidence, however often it's given, and more importantly, Mr. Chair, to understand the evidence and, more important than that, to withhold judgment until the evidence is in.
However, the Bloc, interestingly enough, are not interested in the facts. What they're interested in is partisan political games so that they can attempt to raise their voting level in Quebec. But that's not going to happen, Mr. Chair.
I don't want to repeat anything, except, of course, when the Bloc members misunderstand. Whether it's interpretation...but I don't think so. I think the interpreters here on the Hill are excellent interpreters. I think what's happening is that there's a lack of attention span by the members opposite and they don't really--
An hon. member: What's your point?
Mr. Gary Goodyear: I'm speeding it through, but I'm trying to explain the process here. I want to get over this too. If there's an indication to adjourn this kangaroo court, I'd be happy to vote for that.
Since the Bloc has raised the issue of not needing to pay attention to the facts, I want to point out that the Bloc has clearly made up their minds to show members of the public who are listening how games are being played here, particularly in this case by the Bloc.
Mr. Chair, I'd like to go through a series of arguments, and I'll end up, for Madam Lavallée, with evidence of how the Bloc--and that's probably why the member wants to shut this thing down quickly, before I'm able to get on the record--the member's own colleagues, use the same advertising strategies. But I don't want to do that. Let's save the exciting stuff for later.
The last time Madam Lavallée spoke, she was wrong again on the fact that Elections Canada has suggested that the Conservative Party has overspent their limit. The fact is, Mr. Chairman, that when all of these advertising trades happen, as all parties have done, they are well below the national campaign level. What happens is that Elections Canada, for whatever reason--and we'll discover that at trial--has decided to disallow certain expenses and force them to be charged.
You might want to listen very carefully, because this is very important.
When they disallow for some unknown reason, which we'll find out in court, expenses at the local level, it forces the national campaign to charge them through at the national level. It's our belief that that interpretation is incorrect, and we'll prove that in court. But if that's correct, only then has the national party gone over, because we're being forced to claim it at the national level, which the Bloc will be too, by the way.
Madam Lavallée is incorrect when she says we've gone over the limit. That's yet to be determined by a legitimate court. Of course, this isn't a legitimate court, so I will allow my honourable colleague considerable leeway. It is her right to be wrong.
I wonder if members of the committee realize that the rules that Elections Canada has now decided they're going to unilaterally impose on the Conservative Party were actually printed and passed out after the election. Members aren't aware of that, or they're not paying attention. This was after the election, Mr. Chair, and I think it's important that members, those who haven't made up their minds already on the guilt or innocence--
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Well, you're absolutely correct, Mr. Chair. Of course it's surprising we got here with the chair's restricted debate opportunities, but I'm going to carry forward anyway, because this has everything whatsoever to do with expanding the amendment.
Let me just jump to that. I'm going back to this stuff, Mr. Chair. I'll raise my hand until September if I have to, because this is absolutely relevant. The member opposite opened the door when she herself talked in the last meeting about big companies. She was allowed, Mr. Chair, all the freedom to discuss all kinds of things from this alleged RCMP investigation, which has nothing at all to do with these amendments either.
So with all due respect, what I'm going to suggest to you is that here on the ethics committee the mandate is to determine ethical standards. It seems pretty ironic to me that this committee, which is about to determine whether we should study the ethics of another party, is about to make the biggest ethical mistake ever, and that will be to subject witnesses to violate sub judice convention and potentially influence, to the negative, the outcome of a civil proceeding. That's where it's relevant.
This has come up before. I'm glad you've raised it. We are not authorized—it's not within our mandate—to determine any ethical standards of any party. This has to do only with public office-holders and their duties with regard to ethical standards, which are set by the Prime Minister and are also included in the Code of Conduct for Members of Parliament, which is included in the Standing Orders. We are not—and I hope everyone understands that—in a position under our mandate or the motion before us, not authorized whatsoever, to opine on a political party and its activities. That is not included in this discussion. The only way it could ever be considered is if the committee specifically wanted to do that, but it does not.
We should not be talking about political parties and what they did. We should be talking about the persons, as outlined in my ruling, named in the findings of Elections Canada, who were involved in certain activities that may have given rise to actions under the standards of ethics.
We have to be very careful. I know it's more exciting to talk about elections and parties and all these other things, but we need to keep it to the mandate and to the motions, and political parties are not going to be examined, by themselves, by this committee. We're not authorized to do that. We're looking at individuals covered under the codes and under the ethical standards expected of public office-holders.
I need to narrow this down. I didn't want to jump in too quickly on relevance; I wanted to explain it first of all. I hope we can move much closer to what's before the committee right now.
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I certainly do understand that.
The point I'm trying to make is that the amendment to this motion is an attempt to expand this study into all.... If you don't want me to use the term “political parties” and simply allow the opposite members to use the term “Conservative Party” on a repeated basis, then I won't use the word “party”.
The fact remains that we're on an amendment that attempts to expand the motion. I think the relevance there is that the reason we feel it's absolutely necessary to expand the motion is that we need to determine by comparison; it's the only way to determine whether someone did....
Let's take an example. If you'll allow me, Mr. Chair, I'll drift a little bit and use an analogy.
Malpractice in the medical community is something most members are familiar with. It is determined by comparing the treatment protocols and the behaviours of other local physicians. There was a time when drilling a hole in your head to let the spirits out was perfectly acceptable in the medical profession. That would be considered malpractice today. How would you conclude that? How would a court conclude that? It would be by comparing the behaviours of other professionals who are similar.
Here we have a number of members of Parliament who belong to different political parties. By the matter of numbers, we want to keep the study focused to one individual party. I'm saying that's impossible without the amendments and without the subamendment. It can't be done.
Therein lies my point. Sometimes it takes a little while to get there, but the point is made very clearly that this has to be amended as suggested by my colleagues. There is truth to what my colleagues are saying. The RCMP was invited along. Using such terminologies as “the RCMP raided the place” is absolute proof of political rhetoric. An absolute opinion in any direction can't be made if we're going to study one single party.
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Okay, hang on; I heard you. But we're on a point of order. You can't have a point of order in the middle of a point of order.
My decision stands. We're not going to debate this. My interpretation and certainly my knowledge of the mandate of the ethics committee in the ruling I made was that this is in order because it relates to the ethical obligations of public office-holders vis-à-vis their involvement in something that happens to involve a political party. But it's under the Canada Elections Act.
I must rule that the discussions have to deal with public office-holders, and the amendment and subamendment, although referring to parties, is meant to broaden this to deal with individuals or public office-holders who belong to other parties. And for that reason I allowed them to stand. But if the members want to look again at the mandate, we can't look at parties. We can look at public office-holders.
Are you on the same point? Carry on.
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Oh, it's after the words “by other parties or in past elections”; that's what we're actually debating right now.
But very clearly, from the outset it's completely disingenuous to say that this hasn't been about parties. It's most definitely about parties, because whenever we try to broaden the scope to bring other parties or candidates from other parties, the other parties block it, because the other parties have something to hide or something they don't want to talk about.
It's completely disingenuous to say that this can't be about parties, that it can only be about people. Well, if it's only about people, then I have a whole bunch of people whom I would say we have to be able to investigate, because we're not investigating parties, which means they can't protect their parties.
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No, it's whatever the motion is ultimately. But in our mandate, it is public office-holders; it is individuals. We cannot go beyond and opine on the conduct of any organization, such as a political party or a riding association, etc. We're not empowered to find...we don't find right or wrong. We are trying to look at the ethical implications of what went on.
I think I gave an example. I'm not sure whether you were at the meeting when I ruled. If someone was named in the Elections Canada findings, in which there were a number of public office-holders—10 were named—whether or not there is any ethical requirement or there are guidelines requiring them to do anything; for instance, to make declarations or to recuse themselves....
You may recall that. All the ruling was to deal with individuals--public office-holders. If the members believe that this is not the case in these amendments, or in the motion itself, then the members can vote accordingly or amend them accordingly.
So it's not a point of order. Let's not go there again. We can only deal with persons, with individuals. Okay?
Madame, for you in regard to this specific intervention, and generally to all other members, we should not use points of order simply to have an opportunity to speak. Points of order should be respected. If you cry wolf too often, then this chair is going to have a hard time recognizing you on a valid point of order, so I wouldn't abuse that too often.
I'm sorry, Mr. Goodyear. We're back to you, sir.
With your indulgence, I'd like to continue my argument on the amendment to the original motion, now that I understand that it's not parties we're discussing and that we're narrowing this thing right down to public office-holders. I understand that although these individuals were not public office-holders during that debate, the chair--and I've read the minutes, by the way--has in fact conveniently interpreted that situation to mean that since they eventually became public office-holders, they are in a conflict.
I'm wondering if I could just have some indulgence in reading the names of some other individuals--individuals, not parties--who may at some point become public office-holders.
Let's start with the NDP.
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Order. Order. Mr. Goodyear, order.
Mr. Goodyear, I think you misrepresented my position on the ruling, and I would ask you to begin again. It was very specific that we were talking about public office-holders who, after becoming public office-holders, filed election expenses returns that have caused them to be named by Elections Canada for claiming matters that they should not have. These were private interests subsequent to becoming a public office-holder--subsequent to becoming an office-holder--and not, as you said, who may at some point become public office-holders. To suggest that maybe now we should talk about anybody else who might become a public office-holder is not relevant.
I just wanted to give you a heads-up on that. Speculating on who might become a public office-holder is not relevant to our motions.
Thank you.
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Thank you for that clarification, Mr. Chair.
I just wonder if you could help me then understand Mr. Wayne Easter, with a Liberal Party invoice to the candidate of $5,350, dated January 5, 2006. The candidate return shows a cheque from the candidate to the Liberal Party of $5,350, the same amount, also dated January 5.
I could keep on going, but it sounds to me as though that gentleman from the Liberal Party is a public office-holder, and by your own definition, Mr. Chair, you've just suggested that we can't study anything unless it's specifically Conservative.
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It's not relevant. We're on a subamendment. You can't restrict my conversation to a motion when we're two levels below that.
I have here a document written by the Liberal Party. It says that it's important that the chairs of committees maintain credibility, that it's important to do that by treating all members of all parties equally. It also says, on the very next page, that in a minority Parliament chairs should take particular care to limit their manifestations of excessive partisanship.
Now, are we on the amendment, the subamendment, or the original motion?
On the subamendment, Mr. Chair, let's read off some names for the Bloc, if you don't mind--oh, let's stay with the Liberals for a while. Since we're dealing with individuals, not parties, I won't mention the Liberal Party again.
Some individuals are Anne McLellan, David Kilgour, Doug Faulkner, Bruce King, Maureen Towns, Moe Saeed--the list goes on. It's pages, and I don't want to waste the time of all the members here, so let's skip through here. We've got Calgary South MP, Liberal--
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He was a Conservative cabinet minister.
We're going over the same ground again. We have to stop this.
Again, the motion is seeking to look at public office-holders who were named by Elections Canada to be involved in a matter that includes a political party, as well, but not within our purview. That's where this matter arises from, and our work is to determine whether or not those individuals who were named by Elections Canada, who are public office-holders, in the 2006 election met the ethical standards expected of public office-holders.
There has been an amendment and a subamendment. I gave a lot of latitude to put both of those, because the members made representations that effectively they wanted to broaden this, and I wanted to allow them to have that debate.
That's where we are. But we can't keep going back three steps and starting again. We have to keep moving this forward.
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I respect that completely, Mr. Chairman. The fact is that now you are explaining that we have some latitude to discuss comparatives. We're expanding this motion for that exact reason. I guess I should thank you for pointing that out.
This motion has to be expanded for one simple fact, and that is to have comparables. We need to compare whether they're public office-holders or whether they're not. That's fine. We're looking at the behaviour of one individual as compared to the behaviour of another individual. The Canada Elections Act will deal with whether any of this is the right way or the wrong way to go.
We still suggest that nobody has done anything wrong, but how can we tell whether it's outside the scope unless we expand? That's what the amendment's trying to do.
Who are those other comparatives? How can we compare? If we're going to vote on this amendment, we're going to vote on whether or not to compare the activities of certain members to the activities of other members. That's what the amendment is about. That's exactly what I want to speak to.
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It's probably a good thing anyway, as I can't mention.... Well, I won't mention the names, Mr. Chair, but I'll cite examples, then, of other individuals, and we can all guess who they are; they could be public office-holders.
Here's an invoice totalling $16,642.77 that went to a candidate—it could be a public office-holder—who on May 26, 2004, received a cheque from the national party to the candidate for $17,071. That guy or girl—public office-holder or MP—made off like a bandit. They got tonnes there. On July 15, that cheque was deposited to pay for an invoice that was dated July 13. That's no one—I'll just help everyone out who's listening—in the Conservative Party.
Here's another one. This is an invoice to a candidate for $29,285.75, and guess what? It was dated May 24, 2004. It was a cheque from the national party....
Do you know this gentleman?
I hate to say this, but of course, if we're going to discuss whether these public office-holders had anything to do with this in-and-out scheme, it involves a national party.
No, it's not yours, Pat. This is not you guys. That's another, different page.
This cheque came from the national party—it's a four-letter word here—to a candidate for $29,200. So on May 24 there's $29,285 given to this member of Parliament, and then in October there was a cheque for $29,200.
That's an interesting thing, because that poor guy got ripped off. There's 85 bucks there that the national party did not send back to the poor guy. That's like “in and out plus”, right?
Here's another one again from the same party; it starts with a B. Invoices totalling $17,720 were sent to the candidate on January 1, 2006. A cheque from the national party went back to the candidate for $17,800, deposited on May 17. There's another situation where somebody made off with...wow, in that case it was 20 bucks' difference on a $17,000 in-and-out.
These are the individuals who will be needed at this inquiry. This is who we're going to need to invite so that we can compare whether what the opposition party wants to attest to is that the Conservative members did something wrong. Well, how would we know they did, unless we're allowed to expand the motion and say, wait a second, how is this different?
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It's not different, of course, Mr. Chair. The only difference is that with regard to Elections Canada--I don't want to bring it up, but I will in the context of how important it is to expand the motion--there is some suggestion and concern from people, some of whom are absolutely convinced, that Elections Canada may have acted inappropriately.
So what we need to do is not rely on Elections Canada's rulings. They've not always been correct, and we suggest they're not correct again. So we can't rely on Elections Canada. As the chair has pointed out, it's not within our mandate, and I completely concur with that. But what we need to do, of course, is have something to compare this with, some standard, some measuring stick. The only thing we can do is bring in other members. They may in fact be other members of the Conservative Party, but I suspect that what we're going to want to try to do is compare exactly what happened, day by day, whether it's inside a Federal Court affidavit, as I have before me right now, or it's examples that we've come to find out about in the interim.
The problem we have is that if we don't vote for this amendment...and I'm saying this with all sincerity. I have no problem with members getting up for coffee, but I am being very sincere right now. We can't do our jobs here unless we do them properly. This is becoming a joke. It's becoming a joke. And why would we do that?
An hon. member: Call the question, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Gary Goodyear: The member opposite is asking that we call the question--another example of a member who, like me, is new to this committee, but who is not interested in debate, is not interested in the facts, and who made up his mind a long time ago. That again suggests that unless this motion is amended, this is actually going to be one of the darker days in the history of this place.
This motion has to be amended. The amendment has to be voted on so that all members can have something to compare it with besides their partisan stubbornness--as we are showing over here, I completely agree with you. This is the issue: we are fighting to maintain the credibility of this place, to remove partisan politics out of the House of Commons, where we're supposed to be doing the good work of Canadians, not trying to get some free press time for some damn political party. This should be about Canadians, not about whether you can take a political shot and get an extra vote, or whether members opposite don't want to hear that they did exactly the same thing. This is a political opportunity for the media. That's not what you should have been elected for. That's not what I'm here for. I'm here to do the good work of the people who sent me here. If I'm blessed enough, I can help this country out. But l sure as heck am disgraced that we would keep this motion so restricted that the verdict is almost in before the ink is dry.
There is a debate that needs to go on here. It needs to be expanded. I'm going to solidly support the expanded debate.
Mr. Chair, with that, I'll leave it up to one of my other colleagues to do their very best to convince the opposition of their evil ways.
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Thank you, Mr. Chair. I hadn't even begun speaking yet.
The subamendment speaks to adding, after “by other parties”, the phrase “or in past elections”. Again, I want to emphasize why this is so critically important.
Obviously when any party is conducting an election, when they're making the very necessary purchases for ads and so forth, signage and what have you, that we all make for elections, what they go by is the guide that's published by Elections Canada and the practices that have been followed in past elections. Of course, this speaks to “in past elections”.
My colleague was naming a few things. Well, we see numerous examples of where, for example, the Bloc Québécois....
I do not believe, by the way, Mr. Chair, the Bloc Québécois should be exempt from ever being studied for ethical actions. The ruling seems to have gone that way, but--
The point of order was on a matter of relevance and repetition. They go together, as you know. I think the member is correct on this matter. We have talked about hypothetical cases of transfers. For the life of me, the Elections Canada issue is not about whether or not there were transfers; it's about whether someone exceeded the national advertising spending limit and engaged, or somehow had the involvement of, some of their candidates to make that happen.
The issue is a national party that...we're not dealing with that. But there are some members who have been named specifically. I know that we have these subamendments, but talking about hypotheticals of transfers is not helping us get to the point here.
So let's see if we can move on and speak to the motions, please.
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On a point of personal privilege, Mr. Chair, I will not accept....
Perhaps you've heard something that I've said before, Madame Lavallée, and you elected not to listen to it.
The Chair: Order.
Mr. Dean Del Mastro: But I have sat in the House of Commons, Mr. Chair, and listened to these people speak the same page--
The Chair: Order.
Mr. Dean Del Mastro: --day after day, supplementing a riding name in, and nobody cuts them off. It's my personal privilege to be able to speak to matters.
Let's just take a moment here. We have had over ten hours of debate on these motions. It has deteriorated into procedural wrangling, points of order that are not points of order, repetition in the extreme, and irrelevance with regard to the matters before us.
We could carry on like this, just as the procedure and House affairs committee did, for a very long time. I'm not sure that's in the best interest of this committee. I'm not sure whether I want to be part of where the members are going to continue to be, and that's in a position where we're spinning our wheels.
Accordingly, I'm going to rule that we put all the questions necessary to dispose of the matter before us now.
Yes.