Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to share some views from the New Democratic Party. At the outset, our party is proud to support Bill C-2 and I am proud to have played an active role in getting the bill to this point of time in the first session of the 39th Parliament.
So much that is embodied in the bill finds its origins and can be found in the very ethics package that the NDP was proudly promoting at the fall of the 38th Parliament. This package was put together by our former leader, the former member from Ottawa Centre, Ed Broadbent.
The NDP found it very easy to relate to Bill C-2 and support the many initiatives. Parts of the bill read almost verbatim of the NDP election campaign platform on accountability and transparency measures. It is only natural that our party would support the bill. We are proud that we were able to in our view improve the bill as well.
Our party was eager to support speedy passage of the bill. The NDP was very concerned that, if the bill lost momentum and dragged on into the fall or possibly even into next spring, its likelihood for success would diminish as the time went by. That is the very nature of this place, that competing interests prevail sometimes.
The committee improved Bill C-2 in very significant ways. The committee achieved roughly 20 amendments to the bill, some of them were huge. I can speak proudly that the public appointments commission, which will exist as a result of Bill C-2, will put an end to patronage as we know it in Ottawa today, the unbridled patronage that used to dominate and so offended Canadians. That alone would have been justification for the NDP's support for the bill. I am happy to say it is only one element.
I will limit my remarks to a few points. I need to clear up some misconceptions that have arisen and some that have been promoted by other parties.
First, I find it humorous that I am being accused of being too close to the Conservative Party in this matter. No one has a monopoly on good ideas. When good ideas arise, people gravitate to them. I spent much of my career being red-baited as being too left wing in the labour movement. They called me a commie. Now I am being blue-baited. They are accusing me of being a Tory. I cannot seem to win in this regard.
I am a fiercely proud social democratic. I am a trade unionist and I am an NDP member of Parliament. I will compare my left wing credentials with anyone who may wish to challenge them. Another thing, I am a fiercely proud Canadian nationalist. Unabashedly, and I say this with great pride, I believe that what we have done today with Bill C-2 is the greatest possible thing we could do to advance the cause of national unity in this 39th Parliament.
The weakest link that Canadian federalism has is to be corrupt, not trustworthy, of maladministration. All those things play into the hands of the enemy of Canadian federalism. If we want to be champions of Canadian federalism, we have to put forward a face of federalism of which we can be proud. That means erasing the stain that was put on the good face of Canada by the last administration. I believe, in my heart, that we are doing something right for Canada when we advance transparency and accountability.
The other misinformation I have to correct is this. The Liberal Party has put out a press release saying that I personally voted down its anti-floor crossing amendment. This is an absolute fabrication and untruth. I want to state it very clearly here today. What happened was the Liberal anti-floor crossing amendment was ruled out of order. The Liberals did not vote for their own floor-crossing amendment because it was ruled out of order.
If we could possibly clarify that, then the Liberals may stop saying this around the country. If the Liberals will stop telling lies about me, I will stop telling the truth about them.
In terms of election financing, the Liberals and the Bloc voted down a corrective measures put forward by the NDP to stop the atrocity of shaking down school children for their lunch money and trying to circumvent the election financing laws by laundering money through children's bank accounts. We had a perfectly viable proposal at the committee, which would have ended this practice forever. The Liberals and the Bloc voted that down. I invite anybody on either side of the House to challenge that.
The NDP thought it brought forward meaningful amendments in election financing. There are changes in Bill C-2 that we support. Lowering the annual donation limits to a reasonable amount, will take big money out of politics. There should be no corporate donations. There should be no union donations. There should only be donations from individuals. With a limit of $1,000, we believe no one will be able to buy an election any more. That in itself is something of which I am proud. That stand-alone item would have had me voting in favour of Bill C-2.
There are six or seven individual items in Bill C-2 that by themselves would have earned my support and vote. It seems only natural to me that we would enthusiastically support the whole package.
Some of the other opposition parties are sensitive, and I do not blame them. Every page of Bill C-2 reads like a condemnation of the past practices of the Liberal Party of Canada for the past 13 years. I do not blame them for being sensitive about that.
It is true that the first session of the 39th Parliament had to be dedicated to ensuring that no political party could exploit and abuse the public trust the way the last administration did. It was necessary work. It was like pulling a tooth. It is good we are getting it out of the way fast, like ripping off a band-aid. We want to do this quickly and get it over with so we can move on with the other important work and challenges facing our country.
One of the other things I am very proud we managed to get done was on the lobbyist registration. It has always bothered people that peddling influence by insiders in Ottawa has corrupted and jeopardized democracy in that certain people have undue influence because of who they know. That will not be allowed any more.
We have seen what lobbying has done to the United States. It has virtually ground Capitol Hill to a halt in many ways. Nothing happens without satisfying the hordes of lobbyists. We are not going to allow that to happen here. If we are on that slippery slope, I believe we have taken important measures to clean that up, to preclude the influence peddlers having undue influence in Ottawa. I think we can celebrate that move on behalf of Canadians.
I know I do not have much time and I will not dwell on this for long, but I read an interesting speech recently. A few years ago there were only 20 federal countries in the world. Federalism is the most difficult form of government to hold together. People do not realize how rare and difficult it is. At that time, 3 of those 20 federalist states were blowing themselves to pieces through corruption, maladministration and internal strife. The Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Canada were the three countries at risk, as mentioned in the international journal I read.
We know what happened to the Soviet Union. We know what happened to Yugoslavia. To hold this precious effort, this initiative we call Canada together, we need to operate at the highest possible ethical standards in order to earn and keep the confidence of all the disparate parts of this federation. The string that holds all these pearls together into one wonderful entity called Canada is always very vulnerable. It is very fragile and needs to be nurtured.
The enemies of transparency and accountability are the enemies of the Canadian union, in my view. It raises this whole issue to a much higher plane. We are doing something noble as we pass Bill C-2 and I am proud to be associated with it.