1996-05-30

Routine Proceedings
International Labour ConferenceHon. Alfonso Gagliano (Minister of Labour and Deputy Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.): Madam Speaker, pursuant to article 19 of the International Labour Organization constitution, I have the honour to table in both official languages copies of the Canadian position with respect to conventions and recommendations adopted at the 81st and 82nd sessions of the international labour conference in Geneva on June 1994 and 1995.
Government Response To PetitionsMr. Paul Zed (Parliamentary Secretary to Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.): Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table in both official languages the government's responses to six petitions.
Proposal For Partnership In Labour Market ActivitiesHon. Douglas Young (Minister of Human Resources Development, Lib.): Madam Speaker, if I may, I would like to table the proposal the Government of Canada is making to the provinces and territories concerning a new partnership in labour market activities.
EmploymentDouglas Young: Madam Speaker, I rise to inform my hon. colleagues in the House that on behalf of the Government of Canada I am sending a proposal to the provincial and territorial governments today. It proposes a new partnership with them on active employment measures.
This partnership respects provincial responsibility for labour market training. It recognizes that both levels of government must find new ways to help unemployed Canadians get back to work as rapidly as possible.
The proposal responds to the long standing provincial and territorial call for greater responsibility in the field of labour market development. It provides a basis for managing the federal withdrawal from labour market training the Prime Minister announced last November.
This represents flexible federalism. The proposal provides for a new federal/provincial/territorial partnership in labour market activities. Provinces will have the opportunity to deliver active employment measures funded through the employment insurance account; use EI funds to tailor active measures to meet local and provincial or territorial labour market priorities; provide labour market services such as counselling and screening now delivered by the Government of Canada; match local labour market demand and supply through job placement services; and assist individuals with career action plans to address their employment needs and guide them to successful employment opportunities.
The proposal retains the legal responsibility of the Government of Canada for the funds of the EI account and the requirement that these funds be spent effectively and efficiently in a way that achieves agreed to results.
Under this proposal the Government of Canada will make approximately $2 billion available to the provinces and territories for active employment measures and for the related labour market services the Government of Canada now delivers.
The Government of Canada is committed to working in concert with our provincial and territorial counterparts to develop new labour market arrangements. These new agreements will help us provide appropriate transitional assistance to Canadians who face temporary periods of unemployment. Bilateral agreements will reflect the diverse and changing circumstances that exist across the country from province to province to territories.
The Government of Canada will maintain a significant role in labour market issues. As I indicated, these agreements will be consistent with the Government of Canada's fiduciary responsibility for the employment insurance account. We will continue to be responsible for labour market matters that are pan-Canadian in scope. These include the interprovincial mobility of workers, labour market information and national sectoral partnerships on sectors.
We will continue to respond to national economic crises and facilitate labour market adjustments. This initiative is consistent with the best traditions of the Canadian federation. Federalism in this country has always been a living and creative solution to challenges of Canadian life. We must adapt to meet the needs of each succeeding generation.
A major challenge that faces us now is creating more jobs in the context of a new, demanding, challenging global economy. Renewal to our federation through flexible initiatives such as this proposal will contribute to help put Canadians back to work.
This proposal builds on the announcement on labour market training made by the Prime Minister on November 27, 1995. That commitment was restated in the speech from the throne earlier this year. We have already begun to take action to implement it. Funding has already ended for cooperative education and workplace-based training.
Under this proposal we will phase out the remaining federal presence in labour market training in less than three years. Our government is committed to working in concert with our provincial and territorial partners on the design, delivery and evaluation of active employment measures.
We understand that some provincial and territorial governments will want to take on more of these responsibilities than others. We are ready to accommodate that diversity.
This is what we mean by flexible federalism. The provinces and territories will have the opportunity to shape the design and deliver the new active employment measures in order to achieve maximum results.
We look forward to achieving mutually agreeable arrangements with our provincial and territorial partners. The agreements will emphasize results. They will underscore our responsibilities to each other, to employers and to the men and women who pay the employment insurance premiums that will fund these measures.
The transition to this new partnership must be smooth and effective. We will carry it out in a way that ensures our clients' needs are met. We will ensure there is no interruption of these services to Canadians.
Transitional employment measures will be delivered through human resource centres of Canada or community based services until new federal-provincial-territorial arrangements are in place.
Some Government of Canada employees may see their work shift to another employer through these new agreements. In such cases the transfer of employees in keeping with established government policies will be a very important aspect of our negotiations. We expect provinces and territories will want to take on many of these experienced employees. They are people who know their community and regional labour markets well. The Government of Canada is absolutely committed to ensuring the rights of our employees will be fully respected.
I believe this proposal of the Government of Canada is a new page in the evolution of the Canadian federation. The door is now open to more efficient, effective and flexible approaches that will help more unemployed Canadians find work, and that is our objective.
Mrs. Francine Lalonde (Mercier, BQ): Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by pointing out that we have just received the document on this proposal. Obviously, then, I cannot react to something I have just had for a couple of hours, but I will react to the minister's statement.
I must say that there is no assurance in the minister's statement that the Quebec consensus will find a response in the proposal. There is no assurance, because the key intentions it expresses are, first of all, to withdraw from manpower training but with no mention whatsoever of compensation and, second, to share the administration of active measures, whereas all of the major Quebec stakeholders have been unanimous in demanding total control over these active measures, their administration, planning and delivery, via other organizations if necessary, as has often been done in Quebec in the past.
The reason Quebec is demanding total control is rooted in its own experience. Some of the measures contained in this legislation-need we call it the Employment Insurance Act when it is not yet in effect?-have already been tried in Quebec over a number of years by one government after another. Quebec's assessment of the experiment certainly does not match the federal government's opinion; otherwise it would not have made a proposal calling for this to be the approach used.
The Quebec government's proposal of January 18 was therefore based on the input of all of the stakeholders, institutions and groups in Quebec constituting the Société québecoise de la main-
d'oeuvre, and reflects their experience, consensus, and concern for efficiency and the best use of workers' and employers' funds.
I must point out that this consensus in Quebec has been expressed long before today, even before the election of the Liberal Party, I would say. Since that party has been in power, we have repeatedly asked when, given the urgency of the situation, given the high unemployment levels, given the poverty levels, Quebec could finally have control over all of the means to help its ordinary citizens.
In the statement, the fact that there is no mention at any time of compensation for the withdrawal from manpower training is a source of great concern. We must, however, accept and acknowledge that finally there seems to be some openness to negotiation. It will be looked into, but I must again repeat that there is great concern. Our concern is great because, this time, there is no pretence of any transfer arrangement relating to the active measures as a whole. Yet the consensus in Quebec demands this, and strongly.
I would point out that much time was needed, that this is not a response to Quebec's demands, that there is nothing in this proposal which points to any recognition of the distinct character of Quebec, but we take note of the proposal nevertheless. I personally am most anxious to read it.
Mr. Ian McClelland (Edmonton Southwest, Ref.): Madam Speaker, I thank the minister for his courtesy in giving us overnight advance notice of this initiative of the government.
This is a hesitant baby step in the right direction. It is something that Canadians from coast to coast have been urging on the government for some time. We have been trying to get the government to consider moving responsibility closer to the people being served in all aspects of governance and this is yet another aspect of governance that needs to be moved closest to the people it serves.
In my opinion, this responsibility should be vested in the provincial governments. On the surface this appears to be, once again, the government buying Canadians with our own money.
The UI fund is a tax, a payroll tax off the top of every working Canadian's income. This year the fund surplus will be in the region of $5 billion and $2 billion will be put back into labour market training. Some serious questions need to be asked about access to the $2 billion in labour market training. Will that access be restricted to those with attachment to the labour market? What happens with people who have never had a job or have never been able to get into the workforce in the first place? Is this a provincial responsibility? Is it a shared responsibility? When a citizen goes into an office, will he or she be told that because they are unemployed, go through that door, not this door.
The number one concern of Canadians from coast to coast is unemployment. My constituency is one of the wealthiest constituencies in the country. The number one concern of people there is employment and security of employment for themselves and their children. The government needs to get its act together. The responsibility belongs to the provinces. There must be one door.
I applaud the fact that we are getting out of useless federal job sharing programs that really do not achieve anything. They just do not work. In my view, we need to ensure that the provinces clearly understand it is their responsibility to provide training for their citizens.
It is the federal government's responsibility to ensure that the labour standards across the country provide for portability of people, of circumstance and of qualifications. It is our job to have vision. When we are addressing the global economy in which we find ourselves, we should be leaders. It is our job to ensure that a national long range vision is present. The minister should consider this a very important and strategic part of the federal deliberations but the responsibility and the accountability goes to the provinces.
If we end up with a situation where the provinces are able to point their fingers at the feds and say, it is their job, and the feds are able to point their fingers at the provinces and say, it is their job, nothing will be achieved. We need clear, defined accountability in this whole process.
Second, we must address the fact that the funds for this program come out of the wages of people who are employed. Payroll taxes are perhaps the number one killer of jobs in the country. When business is not increasing, when it is stagnant, the only room for most employers to find additional revenue is by laying off people. When taxes go up, employment goes down. Everyone knows that. We have to make sure that payroll taxes go down.
There are other areas. This may or may not be the appropriate place and time to address them but when we talk about stability in our communities, perhaps our vision should be on the impact of part time work on the country. When families are able to get only part time work, when both parents are holding down two or three part time jobs, how can they have a sense of community or involvement? How can they have a foundation from which to go forward or to provide parenting to their children?
Why do we have such catastrophic problems with youth crimes? They seem to be unsolvable. However, how can parents be parents if they have to hold down two or three part time jobs?
Perhaps we should be looking beyond the surface of some of these matters and ask what is our responsibility to the communities of which we are all part? As we get further into this and start looking into the nitty-gritty of the employment situation, we will start to address the people who are chronically unemployed or who chronically find themselves in part time employment, particularly the young.
Another suggestion that I would like to bring to the table is with regard to employment insurance. A fundamental decision has to be made about whether employment insurance is employment insurance or whether it is a redistribution of income and wealth. If it is truly employment insurance, then other avenues should be looked at to find the funds necessary for training, particularly with the requirement in this legislation as it is now for attachment and previous attachment to the labour force.
People who are not part of the labour force now will be asking how they can get a foot in the door. That question needs to be answered with a very strong foundation so that people have a sense of hope and confidence in the future.
I look forward to working with the minister as we pursue these questions over the next year. I appreciate that the minister has invited me and others to work with the department in this area.
Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg Transcona, NDP): Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I wonder if I might have the unanimous consent of the House to respond to the minister's statement on behalf of the NDP.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): Do we have the unanimous consent of the House?
[Intervention]
An hon. member: No.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): We do not have the unanimous consent of the House.
Committees Of The HouseMr. Ghislain Lebel (Chambly, BQ): Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 123(1), I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the second report of the Joint Standing Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations.
Pursuant to Standing Order 123(3), I would point out that the report contains a resolution recommending that the government issue an order under section 23 of the Financial Administration Act so that all persons who had obtained a corrected certificate prior to June 8, 1992, following the amendment to the Canada Business Corporations Regulations, SOR 91-567, under section 261 of the Business Corporations Act, shall be remitted the fees payable under the Canada Business Corporations Regulations. A copy of the minutes and relevant testimonies is also being tabled.
Divorce ActHon. Fernand Robichaud (for the Minister of Justice): 
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-41, an act to amend the Divorce Act, the Family Orders and Agreements Enforcement Assistance Act, the Garnishment, Attachment and Pension Diversion Act and the Canada Shipping Act.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)
Judges ActFernand Robichaud: 
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-42, an act to amend the Judges Act and to make consequential amendments to another Act.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)
Railway Safety ActFernand Robichaud: 
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-43, an act to amend the Railway Safety Act and to make a consequential amendment to another Act.

Madam Speaker, I would inform the House that the government intends to refer this bill to committee before second reading, pursuant to Standing Order 73(1).
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)
Canada Elections ActMr. Ted White (North Vancouver, Ref.): 
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-285, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act (election expenses).

Madam Speaker, the bill I am introducing to the House today amends the election expenses section of the Canada Elections Act. The purpose of the bill is to eliminate any reimbursement of election expenses incurred by candidates and political parties.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)
Income Tax ActTed White: 
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-286, an act to amend the Income Tax Act.

Madam Speaker, this bill is an act to amend the Income Tax Act in connection with political activities by charities which receive public funds. The bill would disqualify from charitable status any corporations, trusts and organizations that have received discretionary funding from the government and then use that to promote or criticize any candidate or party in an election.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)
Plain Language ActTed White: 
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-287, an act to promote the use of plain language in federal statutes and regulations.

Madam Speaker, this bill is to promote the use of plain language in federal statutes and regulations. The purpose of it is to ensure that plain language is used so that people other than lawyers can understand what acts of Parliament are all about.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)
Currency ActTed White: 
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-288, an act to amend the Currency Act.

Madam Speaker, the last bill which I am introducing today is an act to amend the Currency Act. Actually, my hon. colleague who seemed to be a little disturbed will probably like this one because a former colleague of his introduced a similar act in the previous Parliament. It calls for the abolition of the one cent coin. It provides for the one cent coin to disappear after July 1, 1997 so we can get rid of all those little take a penny, give a penny canisters by cash registers.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)
Nuclear Liability ActMr. Chuck Strahl (Fraser Valley East, Ref.): 
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-289, an act to amend the Nuclear Liability Act.

Madam Speaker, in 1990 a study was done in Canada to estimate the cost of a nuclear accident. The study concluded that it could cost from hundreds of millions of dollars up to $11 billion. The current Nuclear Liability Act only obliges operators to buy $75 million worth of insurance coverage. The American equivalent is $7 billion. To fix that problem I have corrected the figure in the Nuclear Liability Act by the rise in the cost of living. I have also included Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. as an operator which would be required to buy insurance, something which it is not required to do. I believe it is time the nuclear industry came into the 21st century.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)
Bear Protection ActChuck Strahl: 
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-290, an act respecting the protection of bears.

Madam Speaker, I am introducing a private member's bill to assist with a problem that is being experienced around the world. People are hunting different species of animals for the supposed medicinal value of parts of their bodies.
In particular, bears are at risk in North America. Some environmentalists say that each year in North America up to 20,000 bears are killed for their body parts, specifically their gall bladders. That figure may well be exaggerated but provincial authorities do recognize there is a significant trade in this kind of thing and it does put pressure on bear populations. Last October several businesses and people were charged with trafficking in black bear and grizzly bear parts.
My bill would not stop legitimate hunters but it would prohibit the export of bear parts without a special permit. It would prohibit their interprovincial trade and transport. It would be another tool in the arsenal for people protecting them.
Canada is one of the world's last and greatest sanctuaries for the preservation of wildlife. This bill if passed would assist in preserving our unique natural heritage.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)
PetitionsBill Blaikie: Madam Speaker, I have a couple of petitions to present to today.
The first petition calls on Parliament to request the federal minister responsible for Canada Post to consider bringing in legislation requiring all unsolicited mail and flyers to use recyclable materials, post consumer and fibre and amending the Canada Postal Act so that Canada Post would have to comply with "no flyer" signs at personal residences with the exception of material from political parties and charities.
Bill Blaikie: Madam Speaker, the second petition calls on Parliament to consider the advisability of extending benefits or compensation to veterans of the wartime merchant navy equal to that enjoyed by veterans of Canada's World War II armed services.
Ted White: Madam Speaker, I would like to present a petition today on behalf of Elizabeth Dowber of North Vancouver and 93 others. They believe that the privileges which society accords to heterosexual couples should not be extended to same sex relationships. They pray and request that Parliament not amend the Canadian Human Rights Act or the charter of rights and freedoms in any way which would tend to indicate societal approval of same sex relationships or of homosexuality.
Questions On The Order PaperPaul Zed: Madam Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): Is that agreed?
[Intervention]
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): I would like to inform the House that because of the ministerial statement, Government Orders will be extended by 19 minutes.

Government Orders
SupplyMr. Monte Solberg (Medicine Hat, Ref.): moved:

That given the Prime Minister's 1993 election commitment "that there will not be a promise I do not keep", and his government's subsequent record in breaking promises on job creation, safer streets, governing with integrity and scrapping the GST-the last of which culminated in the resignation of the former Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps-this House condemns the government for betraying the trust of Canadians and contributing to the overall "cynicism about public institutions, governments, politicians and the political process".

Madam Speaker, I did not hear the entire motion go into the record. The motion we are debating today reads:

That given the Prime Minister's 1993 election commitment "that there will not be a promise I do not keep", and his government's subsequent record in breaking promises on job creation, safer streets, governing with integrity and scrapping the GST-the last of which culminated in the resignation of the former Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps-this House condemns the government for betraying the trust of Canadians and contributing to the overall "cynicism about public institutions, governments, politicians and the political process".

That is the motion. By the way, that last quote came from page 91 of the Liberal red book.
The promise the Prime Minister made during the election campaign was very bold. I think the Prime Minister knew exactly what he was doing. At that time Canadians were very cynical about politics, federal politics in particular given the record of the Mulroney government. When the Prime Minister made the promise that he would not break any promises, he played on the hopes people had for a new government. People were desperate for some integrity in government. They wanted to believe that a new Prime Minister would instil some integrity and that they would be able to believe what the Prime Minister was saying.
How disappointed Canadians must be today. How disappointed they must be after the red book made all kinds of pronouncements about the promises the government would fulfil. Although there are many, the most obvious example is the breaking of the promise with respect to integrity. I point in particular to the recent resignation of Sheila Copps, the former Deputy Prime Minister who is now pursuing re-election in Hamilton East.
I want to talk a bit about the sequence of events which led up to the breaking of that promise. I must underline how important it is as politicians that during an election or at any time when we make statements about what we propose to do, people regard those words very seriously. We need to take these matters seriously. We cannot just hope that people are going to say: "Oh, it is just another
politician making a promise. We do not really take it very seriously anyway so if they break it, it is no big deal". We have to do something to restore the confidence people had at one point in politicians. I will talk about the events which led up to the breaking of the GST promise.
In the three or four years between the time the GST was introduced and the time the present government came to power we heard over and over again from members across the way when they were in opposition that they would scrap the GST. They would kill the GST. The GST would be eliminated. We did not hear it just from the former Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps, although she went on national television and said it. We also heard it from the Prime Minister himself who said: "I hate it. I will kill it". We heard it from the finance minister. We heard it from the current human resources development minister. We heard it from many backbenchers across the way. The promise was made by many people.
Subsequent to that, about a month before the election, the red book came out. It was distributed to about 70,000 people. It certainly did not get the distribution the Deputy Prime Minister's remarks received on national television. That document said that the GST would be harmonized, or would be replaced rather, with something that was equivalent in terms of the revenue it would generate.
Now we have a new broken promise to deal with. Subsequent to that the finance minister introduced a harmonization agreement in Atlantic Canada, along with other sundry rule changes, which will actually increase the amount of revenue that goes to the government. In fact it could increase by as much as a billion dollars a year. Again, that promise is being broken. Again, the government is not living up to its word.
I want to take the point a little further. Two months ago the finance minister said the government was not raising taxes and would not raise taxes. He was talking about personal and corporate taxes but I point out that although he is living up to the letter of his word, he is not living up to the spirit of his word.
Since the government came to power it has raised taxes and increased revenues in various different ways to the tune of $10.5 billion. That is unbelievable. Two months ago the finance minister said they were not raising taxes.
What did the minister do after that? He effectively raised taxes in Atlantic Canada. Before the House broke last week the Government of Nova Scotia revealed that the new harmonized GST in Atlantic Canada was to cost Nova Scotia consumers $84 million. That is another broken promise and a breach of integrity.
The finance minister lived up to the letter of his word but he did not live up to the spirit of his word. The government deceived Canadians in the budget by saying it was not raising taxes. That is absolutely untrue. Nova Scotians will pay more and anybody who deals in used goods will pay more. It is to be a billion dollars a year in extra revenue to the government.
How the government can say it is somehow fulfilling a promise is beyond me. However, we have the Prime Minister who is still to this day saying they have met their GST promise and that it was only the former deputy prime minister who overstepped the bounds and went too far. I cannot believe he truthfully believes that in his heart. The Prime Minister knows that somehow Canadians do not buy this. Even if the finance minister lives up to the letter of his word he is not living up to the spirit.
Deception takes many forms. Sometimes deception is not lying to people. Sometimes deception is withholding the truth, which is what the government has done over and over again.
I wish I could say it ends with the GST promise, but it does not. There are many other instances. I refer to page 95 of the red book:

In particular, a Liberal government will appoint an independent ethics counsellor to advise both public officials and lobbyists in the day to day application of the code of conduct for public officials. The ethics counsellor will be appointed after consultation with the leaders of all parties in the House of Commons and will report directly to Parliament.

Has that promise been fulfilled? The answer of course is no. What do we have today? We have a situation in which the defence minister is embroiled in a controversy. He is alleged, although it goes beyond alleged because he has acknowledged it, to have given $100,000 to a former campaign worker, broken up into small contracts so he could get around the rule that contracts over $30,000 have to be tendered. We have called for the ethics counsellor to be brought in.
What has happened? The ethics counsellor has not been brought in because the government did not fulfil its promise. It broke its promise to make the ethics counsellor accountable to Parliament. The ethics counsellor is a lapdog for the Prime Minister. He answers only to the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister refuses to bring him in to do a proper investigation into this matter. This is another example of a broken promise. I want to talk about another broken promise.
One of the promises in the red book is: "We will examine such programs with the objective of reducing waste and inefficiency and promoting economic growth. Expenditure reductions will be
achieved by cancelling unnecessary programs, streamlining processes and eliminating duplication".
If the government is so efficient at reducing waste, I wonder if members across the way can tell me why last year the Department of Human Resources Development gave $105,000 to the Canadian Bankers Association. That is the organization that promotes the bank industry. If my memory is correct, the banks made about $5 billion in profits last year. I heard yesterday or this morning that the Royal Bank posted a quarterly profit of $324 million.
Why is it that when the banks are making $5 billion and the government says that it will reduce waste, we are giving banks $105,000 of taxpayer money? That somehow defies logic. How does the former deputy prime minister explain that when she is campaigning in Hamilton East?
Hamilton East is a working class neighbourhood. People there are probably wondering about the profits made by the banks. When Sheila Copps comes knocking on their doors, when they hear her government has given $105,000 to the bank industry and they have heard the banks made $5 billion, I wonder how she answers their questions. I wonder how she would answer a question when going door to door about all the money the government gave to the Canadian Bar Association, $277,000. The government promised in the red book it would get rid of all that waste.
The government gave $277,000 to the Canadian Bar Association. Does that not seem odd? The association received $20,000 from its buddies in the justice department and approximately $250,000 from CIDA, of all places. I expect that lawyers, some of the most well paid professionals in the country, would be able to afford to fund their own lobby organization. I would not have thought the Liberal government would have to give them $277,000. Another broken promise.
The government cannot get the message that people do not want it to spend money on organizations like the Canadian Bar Association and the Canadian Bankers Association when we keep going further into debt, when we are cutting social programs and when people are really suffering. Yet the government continues to spend on wasteful projects like those. Another broken promise.
I would think lawyers already benefit enough from the government. We have 36,000 challenges before the tax courts today, which should keep lawyers plenty busy. They do not need any more help from the federal government.
I point to another waste issue. Recently the auditor general reported that a $2 billion family trust had been transferred to the United States from Canada without any Canadian tax being paid. That is odd. The government said it is committed to ensuring there is no waste. That is a waste. There are tens of millions of dollars in taxes that should have been paid on that to the Canadian treasury, but all that money escaped.
The government will argue that was before it was in power, which is very true, but why did it not lift a finger to close the loophole? Why is it waiting for all the horses to get through the barn door before it closes it? Why is it allowing people with big money, people with all kinds of ability to navigate through loopholes and complex regulations to transfer millions and billions of dollars out of the country? By doing that it is ensuring that ordinary people like the steel workers in Hamilton and farmers in my riding, fishermen on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts have to pay taxes to make up for it. Why are the Liberals doing that? It is another promise from the red book blatantly broken.
I wonder how Sheila Copps would answer that? Unfortunately we do not know because Sheila Copps will not come to any all candidate forums. Sheila Copps will not take calls from her constituents when she is on talk shows. I guess we have to talk about it in here. Hopefully when she goes door to door people will ask her some of those questions.
A major promise the government made during the election campaign was jobs, jobs, jobs. I wonder if people remember during the election campaign when the now Prime Minister pounded Kim Campbell for saying she did not think there was any prospect that the job picture would improve before the year 2000. I think a lot people will remember that. It was a fairly prominent headline in the news.
Recently the Prime Minister said in Calgary and in the House "I guess we will have to live with high levels of unemployment". At the time of the election he said Kim Campbell was wrong. He suggested that somehow things were to be much better under the Liberal government.
What is the situation today? Today there are 1.4 million unemployed Canadians. There are approximately 13 million people in the workforce. One third are underemployed. One quarter are nervous about losing their jobs. As a result of all of that the economy suffers because there is so much uncertainty about the future.
The point is the government in many different ways implied that somehow things would be radically better than they were under the Conservatives. As I pointed out before, deceit has many different faces and sometimes it is not a blatant lie, it is a withholding of the truth. The government again has broken its promise of jobs, jobs, jobs.
When we look at the numbers there are actually 4,000 more unemployed young people today than there were in 1993 when this government took power. I cannot help but wonder how the Liberals are saying they are keeping their promises on the job issue, as some members did a moment ago. They have absolutely not done that.
The debt has climbed, interest rates have climbed, taxes have climbed and course unemployment climbs. The people over there have added $120 billion to the debt; $10.5 billion in new taxes and revenue measures since this government came to power. That not only ultimately kills jobs, it prevents jobs from being created because there is much less money in the economy and so people are not able to start businesses.
I have argued on may different fronts that the government has repeatedly broken promises and it does it without even batting an eye. It took overwhelming public opinion to force the deputy prime minister to resign. The Prime Minister denies there are any problems. I put to the House that the government has done a terrible job of fulfilling its promises and should be punished in the byelection in Hamilton East.
Mr. Robert D. Nault (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Human Resources Development, Lib.): Madam Speaker, I do not know whether to cry or to laugh. Today we could have had the opportunity to debate a very serious manner, the business of looking after the Canadian people, and at the same time the opposition could bring forward suggestions and ideas. Instead we have a nonsense motion which really does not do anything except signify to the Canadian public and to members of Parliament, on this side at least, that the old Tory party is back.
There are two children of the Conservative Party on that side of the House. The reason the Bloc was created was because its members were not happy with Brian Mulroney so another party was formed. The reason the Reform Party was created was because its members were not happy with Brian Mulroney's Conservative Party so they created another party.
Only one Reform member was around in the Mulroney years. The Reform movement was very concerned about the Conservative Party and where the right wing was going so it started its own party. During the process of becoming a new party those members said they would be different. That was one of the major promises of the Reform Party during the last election. They said they would come to the House of Commons to change things.
I have been in the House almost eight years and I have seen many interesting politicians come and go. I have seen many interesting motions from the opposition. However, I have never seen a motion as difficult as this one is to be serious about. We should be sad. I will try not to laugh because we have to try to bring some points forward today. I will do that because it is important for the Canadian public to see how ridiculous the reformed Conservative Party has become and how much disarray there is within the party.
I will spend some time talking about the government's record as it relates to job creation and the economy. That is important. The member opposite just finished telling us that the economy has not improved, that the economy is falling apart, that the economy under the government has not made any significant improvements. I want to put on the record some factual information, not simply rhetoric.
Before I do that I would like to have a bit of fun. It is important for people to know just how bad the Reform Party has become as the new child of the Conservative Party.
I recall during the last election campaign, when I ran against the Reform Party for the first time, that its members said they would come to the House to be different. They were going to represent their constituents and they were going to have all sorts of free votes. We know that the leader of the third party does not allow free votes. They pretend they do, but you never see any major free votes over there. You get the odd person who votes against the party. When a member votes against the party, their seats keep going backward.
Mr. Silye: If you are going to speak, tell the truth.
Bob Nault: The member who is chirping in his seat used to be a lot closer to the front. He moved to the back, as he must have had the odd occasion to vote against his leader.
That was one promise which the Reform Party made. When we run in the next election we will be able to say that they are free to vote with their constituents, but, quite frankly, we know that the leader of the third party muzzles his members.
Speaking of muzzling, we now know that the party is very similar to the Tory party of Brian Mulroney. A few members have been placed in the penalty box. They were muzzled because they were too extreme. If a member of the Reform Party wants to be extreme, let him be extreme. Quite frankly, that is the philosophy of the party. That is what the party projects out on the hustings. I have heard that on many occasions from the members who were booted out by the party because of things they have said about certain individuals in society.
The member, when he made his speech, continued to suggest, in sort of a roundabout way, that somebody is on the take and that there is some sort of conspiracy going on. That is the theory I heard during the election campaign from the Reform candidate.
This member has followed through, saying that there are evil people out there who are running the government and who do not care about the people of Canada. After hearing statements like that, that is why the people in Canada are cynical. Had he taken the facts and said this is what I am disappointed about, this is what the
government can improve, and talk about it, then it would be a reasonable debate.
We could have a debate on what the Reform Party would do about the GST. When I was in opposition we had that debate. It would be a good debate. I would love to have a discussion about taxation and about what could do done differently.
All the member wants to talk about is poor old Sheila Copps, how she made a mistake, how terrible it is, how deceiving it is. Yes, she has paid a price. She has admitted that she was wrong. She has admitted that she went further than the red book.
I campaigned on the red book. I can tell members that my little Reform friends in Kenora-Rainy River spent about two months trying to figure out whether I said something I was not supposed to say about the GST. My friends in the press have come back to me and said that I must have followed the red book very closely because I am pretty clean. They have spent weeks trying to figure it out.
Many of us on this side ran on the red book. We knew changes had to be made to the GST but in this place, like everywhere else, people make mistakes.
The member suggested that the government has broken all its promises. We are human and err. We are willing to admit that we make mistakes. However, the member stated that everybody on this side has become as bad as Brian Mulroney. I was here. I know why the Tories have only two seats. I know why there are two children of the Tory party on that side of the House: one is a separatist party and one is so far right wing that its policies are extreme because that is the way it is on the far right. Those are the facts and the reality.
Remember also there is the odd moderate in that party. One was kicked out and it has a couple more to go and I suspect it will not be long before they are out. One of them is laughing across the way. He is probably closest to being a moderate.
Reform will get rid of them because they do not fit into where this party is going. I look forward to the Vancouver convention when Reform makes it quite clear to the few moderates there are that they have to go. They just do not fit into the mould of the Reform Party, which is the very cynical view of how politicians and Canada work. It is unfortunate that it continues to portray that as the economy gets better and better.
I have one last little point to make about what makes me angry about this silly little motion we are debating today. The leader of the third party has a suit allowance paid by taxpayers' money. Remember how different these members were going to be. Heaven knows, my wife would like it if I had a suit allowance paid by the taxpayers of Canada. She does the shopping. If you do not like my suit, Madam Speaker, it is my wife's fault.
I am very disappointed in the member across the way who portrays his party as so sanctimonious and lily white, as a party that has never done anything the public would disagree with. Meanwhile, the leader of the third party is down at Moore's shopping for free suits at taxpayers' expense.
That is the fun I thought I would have in relating to the people of Canada why the Reform Party is in such disarray. It is pretty obvious to me when we see a motion like this that this party is running out of steam. Its members are looking for things to use to criticize the government, but they cannot find them because things are starting to improve in the economy.
As Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources Development, my role is to talk about job creation and the improvements that occur in the economy because of the economic policies of this government.
The government has had to make some very difficult choices. We admit that. We came in after the right wing government of Brian Mulroney. The folks across the way voted for but did not want to get branded with the mistakes made Brian Mulroney and his Tory party, therefore they started their own party. They do not want to take responsibility for that mess. I can understand that. I would not want to be part of that party either if I had to admit that I voted for those folks on a number of occasions. I can tell members from experience that I never voted any other way, but one way.
I do not have to pretend that I flip-flop on which party I belong to. It is very clear to me that the reason why that party exists is because its members did not want to take responsibility for the Mulroney years and I quite frankly do not blame them.
The Liberals came into a total mess, after a right wing party had said it was going to be fiscally responsible, good managers of the economy, that it would deal with the deficit and the debt. Its biggest issue during the 1984 campaign was that the Liberals could not manage the economy. When we came in there was a $42 billion annual deficit. We have a huge debt. We know we are going to have to deal with that and we are working toward that.
Since coming into power the deficit has been reduced by $25 billion. Members opposite are not saying: "That is pretty darn good". When the right wingers were in power the deficit never went down, it always went up. After three years the government will be able to show the Canadian public at the end of this fiscal year that the deficit is down to $17 billion.
I cannot guarantee this because I do not know how the economy is going to react, but I am very sure that if the economy continues at
the rate it is going by 1998-99 the budget will be balanced. What are those folks across the way going to say then? Are they going to do what they are doing now and say: "They are terrible managers"?
It is because of the policies of this government that we have now proven-
Jim Silye: Talk about the debt.
Bob Nault: Madam Speaker, the next issue is the one that my chirpy friend is talking about and that is the debt.
There is no doubt that the Liberals are going to deal with the debt. We have a strategy to deal with it because it is a major issue. We cannot deal with the debt until we deal with the deficit, get our fiscal house in order and clean up the mess of the Mulroney years.
When I sat in opposition there were 42 cabinet ministers over here. They took up two and a half rows of seats. They all had their fancy limos. They all ran around creating programs. We have come in with a very streamlined and clean government which is working toward improving the economy. I want to prove that we have.
So far I have explained to everyone in the House and across Canada that we have met our commitments in moving toward a balanced budget. We have worked very hard at that. We have had to make tough choices.
If the party across the way were to be different than the Tory party of old, it would admit that the government has done a very good job as it relates to that issue, even though it has been tough. None of us on this side are happy when programs are cut because we are Liberals. Liberals like to give service to the Canadian people. Liberals do not rejoice when somebody is cut off. We do not rejoice when a program is cut because it hurts people.
Therefore we do not spend our time running around the country saying: "Man, are we ever doing a good job cutting the deficit," because it hurts. We just carry on with other areas by focusing on issues that we think are important.
I want to talk about the government's record on jobs. The member talked about that at the end of his speech. I do not want to talk about it very long. It is a pretty darn good record. Quite frankly anybody should be proud of it. The question Canadians should ask is: "Are we better off than we were before? Are we better off now with this government than we were under the old government? Are the directions, the policies and the programs of this government proving to be successful in going where we want to go?"
There are key indicators that should show that. One of course is interest rates. They are at the lowest in 30 years. The inflation rate is at the lowest in 30 years. The bond raters and even the Globe and Mail said that the government has really got its act together and is going in the right direction. That is two areas.
The other area is job creation. Nobody in this Chamber will say that Liberals are happy with the unemployment rate because they are not. If we had our way we would like to see the unemployment rate down to the lowest level that it has ever been in history or at least lower than it has ever been in my lifetime and that is under5 per cent. We have a long way to go because the rate is still over9 per cent.
I want to lay these facts on the table. Perhaps the Reform's research is not very good. If the Reform members would ask us we would send the facts over to them.
Reformers continue to pretend that something is not working in the government as it relates to jobs and strategy but the numbers do not prove that. Six hundred and thirty-six thousand more Canadians have jobs than when we took office. That is not bad. The average gain in 1996 has been roughly 30,000 more jobs every month since December. Full time jobs were up 47,000 in April. That is the fifth month in a row there has been growth in jobs. Most of the increase in that month was in the manufacturing sector with 37,000 very good, high quality jobs.
Another issue which I find very cynical about the Reform members, as sanctimonious as they can get, is that they pretend there is some sort of conspiracy over here. They just want to be very selective in their facts.
Let me give the reason the unemployment rate has not gone down as fast as it should even though jobs have been created. The labour force was up 54,000 in April and up 137,000 since October 1995. What does that mean? It means people who had quit looking for work over a number of years are now beginning to look for work and are finding work. The labour force is getting bigger which changes the numbers and makes it look in some cases as if the unemployment rate is not going down as fast as it should. The reason is that people are now getting so much a sense that the government is going in the right direction that there is hope and they are now looking for work more than they ever have before.
Another statistic comes from the private sector. This is another indication of how well the government's policies are working. Twenty-three per cent of employers told Manpower Temporary Services, which is a private sector group that does monitoring of this, that they expected to increase staffing in the third quarter of 1996. This survey found that 23 per cent of employers expected that they would be hiring more employees.
In northern Ontario, 40 per cent of the employers in the Sudbury area expect to hire more people in this next quarter. Thirty-three per cent of the employers in the Thunder Bay area, which is close to where I am from, said they expected to hire more individuals because of the faith they have in the economy and because of the policies of this government. This comes from a private sector
group which knows that growth is coming and that we have our fiscal house in order and the benefits are beginning to show.
In the last budget we focused on certain areas. I could spend another hour talking about the nonsense motion of the Reform Party simply because it shows just how desperate Reformers have become. I know how frustrating it can be to be at the same level in the polls as the Conservatives were two and one-half years ago during the 1993 election. They were hovering around 12 per cent. Those were the good days. That is about where the Reformers have been hovering around. Sometimes they jump to 16 per cent, the odd time when somebody says the right thing. I can understand why they would get very depressed and why they would have a nonsense motion like this one.
Let us remember that in the last budget we said that because we could not raise taxes, which we recognized, and because we knew we had to deal with the deficit and debt, we would have to repriorize some of our spending. We focused on three areas: youth, technology and trade. A multitude of things are going on with respect to youth, which I wish I had some time to talk about but I do not. There is also technology and trade, the Team Canada approach and the $20 billion worth of trade and exports we have been able to help employers with because of the priority we put on international trade. Those are the kinds of things Canadians expect us to do.
In closing, I will tell the opposition members about this government's very good record and the integrity it has brought back to this place. I can understand how difficult it can be for right wingers to understand what integrity is. They had to live through the Brian Mulroney government and all of the scandals that I lived through between 1984-88 and 1988-93 when some 20-odd ministers had to pack their bags and wonder off. Of course they voted for those folks.
Let me give Reformers one bit of advice. If they are going to be successful as a party they are going to have to do it based on facts, not on fiction and not on trying to scare Canadians that this party is doing a bad job. Talking to my constituents and the polls prove to me every day that we are doing the right thing. We are improving people's plight every day and we are working very hard at it. We are not doing it overnight but we are making a difference.
Monte Solberg: Madam Speaker, there are so many issues and so little time.
I smelled the distinct odour of Liberal arrogance when the member was boasting about their standing in the polls. I remind the hon. member that the Conservatives were very high in the polls the summer before the last election and they ended up with two seats.
The member mentioned a number of issues. He pointed out that the deficit has fallen by $25 billion. Will he also acknowledge that revenues for the government have gone up by exactly $25 billion and that $10.5 billion of that has come from new taxes?
When the member was talking about how difficult it was for him and his colleagues to cut social programs, he did not mention how easy it was for them to vote themselves a very fat MP pension. A very fat one. They are cutting seniors benefits and benefits to people in Atlantic Canada, but I note he forgot to mention how much money he had given himself in the form of a huge MP pension. That was noticeable by its absence.
Will the member acknowledge that when the debate was going on about my leader's $30,000 receiptable expense allowance, the newspaper accounts also pointed out that his leader received $400,000 a year from the party, absolutely unreceiptable in the form of an entertainment allowance? Will he acknowledge that the empties from that entertainment allowance would be more than enough to make most people happy?
Bob Nault: Madam Speaker, the member made the exact point I was hoping he would make.
I never said there was anything wrong with giving the leader a slush fund, if that is what they want to call it. They do not want to call it the suit allowance, so we can call it a slush fund, an entertainment allowance or whatever. I understand that as the leader there are many other activities involved which involve a lot of expense that average members of Parliament would not have to deal with.
My issue is with the sanctimonious attitude of the member across the way. He pretends that no one in the Reform Party would ever have the gall to do anything like that. Just admit that there are certain things to being an MP that are necessary, that funds have to be allowed for them and then we can get off this little sanctimonious trip his party is on.
I have seen this before. I come from the labour movement. I have listened to the NDP for years and years and years with their pie in the sky kind of attitude and their sanctimonious attitude toward how government is run. Then we brought in our good friend Bob Rae in Ontario where I come from. Then the people really saw what it was like and what the NDP was capable of doing and not doing.
The people of Canada should be careful not to buy into this nonsense across the way and giving them the chance to run this country. They will do what Brian Mulroney did. They will do what Bob Rae did. They cannot give us the kinds of policies they are proposing without completely raising Cain and ruining Canada's economy. I am very fearful that someone will buy into this rhetoric.
About my pension. The member said I got a raise in my pension. I have been here since 1988. I am on my eighth year. My pension was cut by 33 per cent. The member across the way does not have to worry about that because he will not get elected again and he does not have a pension. However I have a pension which is fine. I have a family. I have a young child at home and a wife who does not work. In this job it is pretty tough for my spouse to work when I am on the road. I represent one-fifth of Ontario's land mass.
What I dislike the most is when a member stands up and suggests that I got a raise when in fact I got a 33 per cent cut. I am not saying I am underpaid, but at least be honest. If the pension is too lucrative for his liking, then we will give him another cut in pay. If he wants to work for less than we do, we will oblige him. He can send us a letter from his House leader and we will see what we can do through a private member's bill.
My friend from North Vancouver likes to sponsor private members' bills that do not make much sense. Bring one in that says the Reform Party will work for free and we will pass it in a big hurry.
[Intervention]
An hon. member: In one day.
Bob Nault: We will pass it in one day. It will not take us long. I would vote for it because I do not think Reformers are worth the money they are being paid. I know I am because I have one of the largest ridings in Canada. I have 80 communities, 46 reserves. I would like to bring my little friend from Medicine Hat on a three or four week trip up north on a float plane. He would come back a lot skinnier than he is now.
I want to make it clear that that sanctimonious attitude is the reason this country is in trouble now. We are working very hard to clean it up. Canadians will not buy into his party's nonsense.
Mr. John Cannis (Scarborough Centre, Lib.): Madam Speaker, I will add my voice to the proceedings to touch upon the issue of honesty within government.
The Reform Party is also known as the son of Brian. When Reformers need ideas they go south of border and huddle with Newt Gingrich and Pat Buchanan. Then they come back thinking this is the United States of America. I will go beyond that to talk about decisions and standing by what one says and there are several examples.
After the budget presentation the first person who stood up to applaud the budget was none other than the Reform finance critic from Capilano-Howe Sound. Five minutes later he was out of the House. Later the Reform defence critic said that the Minister of Finance cut too much. Still later the member for Saanich-Gulf Islands said that we went too far. We do not know if we are cutting enough, if we are going too far, if we are not going too far. Reformers cannot make up their minds which way to go.
When Reform members talk about pensions it is really insulting. There are members in the Reform Party who are so-called double dipping. One of the first things we did as a government in our commitments was eliminate double dipping as well as the cuts which were mentioned earlier by my colleague.
In Reformers' own ridings, 55 per cent of their constituents have stated that the Reform Party is too extreme. This is from their own constituents whom they say they represent. Their constituents sent them here to represent them. They vote against their own constituents. Consider the gun issue. They were sent here to vote against it and they voted for it. They cannot have their cake and eat it too.
It is no coincidence that the Reform Party membership is down by 65 to 70 per cent. I ask myself why. It is simple: Nobody wants to be associated with the extreme views of the Reform Party. Nobody wants to be associated with the Newt Gingriches of this world who look at the esoteric picture as opposed to the global relationship we have.
There are certain expenditures but they do not talk about the the leader of the Reform Party who has gone from the $44 a night Travelodge Hotel to one that is $165 per night.
I could go on and on, but I think I have made my point. Reformers should be honest with the people of Canada.
Mr. Jean-Paul Marchand (Québec-Est, BQ): Madam Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to speak to this well written motion put forward by the Reform Party. I fully agree with the motion, which points out the Prime Minister's Liberal government did not keep its many promises.
There were frequent reports in the press about the promises that were made, like those the Prime Minister dared to make before the election. For example, the promise on free trade was abandoned, as well as the one on job creation. An attempt was made with the infrastructure program, which created a few jobs. Few jobs have been created since then. In fact, the government did not even keep its promise to make job creation the focus of its budget. On the contrary, everything was done to try to protect wealthy families, for example, rather than to help the poor, as this government took all kinds of measures to go after the most disadvantaged and the weakest, as we well know. We know all about this.
To this we can add the famous promise to scrap the GST, which was not kept. Ms. Copps had to resign because of this unkept promise, a promise that, unfortunately, did not bear fruit. In fact, her resignation seemed to mock voters. When Ms. Copps promised
to resign, she was supposed to resign for real and not stand for re-election again the same day.
There is much to say, and the evidence is there that this government is very dishonest when it comes to its promises, as well as very hypocritical.
There is one promise that few people will remember, except you, Madam Speaker, and francophones outside Quebec. It is a promise the Prime Minister made in Acadia, not before the election but in August 1994, when he was already Prime Minister.
Mr. Chrétien came to the Acadian convention, where he solemnly promised that part VII of Canada's Official Languages Act would be implemented. As he said himself in his August 12, 1994 speech, he was making that promise not only as Prime Minister of Canada but also as the former member for Beauséjour. Therefore, he seems to know the situation of francophones living outside Quebec.
In his speech, the Prime Minister said: "It is always a good thing to remember that there are over one million francophones living outside Quebec". There is a minor mistake here, since we all know that, given the current rate of assimilation, there are no longer one million francophones living outside Quebec but, perhaps, only half of that figure.
The Prime Minister added: "Therefore, the federal government will not stop here: it will continue to protect and to promote the rights of French speaking minorities everywhere in Canada. This is one of the major principles I have defended throughout my political career and it will remain a priority for the government of which I am the leader".
This is a very solemn commitment. The Prime Minister then added that the Minister of Canadian Heritage had announced earlier that same day, during the same event, "how, from now on, the government will ensure that all federal institutions likely to play a role in the development of French speaking communities take into account the particular needs of these communities".
Madam Speaker, you are from Acadia and you will surely remember that, in making this statement, the Prime Minister effectively pledged to establish the implementation process for part VII of the 1988 Official Languages Act.
Earlier that same day, the heritage minister had said very clearly: "Therefore, I am pleased to announce that cabinet has approved a corporate policy regarding the participation of federal institutions in community development, as well as a work plan". The minister was also referring to part VII of the Official Languages Act, which had been approved in 1988, but which six years later, in 1994, remained an unused part in the statutes of a government claimingto be very concerned about the survival of French speaking communities outside Quebec.
For those concerned with this question, it is a very serious problem affecting a number of communities, as we know. In addition, it is part of the symbol of a bilingual Canada. This is why the Prime Minister, of all people, has repeatedly referred to himself as the champion of francophones outside Quebec.
The problem is a serious one, when you think that not only is the rate of assimilation of francophones outside Quebec very high, but it is also increasing rather than declining. The Official Languages Act was passed in 1969 for the very purpose of slowing down the assimilation of francophones.
Another part of the Official Languages Act of 1969 was also to ensure that Quebec is respected as a French speaking province in Canada. This is another promise not kept by several prime ministers, including Mr. Chrétien, the current Prime Minister, but I will not go into that.
Not only is the situation of francophones living outside Quebec precarious, but it is steadily worsening, despite the solemn promises made by this Prime Minister. As the minister has just said, separation will obviously not help matters.
This government, as the Prime Minister and certain of his ministers have often done, is using francophones outside Quebec as pawns in a game against Quebec. He says that francophones outside Quebec will disappear if Quebec separates, when they are already disappearing because the Government of Canada, in the most scandalous display of hypocrisy, is doing nothing to implement the Official Languages Act in Canada, including Part VII. I could also mention other parts of the Official Languages Act, but the most glaring omission is Part VII.
Reformers are not perhaps as sympathetic to francophones living outside Quebec as are members of the Bloc Quebecois or the people of Quebec. Like the people of Quebec, we respect French culture in Canada and it is in our interest to see that francophone communities, whether they are located in Canada or in the United States, survive. This is an obvious and fundamental principle for all those who respect the French culture.
Ministers and members in this House who say that francophones outside Quebec are a symbol of the survival of this country should look at what is happening to them. Once again, not only is the rate of assimilation very high, but it is on the increase. This means therefore that the situation is not improving for francophones outside Quebec. There are a number of reasons for that.
[Intervention]
Some hon. members: Oh, oh.
Jean-Paul Marchand: If members were a little quieter, I could talk to you about it. The rate of assimilation continues to climb. In the 20 years between 1971 and 1991, it has increased. I could provide official statistics from Statistics Canada, which indicate that this is the case in all provinces, including yours, New Brunswick.
[Intervention]
Some hon. members: Oh, oh.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): Order, please. The hon. member has the floor.
Jean-Paul Marchand: Thank you, Madam Speaker. The rate of assimilation is nonetheless a serious thing, basic. Francophone communities outside Quebec are going through this ordeal. It is true. There is no doubt. Statistics confirm it very clearly.
I could, obviously, give you the rate of assimilation in all the provinces outside Quebec, but you know about that, Madam Speaker, because you are Acadian. Assimilation is happening and is on the rise in all provinces outside Quebec. New Brunswick is, perhaps, the sole exception, with a rate of assimilation of between 8 per cent and 10 per cent. In Ontario, for example, the rate is 35 per cent to 40 per cent. In western Canada, it is over 70 per cent.
This rate of assimilation is bad, because francophone communities outside Quebec, the symbol of Canadian bilingualism, are being destroyed.
Just last week, another Statistics Canada study was published. It concerns young people and indicates that there are fewer and fewer young francophones outside Quebec and that francophones are producing fewer and fewer children, thus contributing to the tendency of francophones living outside Quebec to disappear.
In its report, Statistics Canada says, and I quote just one sentence: "Unless the situation changes or the number of francophones increases through migrational activity, the size of the francophone population outside Quebec will decrease in the future".
This is from a study published two weeks ago by Statistics Canada. When Statistics Canada publishes a report, it uses neutral language. This marks the condemnation, so to speak, of the future of francophone communities outside Quebec. When young people leave, when there are fewer and fewer of them, when they no longer have access to French schools, when their numbers keep going down and the trend continues, this portends a very dark future for francophone communities.
The government knows this. We have been saying so long enough. Even the spokespersons for the association of francophones outside Quebec said so in a report entitled "The Heirs of Lord Durham". This report is worth reading. I could even give a copy to the members of the Reform Party. Its subtitle in English is: "Manifesto of a vanishing people". One paragraph at the beginning of the report from the association of francophones outside Quebec reads as follows:
"Our dreams have been shattered. We are going through a severe crisis which may even have been planned and deliberately cultivated. Francophones outside Quebec are like a family whose home has been destroyed by fire. We are without shelter, our eyes fixed on odd belongings scattered here and there, but we are still alive".
That was in 1977, 20 years ago. The problem has gotten worse and, only two weeks ago, the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne, which published this report in 1977, wrote in another report: "The Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada expects elected parliamentarians to carry out the mandate entrusted to them by the Canadian people. The urgent situation faced by members of our communities is unacceptable. The government, and especially its officials, does not seem overly concerned about the fact that the assimilation rate increases from one census to the next".
This report was published by the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne after the Prime Minister made his solemn promise to the Acadians in August 1994.
Application of part VII of the Official Languages Act is just a manifestation of the government's commitment to promote the development of francophone communities. That is absolutely normal. If the Canadian government, and the Prime Minister first and foremost, portray themselves as the champion of francophones outside Quebec, committed to the survival of the French language in Canada and the symbol of a bilingual Canada, then they have all the more reason to react swiftly when the very communities which form the basis of this symbol are threatened with disappearance.
The act was passed in 1988 and the Prime Minister made his promise in 1994. Nothing has been done in the intervening six years. And since the Prime Minister took office, two years ago, I must tell you that, with regard to enforcing part VII of the Official Languages Act, nothing has been done, nothing at all. That about sums up the action taken by the Prime Minister in terms of his solemn undertaking to implement part VII.
These are not my personal observations. The facts speak for themselves. I read and quote the report of the commissioner of
official languages, who is supposed to be impartial in this matter, although I doubt that seriously, because it seems to me that he sometimes plays the government's game of covering up the fiasco involving francophones outside Quebec. Time permitting, I will get back to this point.
The commissioner has examined everything the government has done in relation to part VII. In his detailed study released this year, two years after the promise made by the Prime Minister before the Acadian congress, in August 1994, the commissioner stated that, according to his study, nothing indicates the existence, even after August 1994, of a systematic effort to ensure compliance with section 41, that is to say part VII, in the restructuring process of the government's institutions and programs. Instead, notes the commissioner, this restructuring was sometimes done in a way that reduced, instead of increasing, support to the development of minority official language communities.
After solemnly promising to defend and support francophone communities outside Quebec, communities now confronted with a difficult and disastrous situation, not only did the Prime Minister of this country not make any effort to ensure the law was enforced, but the commissioner, himself almost in the Prime Minister's pocket, was forced to admit that nothing has been done. What is more, the situation has actually deteriorated.
The Prime Minister has no right to claim to be the champion of francophones outside Quebec when he is not doing anything. Not only did he not enforce the law, but he is cutting back the resources allocated to programs supporting francophone communities. This year, in some cases, cuts in subsidies have been as high as 50 per cent. For some, this represents a death sentence.
There is a francophone community in Saskatchewan and this community has been treated very unfairly because, as you know, legislation contravening the Canadian Constitution was passed in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta, prohibiting the teaching of French. Several Supreme Court rulings were made, telling these provinces they had to respect these rights.
When they complied with the Supreme Court's decisions, the provinces received certain amounts from the federal government to try to encourage communities to make up the ground they had lost over the past century.
I will conclude by saying briefly that, in Saskatchewan, subsidies for francophones were cut by 50 per cent. Had I had more time, I would have read you the letter of a 12-year old girl. It was handed to me just minutes ago. This 12-year old wrote Mr. Chrétien, asking him: "How can you say, Mr. Prime Minister, that you care about francophones outside Quebec, like us in Saskatchewan, when you are cutting our subsidies by 50 per cent?"
Bob Nault: Madam Speaker, I had a difficult time following the member's debate based on the Reform motion. Nonetheless, I would like to ask him a fairly obvious question.
As separatists, his party is advocating that Quebec leave Canada. At the same time he is spending a lot of time complaining about the non-existence of the French language outside Quebec.
The province of Ontario, the province of Quebec and all other provinces control their educational system. Quebec controls immigration. It also controls labour markets, labour market adjustment and training. We are now in the process of transferring that area to the province of Quebec.
The province of Quebec has all the tools to protect its French language. The premier of Quebec has stated categorically that he would protect minority rights in Quebec, which means that English would still be a part of Quebec's culture, unless they are suggesting everyone who is English leave.
I would like to know from the member, as a separatist, where he is coming from. Is there a fear that French will disappear if Quebec stays in Canada? Is there a fear that unless things are done differently the French fact in North America will not exist? Can he explain to me what will be better under a separate country as far as the ability to keep the French fact in North America?
Why does Quebec not have a policy to help French speaking people in the rest of Canada? Why does Quebec not seem to have an interest in French people outside Quebec? Why does it continue to tell its population that in provinces such as Ontario there are no French people? We know that is not the case.
Jean-Paul Marchand: Madam Speaker, the member is from Kenora-Rainy River. Not many francophones live in that area of Ontario but there are francophones in Ontario, especially in northern Ontario.
What I noticed in what he said is there is a lot of misunderstanding with respect to language laws. That is probably one of the major problems in the country. People do not really understand the application of language laws and the situation of francophones versus anglophones.
The member said francophones in Ontario control their school boards. That is not true. Francophones in Ontario have been fighting for years to get adequate schools. Only recently have they been enabled to control four school commissions out of a possible 15. Ontario is very resistant to the survival of the French language. It could have been a province that had been bilingual like New Brunswick. There are 5 per cent to 10 per cent francophones in Ontario. Ontario has mistreated the francophones more than other provinces because of the number of francophones living in Ontario. Francophones of Ontario do not control their school boards.
Coming back to the members questions of what will happen to francophones if Quebec leaves and why Quebec does not help francophones, we cannot have the situation both ways. Francophones outside of Quebec are being assimilated at a very dangerous rate. They are losing their schools, they are losing the foundations of their survival in a country that is said to be bilingual.
Quebec also suffers from the discrimination which is practised against francophones. One form of discrimination, particularly in Ontario, is that francophones cannot automatically provide funds for their own schooling. In other words, whenever they pay school taxes those go automatically to English language schools.
If you are a francophone and you really want to have French schooling for your children you have to go out of your way and assure yourself that your tax dollars are to be served for French language schools. For example, in Ontario in a business with 15 employees, 14 of whom are francophone, where do the school tax dollars go? They go to the English school board, not to the French school board.
There is a form of discrimination against francophones, translated in Quebec as well. Everyone knows Quebec has a long history of discrimination with respect to its survival as a French culture. That is proof and the reason Quebec has come to the conclusion that the French language is not respected in so-called bilingual Canada. It is proof that Francophone rights throughout Canada have never been respected. Even today francophones rights are not respected according to the charter of rights and freedoms of 1982, article 23.
After 15 years every province in Canada should have granted proper schooling and control of school boards to francophones, but that has not been done. It has not been done in B.C., in Ontario or in Newfoundland, despite the fact we are most likely to pass a motion that will provide for the premier of Newfoundland to change the school system. He has not spoken about granting the rights to francophones to control their own school system. That is against the Constitution. These are provinces that have not respected the Constitution of Canada in granting rights to francophones, and that is a serious problem.
It is natural that because the situation is so disastrous Quebec looks at its own survival as a French language and culture, as they are far from being guaranteed.
There are other reasons but one cannot stand in the House and say Quebec is not trying to do the utmost to help the survival of francophone communities. Quite the contrary. That is why we are working for sovereignty.
Bob Nault: Madam Speaker, first of all, the member is wrong when he says you cannot put your tax dollars toward a French school. I have a house in Ottawa. I bought it a couple of years ago. I put my tax dollars toward a French separate school system. They came to the house and asked which system I wanted to be under and I put it there. The member is factually wrong and should stop saying that.
If the member is so concerned about bilingualism nationally why is it that Quebec is not bilingual? Quite frankly, it is grossly unfair to suggest we have a bilingual country but New Brunswick is the only bilingual place, and Quebec is not.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): A very short answer.
Jean-Paul Marchand: Madam Speaker, there is no such thing as a short answer to that comment. Canada is not a bilingual country. The public service in Ottawa is not a bilingual public service. Ottawa is the capital of the country and it is not a bilingual town.
I might have committed an error with respect to the school taxes. What I was trying to say is that in Ontario you can provide your tax dollars to the French school system. I am not saying the contrary. It is just that you have to go out of your way to assure yourself those tax dollars are put into the French language school system, otherwise they go automatically to the English school system. It is discriminatory in Ontario.
Ted White: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be speaking today in support of this motion which severely criticizes the government because it does give me the opportunity to talk about all the broken promises.
I bring up some matters mentioned by the member for Kenora-Rainy River. He mentioned the importance of voters selecting a party based on facts, not fiction. Let us get something very clear. Fifty-one of fifty-two Reform MPs in the House gave up their right to any pension. Therefore nobody can point a finger at us. All of the greed is on the other side of the House.
I am getting a bit sick of having my constituents attacked as racist, bigoted, homophobic, extremists or any other derogatory adjective these Liberals keep bringing up. Just because my constituents do not believe in Liberal tax and spend policies does not mean they are intolerant. Every time the member puts a label on us or our policies, which incidentally have not changed since the 1993 election, he is attacking our constituents. More than two million people, 20 per cent of the voters of Canada, voted Reform in the last election. Therefore every time he gets up arrogantly to use those labels I suggest he give a little thought to what he is doing.
I continue with the latest set of broken promises from the government. Canadians will remember that about a week ago the Prime Minister in western Canada said Canadians will have to live with high levels of unemployment. By admitting failure on the job front the Prime Minister has confirmed that neither he nor any of
his government employed for life colleagues have the slightest idea how real jobs are created.
The Prime Minister claimed during the 1993 election campaign that his $6 billion job creation infrastructure project would create all sorts of wonderful jobs and we would return to the days of low unemployment. He had this theory that all the people employed by the program would spend the money in their communities and that this would then reduce unemployment.
However, anyone with business experience could see that the plan could not work from day one. The reason was the government was not creating long term, meaningful jobs. It was buying jobs using taxpayers money and borrowed money, and those sorts of jobs are only short term.
Frankly, if running deficits and accumulating a $583 billion debt could create jobs we would each have at least three by now. Instead the overspending has led to punitive levels of taxation. It has driven businesses out of the country. It has reduced the amount of disposable income in the pockets of consumers. Debt and deficits have caused unemployment. Until the people on the other side of the House-and we can laugh at this right now-come to grips with that we will not make any progress.
Although governments cannot themselves create meaningful jobs, they can create the climate that permits private enterprises, the private sector, to create those jobs. The steps to success would require the federal government to balance its budget as quickly as possible so that those who are to be affected by the changes can adjust as quickly as possible and then immediately get into tax reductions to put more money into the pockets of consumers. With that money in their pockets, consumers will spend more, stimulating the demand for products, increasing the demand for jobs and subsequently lowering the unemployment level.
These steps were the foundation of Reform's zero in three plan for balancing the budget, which we used during the 1993 election campaign. We are three years down stream from that now. If the government had taken our plan the day it came to office, we would today be running surpluses and arguing about what to do with the surplus money instead of arguing which social program we are to cut next.
We would not be talking about disassembling CPP and cutting the transfers to medicare. We would have a surplus and would be talking about enhancing those programs.
I come from New Zealand. New Zealand politicians were forced by a fiscal crisis in 1984 to take exactly the steps I just detailed. Today the New Zealand unemployment rate is below 6 per cent. It has large budget surpluses. It is applying those surpluses to expanded health care programs, better social programs, and at the same time workers this week received a $100 per month reduction in income taxes.
Imagine if the Minister of Finance had been able to stand in the House in his last budget and announce a $100 per month reduction in income taxes. The government side is always paying lip service to eliminating and reducing poverty. The best way to make that happen would be to get taxation down so that there is more money in the pockets of consumers.
New Zealand has proven that a dollar in the hands of an investor, a business person or a consumer will be spent more wisely and will create more jobs than that dollar in the hands of anyone on the other side of the House. We can have jobs, jobs, jobs if we want them but first we need to get a few MPs in the House who understand how jobs are created.
The sad thing is that even though there are methods for job creation that have been proven in other countries, one must ask why we cannot not get that in the House.
The basic problem is there is a party unwillingness on the other side to admit that any idea that comes from this side might actually be worth considering. That problem stems from the fact that Parliament in its present form is much more suited to the enactment of a party agenda than it is to the enactment of sensible policies or the will of the people.
In blunt terms, the $125,000 plus to run this place every hour gives us little more than a charade of meaningless debates and answerless questions. The outcome of every vote on every government bill is known in advance, before the first speaker even gets up. The government knows every one of its bills will pass. The problem is that to change that sort of thing we will need a lot of sacrifice by those in power. At the moment those people are the least willing to sacrifice the power they maintain.
Despite their resistance I can feel the tide turning. I feel the tide of Canadian support turning against those traditionalists. The progress of the revolution can be measured at the ballot box. It certainly manifested itself in tremendous uncertainty for the traditional parties over the last five years or so.
We need look only at the success of the Reform Party of Canada, which jumped from one seat in Ottawa prior to the 1993 election to 52 seats. It was contrary to the predictions of the pundits and despite the vigorous, completely unfounded media attacks against the party. It used to use the old labels of racist and bigoted, but those long ago lost their effect because they were not true.
Let me give a personal example. My riding was held from the middle of the 1970s until 1993 by Chuck Cook, a Progressive Conservative. In the vote of 1993, I received a higher number of votes than Chuck Cook ever had in his entire history in this place, votes paid to any suggestion that this party is a reincarnation of the
PCs. Through our policies I took 18 per cent of the NDP vote to Reform. That happened in Reform ridings throughout western Canada.
The truth is voters saw through the attacks, the labels attracted to the party. What they saw they wanted, a populist set of policies based on their input and a promise that MPs would represent the will of constituents in Parliament.
Perhaps this is an appropriate time for me to mention again that my constituents are getting fed up with hearing Liberals in the House continually implying, through their personal attacks on Reform MPs, that the millions of Reform voters and supporters across the country are racists, bigots, homophobes and extremists simply because they do not agree with Liberal policies and because they do not agree with the way bills are rammed through the House.
They are not racists, bigots, homophobes and extremists. They are caring, responsible, compassionate Canadians, and they are sick and tired of being attacked by the politically correct who sit on that side of the House. It has to stop because it is unacceptable. It would do well for those taking part in the smear campaigns to remember that every time they stand in the House to make those kinds of accusations.
This morning I had a call from a constituent who watched the television coverage of yesterday's extensive ceremonies involving MPs. I ask members to put themselves in the shoes of ordinary Canadians who watched that yesterday. They saw former members of Parliament honouring themselves by unveiling a series of wall plaques listing their names in the House of Commons. They saw them heading off for a cocktail party at the governor general's residents.
Those taxpayers were asking who was paying for all of this self-glorification. Do they not have big enough pensions already? Do they not have a big enough trough already? Do they not take any responsibility at all for what they have done to the country? Are they proud of the $583 billion debt they left for our children and our grandchildren? Are they proud of the highly excessive taxation levels forcing people to deal in the underground economy? Are they proud of a justice system that cannot protect us? Are they proud of the Young Offenders Act which lets young offenders roam out of control in gangs, not accountable for the crimes they commit?
They are the ones who caused all the problems. Why are they honouring themselves? It was because of them that millions of Canadians voted in 52 Reform MPs in the last election, a party with ethics that would stop wasting taxpayer money on gold plated pension plans and would restore some common sense to government.
The truth is the real extremists in our political system are sitting on the opposite side of the House. They are the traditional politicians who flocked to this place yesterday to admire their names on the gold plaques on the walls. They were the ones who before they began dismantling the CPP for ordinary Canadians voted themselves a gold plated pension plan that would be illegal in the private sector.
They were the ones who ignored the will of ordinary Canadians and rammed their politically correct legislation through Parliament. They are the ones who invoked political correctness so that Canadians are afraid to speak openly about the issues that concern them. As a Reform MP I have had to live through a lot of attacks from special interest groups which see their funding threatened.
On this latest attack that we have heard over the last couple of months, this extremist label that has popped up, the public sees labels for what they are, a smear campaign without foundation. As the constituent who called me this morning said, we have only to look at the actions of the traditional parties to see who the real extremists are.
Their $583 billion debt is extreme. Their punitive tax rates are extreme. Their decision to let dangerous offenders out of prison after a few years of sentence is extreme. Their actions in ramming special interest group bills through the House are extreme. Closing off debate on important bills is extreme. Their thousands of annual patronage appointments and grants to special interest groups are extreme. Most extreme of all is the legislation they passed for their own pension schemes.
All these things were achievements of the people like those on the opposite side, the traditional old line politicians who ignored what the people wanted them to do and enacted the will of the special interest groups instead. Yesterday they celebrated their achievements and people watched on television. Members should have heard the comments they made.
The people on the opposite side of the House are slow learners. There is no doubt in my mind that we have now reached the point where any party, federal or provincial, which does not listen to the voters and start enacting the will of the voters is going to find itself subject to elimination by the voters of the information age. We can already see the evidence that it is happening by looking at matters in the provinces and even at the federal level.
It is only the social engineers who still cling to the belief that people are too stupid, too mean, too intolerant, too lacking in compassion to govern themselves. Those social engineers are resisting change.
The traditionalists think they are the sole possessors of compassion, understanding and tolerance and that the voters can only be
trusted to make a decision once every five years about which benevolent dictatorship will govern them next. I know for certain, and every MP in this House must know, the public notices how every party when it gets elected says how clever the voters were to have selected it to run the country. Any time the public will is against one of its bills the first thing the party does is label the voters as ill-informed, mean-spirited, racist, homophobic, extremist. No wonder the voters have become cynical about their governments. They have good reason.
Let us look at an example which happened in the House just a couple of weeks ago. The member for York-Simcoe stood in this House and criticized the member for Yorkton-Melville who made a statement on behalf of a group of Cree Indians. Leonard Iron, a Cree of the Canoe Lake Band had handed a letter to my colleague from Yorkton-Melville and asked him to read it in the House. That is exactly what that member did. Then last week the member for York-Simcoe said in her statement in the House:

Once again a member of the Reform Party has lashed out against a minority group, this time Canada's aboriginal community. This Reform member made derogatory remarks about Canada's native leadership when he said that its leadership will turn native self-government into fascist states.

After she made the comment I walked across the floor of the House and I said to the member: "When you read that statement, did you know that my colleague was reading it from a letter from the Cree nation?" She said to me: "Yes, I did". I said: "What sort of person does that make you?"
I can respect differing opinions in this House. I am prepared to argue for the policies that I stand for but I have no respect for people who set out to destroy others by not using the facts.
Here is another example. I have been waiting for the answer to a question I put in this House in March of last year. I realize there has been a prorogation but anybody with an ounce of common sense knows that if any work had been done on the question it could continue after the House came back. Since March 1995 the question is:

With respect to the Squamish Indian Band in North Vancouver, what has the federal Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development determined to be (a) the total number of band members living on the reserve, (b) the total amount of funding provided to the band in each of the years from 1990 to 1994 from all federal government transfers, including but not limited to, transfers and grants for any purpose, government leases of land from the band, housing costs, education and training, special purpose funding and income from Park Royal South Shopping Centre lease collected on behalf of the band?

I have been waiting for an answer to the question for my constituents for more than a year. It is a disgrace the way this government conducts itself.
Unfortunately our parliamentary system has made it possible for the MPs of the traditional parties to be unaccountable between
elections and to ride to election on the coattails of a dictatorial leader who will tell them how to vote in the House. In my opinion this has the potential to rob them of their dignity, their decency and their morality and could reduce them to the level of trained seals.
Unfortunately those who hold the reins of power presently pay lip service to consultation and input. It is very rare for anything to change in their plans as a result of that input.
The Prime Minister has done nothing to rectify this problem despite the promises of free votes. If he truly believed in democracy, all he would have to do is rise in the House, the way Pierre Trudeau did when the present Prime Minister was the minister of finance, and state that a vote lost on a government bill does not mean the defeat of the government but should be followed by a confidence vote to restore confidence. This would allow democracy to prevail. It would allow meaningful debates in the House in which members would have a chance to talk openly and freely to perhaps convince one another to vote a different way.
The problem is there is no accountability. There is the same lack of accountability by ministers. For example, the minister of immigration answers letters from my constituents with ridiculous statements which I do not have time to read.
It is very depressing to see what happens here. I support the motion of my colleague and I hope others will also vote in favour of it.
Mr. Maurizio Bevilacqua (York North, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I paid attention to the hon. member's speech. Why is he so bitter about life as a parliamentarian? It seems that you question the importance of public service, when you cannot enjoy a historical moment like the one we had yesterday when the names of people who have contributed to the history of this country, who have given of themselves to the improvement of our society, that somehow you would view that-
The Speaker: Order. I do not know if the hon. member is addressing the other member directly, but I would prefer he address the Chair.
Maurizio Bevilacqua: Mr. Speaker, it was an initiative that you initiated as a Speaker. I wonder why the hon. member would feel that somehow it is an abuse of power to respect history. The names that appear on those plaques are of people who have been nation builders. They helped create the social security system, medicare, Canada pension plan. The modernization of our nation has occurred because of the input of so many members of Parliament who have practised their faith in the country here in this Chamber. You
do a great disservice to this nation by saying that members of Parliament do not play an important role.
I will return to some of the issues you raised.
The Speaker: My colleague, you must address me, please.
Maurizio Bevilacqua: Mr. Speaker, I will return to some of the issues the hon. member mentioned. He sees nothing good coming out of this session of Parliament. He feels that the world is falling apart, that Canada is nowhere.
This country has been named by the United Nations as the number one country. We have one of the best employment records, job creation records in any of the industrialized countries. Over 604,000 jobs have been created. There has been a reduction in unemployment. Past governments stated that we would not have single digit unemployment in Canada for a long time. They said it would be double digit for a number of years. That has been reduced.
Consider the deficit. Not only has the government met its target but has even improved on its projection. The hon. member said that things are so bad in this nation that absolutely nothing is working right. Yet there are so many positive indicators that the government is moving in the right direction, that Canada has a great opportunity to remain as number one in the entire world.
The member talked about having a Prime Minister who is a dictator. I do not know which House of Commons or which Parliament he is in. On many occasions the Prime Minister has expressed the will of the party in very democratic ways. There have been free votes in the House. I have seen how many times there have been free votes on the other side. The hon. member ought to pay a little more attention to what is going on.
Is it part of being a member of the Reform Party that you have to be bitter about life in general and bitter about anything that governments are doing to bring about positive change? Why is it that you cannot see the positives that are occurring throughout the country? Have you not been around long enough?
The Speaker: Once again I urge members to address the Chair at all times, not one another.
Ted White: Mr. Speaker, first I would like to deal with the issue of free votes. As the critic for democratic reforms for the party this is my area of specialty. I would like to put on the record that every vote which is held in the House is a free vote for the Reform Party. It is just that our definition of free votes is a little different than the other side's.
The way we define free votes is that a member must show that in order to vote contrary to the general principles of the party there must be support from constituents. We do have a process which a member must go through in order to demonstrate that the way he or she is voting is actually representative of constituents. There is a process. Every single vote that we have is free.
In terms of whether or not I am bitter, I would prefer to call it passionate. I am passionate on behalf of my constituents who are, very rightly, cynical about what this government does. It is cynicism which led to the dumping of the PCs at the last election and the voting in of 52 Reform MPs.
The people came to the Hill yesterday to honour themselves and to look at their names on plaques. The member says they built a great country. I will admit that they contributed to the country, but in ways in which a lot of people would disagree with. Most Canadians are not satisfied with the way the justice system treats them or protects them. They are not satisfied with the level of debt.
The member mentioned what a wonderful job they had done in controlling the deficit. The fact is, they have cut $9 billion out of government spending at the same time as they added $9 billion in interest payments. The finance minister, with great credit, has walked along a tightrope right down the middle, but he has kept us on the treadmill. The problem is still not solved. The debt is still rising dramatically. In the last hour in which we have been debating, the debt has risen another $2 million. That debt is a millstone around our necks which will continue to erode our social programs.
I would like to deal with the names on the gold plated plaques. I never intended any disrespect to our Speaker. I am well aware that the plaques were funded with private money. Really, that was not the point. The point I was trying to convey on behalf of my constituents was how that exercise looked when someone was watching it on a television set in western Canada. I believe I was successful in making that point because of the reaction of the member.
My constituents would have no problem whatsoever supporting plaques in the House of Commons showing the names of everyone who has served here if they thought they were getting value for their money, if they thought MPs were not ripping them off, if they thought MPs were following the will of their constituents. There is not a scrap of evidence that ever happens. Every piece of evidence that every constituent has is that nobody gives a darn for their opinion from the day of the election until six weeks before the next election. That is the way this place operates.
I have a letter which was sent to me by the minister of immigration in response to a letter I sent asking her to deport yet another group of criminal refugees who are committing crimes in my riding. I have had a plethora of them over the past year. I cannot get rid of these people. They are a menace to society. I wrote to her again on March 18. She was kind enough to reply on May 15. She said, basically, that she does not want to deport anybody in lieu of
sentencing because she wants to make sure they realize they must serve their sentences and that simply deporting them would be to diminish the severity of their crimes. Frankly, that is a load of rubbish.
The way my constituents look at it is that these people will get out on early release to wander around in the community. Early release and probation are considered to be a part of sentencing. There is no accountability. These people should be deported at the time they are convicted.
Mr. John Godfrey (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister for International Cooperation, Lib.): Madam Speaker, today we are debating a very weighty subject which is the origins of cynicism. I do not know if we pursued the debate to its final conclusion we would have to have a debate on the human condition, but I suppose we would have to do it with the political conditions we find before us today.
I suppose one could ask who is putting the question about cynicism and perhaps ask them a couple of questions back. I want to start with something rather specific that was said by the member for Medicine Hat. In his speech he raised a litany of things which he said would be the source of cynicism about our government. I was curious at his roll call.
One detail leapt out of his speech on which I decided to do a little research. The member informed the House that the Canadian Bankers Association in Vancouver received from the Government of Canada a grant of $105,000. This was cited as an example of waste. Of course there were no details provided so I decided I might try and help out the hon. member by finding some details myself.
It turns out that this much criticized grant which the hon. member referred to was used exclusively to train aboriginal students and persons with disabilities. They would be better prepared to enter the workforce, get off social assistance and expand their skills so they could access entry level positions within the banks.
The banks themselves provided on the spot training and all sorts of support significantly over the period of the grant to help these aboriginal people and disabled persons. There were 55 students from 1991 to 1994. Forty-seven of them graduated and 30 of them were hired by the banks.
I only raise this seemingly minor point simply to ask: If the hon. member had done the research and had found out what I found out, would he have made the point? If he had made the point knowing what he knew, would that not have contributed to the cynicism which surrounds the political process, that he might have deliberately suppressed the most crucial information about the case he cited?
There are broader reasons for political cynicism which can be laid directly at the door of the Reform Party. One might ask what the source is of cynicism about public institutions, governments, politicians and the political process.
I suspect that if one examined the very origins of the Reform Party itself, one might say it is an anti-political political party. I dare say Reformers would not disagree with that. These are politicians who say they hate politicians. Indeed, the entire Reform Party platform is based on catering to a fundamental dislike which human beings have of public institutions, governments, politicians and the political process itself. Therefore, if one likes, the Reform Party was constituted on a principle of self-loathing as a political party.
The origins of those ideas of course are to be found south of the border and across the Atlantic. The origins of those ideas come from that bundle of concepts which could be described as Ronald-Thatcherism. It is a strange view of the world which basically states that governments are not neutral actors, they are bad actors, and that for all of the major social and economic issues of our time the marketplace should decide and the individual must reign in complete freedom. Those are the major tenets of the Reform Party and they belong to a larger school of intellectual thought which we saw active in the 1980s.
There is also a certain connection, which I dare say they would deny, between that chain of ideas and the ideas of the predecessor government to our own. The previous Prime Minister, Mr. Mulroney, very much subscribed to the Ronald-Thatcherite school of thinking with its libertarian ideas. He also subscribed to the notion that the model for society was the United States. He used to state so simply about Canadian foreign policy: "I know who my friends are".
I suspect that the cynicism which Canadians feel about the political process which was certainly accelerated during the Mulroney years comes from two sources, not one. The obvious source was the suggestion of favouritism and patronage. But more subtly the source was a fundamental belief by the leader of the country that the model was somewhere else, that headquarters were somewhere else and we would be very well off if we could emulate those values and that kind of society. That was a subtle undermining of the political process and a major contribution to cynicism. The Reform Party has contributed to the continuation of this cynicism.
It was interesting to observe the Winds of Change conference over the past weekend. There was such a clear distinction between what I would call true Conservatism, which I do not think Mr. Mulroney embodied, and the kind of radical rightist thinking which is characteristic of the Reform Party. I entirely sympathize with the Reform Party because of course there can be no true union between true Conservatives and radical rightists.
What do radical rightists believe? Jeffrey Simpson put it very nicely the other day in an article:

These radical rightists are essentially libertarians with little sense of community. As such, they represent the antithesis of genuine conservatism, which emphasises the organic nature of society, tradition, pragmatism, order and reciprocal obligations. A society that values cohesion and order must have a sense of obligation, of what we owe each other, but a libertarian society is founded on the idea that we owe each other nothing except the ability to protect individuals from interference in the unfettered enjoyment of their liberty and property.

This is the radical rightist or Reform world view. Of course, it represents cynicism not only about governments, politics, institutions and the like referred to in Reform's motion, but it represents-and here I echo the remarks of the member for York North-a cynicism about the human condition, about human beings. It is a meanspirited view of humankind. It is a distrust of society. It is, as I have said, a kind of political and social self-loathing.
One might ask what the alternative is to this and why would our alternative Liberalism be of a different order. There are five principles of Liberalism which help to dissipate cynicism, which give people hope and differentiate us not only from the radical rightists of the Reform Party or of Mr. Frum. They not only differentiate us in some sense from the traditional Conservatives, although we would be closer to them, but also from the New Democratic Party, whatever that is.
The first important distinction which separates us from the pack is a dedication to innovation. It is true, particularly in this century, that the Liberal Party has been innovative in economic reform and innovative in social reform. The Liberals are innovative now in recognizing that when institutions which were created for one purpose, such as unemployment insurance and the health care system, now find themselves in a different situation, we are not afraid to innovate again by going back to the fundamental principles of what it is we are trying to achieve with the social system in question, be it the health care system or social support for individuals. Innovation is at the heart of what we did in the red book and what I hope we will be able to do in the remainder of our mandate.
A second distinguishing characteristic, which is almost a psychological tone if I may say, is optimism: optimism about human beings, optimism about society, optimism about the future of the world. It is an optimism which is not to be taken for granted but to be worked on through innovation. We have to be optimistic about this country, about our families, and about business if we are to make a go of it. We cannot start from the principle that it is dreadful and getting worse. We have to be optimistic.
A third important strand, and here we connect up with some of the other ones I have referred to, is a concern for the individual's welfare, not ignoring vast numbers of humankind because they are not our kind. It is a concern for the individual.
A fourth distinction-and this one really does separate us from the others-is a view of the state which says on the one hand, unlike the NDP, we do not think the state can do it all. On the other hand, unlike the radical right, we do not think there is no role whatsoever for the state. It is a view which says sometimes it is useful and sometimes it is not.
I wish to pick up on some remarks made by the Minister for International Cooperation. More important, the state now has to be in a partnership with all elements of society. We no longer speak of nations in a sense and we no longer speak of states; we speak of societies which compete collectively as state-sharing vessels.
Sometimes I agree with the language of Mr. Bouchard when he talks the language of social solidarity. It is all of the elements coming together to compete. It is the Team Canada approach internalized which will advance the cause of this society. We cannot command and control this economy or this society, but neither can we neglect it.
We have to use our convening power to bring together all the elements of Canadian society to advance the technological agenda, to advance the social agenda because no one person, no one institution, no one situs, in sociological terms, can do the job alone. That is a distinguishing characteristic: that we view the state as having an active but not dominant role. That is the fourth condition of Liberalism.
Finally, and I think this is crucial as well, Liberals do not see themselves either as individual members or collectively as representing the interests of one group of Canadians or one social group as in contradistinction to another. It is the difference between what has happened in Ontario in recent elections where the ins under the NDP represented a certain group of people: the trade unionists, the environmentalists, very worthy people. Then suddenly there was a swing and the new ins represent the country club set and reject the views of labour and all the rest of it.
Liberals do not play that game. Liberals say they protect all those interests and attempt through society to harmonize their interests to a common purpose. That is the distinction between what we do and what the Reform Party does. That is why I think Canadians have a great deal less to be cynical about as they think about the Liberal Party than as they think about the Reform Party.
Jim Silye: Madam Speaker, the hon. member for Don Valley West talks about what a Liberal is. It seems to me, especially in the last two and one-half years I have been here and when I participated in my first election campaign,
the definition of a Liberal is to say anything you need to to get elected and then do what you want when you are here.
The Prime Minister himself exemplified that statement when he said: "Ask me after I am in government. I will tell you how I govern after I get elected". Make any kind of promise you want and then get here and do what you want. In my speech I will talk about the broken promises.
The member claims that the Liberal Party has a social conscience and it is looking after health care. How do the Liberals look after health care, education and welfare? They lumped it all together, said that they did not know how to do it, so they just took $7.5 billion and cut it. They cut $7.5 billion form established programs financing and the Canada assistance plan and that is how they solved it.
Is that a solution? Is that responsible government? Is that the way the member thinks that his party has a social conscience, by downloading health care, education and welfare on to the provinces so that the Ontario legislature gets the rocks thrown at it and not this building?
John Godfrey: Madam Speaker, I spoke of the importance of innovation. If the hon. member for Calgary Centre were to read the chapter in the red book on health, he would discover a radically new way of thinking about health care which would link it to our social programs, to the way in which we view education and training and indeed to the way in which we view universities. That is what I mean by innovation.
There was a time when we concentrated on health care. The most advanced thinking in the field is to concentrate on the determinants of health itself. Surely health is what we hope to be the outcome of a health care system, but it is not the outcome of the health care system. Health is the outcome of what happened to us earlier in life, in early childhood for instance.
It is our position that we have to work with the provinces because we do not, as the hon. member well knows, have the constitutional responsibility for the things he mentions. We should work together as partners in a Team Canada approach that looks at how all these issues are connected.
If we get it right with early childhood, from birth to the time children enter the school system, the positive outcomes will not only affect health status of adults, the learning status of adults, but will radically improve crime statistics, which the hon. member is worried about.
What I am suggesting is that they will continue to go up until we take a holistic view of how these things hang together. That is what I mean by innovative thinking and a willingness to rethink old problems.
Monte Solberg: Mr. Speaker, I must address some of the assumptions the hon. member was making about the Reform Party. He talked about the radical right and all that kind of nonsense.
There are many people on this side who believe in a very organic way of looking at the world, a conservative way of looking at the world, but we view it a little differently than the member opposite.
We believe good common sense, an organic view of the world and slow growth come from people and not from the government. That is why we reject Liberal government social engineering. I will give a good example that ties in precisely to the example the hon. member used about the subsidy that goes to the banks, the $105,000 I raised in my speech.
The member mentioned that the $105,000 that goes to the banks, which made $5 billion in profits last year, is used to hire aboriginals and people with disabilities. What the member failed to mention is that his own government has put into place social engineering in the form of affirmative action that forces banks and others to hire visible minorities, women, people with disabilities and aboriginals.
Therefore what we have in this situation is legislation that forces the banks to do something. The banks make $5 billion in profits and then the government gives the banks $105,000 to fulfil the legislation they have set out.
Would the member acknowledge that perhaps what the Reform Party really stands for is allowing people to make a lot of the judgments themselves because they are the ones who are truly socially conservative, the ones who create a sense of community, not the government?
John Godfrey: Madam Speaker, that was a very confusing question. Let us start with the $105,000 that went to the bankers association to train aboriginals and disabled people. It was intended to do precisely that, to allow people who would not otherwise be in the workforce to cease to be liabilities and to become social assets by entering the work force. They did. The program worked.
The member used the language of force. The banks, he suggested, would not have done that. They were forced to take on board, because of equity legislation, these kinds of people and were therefore forced to train them. What if they had not been forced? Is he telling me they would not have done it, that it was not worthwhile doing it in its own right, that somebody in this society should not take care of aboriginal people and disabled people to integrate them into the workforce?
He may well say if we would let the banks do it on their own, but that is not what he suggested. He suggested they were forced to do it. The implication was that they would not otherwise have done it. If they would not have done it, who would have done it?
Monte Solberg: Madam Speaker, the member's comments betray his attitude toward the people. The point that I am making is people will make good judgments about how they treat other individuals. The reason I say that is in the situation the member refers to he forgets there are a complex set of variables involved.
We have a bank industry that is very tightly regulated. There is no competition among banks. We have all kinds of very high tax levels. We have high payroll taxes. There is actually a disincentive to hiring all kinds of people.
We have high unemployment due in large part to the fact that the government has intervened so heavily in the economy that it actually provides a disincentive to hiring.
That means banks and other groups hire people who come best prepared. That is not a surprise to me. It may be to the hon. member. When we look at it at the local level, when people have a choice people are more than willing to help out their neighbour. They are more than willing to help out people down the street who may come from a disadvantaged situation.
The hon. member has forgotten a huge part of this equation. There are all kinds of factors he did not consider such as interventions from the government that provide disincentives to hiring some of the people he talked about.
John Godfrey: Madam Speaker, in this case it comes down to this. If there are people who are disadvantaged in society how are we to ensure to the maximum that they will cease to be disadvantaged, that they will as individuals, which I stressed in my talk about Liberal principles, have the best possible chance of access to jobs?
I do not discount what the hon. member said about the virtue of community and the importance of individual initiative or community initiative or company initiative. I do not discount that in the slightest. It is a crucial part of the social fabric of the country. I do not think it is only the role of government to do that.
What worries me in that analysis is what happens to the people who are not the neighbour at our gate. What happens to the people who are the strangers in our streets? In the case of aboriginals, many of them are. Look at our large urban cities. Look at who those people are and how disconnected they are from our neighbourhoods and our families and our communities.
If it is not society acting through its state, working with its partners, the private sector and communities, that will take care of those people in some kind of fairly systematic way, then not only will we be an unkind and uncaring society, we will be an inefficient society. We will be forced to use more of our resources for security guards and prisons and deal with people who drop out of schools and all the rest of it.
It is in everybody's interest to behave in a collective manner and to recognize the potentially positive role of government in doing that. We are not saying government is any better than the private sector or individuals or anything else like that. We are simply saying it is no worse. I say this as an economic historian. Its track record in worrying about the betterment of humankind is considerably better over time than that of the business community.
Jim Silye: Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak in favour of our motion.
I refer to the Prime Minister's 1993 election commitment that "there will not be a promise I do not keep". I went through the red book. I researched the red book. I found in the red book 187 promises. I found also, as I checked them off with some help from some researchers, that 46 have been kept. That is drastically less than the 75 per cent bragged about in the testimony of the Prime Minister a couple of weeks ago in the House. The Liberal government has 121 promises to go if it wants to keep the promises in the red book.
The Prime Minister also challenged any Canadian, not just MPs, "any time hold up the red book and ask me where I am on this promise". I would like to review some of these promises and maybe I will ask him where he is on some of these promises.
To get elected, as I mentioned to the member for Don Valley West earlier, this government when in opposition, when out on the hustings, used rhetoric, language and words to get elected that are so far from the reality of what it is doing today that it really brings into question integrity and accountability. Those are the two areas I will touch on.
We have even had a deputy prime minister resign because of the promise she made. The finance minister admitted they cannot keep the GST promise. The only person left who will not admit he cannot keep it, will not keep it, will not kill it, will not get rid of it, will not scrap it, is the Prime Minister.
He still thinks he is keeping his promise, that he will replace it. He says read page 22. I read page 22. It says they will replace it with a system of taxation that generates equivalent revenues. It does not. It will cost $1 billion in three provinces alone. "It will be fairer to consumers and businesses". It is not. To small business only it is fairer. For consumers it increases taxation on those goods and services that the PST did not apply to.
The reality is the government has not replaced the GST. What it has done is replaced the PST. Is that what it campaigned on? Did it say replace the PST with the GST? It has entrenched the GST into our lives forever. It has now become a 15 per cent GST. It is now to be there for all future generations. We will never get rid of it now unless a new government comes in and abolishes it with a new system of taxation. This was a big promise made to get elected, a big promise the government has failed to keep. It smacks of duplicity and exaggerated claims.
The Minister of Finance, the minister of myth, is now trying to brag about how he has done everything in the world to make this a better place to live. I have never yet seen a finance minister or a chief executive officer of any corporation in the private sector, of which I was a part for 25 years before I came here, stand up before a board of directors or shareholders and review the balance sheet of that corporation or the balance sheet of a nation and brag only about one side of the ledger, about how the deficit is coming down.
The finance minister gave an 80 minute speech to the shareholders of the country and not once did he mention the word debt. Look at his speech and find where he talks about the debt, the interest costs to service the debt or how much the debt is going up. He brags about six, five, four, three and hopes for two, one, zero, but will not make a commitment to it and does not talk about the debt, how the interest is rising on that debt and how that interest cost will suffocate the very social programs the member for Don Valley West brags about in terms of helping the disabled.
As much as they brag about how much they are helping, we subsidize and give $8 billion to aboriginals and he still claims they are disabled. Through five different programs in the expenditure system we have, we give $9 billion for children one way or the other and we still have a million starving children out there. That is a poor job and it reflects on the government.
To get elected the government promised to introduce an infrastructure program that would create jobs, jobs, jobs. There are still 1.5 million Canadians unemployed. Where are the jobs? The Prime Minister has now admitted once again that he cannot deliver on that promise of jobs. The infrastructure program has helped in some areas but overall it has been a failure. It has created 100,000 interim jobs and maybe 30,000 full time jobs at a cost of $6 billion. That is $60,000 a job. Is that worth it? I do not know.
The government also promised to reduce UI premiums to help businesses have money for investment and growth. Today we had a statement from the minister that they have reduced premiums, one-twentieth of one per cent. How much will that help businesses? How much will an entrepreneur reinvest? How many people will he hire on that basis?
What the government also did is increase the taxes on part time employees. Now when a business hires part time people it has to go to the trouble of filling out these UI forms. It is another tax. It increased payroll taxes by 7 per cent on part time employees, which inhibits and hurts. Businesses do not want that. No, the government wants more revenue. The minister talks about no taxes. That is also a myth.
There was talk about the Young Offenders Act, what is the root of increased crime and what is the problem in society. We have to empower people, but if we are to empower people we have to do two things. We have to leave more money in their pockets so they can look after their families and themselves and we need tougher rules for those people who do the crime. If someone does the crime they should pay the time. I do not care if they are 12 years old. I have been to public schools talking to kids in grades 6, 7, 8 and 9. They all say that if they do the crime they should pay the time.
However, the Minister of Justice, this soft hearted Liberal, does not want to do that. He talks like he is doing a lot of stuff but he is not. Crime is up.
What has the government promised on health care. It stated it would have a national forum and get to the bottom of health care. It would solve the problem and guarantee that every Canadian will have free health care.
Is health care free? The Prime Minister thinks it is free. He says it is free and he is going to protect it. The government and the provinces had one meeting in two and a half years and they broke up. What happened next? We are not going to hear about it until the next election. So much for health care.
The government reduced the funding for health care and education. It said to the provinces: "We are going to give you less. You handle it. But we will guarantee that five years from now we will always give you $11 billion. We will do that for you, but you handle this cutback. We do not know how to handle it".
The Liberals also said that they would restore integrity in government and bring in an ethics counsellor who would be accountable to Parliament. That is another broken promise. I even forget the name of the ethics counsellor, we have not heard of him for so long. He is responsible to the Prime Minister. That is not a watch dog. The ethics counsellor is a lap dog. That is not the integrity about which the Prime Minister spoke. It is an example of the rhetoric the Liberals used to get elected. The facts are different than the rhetoric. I am asking Canadians to recognize that.
The Liberals said they would cancel the Pearson airport deal. Yes, they did. They kept that promise. It has cost us half a billion dollars so far. It has been kicked around in the Senate. Guess what? It is coming back here. They will do another study to show that if they had gone ahead and privatized it those people who would have been taking the risk would have lost X amount of dollars. How silly. Do something with it. If it is to be cancelled, then cancel it. Handle the lawsuits and get rid of it. No, this government does not know how to do it. So far it has cost us half a billion dollars and it will cost more.
The Liberals said they would get rid of the EH-101s. They were going to cancel the helicopter deal. There were 55 or 54 EH-101s. Kim Campbell knocked the number down to 45 to try to save her butt and get re-elected. However, she was not re-elected. The Liberals said they would save that $5.8 billion. They said the country did not need the helicopters. Guess what? The department of defence needs more helicopters.
Did the Liberals tell us door to door that they would cancel this deal but spend $2 billion on another one? No, they did not say that. The rhetoric they used to get elected is different from the facts and what they are doing. The definition of a Liberal: "Say anything you want, do anything you want, be anything you want to get elected. Once you are there, do what you feel like doing".
As far as accountability goes, the Prime Minister said: "They can vote for me or not vote for me in the next election". He does not care. It is just one day every five years that he wants to be held accountable.
In opposition members of the government railed, ranted and raved about closure. When the Tories used closure the Liberal opposition said it was anti-democratic and dictatorial. This government has used closure on numerous occasions. It has limited debate on important issues that all Canadians should know more details about. It has invoked time allocation which has limited the amount of members who can speak. The government has impeded our freedom of speech. It has restricted the amount of time that 295 members can speak on controversial bills in order to get them out of the way. Canadians do not know both sides of the issues. That is what debate is all about. That is what democracy is all about. That is how the House should work. We must have proper time to debate both sides of the issue before we vote. Time allocation is anti-democratic. The Liberals said that when they were in opposition.
When they were in opposition they had integrity. When they were here they had values. What happened when they went over to that side of the House? Why did they lose it? Why do they no longer do the things they said they would do when they were in opposition? I do not understand it. I guess I never will.
Let me talk about travel. When Mulroney travelled the world there was a headline in the media every day. When this Prime Minister travels it is Team Canada and it is good. What did the Prime Minister do to the media? How did he get the media on his side? This Prime Minister has travelled more than Mulroney did in his first four, five or six years. In two and a half years this Prime Minister has travelled more. Nothing is being said about it.
We talked earlier about the patronage appointments to the Senate. Where is the integrity when a prime minister of this country stands up and talks about appointing senators? I know that is our system. We want senators to be elected. That is what this party stands for. We want a Senate which is effective, elected and equal. We think there should be two Houses in the country.
The system is patronage. The people who they think will do a good job are appointed. There are rules as to where the senators come from. Should a senator not be appointed to represent the region? I think so.
There are people on the other side who are well studied-I see two of them across from me-who are well learned and probably have impeccable credentials when it comes to the meaning democracy and political values. They know more about it than I do. I am just a businessman. I know the two members across from me know this.
Is it not important for the Prime Minister to simply say: "I appoint this man because I think he will do a good job for Alberta", instead of, "I will appoint a Liberal and he will represent my party in the Senate?" Is that democracy? That is not right. I know it is not right. The Prime Minister knows it is not right, yet he does it and he gets away with it.
I will get back to the GST by reading from two letters. In opposition and even in government, what some of these members have done with the GST and harmonization is replace the PST, which was not in the red book, with the GST. They entrenched it into our lives forever.
When the Liberals were in opposition they said such things as: "The GST is to be applied to reading materials. How do we expect to have another generation of people who can know more and can compete in the a world around us?" This question was asked by the former Minister of Health in 1990.
"Thousands of other Canadians are appalled that the government decided to tax books, magazines and newspapers. We in the opposition objected specifically to the inclusion of these products. We continue to oppose it". This was said by the member for Kingston and the Islands in 1993 when the Liberals were in opposition.
"The government is proposing to add GST by taxing the printed word. It strikes a blow at learning, the transfer of information". This was a statement made by the current member for Willowdale, the chairman of the finance committee.
They all said that it is wrong to tax reading. They all said that it is incorrect to tax reading. They all talked about, but what did they just do with harmonization? They increased the tax on reading by 7 per cent. I give up, that is enough on that topic.
The minister of myth, the Minister of Finance said: "We have produced three budgets and we have not increased personal taxes in the first, second or third". He has said it so often that I can almost do an imitation: "We haven't increased personal taxes, we haven't increased corporate taxes, we haven't increased excise taxes. In
fact, we haven't increased taxes". Wrong, wrong, wrong. I will point this out.
Here is one example, a letter from a senior in South Surrey, Mr. Sidney Martin:

Do we now have a government that blatantly lies to us? We were told that there would be no change in income taxes, 1994-1995.
On line 301 of the income tax return a non-refundable tax credit of $3,482 is available to those over 65 years of age-subject to certain limitations. In 1994 a minimum credit of $1,741 was allowed, but in 1995 this has been reduced to zero dollars.
Although my taxable income is down $1,244 in 1995, my income tax, as a result of this change, has increased by $138. In other words, I am suffering a net loss of $1,382 in 1995.
As a World War II merchant navy veteran I question, is this the type of government we deserve after defending our country from 1939 to 1945?

Is this the kind of finance minister we deserve, one who stands up and blatantly misrepresents what he has done in his budget when he claims that he has not raised taxes? There are two ways to raise taxes: raising the personal rate or broadening the base and reducing deductions. That is what he has done. That is clearly a tax increase.
On May 7 the Prime Minister claimed that the Liberals have managed to reduce the deficit with no tax increases. This is untrue. It is blatantly untrue. On the same day the Minister of Finance, the minister of myth, stated that in the last three budgets the government did not raise personal taxes. This is also untrue. This letter is evidence that he raised taxes for this gentleman by $138. This is proof.
The following facts about the three budgets of 1994, 1995 and 1996 are for the minister of myth and his Department of Finance that keeps feeding him these wonderful lines to use to try to fool the Canadian public. Economists agree there are two ways to increase taxes: explicitly raising the tax rate from 26 per cent to 29 per cent, or 17 per cent to 20 per cent or by broadening the definition of taxable income to include previously excluded income. The federal government has relied on the latter method because of its stealth characteristics.
Taxpayers do not see an increase in their tax rates and hence are fooled into believing that their tax liability stayed the same. It is on that basis that this minister of myth claims no tax increases. However, at tax time that taxpayer's tax liability will increase just as surely as if tax rates had been specifically raised. Once again, this is a specific example of how that works.
Excluding changes to the Income Tax Act designed to improve compliance and crack down on the underground economy, the government has instituted 14 revenue positive changes to personal income taxes; 15 positive changes to corporate income taxes and 2 revenue positive changes to excise taxes for a total of 31 revenue positive changes to taxes, which means 31 tax increases. Yet the Minister of Finance stands before the Canadian public and says: "No tax increases".
I have just shown that he has raised taxes 31 times. These increases add up to $10.5 billion in extra revenue over four years. The truth is, what Liberals say and the rhetoric they use does not match the facts.
Liberals have increased taxes 31 times and taxpayers will pay an extra $10.5 billion. As much as the Liberals claim they are reducing the deficit, the debt is growing faster, the interest costs to service the debt is growing. Since they came to power it has gone from $40 billion to $50 billion and the debt is up by $70 billion. When they leave this Chamber in the next election, they will have increased the debt by $112 billion. That is the true financial picture of the country. We need a finance minister that will address the problem of the debt and the service cost of that debt.
Hon. Pierre S. Pettigrew (Minister for International Cooperation and Minister responsible for Francophonie, Lib.): Madam Speaker, I was astonished to hear the hon. member tell us that the government has done nothing right since it was elected. I would like to know if there is anything that it has done right? Just a little thing. It would be good for the Canadian public, the viewer who may be watching, to see that there are some things to hope for in this country, which I love very much.
In a more and more global world, can we honestly blame the Prime Minister of Canada who travels the world with business people to create jobs by helping business people to develop contracts.
I would like to ask the hon. member what he thinks about international affairs and what he thinks the government should do concerning international trade, given the fact that so many present and future jobs depend on it. We have an extraordinarily good record as far as job creation related to international trade.
Jim Silye: Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his question. First, I never said that the government does nothing right. He must remember that I am in opposition. My job is to hold the government accountable. Therefore, by holding the government accountable I point out the areas where it is deficient: 121 promises yet to be kept, 46 broken promises. It is my job to point that out.
The one thing the government has done right which has helped the respectability of the country, is setting a deficit target to GDP, even though it is low, and meeting the target and appearing that it is doing better all the time is a positive, good message for the economy. It is good for everybody and good for the finial markets.
There is your compliment. I gladly give it. However, having given it, the problem is the debt. By concentrating on the deficit and not making a commitment to get to zero, not to get to a surplus, the government is focused in the wrong direction. It is my job to point that out. The focus should be on the debt, the cost of servicing the interest on the debt. Therefore, the increases in the revenue have to be greater than the growth of the debt and the service costs on that debt. That is my advice, that is my recommendation which has been ignored by the government for two and a half years.
There is no question with respect to international affairs that there is a time when the Prime Minister should travel and there is a time when there is a need to travel. The first trip he took to China was a necessity because of those deals. The member now claims the finance minister has signed and closed those deals as if he is the one responsible. Let us tell the truth. He is not responsible for that. These were deals and negotiations that have been going on for two, three, four and five years by private and public sector and government to government as well.
There comes a time when certain people in politics in Asia have to see that the politicians here are behind and backing and would shore-up. That trip was worthwhile. That was one trip, five days, but how many other days has the Prime Minister been out of the country? It is 176 days. How many other jobs has he created with those other trips? My point is this gentleman made a lot of promises to get elected. He should be in the House more. He should be leading his party because it needs to be lead. The ranks are pretty thin.
Then he had to fire all his parliamentary secretaries, fire a couple of cabinet ministers and bring in two rookies from Quebec to help him handle that province, which the finance minister almost lost. He had to bring in two experts from Quebec. That is the kind of depth that party has and that is a sign of weakness, although the two members he brought in are outstanding in their field.
Ms. Jean Augustine (Etobicoke-Lakeshore, Lib.): Madam Speaker, I am forced to ask the member a question. It seems this entire motion and the member's remarks are very self-serving especially when the member says "my position is to oppose and I can recount some of the good things you have done, but I would put a motion on the floor that calls for non-confidence in you because you are not doing what I would like you to do".
It seems that if he is putting forward our positive record, if the member is telling of some of the things we said we would do and did, there could be some other ways in which the member can find opportunities to work with us to ensure that some of his good ideas connect with our good ideas and that we do the best we can for Canadian society.
Would good ideas does the member have that could match some of the good things we laid out and some of the paths we are working along for the benefit of all Canadians? How can he work with us to ensure that agenda becomes the best possible one?
Jim Silye: Madam Speaker, I can help the government by the very method I am using here today.
It is not what we promise but what we say. I am only criticizing the red book. We and other people took a look at the red book. There were 187 promises made in the red book. I have said the government has kept 46 of them. There is the compliment. It has 121 to go and only one year left before an election. It had better crank it up.
How we in opposition help the government is to hold the government accountable to those policies and principles it uses to get elected. The Liberals promised to protect the civil service. They fired 44,000. They promised stable funding for the CBC. When we came out with our first budget and said we would cut spending on the CBC by $330 million guess what? The Liberals broke that promise. They called us slash and burn and draconian for recommending that. They slashed the CBC to the tune of $337 million, $7 million more than what we said. Where is the slash and burn now? Where is the draconian budget cutting now?
Our job is to to exactly what we are doing, holding the government side accountable, questioning integrity and showing incompetence if there is any because taxpayers have invested in 295 people to look after their interests. The government can brag about what it has done and done right. I wish it would not distort the truth, though.
I wish the minister of myth would use reality rather than fiction. I have to point out what he is doing wrong. That is wrong. It is wrong to talk to Canadians that way. What is right is to talk about the whole picture. A true financial picture has assets and liabilities. People have to talk about their liabilities and not only their assets. Although he has done well on the deficit, what the government should be doing is targeting the debt as a percentage of GDP.
On a federal basis currently that is running at 76 per cent. Our debt at close to $600 billion is 76 per cent of our GDP. If the provincial debts are combined with that, we are at a trillion dollars. We are at 104 per cent debt to GDP. That is very high and the credit rating goes to risk.
Control over finances is not in our hands when 40 per cent of that debt is outside the country. My contribution to the government is to make it aware of the facts, remind it of the facts and hope it addresses the facts. That is how I help.
The government, the finance minister and the Prime Minister have the power to act. We do not. There are so many things the government is missing that it may sound like a diatribe on poor
government, but for me to talk about all the good ideas that we have would take another week.
Mr. Art Hanger (Calgary Northeast, Ref.): Madam Speaker, I am pleased to support the Reform supply motion on government broken promises.
I refer to the Prime Minister's statement in 1993 during the election that "there will not be a promise I do not keep". Those words ring very clear in my mind given that during the campaign in my riding of Calgary Northeast it was a very heated time.
It became very intense over one issue in my riding, criminal justice. There was a calling to account from all the candidates about what they would do about the crime problem in the country. There was concern about the Young Offenders Act, early release, what is happening in our prisons and why the police are not able to enforce the law adequately and uniformly.
Of course the Prime Minister and the red book reflected how safe the streets would be under a Liberal government. The problem at that time was the streets were made unsafe by previous Liberal governments. Another Liberal government came forward with statements that it would make people feel much more safe and that it would look after the violence that was increasing in society.
I refer to 1962 stats and compare them with stats of 1994. In 1962 there were 221 violent incidents per 100,000 population in Canada. In 1994 the violent crime rate increased to 1,037 per 100,000 population. That represents a 369 per cent increase in police reported violent crime over a 32 year period.
I was a police officer during those years. I could see crime increase over my tenure with the Calgary city police force. Nobody here, especially those on that side of the House, could ever tell me or the people in this country that violent crime has not increased by at least that percentage, regardless of what Statistics Canada is telling everyone here, and those on the government side believing violent crime and crime in general are going down.
Let us look at the broad picture. In 1962, 221 violent crimes per 100,000 population as opposed to 1,037 in 1994. That speaks for itself. Most of that is a result of Liberal policy initiated by not only this government but the two previous governments.
Let us look at some of the statements regarding the present policy as passed by this Liberal government. The government started with a bang. It started with the gun control bill. The government said it will among other measures counter illegal importation of banned and restricted firearms into Canada and prohibit anyone convicted of an indictable drug related offence, a stalking offence or any other violent offence from owning or possessing a gun. That is quite a mouthful.
Go to Cornwall and see what kind of importation is going on. Go to Cornwall and find out what the smuggling problem is in that area of the province. There is a smuggling problem there and it includes illegal firearms.
The Liberal government keeps nattering about what a great job it is doing clamping down on smuggling, especially the smuggling of firearms. It is a joke. The government is doing absolutely nothing to counter the smuggling problem. It is happening in several areas across the country on the border of the United States.
[Intervention]
An hon. member: How do you know that?
Art Hanger: I have been there. I tell you to go there.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): I remind the hon. member to put his remarks through the Chair.
Art Hanger: Madam Speaker, I will do so. I tell that member to go there if he questions whether there is a smuggling problem in this country. Either that or the Liberal members as always are burying their heads in the sand if they cannot realize there is a problem relating to smuggling. It is not just firearms but drugs and alcohol. Ninety per cent of the illegal alcohol being smuggled into the country comes through that area over by Cornwall. There are cigarettes and other contraband.
The Liberal government is ignoring the plight of many people in the country who are really being burdened by this type of crime in their communities. I refer to another area, Ipperwash, where the law is not enforced adequately or equally. There is an entire community in Pasangquet whose property values have decreased to such a degree that it does not know how it will survive after investing considerable sums in those properties. The government sits on its duff. The solicitor general sits on his duff and does nothing to intervene. This is a crime in itself. It is falling on the shoulders of this government and the solicitor general for not doing something about it.
People not only in those two regions I just mentioned but also in urban Canada are very concerned about their safety. They are very concerned that the law is not adequately applied. I will turn to Toronto, Vancouver and the lower mainland. I suggest to the member for Halifax that she go to those two regions to see for herself just how the people in those cities are being victimized. They feel so much tension because of the crime in their cities. It all comes down to the enforcement of the law. People desire that. They seek government intervention in the whole area of safety. It is the responsibility of the government to ensure it happens.
I know many government members cannot grasp this, but it is unfortunate there are areas in our major cities where crime is
unchecked. The safety of many people is being jeopardized. The government talks about safe streets and safe homes. Nonsense. It has done nothing to make our homes and our streets any safer.
I will briefly touch on the Young Offenders Act. My colleague, the member for Crowfoot, is doing a more than adequate job in researching the Young Offenders Act. The government has had two and one-half years to straighten it around and it still has done nothing to address the major concerns people have. People want the age for young offenders lowered. They want those 11-year olds who commit rape charged. They want to see those who commit violent crime charged and tried as adults. They want to see punishment in the system. It does not exist. It is a joke.
Government members are reluctant to face reality. The member from Don Valley forgot to add reality to the reasons for being a Liberal. He did not refer to the reality that people's lives are being jeopardized, many by a very small element, the young offenders who are not being punished.
Government members should look at the detention centres and prisons across the country. The justice minister and the solicitor general can talk all they want about making things tough but it is only rhetoric. They are doing absolutely nothing to tighten up the problems which exist within our prison system or our detention centres.
As an example of some recent problems we could look to the women's detention centre, or jail, in Edmonton. I call it a retirement home, a comfort cottage. The prisoners in that home murdered another prisoner. The warden was told there would be a major problem if one particular woman was integrated into the regular population. The warden ignored the advice. Corrections ignored any advice it was given.
It was a philosophy which was supported by the solicitor general. It was decided to create that type of incarceration, that type of facility. The programs which followed were suggested by CSC. The minister supported it. As a result, a few weeks after the prison opened, one person was murdered and one-quarter of the prison population walked away. I say walked because all they had to do was step over a four-foot fence and walk away.
The government claimed it was going to make our streets and our homes safer. Where is the safety? The philosophy adopted by the cabinet, the solicitor general and the justice minister is to contrary. They say one thing and do another. Our streets are no safer. In fact it is the opposite.
Given the fact that facilities such as the women's prison in Edmonton can have those serious problems within a few short weeks of opening just shows the mentality of what is really happening within that system. This should be of concern to all of us. The reality is that crime is not being punished. Our streets are not safe and our homes are being jeopardized even more every day. Individuals have to lock themselves up in their own homes while the criminals run around free.
The Liberal government talks about the rehabilitation of sex offenders. It has expressed concern about releasing sex offenders into society. If we look at some of the recent releases it is clear that individuals who are being released are not being punished. They are not being rehabilitated. They are refusing to participate in any form of treatment and are refusing to co-operate with prison officials. They are refusing to follow the minimum requirements. This is despite the warnings that if released these individuals will reoffend.
They are serious sexual offenders and that is what is happening. They are being released back into society and are jeopardizing the communities in which they are placed. As a result, many of them are reoffending. Efforts have been made to stop this process or at least to identify those who are being released. What has happened instead? The government has ordered the RCMP not to release any information about these individuals to the communities or to any groups that want to protect their communities. This is insanity.
Right now Liberal members are laughing. This is not a laughing matter. This is serious business.
Jean Augustine: No one is laughing.
Art Hanger: I am appalled at their actions sometimes.
Those are just a couple of points which really make it clear, and it should be clear to Canadians, that the government is not serious about doing anything with regard to making our homes and streets safer. The government is not serious about punishing offenders. It is not serious about making those offenders more productive when they are released. It is absolutely astounding.
Probably for the most part the majority of members on that side of the House have never been inside a prison.
Ms. Clancy: Probably not.
Art Hanger: It is certainly a learning experience.
Jean Augustine: How long did you spend there?
Art Hanger: A member across the way just asked how long I have spent in the prison system. I have spent the last two and one-half years visiting the majority of this country's prisons. I invite members on the other side of the House to do the same.
A recent study done by the Fraser Institute identified some economic factors revolving around crime, public safety and security. It put together a list on the costs of crime which included victimization, policing and private security, court and legal proceedings, corrections and shattered lives. The total costs incorporated in the list I have just stated are estimated to be $37 billion
annually. That is almost one-third of the annual budget. The costs of the social impact of crime are almost one-third of the annual budget. The Liberal government has not done anything to make our streets and homes safer. It is another broken promise.
Bob Nault: Madam Speaker, in his remarks the member made suggestions about two systems of law and that in certain parts of the country alcohol and firearms are being smuggled in. Those are serious allegations.
The member has some background in the legal system and in law enforcement. I would be interested in knowing whether he has proof of these allegations. If he does, why has he not brought it forward or is it just more Reform rhetoric, taking it to the extreme? There is some smuggling, which is probably true but to make it sound like it is coming in by the truckload to Cornwall, I think is a little far fetched.
Would the member tell us where he is getting his statistics and whether there is any validity to them? Could he also tell us which communities he is referring to? He is being somewhat careful with his wording. My understanding is that he is referring to aboriginal communities. If that is right, then why not come out and say so?
Art Hanger: Madam Speaker, I will be pleased to relate any information which reflects on certain communities in the country. One of course is the Cornwall area.
If the member will recall, approximately six months ago a police report, a joint forces report, was presented to Parliament. It reflected the very point that alcohol, cigarettes and other contraband are being smuggled through those areas. Guns were also included in the list. I am not speaking out of school and I am not speaking off the top of my hat. It was in the police report. There have also been references to such in the news media from time to time. If the member so desires, I can pick up those press releases for him.
Am I referring to a particular group? In this case the member mentioned aboriginal people. Let me put it this way. I am referring to organized criminals. It is a well-known fact that Cornwall is a gravitation point for organized criminals of all stripes because it happens to be a point of entry for contraband.
My concern is with the effects of organized crime and the influence of organized criminals in those regions. That is one and I could reflect on others if the member so desires.
Mr. Peter Milliken (Kingston and the Islands, Lib.): Madam Speaker, the hon. member chastised the government for its failure to live up to what he says are its promises when he knows there is a list of enactments the House has dealt with concerning law enforcement issues, some of which he has supported and some of which he has opposed. All have been brought before the House in accordance with the promises made in the red book.
I am surprised that with a motion of this kind that does not mention law and order issues he would bring this up. This is one of the areas in which the government has been most active. It has dealt with changes in the criminal law of the country. We have changes in the criminal law itself. We have had changes in the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and so on. We have had many legislative changes in respect of young offenders. Ongoing work is being done in committee in this area as we speak.
I am surprised the hon. member raised this subject. Perhaps he did not clear it with his leader. Could the member tell us whether he is still advocating caning as a means of stamping out crime in Canada? If so, perhaps he could tell us the results of the studies he has conducted in this regard and whether he made it to Singapore to get the true facts on this subject.
Art Hanger: Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands for the question which gives me an opportunity to clarify a lot.
It is important for the House and those watching to recognize there is a concern about punishment in this country. People are concerned that offenders who have committed all kinds of offences, some violent, are not being punished. I have been to many town hall meetings across the country. The member for Kingston and the Islands has spent much of his time in his own community and has not wandered much beyond its borders. There is a concern that criminals are not being punished for the acts they commit. The matter of corporal punishment has come forward several times.
At no time have I ever advocated corporal punishment. At no time have I ever advocated caning, but I have suggested we study the issue of corporal punishment. That matter has only lately been removed from the Criminal Code.
The member has given me a book on Singapore and the corporal punishment issue there. He is obviously supportive of it because the book is supportive of it. I suggest the member pursue the matter a little further.
Mary Clancy: Madam Speaker, I really do not want to change the subject but I would like to get back to the topic. I read the resolution put forward by the hon. member from the third party. The resolution shows the hon. member is certainly talking through his riding name, Medicine Hat.
There a number of things that need to be addressed in response to this opposition motion. I will discuss job creation, which the third party seems to think is a broken promise. I will throw a few words around like infrastructure. The number of infrastructure projects in my riding alone has created an incredible number of jobs over the last two years, water and sewer projects, highway projects, bridges, et cetera.
I will not talk about in Halifax the construction of the new Neptune Theatre which is not just creating jobs but a magnificent cultural centre in the Atlantic region. I will not even talk much about St. George's Church, one of the great historic sites in Canada that was nearly destroyed by fire. Through a variety of funding sources, and not an inconsiderable source from the federal government, jobs were created in Halifax in the north end of Halifax where jobs are crucial and necessary. We created very special jobs, bringing back old trades, old arts and crafts and artisanship that we would have lost in Atlantic Canada and in Canada across the board. The department of heritage was really doing something to ensure this part of our heritage was preserved.
I want to talk for a minute when it comes to job creation, in which the member for Winnipeg Transcona is interested, about ACOA in my region, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, which has created 80,000 jobs in our region in the last two and a half years. Again, the hon. member is clearly talking through his head covering.
The same money from ACOA that created 80,000 jobs has seen over the last two and a half years a two dollar return in taxes in Atlantic Canada for every dollar spent. I ask everyone in this House, is that value for money? I'll say it is. Is that good investment? I'll say it is. Is that keeping our promises in Atlantic Canada? I'll say it is.
I have two words for hon. members across the way about safe streets, gun control. I could not be happier that I was a part of the party and the government that saw that law passed to increase the safety of Canadians on our streets and on our country roads.
[Intervention]
An hon. member: Why is crime up?
Mary Clancy: I remember on television somebody asking who will you believe, me or your own two eyes? The words are, crime is not up in Canada, it is down.
That does not fit their agenda. They do not like it. It only happens to be the truth. To get back to my mutton, what have we done on safe streets? We passed the hate crime legislation, which they did not support. We passed amendments to the Young Offenders Act, and the justice committee as we speak is going around the country consulting with Canadians to see how we can better-
Mr. Ramsay: We are home.
Mary Clancy: Yes, I know. I was being alliterative. I know the hon. member opposite and other members of the justice committee will soon be travelling again, listening to and consulting with Canadians on further amendments to make the Young Offenders Act a better act and to ensure we make the kinds of interventions that stop young people before we lose them entirely.
Crime overall is decreasing in Canada, but that is not a good news agenda our colleagues in the third party want to hear about. When it comes to things they note in this unusual and rather silly motion, I and a lot of other Canadians are getting a little tired of this. We have a government in which ministers are responsible to the country, who consult with the country, who listen to Canadians and who respond. They even respond to some of the unusual and bizarre questions put forward by the third party. Let us talk about integrity in government. Let us talk about Sheila Copps.
The promise that was made in the red book was kept. I am tired of the members opposite and their bad news agenda. I am tired of sanctimony. I am tired of judgmental attitudes and a meanspirited reaction to any and all people who do not share their narrow, rigid, blinkered view of this country and its people.
Did Sheila Copps go far during her campaign? Yes, she did. Did she go further than the red book promised? It can be suggested she went too far. The hon. member over there called her toast. I suggest the hon. member wait until the day after the byelection. We will see who is toasted the day after the byelection.
Those of us who are proud to call Sheila colleague know that her energy, her commitment and her sheer exuberance can sometimes cause her to say and do things that may be over the top for the duller of wit and slower of eye that sometime sit in the House. I say God bless Sheila. God bless her fearlessness. Without her the country would be without a powerful, articular and courageous advocate.
With regard to her action in the wake of her own private promise, perhaps those in the Reform Party do things without consulting their executives, their colleagues and their families. Sheila made her decision, the correct one, after consulting and informing those people who were, are and will be in future part of her team. She did it right. She marched to her own drummer. She said she would resign. Because she could not keep the promise she made, she resigned. She never said she would not reoffer, because the people of Hamilton deserve and have a right to the best representative they have ever had and every could have.
To the member for Medicine Hat, the author of this funny little motion, I will wager anything he would care to wager, name it, that Sheila Copps with her great heart, with her great spirit, with her courage, her determination, most particularly with her horror of bigotry, with her horror of racism, with her horror of injustice, will back in the House. She will shine in the House when the third party
is a dusty footnote in a dusty textbook on a forgotten bookshelf. I leave my wager open to the hon. member for Medicine Hat.
The Speaker: It being 2 p.m., we will now have Statements by Members and we will take up this very interesting debate after question period.

Statements By Members
Student ConnectionsMr. Geoff Regan (Halifax West, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about an important measure the government has taken, a concrete measure to create jobs.
Industry Canada together with Dalhousie University and the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada has begun the student connection program. This program will send out 2,000 senior university students across the country to introduce small and medium size businesses and voluntary organizations to the Internet. They will train people in middle and upper management in these businesses to use the Internet to support their own decision making processes. They will be taught how to use Internet sites like Strategis, the largest Canadian source of information on business on the information highway.
All Canadians are concerned about jobs, especially the young. This program is aimed not only at helping business use information technology but at creating jobs for young people, a very worthwhile goal.
Since we took office as a government the economy has created 636,000 new jobs in Canada. The student connection program alone will directly create 2,000 work term jobs.
Northern Quebec Cross Country TrekMr. Bernard Deshaies (Abitibi, BQ): Mr. Speaker, Fernand Trahan, a businessman from my riding, just finished crossing Quebec's northern region from west to east, covering 4,000 kilometres alone on his snowmobile.
Mr. Trahan, who started his expedition in February and recently made it back to Val-d'Or told us: "It was hard, but I always believed I would succeed".
Mr. Trahan deserves the congratulations of this House for his achievement, having survived the cold, blizzard conditions and wolves. He also deserves our admiration for his courage and his desire to surpass himself.
His trip did not go unnoticed among Inuit people. They welcomed him and he had the pleasant surprise of being able to speak to them in French, which is the second language chosen by many young Inuit.
Regions whose environment and climate are harsh build strong people. Mr. Trahan is one of them and he is a model for all residents of the Abitibi region.
International Banking CentresMr. Ed Harper (Simcoe Centre, Ref.): Mr. Speaker, when the Minister for International Trade was mayor of Toronto, he was angered when the federal government designated Montreal and Vancouver as international banking centres while the city of Toronto was refused this status.
The former mayor called the decision: "Crass politics at its worst. All this adds up to is bad news for Toronto because we have been openly discriminated against by the federal government".
On June 8, 1994 during question period I asked the finance minister when the government would designate Toronto as an international banking centre. His answer: "When we have completed the examination I will be delighted to respond to the member".
Three things are now clear. First, the minister has had nearly two years to examine the question, but this Liberal government is continuing to ignore Ontario.
Second, with the election of a new government in Ontario last year, the province said it is open for business. Why will this Liberal government not insist in getting out that message.
Third, although there are currently 94 Liberal MPs from Ontario, it is obvious that we do not need any more in Ottawa. Voters in Hamilton East have an opportunity to tell the Liberals what they think of ineffective representation.
B.C. ElectionBill Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, the political culture of Canada took a step back from the prevailing dangerous imbalance when the NDP was re-elected in B.C.
The truth of the matter, to use a hockey analogy, is that the right wing, neo-Conservative, neo-Liberal corporate agenda has been enjoying a breakaway in Canada since 1993. Federal Liberals have been out-torying the Tories, provincial Liberals in B.C. and New Brunswick look and sound like Reformers, Klein and Harris out-reform the Reformers and the provincial Tories in Manitoba quietly outdo them all.
Reformers and Tories talk about unifying the right wing. The right wing is already unified under the Liberals. Liberals, Reformers and Tories, it is all the same agenda.
The B.C. NDP ran against that agenda and won. There is somebody on the blue line and in the net after all. It is the NDP. The NDP is the alternative to the Liberal-Tory-Reform coalition and we will restore political balance to this place and this country come the next election.
The EconomyMr. Brent St. Denis (Algoma, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, Canada is among the top 10 countries in the world when it comes to economic competitiveness, according to study of 49 countries released yesterday by the World Economic Forum.
This reinforces the message to foreign investors that Canada is an excellent place to invest. It also offers a positive sign that Canada can expect continued strong economic growth over the next decade.
Among its G-7 partners, Canada is ranked the second most competitive and much of the credit for this goes to this Liberal government. Since assuming office, the government has taken concrete steps to get Canada's fiscal house in order. Inflation and interest rates have remained low and personal taxes have not been raised. Furthermore the deficit is on its way out.
Further, the new national sales tax harmonization initiative will lower costs for businesses and increase the competitiveness of Canadian products and services in the global marketplace. In short, the government is creating the ideal climate for real and sustained economic growth and job creation.
I congratulate the Liberal government on the steady and sure progress it is making in ensuring opportunity for Canadians and Canadian businesses all over the world.
National UnityMr. Glen McKinnon (Brandon-Souris, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, in 1870 Louis Riel fought for the recognition of a province that was split between the English, French and Metis peoples. Riel understood that while divided in number, these people were united in purpose.
Today we know that it is these feelings of tolerance and compassion that still unite us. This nation has thrived because of differences and not in spite of them. We have been able to draw together, to work together, for the betterment of Canadians and the country as a whole. We have stayed together all these years because it is the desire of Canadians to do so.
As we approach our nation's birthday and our third millennium let us look at our achievements and our growth and let us be proud to be Canadians.
Alliance Of Manufacturersand Exporters CanadaMr. Morris Bodnar (Saskatoon-Dundurn, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, 125 years ago the Canadian Manufacturers' Association was founded and 94 years ago, on May 15, 1902, Parliament passed an act incorporating the CMA with objectives to promote Canadian industries and to further the interests of Canadian manufacturers and exporters.
Fifty-three years ago the Canadian Exporters' Association was founded to promote Canadian international business and to advance the interests of exporters.
Today these two historic associations, which have helped to form the fabric of Canadian industry, are merging into a new organization to be known as the Alliance of Manufacturers and Exporters Canada. They bring together their respective strengths and the commitment to support Canadian manufacturers and exporters in a globally competitive economy.
The new alliance will, in due course, request Parliament to amend the original act to formally adopt the new name and to continue to advance the interests of Canadian manufacturers and exporters.
I ask the House to endorse the new association, Alliance of Manufacturers and Exporters Canada, and to extend its best wishes for every success in the future.
Young Offenders ActMr. Jim Hart (Okanagan-Similkameen-Merritt, Ref.): Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the constituents of Okanagan-Similkameen-Merritt in the aftermath of Tuesday's school bus hijacking by two teenagers. The school bus was loaded with young students who were taken on a horrific journey from one part of my constituency to another. It was a relief for all of us that the incident ended without injury or loss of life.
Canadians want the rights of victims placed above the rights of the accused in the justice system, but these two perpetrators are protected by the Young Offenders Act. Their identities are protected. Canadians feel that regardless of age, kidnapping, hijacking and the use of firearms in the commission of an offence should be dealt with in an adult court.
The Liberal government has promised to make significant changes to the Young Offenders Act. So far it has only tinkered
with it. This is pure balderdash. The Liberals promised to get tough on crime and violent crime in particular. The present government has failed to make Canadians' homes, streets and schools safe.
Day Care ServicesMr. Paul Crête (Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup, BQ): Mr. Speaker, parents, educators and politicians are all concerned by the theme of the Quebec week for day care services: "Give me time to be a child".
This theme reminds parents that they must let their children live their childhood, in spite of life's demands.
As for educators, it reminds them that their daily responsibility is to take care of our children, at a time when they learn values and also how to behave like members of a society. The dedication of the qualified and competent staff in Quebec's day care services must be emphasized.
Finally, the theme reminds politicians that, in these times of budget restrictions, children must remain a priority, and the services provided to them must be exempted from budget cuts.
Canada Trust ScholarshipMr. John Bryden (Hamilton-Wentworth, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I know you are always interested in meeting people whose good works and public spirit are an inspiration to all Canadians. I would therefore like to draw your attention to 21 young people visiting the House of Commons today who this morning were honoured by the Governor General as recipients of the Canada Trust Scholarship for Outstanding Community Leadership.
With young people like this, we in this House can rest assured that the future of Canada will be well taken care of.
Quebec ReferendumHon. Sheila Finestone (Mount Royal, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, pity poor Pierre F. Côté. He is insulted. He is upset because Alliance Quebec questioned the objectivity of his report on electoral fraud in the Quebec referendum.
Let us see. An independent study by McGill sociologists looked at all 22,000 polls, yet Mr. Côté only investigated 290. Evidence showed the same pattern of fraudulent steps taken by the "yes" side in at least three ridings that were examined, but Mr. Côté concluded that there was no national conspiracy to undermine democracy.
More than 60,000 perfectly good "no" ballots were illegally rejected by sovereignist officials, but Côté considered this less serious than freedom of expression at the Montreal rally.
He is upset. It is Quebecers who lost their democratic right as citizens to have their votes count who are legitimately upset.
Join Alliance Quebec tomorrow at noon in front of the Hydro building. Let the government know about democracy, fairness and decency in the voting process.
Integration Of People With DisabilitiesMr. Bernard Patry (Pierrefonds-Dollard, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, this week, we are called upon to take an active part in the many activities organized as part of National Access Awareness Week.
Even today, people with disabilities are faced with all sorts of barriers, both physical and social, which prevent them from playing an active role in our society.
The purpose of this week is to make us aware that much still remains to be done, despite the phenomenal progress made in recent years in this regard.
People with disabilities are full-fledged citizens. Our attitudes and treatment of them as a society must not be a greater handicap to them than their disability. We must therefore continue to be vigilant, so that they can enjoy the same advantages and rights as any other Canada citizen.
National Access Awareness WeekMr. Andy Scott (Fredericton-York-Sunbury, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, this week marks National Access Awareness Week. Citizens with disabilities are just that, citizens first and foremost, not somehow less than those of us who can walk around without the aid of a wheelchair or go to work without the aid of an attendant.
The only difference between those of us who are disabled and those of us who are not is that those of us who are not have been lucky.
There have been many gains with respect to awareness in many areas of society. Differences in race, religion and sexual orientation are becoming more and more accepted and actions are being taken to mitigate injustice.
We need to afford persons with disabilities the same consideration. It needs to become a matter of course that access is built into every program we design, every course we put on, every announcement that we make and every incentive that we offer.
We must be committed to being accessible to all Canadians and this is the week that we are to be reminded.
Minister Of Human Resources DevelopmentMr. Paul Mercier (Blainville-Deux-Montagnes, BQ): Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Human Resources Development invited my colleague, the member for Bourassa, to go and find himself another country, because he, an immigrant, dared to support the sovereignist option. If we are to believe the minister, and the Prime Minister as well, my colleague had a pressing moral obligation, as a new Canadian, to throw his faithful support behind the federalist cause.
I imagine that the minister applies this curious notion of parliamentary democracy to me as well, because I, too, am an immigrant and I, too, am a sovereignist.
However, like my colleague, I realized that the federal yoke was preventing my adopted province from reaching the potential it could as a sovereign nation. Heeding the invitation issued to my colleague, the member for Bourassa, by the Minister of Human Resources Development, I therefore decided to find myself another country. The country I picked was Quebec.
Greyhound AirMr. Werner Schmidt (Okanagan Centre, Ref.): Mr. Speaker, 24 jobs in Kelowna, 63 jobs in Vancouver, 145 jobs in Calgary, 43 jobs in Edmonton, 89 jobs in Winnipeg, 61 jobs in Ottawa, 64 jobs in Toronto, 109 jobs in Hamilton: 595 Canadian jobs provided by Greyhound Air. Will it fly? "Can't do it", says the NTA. "Regulatory restrictions", shrugs the Minister of Transport.
The Liberal government has had three years to make changes that would give Canadian business an advantage and ensure fair competition. Why has it not been done? Why must businesses like Kelowna Flightcraft go to court to prove it has the right to do business in its own country?
Clearly too many lawyers and not enough business people are running this country. That would change under a Reform government.
Economic recovery, opportunity and jobs. Those were the promises. By hijacking Canadian business with regulatory restrictions? By forcing Canadian businesses to take a nosedive? That is not acceptable. We do not think so.
Children's Miracle Network ChampionsMrs. Anna Terrana (Vancouver East, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, today in Ottawa we have 10 Canadian children who have been named Children's Miracle Network champions by the Children's Hospital Foundation.
Sierra Harrold, who is nine years old, is the B.C. champion and resides in Fort Nelson. Sierra has Gaucher disease, a rare metabolic disorder which causes ongoing bone thinning, liver and spleen damage, anemia, susceptibility to infections and the likelihood of brain damage.
Sierra has been treated at the B.C. Children's Hospital for the last seven years. She will continue to be treated, but she is improving and remains a champion through lengthy, painful treatments. Sierra and her other champion friends will go to Disney World, an award to honour her bravery and that of the other champions.
During the weekend in Vancouver I co-hosted the Italian B.C. Children's Hospital telethon. The Italians donated about $100,000 to the cause. This money will be presented to the B.C. Children's Hospital Foundation on June 1 and 2 during the annual telethon.
Today I would like to ask my colleagues to join me in congratulating Sierra Harrold and the other nine Canadian Children's Miracle Network champions.
Mr. Ian Murray (Lanark-Carleton, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I too would like to take this opportunity to welcome some true Canadian heroes to the House of Commons.
Ten children from across Canada have been chosen as Children's Miracle Network champions and the Speaker and Prime Minister will be presenting them with special medallions this afternoon in recognition of their triumphs over illness and life challenging problems. The champions are accompanied by two other well-known Canadian champions, Rick Hansen and Mark Tewksbury.
The 13 CMN hospitals in Canada specialize in the treatment of children with a wide variety of afflictions such as cancer, birth defects, heart and muscular diseases as well as accident victims.
In conclusion, I want to particularly congratulate 10-year old Chris Stephens, a CMN champion from my riding of Lanark-Carleton. Best wishes to all of you. Let us all support the Children's Miracle Network so it can continue to provide help for Canadian children everywhere.

Oral Question Period
ManpowerMr. Michel Gauthier (Leader of the Opposition, BQ): Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Human Resources Development has just this morning released a document presenting his manpower policy. Briefing Note No. 2 describes the post-negotiation arrangements with the provinces as "enabling the provinces to deliver active employment measures funded from the employment insurance fund".
My question is for the Minister of Human Resources Development. Are we to conclude from this statement that the federal government reserves for itself the responsibility for defining policy with respect to active employment measures?
Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, no. Obviously I hope that we shall succeed in finding ways of meeting the requirements of all provinces and territories. There will be differences, no doubt; the agreements will differ from one province to another. Certainly, the available resources, the wishes, the systems in place to deliver programs will differ.
The objective, however, is to ensure that, where provinces wish to take over in this sector, we will be able to reach an arrangement based on negotiations, on a true agreement characterized by partnership and collaboration. It is not our intent to impose conditions and to drive a hard bargain in these negotiations. We want to obtain something that will work well, so as to prove to Canadians that federalism works.
Michel Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, you will understand our concerns when the document refers to allowing the provinces to deliver active employment measures. It does not refer in the same terms to defining policy.
My second question for the minister is this. By reaffirming in these documents his responsibility to "ensure that funds are spent effectively and efficiently", does the minister confirm that the federal government is thus retaining responsibility for monitoring results and for final assessment of the programs?
Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, we believe that, through these negotiations, we can arrive at the kind of results we all want. We will proceed via negotiation, via agreement. No province would accept our simply forcing our criteria on them, deciding how our programs should be delivered, nor our deciding unilaterally what results we would like to obtain.
These are all elements which will enable us to reach agreements with provinces such as Prince Edward Island, in which resources and the ability to deliver programs might be far more limited than in Ontario, for example.
The entire undertaking is based on the willingness of the Government of Canada to find means of co-operating so that we may, in the case of Quebec for instance, respond to the consensus we know exists in that province between the unions, the Conseil du patronat, the chambers of commerce and the Government of Quebec. All Quebecers have a vision of the way they would like to see this sector of active measures operate. I believe that we will be able to get results that will match those needs.
Michel Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, the minister has just confirmed that the federal government's plans depend on an agreement between the federal and the provincial governments.
Will the minister admit that, failing an agreement with a government, the Government of Quebec for instance, the new Employment Insurance Act will apply, which is more or less like saying that the minister has set all the conditions for a negotiation where he is holding all the cards? In reality this comes down to saying "Negotiate and reach agreement with me, or else I apply my legislation". That is the situation.
Douglas Young: No, Mr. Speaker. In this area, I believe that there will be an attempt to do things so that the results will, I think, match what everyone wants. It will be difficult, without a doubt. Negotiating bilateral agreements with ten provinces and the territories will be complicated.
Finally I believe, and this is obvious, that whether in Quebec or anywhere else, governments, members of parliament, ministers, first ministers, all have one objective. More than a million people in Canada, including Quebec, have no jobs. At the end of the exercise, when all of the negotiations are concluded, it is my hope that everyone will be trying in good faith to find solutions to allow men and women in search of a job to find one, and to prepare them, while they are searching for a job, to be good employees.
That is the object of the exercise, and I believe we have taken a giant step forward today by demonstrating that Canada can be open to new ways of doing things.
Francine Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Minister of Human Resources Development. I say to him that, for things to go the way he has just said, the past cannot be assumed to guarantee the future.
We were stupefied this morning by the government's announcement of its withdrawal from manpower training and the subsequent end to financial assistance in this area.
Will the minister confirm that, after the three year period, financial assistance for manpower training will end and that the provinces will be forced to assume the cost of it on their own?
Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, the federal government has long been asked to withdraw from manpower training. We announced nothing new in this area this morning. We have already said, on many occasions, including in the throne speech, and the Prime Minister has announced it, that the Government of Canada would be withdrawing from manpower training.
Moreover, we have always indicated in our budget forecasts that funding for all these programs would drop to zero at the end of three years. We have already considerably reduced the amount of money earmarked for training.
Since we have to withdraw from this sector, because employment insurance and manpower training are two fairly different things, we are withdrawing and have been continuing to reduce the funding to zero.
Francine Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, that means no compensation for respecting exclusive jurisdiction.
Will the minister confirm that the money invested by the federal government in training comes from the unemployment insurance fund and that the provinces, which do not have access to this fund, will be forced to take over responsibility on their own using their own resources?
Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, certainly there were programs where training was financed out of the consolidated fund. What we are saying is that we have been easing out of training in the area, for example, of the direct purchase of space in CEGEPs and community colleges and in the purchase of training contracts from the private sector. We have planned for some time in all our budget forecasts not only to participate less in this sector but to cut funding as well.
That said, with part II of the Employment Insurance Act still before Parliament and with our upcoming negotiations with the provinces that would be interested in pursuing the proposal we tabled today, I hope that we will continue to find the means to provide job training throughout the country to those who need it.
Government ContractsJim Hart: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.
The defence minister thinks it is acceptable to hand out pork barrel contracts to campaign pals to do political work, all at taxpayers' expense. The minister broke Treasury Board guidelines by contract splitting. Canadians found this kind of patronage unacceptable from Mulroney and Canadians find it unacceptable now.
Why will the Prime Minister not raise his ethical standards to at least the level of Brian Mulroney's and put an end to this patronage budget abuse by his Minister of National Defence?
Hon. Lawrence MacAulay (Secretary of State (Veterans)(Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency), Lib.): Mr. Speaker, the minister will be back in the House tomorrow. He will respond to questions involving the individual who handled the file for the Greek community across Canada.
It is important to note that the changes that were brought about by the 1995 budget brought the War Veterans Allowance Act back to its original intent. That was not to pay resistance fighters from foreign countries. It was to pay the allied veterans who became Canadian citizens and our Canadian veterans. This move saves $30 million for the Canadian taxpayer.
Jim Hart: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the Prime Minister.
The Minister of National Defence has been caught abusing his budget and breaching Treasury Board guidelines, all to reward campaign pals. Let us look at the facts. Two contracts that the minister issued overlapped and amounted to $50,000. The work for each contract was the same. Last week the deputy secretary of the Treasury Board stated that it is not acceptable to contract split and when it happens, disciplinary action must be taken.
When will the Prime Minister obey the rules set down by Treasury Board and discipline the Minister of National Defence?
Hon. Marcel Massé (President of the Treasury Board and Minister responsible for Infrastructure, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, the rules about contract splitting are clear. They indicate that if a contract is for the same purpose, the same object and if the contract is given at the time when it should be above $30,000, it should not be the sole source. The rules also indicate that if the contract is
below $30,000 and is for an object that at the time the contract is given is believed to be studied within the $30,000, this is according to the guidelines. This is what I understand happened in this case.
Jim Hart: Mr. Speaker, my second supplementary is for the Prime Minister.
The Minister of National Defence violated Treasury Board guidelines. The Prime Minister cannot escape the facts. The defence minister issued four contracts to Karabekos. Some of the contracts overlapped.
The work on the contracts was the same. This is one of the most blatant examples of contract splitting we have ever seen. Senior officials from Treasury Board have said that disciplinary action should take place.
I ask the Prime Minister again: Will he take immediate action and discipline the Minister of National Defence?
Right Hon. Jean Chrétien (Prime Minister, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, the President of the Treasury Board studied the problem. It was within the guidelines established by the Treasury Board. There is no need to discipline the minister.
JusticeMrs. Pierrette Venne (Saint-Hubert, BQ): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Justice.
In a ministerial statement yesterday, the Minister of Justice indicated that he was responsible for ensuring the independence of the judiciary and the integrity of the justice system. Yet the minister refused to order an inquiry into the actions of the two federal court judges who have violated their duty to remain neutral and impartial. His inaction has now prompted the judicial council to open an inquiry into the actions of Justices Isaac and Jerome.
Why did the Minister of Justice skirt his responsibilities under the Judges Act and not order himself an inquiry into this serious matter calling into question the impartiality of the chief justice of the federal court?
Hon. Allan Rock (Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, in the first instance based on the facts of this case as I know them, I do not believe it is an appropriate circumstance for me to ask for an inquiry under section 63(1) of the Judges Act.
On the other hand, the judicial council has jurisdiction to consider the matter. Anyone is at liberty to file a complaint with the judicial council. What is more to the point, I now understand that the chair of the judicial conduct committee of the judicial council has asked Chief Justice Isaac to explain the circumstances of his communications with Ted Thompson of the Department of Justice. The judicial conduct committee, based on the explanation furnished by Chief Justice Isaac, will decide whether further steps are required.
The public can be satisfied that the judicial council itself has initiated a process in this matter which will result in an adjudication by judges of the appropriateness of the conduct of Chief Justice Isaac.
Pierrette Venne: It is true, Mr. Speaker, that anyone can file a complaint with the judicial council, but the difference is that, when the complaint comes from the Minister of Justice of Canada, the council has to initiate an inquiry. That makes quite a difference.
I would like the minister to tell us why he is still refusing to file a complaint, in his capacity as justice minister, against the chief justice of the federal court. Could it be that he is afraid of having to appear before the board of inquiry? Does he have a guilty conscience?
Allan Rock: Mr. Speaker, I just came from an appearance before the justice committee of the House on which the hon. member sits. If I can face the justice committee, I can face any tribunal in the land.
The fact is that our focus, my focus as minister, arising from this event has been on the litigation because we have three important revocation cases before the federal court. We do not want to see those cases lost or stayed and we have been arguing that they should not be. That matter I know is before the court. Then I turn to the matter inside the department and the question of how a senior justice official acted. I spoke to that issue yesterday. We have a process in place to deal with that.
When it comes to the chief justice, it seems to me that the matter should be left to the judicial council. I have not felt it necessary or appropriate to require an inquiry. I have already told the House that the judicial conduct committee of the council will be considering the circumstances of this case. I have every confidence it will do so thoroughly and objectively and that any required action will be taken by that council.
Government ContractsChuck Strahl: Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to note that there are three offices of the Department of Veterans Affairs located in Toronto. One of them, the Toronto north office, is actually located in the defence minister's own riding of Don Valley East. The job of that office is to explain veterans affairs
to veterans. Apparently the minister did not trust his own departmental employees to do their job and instead hired a political hack.
When he has such direct access to his own departmental professionals, why did the minister have to hire a music conductor to explain veterans affairs to veterans?
Lawrence MacAulay: Mr. Speaker, as I indicated, the minister will be in the House tomorrow and will respond to any questions dealing with the gentleman who dealt with the file on the Greek community across Canada.
There are a number of veterans affairs offices across Canada which deal with specific issues. This was a major change in legislation that affected a lot of people. That is why this individual was hired.
Chuck Strahl: Mr. Speaker, apparently the qualifications for these political appointments are not as important as how you conducted yourself during the last election campaign. The main qualification seems to be that you had to be a worker on the defence minister's own campaign staff. Incredibly the defence minister says that is just the way it works here in Ottawa.
Will the Prime Minister do something? Will he refer this issue to the ethics counsellor? Will he ask that the defence minister pay back the $150,000? Will he discipline the defence minister in some way, or is this really the way things are done in the Chrétien government?
The Speaker: Colleagues, I would encourage you not to use our names in here. We should use our titles when we are addressing questions and also when we are giving answers.
Marcel Massé: Mr. Speaker, I have explained already the fact that there are two types of budgets. Departmental budgets are there in order to study and implement government policies. There are strict rules of employment. There are also exempt staff budgets. They are called that because the staff is exempt from certain rules. These rules exist as much for members of Parliament as they exist for ministers. There are hon. members by the way who have their campaign managers on staff and I can name them.
Under exempt staff rules the minister can employ staff who have a partisan relationship, and they are exempted by the rules from the normal rules that apply to the public service.
JusticeMr. François Langlois (Bellechasse, BQ): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Justice.
In a ministerial statement yesterday, the Minister of Justice commented on a serious case of undue interference by an assistant deputy attorney general with the chief justice of the federal court. Faced with such a flagrant case of interference in the judicial process, the minister announced that an inquiry would be held.
Can the minister assert from his seat that he was not aware in any way of the representations made to the chief justice of the federal court by his assistant deputy attorney general?
Allan Rock: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I can say plainly and unequivocally that I did not know until after the event that Mr. Ted Thompson had visited, communicated with or spoken to the chief justice about these matters.
Within a couple of weeks, and I think it was within a week of the meeting of March 1, I learned from the deputy minister that the associate deputy attorney general had had the communication with Chief Justice Isaac. At that point we ensured that the documents were put into the hands of counsel for the three parties. Indeed, it was at Ted Thompson's order that it was done and then matters went forward from there.
François Langlois: Mr. Speaker, in the circumstances, does the minister have any objections to releasing the report of the inquiry into this matter?
Allan Rock: No, Mr. Speaker. I have already said that we will make public the actions that are taken as a result of the internal inquiry by Mr. Dubin. The former chief justice of Ontario has agreed to meet with justice officials who were involved. Indeed I met with him over the lunch hour to respond to his questions. We have opened up the files. We have invited him to speak to whomever he wishes. I look forward to his report.
I recognize that the Department of Justice above all departments of government should demonstrate a standard of conduct that is entirely above reproach. By asking for this advice from Mr. Dubin we hope to demonstrate that we are committed to doing just that.
Jack Ramsay: Mr. Speaker, if the justice minister learned about this meeting between his senior official and Chief Justice Isaac a week after it occurred, could he please tell the House when he ordered the inquiry into the activities of his senior official?
Allan Rock: Mr. Speaker, if my hon. friend refers to the appointment of former Chief Justice Dubin, that was done within the last week.
I can tell my hon. friend and the House that the minute the deputy minister told me the meeting had occurred I asked for his assurances that we were going to find out what the facts were, have a complete internal investigation and that was done.
From the moment that it came to the attention of justice officials that Ted Thompson had been to see the chief justice, steps were taken to find out exactly what happened, to get copies of the correspondence and put them in the hands of the lawyers involved in the three cases. The department prepared materials to respond to the motion brought in court to stay the cases. More recently the department arranged for the appointment of former Chief Justice Dubin and his terms of reference.
Jack Ramsay: Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for his response. If there was an internal inquiry done, as the minister has assured the House, could the minister please tell us who authorized this meeting between Mr. Thompson and the chief justice, and who authorized the written correspondence that followed?
Allan Rock: Mr. Speaker, Charles Dubin has just begun his work and I know those are among the questions he will be addressing.
To my knowledge Ted Thompson was acting entirely on his own in going to see Chief Justice Isaac and following up with correspondence. That is my understanding of the facts.
Former Chief Justice Dubin will look at all the facts and will make up his mind based on the record, and I will share it with the House.
Canadian Broadcasting CorporationMr. Gaston Leroux (Richmond-Wolfe, BQ): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Canadian Heritage.
In its report on the coverage of the referendum, the CBC justifies its unfair treatment of the sovereignist side during the referendum campaign by saying that public opinion in English Canada was opposed to Quebec sovereignty.
Does the Minister of Canadian Heritage agree with the CBC's policy that the percentage of public opinion for or against a given option is a criterion in deciding how much coverage this option should receive?
Hon. Lucienne Robillard (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration and Acting Minister of Canadian Heritage, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, the CBC is an institution that is independent from the government, and it is up to its board of directors to take action on the CBC's policies on the basis of the reports they received from their ombudsman.
Gaston Leroux: Mr. Speaker, are we to understand from the minister's answer that, in the next federal election, the CBC should base its coverage on the fact that only 30 per cent of the Quebec population still supports the Liberal Party of Canada?
Lucienne Robillard: Mr. Speaker, unlike the Bloc Quebecois, we are not haunted by the fear of the next referendum; this government deals with the real needs of all Canadians, including the men and women of Quebec.
CubaMrs. Beryl Gaffney (Nepean, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of International Trade.
The United States government has sent a letter to a Canadian company threatening to ban its officers and shareholders from entering the United States simply because this Canadian firm has an operating business in Cuba.
Would the minister report to the House on the NAFTA consultations re the Helms-Burton Bill and how Canadian businesses operating in Cuba are affected by it?
Hon. Arthur C. Eggleton (Minister for International Trade, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, it comes as no surprise that a letter was sent. The Helms-Burton law provided for that, although I must say it is only one letter. The State Department in the U.S. says there may well be more letters. These letters do not even say exactly what they will do. They say the guidelines are coming later.
We are still protesting this legislation. We believe it is fundamentally wrong. It is a unilateral action of the United States plying its foreign policy extraterritorially on Canada and other countries. That is fundamentally wrong and we will continue to protest under NAFTA, as the European Union is doing under the World Trade Organization. We are also examining our options in terms of our own domestic law to protect Canadian interests and Canadian companies doing lawful business in Cuba.
EmploymentJim Silye: Mr. Speaker, today the Minister of Human Resources Development announced a $2 billion, three year proposal to share employment training with the provinces. The $2 billion will come from an estimated surplus in the UI fund of the $5 billion paid into it by employees and employees of this country.,
Why is the government using its taxing and spending power to maintain its position in labour market training even though the government has already recognized provincial responsibility in this area?
Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question. Let me address its two parts.
First, the $2 billion being spent is not calculated in the surplus that is developing after quite a long period of deficit in the unemployment insurance fund.
With respect to the proposal the Government of Canada made today to the provinces and the territories, we believe we are responding to very legitimate and longstanding requests from the provinces to have more control, in some cases almost complete control, of the active measures they wish to put in place as they so desire.
This money is raised through premiums paid for by employers and their employees. We believe, as do most of the provinces if not all, that it is absolutely essential we find means to provide opportunities for people who are the passive recipients of employment insurance to get back into the workforce either by job creation or by providing wage subsidies, upgrading of skills, various techniques which we are very confident the provinces will take up and do a good job of administering.
Jim Silye: Mr. Speaker, the minister said earlier in response to a Bloc member's question that the $2 billion is coming out of the consolidated revenue fund, of which $18 billion comes in from UI and $13 billion is going out. There is a projected net profit of $5 billion.
The federal government has a valid role in employment initiatives such as portability of payment at a national employment registry. However, a major obstacle to the portability of persons is the lack of common qualification standards and licensing from province to province.
What initiative has the government taken to ensure Canadians will be able to work in any province regardless of the province a citizen has earned their qualification in, like the problem between Ottawa and Hull?
Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member raises an extremely important question. It goes far beyond the proposal we were able to put on the table today to the provinces.
The question of labour mobility is one my colleague, the Minister of Industry, has addressed. There is no question we have to rely on the provinces. If appropriate we would like to play some role as a catalyst in bringing the provinces together. We would like to set up arrangements which would allow for the mobility of the Canadian workforce.
As we function in a global society with NAFTA, free trade arrangements and all the rest, I think the hon. member will recognize it is a major challenge for Canadians, the federal government and the provincial governments to find ways to ensure complete labour mobility within the Canadian Confederation.
Coast GuardMr. Yves Rocheleau (Trois-Rivières, BQ): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.
The Coast Guard is now holding consultations regarding fees for pleasure craft. The pretext is water safety, but it is clear that the Coast Guard's real objective is to recover $14 million, the objective set by the Minister of Finance in the budget, from recreational boaters.
Will the minister confirm that the Coast Guard intends to impose fees that could go as high as $35 for each pleasure craft, including rowboats, canoes and pedal boats?
Hon. Fred Mifflin (Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I am not sure why there is applause. The hon. member would agree that his party has constantly been after the coast guard to ensure that we recover fees, do what is proper, have services at the right level and charge the right fees for the right services.
He also would agree that safety is paramount in boating and that there will be a requirement for safety which will address the serious loss of life we have in every province of the country.
While the final decision has not been made in response to the recreational boating community, we will proceed to ensure safety is achieved. There will be a price but the price has not been determined yet.
Yves Rocheleau: Mr. Speaker, a distinction should perhaps be made between a rowboat and a real pleasure craft.
How can the minister justify imposing fees on pleasure craft sailing on lakes and rivers where the Coast Guard does not provide any service to them, that is to say, the vast majority of lakes and rivers in Quebec and in Canada?
Fred Mifflin: Mr. Speaker, it is precisely because there may not be enough search and rescue services in the area to cover every single boat, recreational and of every size, in Canada that it is the responsibility of the coast guard to make sure safety is maintained.
It is precisely for the reason that the hon. member brought forward that we will ensure proper instruction is given and proper safety precautions are taken so that search and rescue facilities can be used for those areas which include the open seas and a number of larger vessels so that for the smaller vessels the inherent safety that would be instilled would act as a control mechanism. This is in response to the recreational boaters.
TaxationMonte Solberg: Mr. Speaker, a couple of months ago the finance minister suggested there would be no new taxes in his budget. It was kind of the Canadian equivalent of "read my lips".
Yesterday we pointed out the minister's harmonization agreement would mean a 100 per cent increase in the GST cost on gasoline in Atlantic Canadian provinces that have harmonized. That would work out to an average of $4.30 for a tank of gasoline in Atlantic Canada.
Can the finance minister explain how this 100 per cent increase in the GST on gas meets his promise of revenue neutrality found on page 22 of the red book?
Hon. Paul Martin (Minister of Finance, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is simply wrong. There is no increase in the GST. The GST rate of 7 per cent stays the same and it applies to the same base. The member is simply wrong.
Monte Solberg: Mr. Speaker, I think the minister should explain that to the people who will be paying that much more when they purchase gas in Atlantic Canada once this agreement kicks into place.
The Government of Nova Scotia has pointed out in its budget document that consumers will pay $84 million more once this agreement comes into effect.
Considering there is only one taxpayer in the country, not two for every level of government, will the minister explain to people how this extra $84 million in taxes meets his two-month old promise that there would be no new taxes as he suggested at budget time?
Paul Martin: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member opposite has an enormous amount of difficulty understanding the obvious. There is no increase in the federal tax. The federal tax stays the same and it applies to exactly the same base.
There will be across the board reductions in Atlantic Canada in the rate, which has been set out at between 4 per cent and 5 per cent. The overall rate to the consumer as a result of substantial savings to small and medium size businesses will mean a lower rate to consumers.
Yesterday the hon. member stood up in the House and basically said the increase in gasoline taxes we have seen over the course of the last couple of months were due to the harmonization agreement. I pointed out to him the harmonization agreement has not taken effect and that it was very difficult to blame increases in gas taxes a month ago on an agreement to take place in the future.
There seems to be a desire that I sit down, but I have a great deal of difficulty-
[Intervention]
Some hon. members: Oh, oh.
Energy SectorMr. Paul Steckle (Huron-Bruce, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Natural Resources.
The minister recently returned from a trip to Asia during which she participated in discussions on energy issues. Can the minister explain to the House how this trip will benefit the Canadian economy?
Hon. Anne McLellan (Minister of Natural Resources, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, the hon. member rightly points out that I did visit the Asia-Pacific area over the past week and a half. The reason I did so is that area provides significant opportunities for Canadian private sector energy companies.
If we look at this region, energy needs are growing at the rate of 11 per cent or 12 per cent per annum. In this country we have expertise, be it in relation to coal, hydro, natural gas or the nuclear industry, which will permit these economies to continue to develop over the coming years.
In this country we understand energy. We have goods, services, equipment and technologies to sell. That was the purpose of my trip.
Francophones Outside QuebecJean-Paul Marchand: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.
In August 1994, in Moncton, the Prime Minister solemnly announced that 27 federal agencies would prepare action plans to meet the needs of francophones living outside Quebec. This week, the Commissioner of Official Languages concluded that the government had not delivered. So much for the Prime Minister's solemn promises.
How long will the Prime Minister continue to pretend to be doing something for francophones living outside Quebec? Is he waiting for them all to be assimilated?
Lucienne Robillard: Mr. Speaker, the Bloc member seems to forget that the Canadian government has programs to support minorities, not only francophones outside Quebec, but anglophones in Quebec as well.
The government made a very firm commitment to implement sections 41 and 42 of the Official Languages Act. During the year that just ended, efforts were made by every department concerned by sections 41 and 42 of the Official Languages Act.
Jean-Paul Marchand: Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that the Prime Minister himself does not rise to defend his solemn promises, leaving the task to the heritage minister. Her department did not do much to implement section 41. The Prime Minister should read the commissioner's report.
Assimilation of francophones is on the rise. In fact, the number of young francophones living outside Quebec dropped 35 per cent over a 20 year period. Just last week, Statistics Canada confirmed that one third of young francophones had become anglicised.
My question is for the Prime Minister. What will the Prime Minister do? What will it take for the Prime Minister to finally admit that the situation is critical?
Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, it is very rare that I do not rise to answer questions. The first thing we do to protect French speaking minorities is to ensure that they will enjoy the support of Quebec francophones by keeping Quebec in Canada. Indeed, should separation be achieved, francophones outside Quebec would be hardest hit of all francophones in America.
We will continue to apply the Official Languages Act. We will support the Commissioner of Official Languages, unlike Bloc Quebecois members who said last week that he was incompetent, but who are now using his recommendations to attack the government. The best way to help francophones outside Quebec is to ensure that the French language has its place not only in Quebec, but everywhere in Canada.
ImmigrationMs. Val Meredith (Surrey-White Rock-South Langley, Ref.): Mr. Speaker, while various ministers in the government are talking tough about two suspected Russian illegals who have been in custody for the past week, it is clear these two individuals will not be deported any time soon without their consent.
If these two suspected Russian spies choose to pursue all available appeals they may be able to delay their deportation for years and then seek to stay in Canada on compassionate grounds.
Is the minister of immigration prepared to take definitive action to remove these individuals from Canada or will they be permitted to defer their deportation indefinitely?
Lucienne Robillard: Mr. Speaker, it is very clear that all the provisions of the act concerning this type of individual and this type of activity taking place in Canada will be enforced.
As everyone knows, this case was before the federal court yesterday and has now been referred to an immigration inquiry. Efforts are continuing, but I can assure members of this House that we are going to rely on every last section in the act that will allow us to take action in this type of case.
Val Meredith: Mr. Speaker, for almost three years the government has repeatedly claimed there is nothing wrong with the current immigration system. Yet it is apparent that it prevents Canada from deporting individuals who are a threat to Canada's national security.
Is the minister of immigration satisfied with these laws that afford more protection to terrorists, criminals and spies than they do for the Canadian public?
Lucienne Robillard: Mr. Speaker, it is very clear that this government will not tolerate the presence of criminals in Canada as possible immigrants, that is very clear.
However, I would like to deplore the fact that every time the Reform Party brings up the subject of immigration, it is to cite specific problems involving crime and to give the whole immigration system a bad name. And this is not the case, for we have a reputable immigration system, in Canada.
Human RightsBill Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Recently I had occasion to meet with Mr. Jose Ramos-Horta who is the spokesperson for the East Timorese. I was made aware in the course of the meeting of a letter sent by the Minister of Foreign Affairs when he was on the opposition side. He called on the Conservative government to halt military exports and foreign aid to Indonesia in protest of the treatment of the leader of the East Timorese and the human rights violations in that country.
Will the Minister of Foreign Affairs tell the House whether he is prepared to live up to the commitments he made while he was in opposition? Will he declare an arms embargo and a halt to foreign aid to Indonesia until such time as the leader of the East Timorese is freed and human rights violations stop in that country? Is he prepared to work toward an international arms embargo against Indonesia until they smarten up in East Timor?
Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, let me first point out that on several occasions members of this government have raised the issue of human rights in East Timor. The Prime Minister when he was there last summer took the occasion to make the Canadian concerns well known.
As far as arms exports are concerned, I would suggest that we probably have the toughest arms export guidelines and controls of any developed country. We intend to apply them exactly as they are meant to be applied, which is very strictly according to the letter of the law.
Presence In GalleryThe Speaker: I draw the attention of hon. members to the presence in the gallery of a very special group of young people. In this House we have been honoured to have our peacekeepers. We have been honoured to have our astronauts and our Nobel laureates. Today we get to see some of the young heroes of Canada.
We have the honour today of welcoming an extraordinary group of young people. They have battled illness and overcome terrible injuries through their courage and their tenacity.
These brave-yes, I use that word-these brave young Canadians are the Children's Miracle Network Champions. They have overcome great hurdles and have beaten the odds. They are symbols of courage and determination, and of the strength of the human spirit.
I will introduce them to you, my colleagues, but I ask you to withhold your applause until I have introduced them all. Before I introduce them, I want you to know that they are accompanied by two outstanding individuals whom we know well: Olympic champion Mark Tewksbury, and Rick Hansen, athlete, activist and an inspiration to Canadians.
The names of our young heroes are: Pamela Rundell, Jordan Sharkey, Andrea Crowe, Tonya Schweigert, Christopher Stephens, Karlee Kosolofski, Matthew Wells, Gillian McCarthy, Sierra Harrold and Patrick Waterman.
[Intervention]
Some hon. members: Hear, hear.
The Speaker: My colleagues, these, our young Canadian champions, are joined by their parents and friends. I, along with the Prime Minister, will be receiving them at a reception in Room 216. I invite all who can come to join us next door for a few minutes to meet these young heroes. This will take place at 3.10 p.m.
Business Of The HouseMr. Gilles Duceppe (Laurier-Sainte-Marie, BQ): Mr. Speaker, I would like to know what the government's legislative agenda will be over the coming days.
Alfonso Gagliano: Mr. Speaker, first of all, given that the House will not sit next Thursday, the ministerial statement regarding House business will be a bit longer than usual.
First, we designate June 5, June 13 and June 20 as allotted days.
Starting tomorrow it is our intention, subject to revision from time to time, to call the motion of the Minister of Justice regarding Newfoundland. This will be followed by third reading of Bill C-20,
the air navigation bill, which will be followed by second reading stage of Bill C-24 respecting tobacco; Bill C-32 regarding copyright; Bill C-6 concerning mines in the Yukon; Bill C-17 amending the Criminal Code; and Bill C-27 regarding prostitution.
We shall then call report stage of Bill C-26, the oceans act. This will be followed by the agricultural bills, Bill C-34 and Bill C-38; Bill C-35, the labour code amendments; Bill C-25 respecting regulations; Bill C-37 respecting certain tax conventions; the two flooding agreement bills, Bill C-39 and Bill C-40; and Bill C-23 respecting nuclear safety.
As I said at the beginning, we will continue consultations since this is the House's business statement for two weeks. If necessary, we will make adjustments so that the House may continue to work in an orderly fashion.
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion.
Chuck Strahl: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak on this motion.
The motion is deliberately written in a very broad fashion to bring attention to many deficiencies in the government's actions to date, the many promises it has broken and not followed through on. There were many things the Liberals campaigned on so vociferously during the last federal election. There have been many failures to deliver on what many Canadians thought were sincere attempts to deliver the goods on politicians' promises.
It is no wonder as we put together this motion and put together the list of promises that were broken that it turned into quite a project. We started out with the obvious ones such as Sheila Copps' nationally televised GST promise which eventually led to her resignation. There were some in my own riding. I remember during the election campaign the Liberals promised they would not sign the GATT agreement without a strengthened and clarified article XI.2(c). Remember that one? Of course that one has gone by the wayside. We remember some of the other promises that were made.
Many of us thought we would put together this supply day motion to bring this to the attention of Canadians. There would probably be a couple of other things which would come to mind. It ended up being a major research project. We started it on the broken promises and it turned into a major research paper. We could write Ph.D. on this.
The motion states that given the Prime Minister's 1993 election commitment "that there will not be a promise I do not keep", and I remember him standing in front of the cameras saying: "Every day you can check in the red book and see where I am". It has rapidly become one of those things which has accounted for the astounding 21 per cent drop in the approval rating of the Prime Minister over the last year. It is an astounding drop. Maybe he feels proud that his approval rating is still up around 48 per cent but one-third of the people who supported him a year ago no longer do. They have run out of patience.
Today the Minister of Natural Resources came before the committee. I reminded the minister again that although she is a very engaging person and talks a good line, people are getting impatient with the lack of follow through. For example, what was promised a year ago July, an energy chapter to the internal trade agreement, has now become a broken promise. There was a promise from the Minister of Industry last December to streamline regulations in the mining industry. It is now almost June and still there is nothing. There was the promise of jobs, jobs, jobs.
The rhetoric was good but the follow through just has not cut it. That has largely accounted for the 21 per cent drop in the approval rating of the Prime Minister. I also think it accounts for some of the paranoia I see on the Liberal side when they talk about many of the issues of the day after a week back in their ridings. They are starting to get the message from Canadians. Promises are fine but the follow through is what counts.
There was the GST debate during the last election. It has gone on here now for a couple of years. We all remember the actions of the Liberals, the ringing of the bells, the playing of the kazoos, doing whatever it took to raise the profile of why they were not going to approve the GST.
At all-candidates meetings my Liberal opponent was telling the world how they were going to abolish the GST. I remember saying: "That is not a serious proposal. You have no alternatives. Something cannot be abolished which brings in $17 billion. Let us be realistic about this". The promises were made. In my riding of course people did not believe it but they did in many other ridings, especially in Ontario where the Liberals won 98 of the 99 seats. However, the GST promise has now come home to roost.
Think also of the other specifics of the GST and how it has been handled. In 1990 a Liberal member in the House said that the GST was to be applied to reading materials and how could we expect to have another generation of people who could know more and compete in the world if the GST was applied to reading materials? Now the Liberals have harmonized the tax in Atlantic Canada and made it 15 per cent across the board. Lo and behold it is being applied to the very products they said three or four years ago they would not support.
Canadians are beginning to see. In Sheila Copps' case the GST brought down the minister. It caused her to resign and go door to door right now saying: "Please trust me this time". I think she is going to have a hard sell back in Hamilton East.
Where do we go? I am not sure which broken promise you are particularly interested in, Mr. Speaker. How about the CBC funding? During the election campaign the Reform Party had the zero in three plan which we said would balance the budget. We had to make some tough decisions. We said we would be tough with the CBC. Doggone it, we would cut $365 million from CBC funding.
For saying that the Liberals got up on their high horse and started in with: "What kind of a draconian feature is that?" They were going to provide stable funding for the CBC. As the member for Kingston and the Islands so readily noted, we promised to cut $365 million from CBC funding. Members can check in the zero in three plan.
The member for Kingston and the Islands has been busy with constituency work lately. He has a lot of time for that as he does not have many parliamentary duties to get in his way. When he goes home I am sure he will be interested in talking to his constituents since he has a lot of time to do that. They will ask: "What about this promise of stable funding for the CBC? What did that Reform Party promise?"
The Liberals have cut more from the CBC than the Reform Party proposed. To date the Liberals have cut $377 million from CBC funding. Our proposal is in the Reform Party's taxpayers budget, which I am sure the member called slash and burn at the time. He can get a copy of our proposals. I would be happy to send him one.
We said to cut $365 million. Did we want to cut $365 million because we thought that would be the end of the CBC? No. However, we were honest with the Canadian people, unlike members opposite who said one thing to get elected then broke those promises once they were in power.
I am sure the member for Kingston and the Islands will be interested in another broken promise, which sprung to mind as I was considering him and his busy constituency work. He wrote on revamping, modernizing and democratizing this place. His little report, which he wrote with a couple of other members from the Liberal Party, was attached to the red book as an appendix on how they were going to democratize the House of Commons.
I am not sure if you are ready for this, Mr. Speaker, but one of the proposals from the member for Kingston and the Islands concerned your very own position which he said should be held by members of the opposition parties. That was his proposal, not a particular campaign promise from myself. I will defer to his experience.
Mr. Speaker, I find you to be a very credible, very fair and an excellent Speaker, as you were in your former occupation. The member said that from his experience, in order to bring credibility to the Chair it was not good enough just to find a fair person; we had to have someone from the opposition parties. Do you remember the promise?
When we got into the House of Commons and went through a couple of sessions, some of the Chair positions were switched around. We brought this to the attention of the member for Kingston and the Islands and asked: What happened to the promise in the appendix of the red book to elect the deputy speakers from the opposition ranks?
I am not sure which person on this side would run but it is an instance of a broken promise. He wrote the report. He promised it to the Canadian people. He said it would help make this place more credible. It was not my proposal. It was a promise made by the Liberal Party of Canada which has not been fulfilled. It is a broken promise. It is another broken promise.
Another issue was the ethics counsellor. When I think of broken promises I think of the ethics issue. The Prime Minister has gone on at some length as to the appointment of an ethics counsellor. He found a person he felt he could trust, and we can take that anyway we like. He felt he could trust the ethics counsellor to give him the verdicts he wanted, the work that he wanted or whatever. The Prime Minister put him in the position. Instead of reporting through the House of Commons to the Canadian people, where does the ethics counsellor report? He reports to the Prime Minister himself.
When the Prime Minister appoints an ethics counsellor he finds someone he has worked with for 20 or 30 years for the position. The ethics counsellor is told to investigate whatever the Prime Minister wishes. When the investigation is finished the ethics counsellor hands the report to him to read at 24 Sussex Drive. Depending on what the verdict is, the report may or may not be shared with the Canadian people. That is not an answer to a promise for an ethics counsellor; it is an ethics lap dog.
The ethics counsellor does not report to Canadians but only to the person who hired him. A hired person is not independent if he must report to the person who is paying the bills. In our opinion that is what has happened to the position.
I return to the GATT and the NAFTA. During the election campaign the Reform Party said that we must sign the GATT. It was going to happen. One hundred and fifty nations of the world wanted to sign the GATT. We were going to sign it. We said that we
should be up front with Canadians. We thought we should sign it. It was becoming a worldwide, rules based trading economy. We should sign the GATT and get on with it.
I can remember the Liberal candidates in both Chilliwack and Abbotsford in my riding saying that they would lay down on the railroad tracks before they signed the GATT without a strengthened and clarified article XI.2(c). I am not exaggerating. The supply managed people had nothing to fear. The Liberals would never sign such an agreement. They would lay on the railroad tracks before they would sign that deal.
Within a month of the election, before Parliament even sat, the Liberal government had signed the GATT. I am not surprised. It was the thing to do. We in the Reform Party campaigned on it. We told the truth to the Canadian people. The Liberals said one thing to get elected and did another thing once they were in power.
The same thing happened with NAFTA. The Liberals railed against that in opposition. They were going to renegotiate the NAFTA. It was a mess. Mulroney had botched it. We wondered if there was anything to salvage. They were going to renegotiate the NAFTA. Again, they got in power and they signed the NAFTA. I am not upset with the decision. That was the thing to do. I campaigned on it. I told the truth. The Liberals campaigned on one thing and did another.
The list is growing. Mr. Speaker, you will notice the list is growing. I am sure you are as alarmed as I am that lists of broken-
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Kilger): With great resistance I rise, certainly not to participate in the debate, but simply to-
Mr. Dingwall: Please do, Mr. Speaker.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Kilger): No, even at the invitation of the minister I will resist.
I would like to remind the hon. member that although his intervention, like all interventions, should be made through the Chair, no one should expect the Speaker or the chair occupant to respond. I realize that sometimes we may be somewhat useful in debate, but I would ask for the hon. member's co-operation.
Chuck Strahl: Mr. Speaker, of course I was not impugning motives or anything. I am trying to direct my conversation through you. As I said, I know you, even from your previous occupation, as being one of those fair people that I want to chat with.
I will return to the issue of broken promises. Issues of integrity have arisen since the last election campaign. Promises made by the government have not been fulfilled. I must bring up the issue of MP pensions. We were promised in the last campaign that the MP pension plan would have a major overhaul. On this side of the House we put it down in black and white. We were going to scrap the MP pension plan. When we ran in 1993 there was no way it was a fair pension plan.
We got a slightly revised MP pension plan from the government. People qualify only after six years. They start to draw at the age of 55. It is fully indexed. At the same time people on pensions and OAS have been told to stay tuned. In three or four years their pensions will not be what they are today. Pensioners will start to lose their pensions in three or four years. The government campaigned on no problems. However, it will start to cut back on seniors' pensions while it guarantees itself a lavish MP pension plan the likes of which no one else in Canada could possibly qualify for. I feel like an old timer.
During the last campaign our budget balancing proposals included an idea for pensions. We said that the old age supplement should be targeted toward those most in need. What is most in need? We decided the cut off on OAS would be the national average family household income, $53,000. We said if someone makes more than that then they do not need help from the federal government on OAS. We are not talking about CPP which people contribute to, but about the non-contributory plans.
From the reaction of the Liberal I campaigned against one would have thought we had commissioned a study to spread-eagle people on anthills and pour honey on them. We had done a terrible thing, but what are the Liberals' proposals now? The cut off for the OAS is $53,000. It is exactly what the Reform Party campaigned on in black and white. We were up front and honest, telling it like it is.
Members over there said: "That Reform Party, what a slash and burn bunch it is". Yet when they got in what did they find? They found the Reform Party's proposals were pretty doggone good. They used our dollar figure for their own cut off, which is remarkable.
Imitation is the ultimate flattery. In that sense I am flattered. However, I would rather feel flattered about being up front. I would rather be imitated on the honesty and integrity of my party than I would on a particular issue, although it is nice to be proven right once again.
The government has a case of selective memory when it comes to fulfilling its promises. It is a case of: "When I was on the opposition side I chastised that Mulroney character. I called him every name in the book. I did whatever it took to be a rat packer and throw the dirt on him, but when I got over here my memory became selective. My promises became slurred and garbled. My vision became Ottawa depth perception instead of looking at the whole country", which is too bad.
This behaviour lends some credibility to the views of people who were surveyed in the Globe and Mail recently. They said that they
held politicians in the lowest regard of almost any occupation in Canada. It is because of broken promises and lack of integrity.
I am reminded of a story in which three people were arguing over which of three occupations had been around the longest: doctor, lawyer or politician. I think it is a true story. The first guy was a doctor who said: "Our occupation has been around the longest. The Bible tells about how in the beginning God took a rib out of Adam and made a woman. Therefore the doctoring skill has been around since the beginning of time". The lawyer jumped in and said: "Hold it. It says even earlier in the Bible that in the beginning it was all chaos, and God had to put the laws of nature in place. That is a lawyering skill, so lawyers have been around forever". The politician, who was Liberal, jumped in and asked: "Where do you think the chaos came from?"
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Kilger): I am sorry, the member's time has lapsed. Let us now move to questions or comments.
Mr. Andrew Telegdi (Waterloo, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, it is hard to take the previous member and his party seriously when one looks at the opposition day motion.
Let me first express some regret because when the Reform Party was first elected to the House its members promised to do politics differently. That really has not been the case. They probably represent the worst in partisan politics. The electors in British Columbia know that as they only elected two out of seventy-five Reform members in the very recent election.
The leader of the third party said: "I will not accept a chauffeur and a car from the government. I am going to be different". Then we find out that the chauffeur supplied by the Reform Party is subsidized by Canadian taxpayers. Later we find out that there is a suit allowance which provides clothes for the leader of the Reform Party. People within the party who raised these matters were subject to criticism.
We also have the case where the members of the third party waxed eloquently when we were dealing with one of the members in our caucus for opposing the government on a matter of confidence. What does the Reform Party do? It suspends two of its members for voicing concern over its policy, which is a matter of freedom of speech. It drove a third member out of the party, one who is regarded by most people as a moderate Reformer.
The motion ends with "cynicism about public institutions, governments, politicians and the political process". Surely the member recognizes that by Reform members cynical actions during the referendum campaign, where they tried to undermine the very integrity of this country, they are the ones who have promoted cynicism about public institutions and politicians in a way that has not been done in the history of this country.
Chuck Strahl: Mr. Speaker, I am not sure if the member is from Atlantic Canada or not but that is a bunch of codswallop. That is a diatribe of the worst kind.
Sometime when he wants to walk home with the leader of the Reform Party I can arrange it because member for Calgary Southwest does not have a chauffeur to this day. The hon. member should know that.
Without getting into the gutter with the member opposite, I will quickly go through some things. Why did the B.C. Liberal Party, along with the B.C. Reform Party and the independents capture 60 per cent of the vote in British Columbia? What did they promise? They promised to resign if they did not do the following Reform things: Go for referendum and recall, reduce taxes, balance the budget, bring in fixed election dates, reduce the number of MLAs in the legislature in Victoria, eliminate the MLA pension plan. The B.C. Liberals said that maybe they would renegotiate the Nisga'a contract. It goes on and on with an entire Reform Party package that captured 61 per cent of the vote in British Columbia.
The B.C. Liberal Party has nothing to do with the federal Liberal Party of course. When he appeared before it, this caucus over here booed the B.C. Liberal guy out of town. He was happy to do it because he said: "I have nothing to do with that bunch. They don't stand for anything I stand for". He did not say it but he stands for almost the same package of reforms that this federal party, the Reform Party of Canada, stands for.
That is why many people supported the B.C. Liberal Party or the B.C. Reform Party in the B.C. election. Together they had a vast majority of British Columbians who stood for none of this nonsense over here, but stood for all the things I just mentioned.
Ted White: Mr. Speaker, I heard the hon. member mention the committees during his speech. It brought to mind that during question period today the Minister of Justice mentioned that if he could withstand appearing before the justice committee, he could face any tribunal in the land.
I have a letter from the Minister of Justice to a committee that I sit on called the Joint Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations. I think that the member will appreciate the frustration and be able to confirm it. The committee is not a high profile one but it is pretty important. It determines which government regulations are appropriate. It is really sort of a community watch dog. It can even disallow regulations so it is pretty important.
The committee wrote to the minister in February 1995 with regard to Bill C-84 with some questions and suggestions. The member for Scarborough-Rouge River who is sitting opposite was a signatory to that letter to the minister.
On May 3, 1996, more than a year later, the minister sent back a reply so far off topic, so full of incorrect information, that the only conclusion that could be reached was that he either thought we were a bunch of idiots or he never read the letter that he signed. Now we are placed in the position of having to call the minister before the committee in September to find out if he even knew what he was signing.
If the minister thinks that the worst thing he has ever faced is the justice committee, wait until he comes to the Joint Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations. That is the sort of frustration and idiocy that goes on in this place that produces the cynicism that so many voters out there feel.
Does the hon. member agree that these sorts of frustrations occur in committee?
Chuck Strahl: Mr. Speaker, I thought earlier when he was talking about the two possibilities for the minister, it would be a tough call. I am not sure whether he did not read the letter or he just did not care. It does highlight some of the frustrations in committee and in the House of Commons.
I have sat on a committee where members have passed amendments to bills without allowing a vote on the amendment. I have been refused the ability to submit amendments because I did not have them in both officials languages even though they were properly typed. I do not speak French, I did not have time to get them translated and so other members refused to hear them. There have been occasions where they have just moved to closure immediately without giving anyone the right to debate the issues.
The government regulations committee, as the member correctly points out, is a very important committee that really is the nuts and bolts of how government enacts its legislation. Committee members had to wait a year first of all for a response and second the response had nothing to do with the original request.
The member for North Vancouver should be relieved in a sense because the regulations that went with Bill C-68, the gun control legislation, were so ill-prepared and not understandable that the justice minister tabled the regulations and then withdrew them in a week because they were totally unworkable even by federal Liberal standards.
The hon. member's frustrations are understandable. The reform of committee work is basically a make work project for backbench Liberal MPs. That is what it is and that is another reform that has to happen. I hope that will happen before the Canadian people get more cynical and distrustful of the process, but also before the Liberal backbenchers do.
Just another little aside, they say that laws and sausages are the same. You should not watch either one being made. I was wishing that we could at least watch laws being made without getting ill at ease.
David Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, I want to participate in this opposition motion which has been put forward by my colleagues who represent the third party.
Unaccustomed as I am to participating in debates in this Chamber, I thought I would go back and review for members, as well as for those who might be viewing the proceedings on television, the fact that at another time I was responsible for putting forward opposition motions. One of the things we learned while in opposition was that it was very valuable to the debate if the motion being put before our colleagues was very focused. Unfortunately today is not that kind of a day.
The motion put forward by my colleagues representing the Reform Party is very long. It is a whining, snivelling bunch of lines which really does not come to any substantive focus in what it is supposed to do.
One of the things that struck me while I was sitting in my place and listening to the member opposite wax, somewhat eloquently I might add, his flippant use of the word "integrity". We heard that from the leader of the third party well before the election in 1993. We heard him during the campaign and we have heard him since he became member of Parliament and leader of the third party in the House. Without qualification, on every issue that hon. member refers to he likes to use the word integrity.
I am not as well read as all those members opposite, therefore I need the guidance of a dictionary. I have looked at page 616 of The Concise Oxford Dictionary where I found the definition of the word integrity. This is what it states: ``moral uprightness; honesty, wholeness; soundness''. That is what integrity means.
This was the party and these were the representatives who, before the election, during the election campaign and since that time, have used that particular word. Now they have to confront their own rhetoric.
Here is what the leader, or as some in Nova Scotia would refer to him, the extinguished leader of the third party, but that would be rather unkind, so I will just refer to him as the leader of the third party, said on October 24, 1993. I think these words are rather telling: "We want to position ourselves in that Parliament not just as a whining, sniffling opposition group but as a constructive alternative to the government itself".
What has happened since October 24, 1993? Have we seen constructive policies come forward from the Reform Party as it relates to health care? Have we seen a proposal with regard to senior citizens? Have we seen a proposal as it relates to a two-tier system of medicare and their opposition to it?
The answer to all of those questions is that unfortunately the Reform Party, and I want members to recognize that in particular it is the leader of the Reform Party who has been bankrupt of the
word that he used prior to his election to the House, during the campaign and since that time of his own word which is integrity.
I say that about the leader of the Reform Party. Mr. Speaker, you know it is not in my character to say those kinds of things about the hon. member opposite. However, we all know that the leader of the Reform Party is going down.
He is going down in the polls and he is going down as the leader of the Reform Party. They will make it so difficult within the Reform Party itself to sustain a bankrupt leader in the leader of the Reform Party.
Let us come back to integrity. Let us come back to what the leader said on October 24, 1993. Let us compare not a year and a half ago but to October 1995 and ask ourselves what have the members of that party been saying about the position the leader took in 1993.
Here is what we find by the member for Macleod: "I will do anything I have to do in the House of Commons, even stand on my head on the bench and hold my breath if it is necessary. That, I guess, is an indictment of my original approach, which was to come here and to be dignified".
This is the word the leader of the Reform Party talked about before he was elected during the campaign and since that time, integrity. His own colleagues have abdicated their support of the leader of the Reform Party. They are now in the gutter where all of their policies seem to be formulated.
I only have great regret and disappointment for the hon. members of the Reform Party. There are some who would like to put forward constructive alternatives but they do not get that opportunity. There are those in the Reform Party who would like to make meaningful suggestions. Because a large group of individuals within that party and are so inconsistent they cannot get a cohesive policy to come forward.
I do not take exception to any of the hon. members in the Reform Party, none at all. This is their Parliament too. They have the right to stand in this place and echo their sentiments and their views in any way they wish.
If they wish to make fools of themselves, as they have done consistently since October 1993, so be it. I take great exception, strong exception to the leader of the Reform Party. He is the person I wish to direct my comments to, not those members who fall at his feet.
I want to go to the source of the Reform Party, the raison d'être of the Reform Party, the leader. I make the prediction that this hon. member as the leader of the Reform Party will not be here after the next election for two reasons. I ask the co-operation of the House so I can demonstrate that my thesis about his absence after the next election is based on not only sound information but on probably the best political evidence anyone could ever gather.
That is and that will be the downfall of the leader of the Reform Party. As we have seen in recent weeks, members want him out. Wait for the big show on June 6 and June 7. They will have a
convention. They will have flags. They will wear sweaters. They will say "we love Preston, he is so wonderful, he is our leader, he is the best thing that has ever happened to us". Reformers have gone down in the polls ever since they came to Parliament in October 1993.
For these members opposite, but more important for the leader opposite, the greatest opposition he must face is his own political party. I respectfully suggest the other reason he will not be here after the next election, as hon. members know, is his bankrupt substantive policy alternatives.
This is a person who has assumed a high office as the leader of a third party. No leader in Canadian history has demonstrated such a lack of understanding of the nation, of its people, of its resources and of its history as the leader of the Reform Party.
Any time, anywhere, on any occasion, on any issue members on this side of the House, members on that side of the House and even members of the Bloc Quebecois would be happy to debate any substantive issue the hon. member raises.
However, we have seen in the last two and a half years, for example on issues of health care, how he tries to duck them. If they are issues concerning aboriginals, he ducks them. If they are issues of safe streets, he ducks them. On economic policy he will submit a budget one year and not submit a budget the next. In terms of job creation they have a plan but nobody knows where it is at. It is one of these: "We will put it this way here".
It is amazing to think that Canadians will be gullible enough to be sold on the bankruptcies of the policies of the leader of the third party. We on this side of the House and on that side of the House will not take an aggressive position in relation to the Reform Party; we will take a position to the Canadian people. We will demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that the bankruptcy other members may label Reform with is not only there rhetorically but is there in reality.
I find it passing strange that hon. members opposite would stand in their places today and have the unmitigated gall to suggest this government, which has not completed its mandate, has not fulfilled a good number of the commitments we made in the red book. To be clear, I provide a few examples.
We promised to cancel the EH-101 helicopter. We did that. We said we would privatize Petro-Canada. We did that. We reduced government subsidies to business, transportation and agriculture, the Western Grain Transportation Act, the Atlantic region freight assistance and the maritime region freight assistance.
We have wound up over 70 agencies and done away with 600 governor in council appointments. We reviewed all government programs and agencies to reduce the waste and have done so not only in government departments but in each and every agency of the Government of Canada. That is what we have done.
We met our economic targets set by the Minister of Finance not once, not twice but three times, which is very significant in terms of meeting our economic targets.
Unemployment is staggering in my region. In terms of the national levels it has been reduced from 11.2 per cent to 9.3 per cent.
[Intervention]
An hon. member: Are you happy about that?
David Dingwall: No, I am not happy about that. I will tell the hon. member opposite that I am not happy with the leader of the Reform Party, who tries to play on fears of those Canadians who are unemployed by offering, not in the House of Commons but while he is on the stump, whether in Newfoundland, in Hamilton or in western Canada, all the answers in relation to job creation. No substantive program has come forward from the leader of the Reform Party. I suggest to the hon. member he ought to be ashamed of his party and particularly of the leader of that party.
There are other initiatives we have taken as a national government. We created the Canada Lands Corporation to dispose of surplus federal properties. We introduced the direct deposit program which saves Canadians over $28 million. We restored the court challenges program and we created and implemented the national infrastructure program.
The hon. member laughs, but I recall with great clarity a day in the House, and I stand to be corrected by the hon. Speaker, when the hon. member with eloquence and fervour told the minister responsible: "I am not in favour of the national infrastructure program". The minister then stood in his place and read a letter from the hon. member which said: "Would you please support these projects in my constituency".
Let us go back the word integrity. I ask the hon. member is that integrity? Is that the Reform Party's idea of the definition of the word integrity? One thing is said in the House and then hopefully the minister would be slipped a little note which will not come up in his briefing book and then their constituents can be told: "I had to say that. I do not support the national infrastucture program because the leader does not support it. I had to ask if he would mind putting those projects in my riding". Is that Reform Party's definition of integrity? I think it is; say one thing but do the exact opposite.
I am sure the House would want to give me extra time to complete my remarks. Let us come back to the national infrastructure program. What was the national infrastucture program?
[Intervention]
An hon. member: A $6 billion waste of money. A boondoggle.
David Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, I am glad the hon. member opposite said it is a boondoggle and a $6 billion waste of taxpayer money. Municipalities all across the country, from the urban centres of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver to villages and towns, have all benefited from the national infrastructure program. It put in communities infrastructure that in most instances would never have been done.
I am ashamed and appalled the hon. member opposite would say to the residents of Goose Bay, Sydney, Nova Scotia, Sudbury or Sault Ste. Marie or Saskatoon that money to give them quality water for children, mothers and fathers is somehow a bad policy for the Government of Canada. I say to the hon. member that it shows the leader of the Reform Party is bankrupt of ideas, bankrupt of programs and bankrupt of knowing what Canada and Canadians are all about. That is very clear.
We announced funding of $315 million over three years to help young Canadians get their first job, $60 million of which will go to increasing summer student employment in 1996. The only person opposed to that is the leader of the Reform Party. He says to middle class Canadians who work hard to put food on the table and to educate their kids "no, we do not want the state to help your son or daughter get a summer job". That is the party of the rich. That is not the party that supports the working middle class of the country. I say to the hon. member with his computer on his desk and his colleagues beside him that the leader of the Reform Party should clearly examine the definition of the word integrity and should do the honourable thing and find another vocation.
Ted White: Mr. Speaker, it seems the minister is holding a bit of a grudge over the attacks on his highway project. I certainly would like to hear a little more on that.
The minister did say specifically that he does not take exception to hon. members of the Reform Party as individuals. Then he followed up and said the policies are in the gutter. I would like to ask the minister then if the policies are in the gutter, and since the policies were produced by the public of Canada with its input and voted on by members of the Reform Party at convention, is he saying that the more than two million people who voted Reform in the 1993 election, 20 per cent of the voters of Canada, are stupid,
intolerant, bigoted and that they would be so stupid as to produce those policies?
If that is what he is saying I would like him to repeat it so that anyone who wants to read it will know exactly what he thinks of them.
With respect to the infrastructure program, in my riding I always select a random committee from the voter's list. I have no idea who they are or what political party they represent. They come, usually about 30 people, and they make the decisions about the grants in the riding. They make some pretty good decisions.
It is not true that the leader or anybody else in this party tells me what to do about those grants. It is true that the majority of people out there feel it is a waste of money, that we are giving money to places which do not need the money to create the jobs.
I will give an example. Morguard Properties, which runs a big shopping centre in my riding, is obliged to look after the gardens in that shopping centre. It would obviously employ students to do it because it is the least expensive labour. Yet year after year it applies for a grant. It is outrageous that we are giving Morguard Properties money.
A better way to do it is through persuasion of the business community to give jobs. It always does if it is persuaded. It does not need the grants.
David Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his two questions. I want to be very clear with the hon. member because I think he has asked serious questions with regard to the policies of the Reform Party and those members who allegedly make up the Reform Party and who have allegedly participated in the development of the policies. I have great respect for individuals who involve themselves in the political process.
I want the member opposite to understand and accept that. I do not accept the leader of the Reform Party espousing one day a policy on health and the next day reversing himself and saying something different. To me that is not integrity. To me that is not good social policy. To me that is not good policy for the nation.
This is the leader who says one thing on Monday and then the following Monday something else. It is evident as it relates to the health policy of the Reform Party, or the lack of health care policy of the Reform Party. I am sure most Canadians, as the polls indicate quite clearly, and wherever I travel and with my caucus colleagues, have overwhelming support for medicare. In excess of 70 per cent do not want a two tier system of medicine. They want a one tier system and they want one taxpayer to fund that system.
The hon. member has gone out on a limb here. I hope I will have an opportunity to visit him in his constituency and to talk with municipal councillors. I hope I have the opportunity to go into the kitchens, as I do in my own constituency, and have tea and biscuits and tell senior citizens and various organizations they do not need a new water system, a new sewage system or an environmental clean-up of a particular problem in their community. I will be glad to discuss that with residents of his constituency.
The Reform Party, in particular the bankrupt leader of the Reform Party, are very envious of our national infrastructure program. It came from the municipalities and we, as a national government, thereafter supported it. They are envious that we as a national political party supported and have implemented that program. It has been overwhelmingly successful all across the country.
Have there been examples in a program of $6 billion where we probably would have had a different view on a project at any given point in time? I say to the hon. member he is correct in that intervention. However, the overwhelming success of the national infrastructure program has meant jobs for Canadians. It has built up the infrastructure in the country, which has been in great need. The hon. member knows it has been successful. We as a national political party have had that success. The hon. member's bankrupt leader is now having to suffer the consequences for opposing the national infrastructure program.
Mr. Antoine Dubé (Lévis, BQ): Mr. Speaker, I have been listening carefully for the past few minutes to the Minister of Health, who, I must say, has livened things up somewhat in the House today. He has brought a little life to the place, and should be congratulated for doing so.
However, he is avoiding the motion by attacking the Reform Party and particularly its leader. He neglects to say that the motion in question talks about keeping promises. I will remind him of a few of them.
When it was in opposition, the Liberal Party promised to eliminate the GST-it did not. I do not know whether he was here at the time, but the people in his party criticized the unemployment insurance reform proposed by the former Conservative minister when they were in opposition. However, they went a lot further: $2 billion in additional cuts. They had promised to reduce, indeed eliminate duplication in the field of health care. I would like his response to that, as that is his particular concern.
I am a new member of the Standing Committee on Health. I have been on it for only a month and have discovered a series of duplications. Could he tell us what he plans to do during the time he has remaining as minister, between now and the election, about eliminating duplication in the area of health?
Finally, he spoke of integrity. He was Minister of Public Works, he knows the rules, because there are lots of rules, but we could go a lot further. For example, we know that there are rules for contracts of $30,000 and over, however in the case of contracts under $30,000, to encourage greater public confidence in the system of public administration, would he support, as an example, legislation on the funding of political parties by individuals rather than by corporations, as is currently the case?
The traditional parties are receiving considerable funding from big business and the banks. Six of the major funders of the political parties are banks. Does he consider this normal? In the interest of integrity and at the invitation of the Reform Party would he support legislation limiting the funding of political parties to that provided by individuals?
David Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, I do not want to give the House the impression that I am attempting to be meanspirited toward my colleague. Obviously he missed the first part of my intervention.
I said the motion before us is not very focused and is very widespread. I was able to indicate to the House some of the words being used in the motion, such as the word integrity, which seems to be a synonym for all of the things the bankrupt leader of the third party was using before the election in 1993, during the election and thereafter. Therefore I am speaking to the motion. It is members of the third party who are attacking us as a national government, saying we have not fulfilled our commitments.
I say to the hon. member opposite that our mandate is not complete. We still have a number of months and maybe even years. God, it might be even decades before we complete our mandate.
The hon. member talked a bit about overlap and duplication. I have worked very closely with provincial governments not only in this portfolio but in other portfolios to rid ourselves of overlap and duplication. In most instances it was a clear road ahead in terms of ridding ourselves of overlap and duplication. We will continue to work with governments.
However, the phrase overlap and duplication should be put in context. Where there is overlap and duplication one has to vet out the respective responsibilities of the different parties and come to some sort of consensus in terms of which level of government, if that is the case, or a third party might be able to do the service or produce the product in question.
With regard to UI reform, the hon. member comes from a great province, la belle province du Québec, where there is high unemployment. There is also high unemployment in my region. However, if the hon. member is suggesting we should not have modernized the unemployment insurance, I think he is wrong. I think the vast majority of Canadians wanted to see the modernization of the unemployment insurance.
The hon. member can debate a provision of the UI changes which have been brought in by my distinguished colleague, the Minister for Human Resources Development, who members opposite support wholeheartedly, as I look across. Those reforms have been predicated on the sense of fairness and what is right.
In terms of political contributions and amendments to the elections act, all of those matters can be discussed at a more appropriate time in terms of committee or other institutions which may be reviewing them from time to time. I do not really think this is the place for me to debate today.
We on this side of the House have attempted to fulfil the commitments we announced in the red book to the best of our ability. We have a period of time remaining in our mandate and we will endeavour over the months or years that are left to achieve all of those things we believe to be important. However, we need the co-operation of people in all parts of the country, including the province of Quebec, the western provinces, the Atlantic region and Ontario.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Kilger): It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the question to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment is as follows: the hon. member for Shefford, the Somalia inquiry.
Mr. Osvaldo Nunez (Bourassa, BQ): Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to the motion presented by the Reform Party on this opposition day. We are looking at the extent to which the Liberal government elected in 1993 has failed to keep the promises it made in its red book.
These unkept promises are numerous. For example, on page 86 of the red book, it says:

At a time when racial intolerance and ethnic hatreds are in resurgence around the world, a Liberal government will take measures to combat hate propaganda-In addition, a Liberal government will encourage "tolerance and mutual understanding", and will make efforts to combat racial discrimination in Canada.

The Minister of Human Resources Development showed intolerance last Monday when he asked me to find another country, if I was not happy with his government's immigration and refugee policies and if I continued to promote sovereignty for Quebec.
This has been a trying week for me, a difficult week. As politicians, we are almost all accustomed to being the target of attacks, but I was not prepared for the extent and aggressiveness of the attack by the Minister of Human Resources Development,
when he clearly asked me to leave, to find another country because I do not share his views or the views of his government.
Following these discriminatory comments, I received telephone calls and letters from people with racist views, telling me they are ready to buy my plane ticket so that I can leave Canada as quickly as possible, and offering to pack my bags to speed me on my way.
First of all, I thank my family, who have been very supportive this week, particularly my wife, who was in the visitors' gallery. I thank my colleagues in the Bloc Quebecois who have given my their unanimous support. I would particularly like to thank the Leader of the Opposition, the leader of my party, who took my defence to heart.
I was deeply wounded, I admit. I was not expecting attacks on this scale. The statements made by the Minister of Human Resources Development are discriminatory and offensive. These remarks encourage the Canadian public to be xenophobic and are an insult to all immigrants and refugees.
The minister is sending an unacceptable message to Canada's ethnocultural communities and to the public at large that there are two kinds of citizen in Canadian society: those who were born here and those who came from somewhere else. It is particularly worrisome when the minister, in the House, or outside, mentions "real" Canadians.
Who are real Canadians, in the minister's opinion? Are they people who agree with his ideas and with the government's positions? Who are not real Canadians? People like me, who criticize his views, his positions. Barely a few months have passed since the end of the International Year of Tolerance declared by the United Nations. Throughout the world, there were activities to promote tolerance, including in Montreal North in my riding. I marked the end of the year with a large brunch on behalf of tolerance, with the participation of the police, ethnic, economic and social groups, and the general public.
The minister's comments are worrisome as far as Canadian rights and freedoms are concerned. He is jeopardizing freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, the right to secede. I would like to quickly quote two sections of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Section 6 (1) on mobility states that "Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada". The minister wishes to deprive me of that basic right.
Section 15 on equality rights reads as follows: "Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability". It is very clear that the charter protects all citizens, even if they were not born in Canada.
I would like to quote here a sentence that had a profound effect on me when I was experiencing political difficulties in my country. Voltaire, the great 18th century French philosopher, said: "Je suis en profond désaccord avec tes idées, mais je donnerais ma vie pour que tu aies le droit de les exprimer".
If that is not clear in French, let me repeat it in English.
"I may disapprove of what you say but I will defend to death your right to say it". Everyone knows that in the United States this quotation has been used often. It is one of the most famous quotations from Voltaire and one of the most popular quotations among American civil libertarians.
I fled the terrible dictatorship of General Pinochet in February 1974. During the dictatorship, hundreds, thousands of people were murdered or disappeared in my country. Human rights violations were flagrant and systematic. I came here because of that dictatorship. I did not want to leave my country, and I would probably still be in Chile, had there not been a dictatorship.
I came to Canada, to Quebec, a profoundly democratic country, and I thank Canada, I thank Quebec, for having taken us in, myself, my wife and my two children, who were two and five at the time, at a very difficult period in our lives.
As the Minister of Human Resources Development said, this country welcomed us with open arms, with generosity, but I must tell you that it was primarily Quebec that did so. I arrived in Montreal, Quebec, and it was the Quebecers in particular who welcomed me with enormous generosity, with understanding, with unfailing solidarity.
Since our arrival we have, like thousands of immigrants before us, tried to make a contribution, to give something back to Canadian society, to Quebec society. I have always worked, I have never been on unemployment insurance or welfare. My wife has always worked. As for my two children, today one of them is an economist working for INFORUM at the Montreal World Trade Centre, a respected economist. My other son works for the Quebec National Assembly. I am very proud of the work Gonzalo does. He is a communications graduate and has a very popular radio program in Montreal.
I am satisfied with what my family has done here. We pay taxes like all other Canadian citizens, and like all other immigrants as well, and therefore we, all the immigrants and refugees, are entitled to the same rights.
But we still have a way to go, in this regard. Before I became a member of Parliament, I was an advocate of individual rights and freedoms in Montreal on behalf of immigrants and refugees, because this issue is very important to me. This is why my party gave me the job of citizenship and immigration critic.
I was elected in Bourassa through the francophone and the immigrant vote. The francophones were incredibly open to someone from another country, who does not speak French with a local accent, who arrived here at the age of 35, who was educated elsewhere and whose habits, sometimes, and traditions are different. I am proud to represent my riding of Bourassa in Montreal North, which is typical of Quebec and Canada, where francophones, anglophones and immigrants understand each other.
My name is neither Bouchard nor Tremblay, it is Nunez, and everyone knows I am a hispanophone. I was elected to Parliament to defend the interests of Quebecers, which I do vigorously. I work hard and I demand a lot of myself. I also here to promote the sovereignty of Quebec along with all my colleagues in the Bloc Quebecois, the party that took me into its ranks.
I am also here to promote social justice, equity and solidarity, to try to create a better place for immigrants and refugees in this society. I visited Canada, I met with cultural communities, I met with anglophones, and I explained why I am a sovereignist. I know that it is an emotional issue.
I understand when there is opposition, when there are vicious attacks, but I do not understand when a senior minister, an important minister in this cabinet, goes so far as to make discriminatory and offensive remarks. That I cannot accept.
Antoine Dubé: With the Prime Minister's blessing.
Osvaldo Nunez: Mr. Speaker, I say to you, I am not the slightest bit intimidated by the minister's remarks. They only strengthen my cause, my decision to continue the fight, my sovereignist convictions. He will not stop me. He will not drive me out of this country. He will not tell me what to do. I have already survived a dictatorship. I can survive here for years and years, even if the attacks are tough, personal, discriminatory, and even racist.
This is not the first time I have been attacked by members of the Liberal Party of Canada. My former adversary in the riding of Bourassa, Denis Coderre, never accepted defeat. Last year, at a public meeting, he made some disagreeable remarks about me, in the presence of the Minister of Labour. He never dissociated himself from these remarks. My former adversary wants to bring back the deportation act and get rid of me, because I do not espouse the federalist cause. He accused me of spitting on the Canadian flag.
Let me tell you, I have never spat on anyone's flag. I have great respect for flags, particularly the Canadian flag, because it is the symbol of a country and is close to people's hearts, they love it.
Why is this Minister of Human Resources Development making such comments? The present Minister of the Environment and former Minister of Immigration is not from here. He was born in Argentina and is a member of the Italian community in Canada. I do not recall the Conservatives ever asking him to leave Canada because, in his criticism of them as a member of the official opposition, he did not share the views of the Conservative government then in power.
I profoundly regret the silence of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration in this matter. It is her role to promote tolerance. And what has she said to date? Nothing.
I profoundly regret the silence of the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Immigration, who has also had nothing to say. I profoundly regret the silence of the hon. member for Saint-Denis, who is also the chair of the Citizenship and Immigration committee, also of ethnic origin, and has not dissociated herself from the remarks made by the Minister of Human Resources Development.
There is much to be understood from their silence. I would like them to react, as they did when Mr. Parizeau made improper remarks about the ethnic Quebecers.
I must also frankly acknowledge the solidarity of certain Liberal members who have come to see me and have, discreetly, expressed their support. They have told me that they are not pleased, and cannot support the views and the attacks of the Minister of Human Resources Development against me.
I am also pleased that this incident has triggered a debate on the place of the cultural communities in Canadian society. Are immigrants and refugees full-fledged citizens, or are they not?
Fortunately, there have been newspaper articles and editorials in a number of papers, including the Montreal Gazette , which is not a sovereignist publication.
"But Mr. Young was out of line this week when he singled out Osvaldo Nunez, the Bloc Quebecois MP for Bourassa, to criticize him for supporting Quebec independence. Mr. Nunez has the right to support independence. Citizens, old stock and new, enjoy equal freedoms. All have the right to express their views and to be politically active. Mr. Nunez has the right to voice his opinions just
like any other Canadian. If freedoms are to have value they need the respect of all Canadians. Mr. Young should apologize". This is from the Montreal Gazette . Le Devoir and La Presse devoted editorials to the question. I thank all those who sent me their support. The FTQ, by labour federation, sent me a message this morning. The Canadian Jewish Congress does not support my sovereignist ideas, but is fighting so that all citizens may enjoy the same rights, particularly the freedom of speech.
The B'nai Brith Canada League for Human Rights, the Chilean and Latin American community, the American multi-ethnic centre, the premier of Quebec, who condemned the remarks of the Minister of Human Resources Development and a Montreal lawyer, Richard Kurland, have all expressed support. If I may, I would like to quote from the lawyer's letter, because it speaks for a lot of people who are concerned by the minister's remarks. Unfortunately, I cannot find it.
I would not want a repetition of this incident, because it damages the reputation and the image of Canada and of all Canadians.
I was given a mandate by the people. I want to continue to fulfil this mandate, to fight for justice, equity and a pluralistic society more open to immigrants and refugees.
John Cannis: Mr. Speaker, I begin by saying that I stand to make these comments today as a proud Canadian and as a proud Greek Canadian, my two heritages.
The hon. member for Bourassa stated that we did not keep the promises which appear on page 82. He mentioned racial intolerance, hate propaganda and racial discrimination. I do not know where he was when we voted on Bill C-41 which covered this entire area. Maybe he did not support it.
I know the hon. member for Bourassa has been abroad on various committees. He has heard, as have I, people in different countries saying: "We cannot understand what you people are doing in Canada. You are working toward splitting the best country in the world which has been recognized not once but twice by the United Nations".
I do not understand it when he talks about tolerance. There is not a country on the universe which has exercised more tolerance than Canada. I am proud to say so. The member said that they pay taxes. Just paying taxes does not give anybody the right to split the country. We all pay taxes.
I was not born in this country, but I cannot accept anybody who works toward splitting it. The member stated that he came from a country which had political difficulties. When he arrived in the country it was not Quebec that welcomed him, it was Canada that welcomed him. It was Canada that gave him citizenship. It was Canada that gave him the opportunity to sit in this honourable House, as I have that opportunity.
He talked about honouring flags. As long as this country is one united country, the Bloc Quebecois and the province of Quebec should respect the flag and put it in their offices and in every institution in Quebec. It is a shame they do not. It is a shame they have falsified Canadian history and continue to do so.
I stand behind what the Minister of Human Resources Development said. We have an obligation to defend this country. He took an oath. I took an oath. We all took an oath. Part of that oath was to ensure we would keep the country strong and united. When it comes to rights and freedoms, we do not have the right to split the country. I will work along with the Minister of Human Resources Development and every other colleague in the House to ensure the country remains united and a beacon of hope to the world.
Osvaldo Nunez: Mr. Speaker, the situation is more worrisome than I said earlier. That a member would back the racist and discriminatory remarks of a minister hurts me deeply.
When the minister made his remarks last Monday, he received a standing ovation from his colleagues. All the journalists are saying that he made a mistake, that this government has committed a monumental error. Reform members applauded him-at least they did not stand up to do so-because they also share the minister's views. What country is this? Did any journalists defend the minister? Did any editorial come to his defence? None did. On the contrary.
I will read a letter-I received numerous letters of support-from the Centre de recherche-action sur les relations raciales. Mr. Fo Niemi, the director general, says: "Mr. Young's excessive remarks demonstrate a flagrant lack of-"
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Kilger): Order, please. I would remind all members that just as we may not name another member directly, neither may we do so indirectly. Therefore, when reading something written by someone else, members must replace the name of the member or the name of the minister by his title or riding.
I know this requires more effort, but it is the rule of parliamentary debate and I ask for and encourage the co-operation of the member for Bourassa. This is already a very emotional debate. I
nonetheless hope that we can go on respectfully, according to our parliamentary tradition.
Osvaldo Nunez: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, I shall continue with my quotation:

The hotheaded comments by the Minister of Human Resources Development demonstrate a flagrant lack of respect toward thousands of Canadians and Quebecers who have chosen Canada as their adoptive country and who wish to exercise in complete safety, freedom and dignity all of the rights, duties and privileges conferred upon them by Canadian citizenship.
I would encourage you not to stand for this type of xenophobia which is unworthy of our parliamentary traditions and our fundamental values as a pluralistic, fair and democratic society. The minister in question must be made to apologize.

Continuing with another quotation, from the Ligue des Noirs du Québec:

La Ligue des Noirs du Québec is totally scandalized by the words of the federal Minister of Human Resources Development concerning Bloc Quebecois MP Oswaldo Nunez. We find his words insulting, discriminatory and profoundly racist.

They are calling for a public apology to all Canadians who have been deeply offended by these statements.
This morning's Le Devoir contained an article which said the following:

We must not hesitate in condemning the words of the Minister of Human Resources Development concerning the Quebec MP of Chilean origin. To state, as the Minister of Human Resources Development did, that a new Canadian MP ought not to be allowed to criticize Canada's immigration policy and that he ought to find another country, smacks of xenophobia.

Hon. Ron Irwin (Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, the hon. member who just spoke comes from Chile. In the early seventies until the change to democracy it was a country that gave 40,000 to 80,000 lives to preserve democracy.
He says he is not paid anything or receives anything in Canada. I might remind him he is paid to be a parliamentarian in the Parliament of Canada and well paid.
He says he is here for harmony. I come from Italian ancestry on my maternal side. What kind of harmony does he bring to this country from Chile if he would separate the 450,000 Italian Canadians in Montreal from the one million Italians in Toronto? They have one thing in common. They are Canadian.
What kind of harmony does he bring to this country if he would separate the five million francophones of Quebec from the 600,000 francophones in Ontario? Would he do that in Chile?
They have Yugoslav communities in Chile. They have aboriginal communities in Chile. They have Hispanic communities in Chile. Would he go back to Chile and split Spaniard from Spaniard, Yugoslav from Yugoslav? Would he do that? If he is prepared to do it in Canada, then perhaps he should be prepared to go back to Chile and do it there.
I might remind him that it was not P.E.I., Newfoundland or Ontario that saved his hide. It was Canada that gave him his passport. May I remind this member, that yesterday when we celebrated 14 Parliaments, on that podium were five French Canadians: the Speaker of the House, the Speaker of the Senate, the Governor General, the person who sang the national anthem and the Prime Minister. Only one of those French Canadians came from Quebec, two came from Ontario, one came from Manitoba and two from New Brunswick. Would he split that type of spirit?
May I end with this. This hon. member sat with other Bloc members during the national anthem with five French Canadians up there trying to keep this country together. They did not sing a word, some of them sat with their arms crossed. Is that the kind of harmony that he would bring from Chile to Canada?
I say to this hon. member that he should be ashamed of himself if that is his stated goal. It is certainly not demonstrated by the party he has joined which incidentally does not think highly of immigrants, if we look at what Mr. Parizeau said after the referendum.
I suggest to the member that he should be ashamed of what he is doing to Canada. He should be ashamed of what he is doing to the immigrants who do not support his position.
Osvaldo Nunez: Mr. Speaker, it is true that I have a Canadian passport, like all of my Bloc Quebecois colleagues, but I hope one day we shall be able to have a Quebec passport.
The minister refers to his Italian roots. I would reply that all of his Italian friends, at least all those I know in Quebec, are not in the least pleased with the comments made by his fellow minister. On the contrary, they are unanimous in their condemnation. I have not seen a single article today in the press defending the untenable, unsustainable, unbelievable, unparalleled comments made by the Minister of Human Resources Development.
I have here the editorial by Mrs. Agnès Gruda in today's La Presse . She sees the Minister of Human Resources Development's words as a reflex that ends up stigmatizing the 'Other', the foreigner, for the political problems one has not been successful in solving''. She adds:Before sinking any further into this quagmire, with its slight scent of xenophobia, it would be in the Prime Minister's best interests to acknowledge that the immigrant in question has had Canadian citizenship for donkey's ages. Let his party respect the rules of democracy. The hon. member for Bourassa is fully grown, has had all his shots, and is entitled to his
opinions. And his political commitment is as legitimate as the next person's".
Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to participate in the debate this afternoon.
We have before us a motion presented by our friends in the Reform Party, a motion, which, incidentally, is not votable, and in which Reformers tell us that the promises made in the 1993 election campaign were, in their view, not kept, particularly with respect to the GST.
They refer to the resignation of the former Deputy Prime Minister, who will be re-elected, I predict, in very short order with an overwhelming majority. Then the Reform Party condemns the government, if you can believe it, for betraying the trust of Canadians, and so on. They finish with a comment about the harm done to public institutions, governments, politicians and the political process.
There is not much truth in that. First, let us talk about the commitments of the government which can be found in the red book. Mr. Speaker, I am sure you are very familiar with that book and you will listen to this with the objectivity, neutrality and the unbiased view that Mr. Speaker gives to these things. Let me read from page 22 of the red book:

A Liberal government will replace the GST with a system that generates equivalent revenues, is fairer to consumers and to small business, minimizes disruption to small business, and promotes federal-provincial fiscal co-operation and harmonization.

Remember the word harmonization. What did the Minister of Finance propose some months ago? He proposed exactly this: a system to harmonize the tax with the provinces. That is exactly what was said in the red book. Not all provinces have opted for that yet and I regret that. The Minister of Finance has announced that he regrets that. But Mike Harris, the premier of Ontario who had previously said he was in favour of harmonization, will have to answer to that in the future and that is very unfortunate.
The member across the way asked why the Deputy Prime Minister resigned. I will get to that in a minute. I ask him to be patient, the way people should be. He will find in very short order that his party is wrong, just as wrong as the Reform Party.
Mr. Speaker, you will probably know that the finance committee had hearings on the issue of the GST. Do you know what the Reform Party members recommended? They had a dissenting report and in it they recommended that the GST be replaced with a harmonized system with the provinces. Would you believe that? No less than the member for Calgary Centre signed those recommendations.
The member for Calgary Centre is not just anybody. The member for Calgary Centre is someone we know very well. At one time he was the whip. He was the second whip for the Reform Party in this Parliament. Some people will recognize him as the fourth whip because the Reform Party has had five so far. He was the second and fourth whip. Anyone who can hold that office twice within the same Parliament and not be there on two other occasions is obviously someone who knows what he is saying, otherwise why would he have the confidence of his party so many times?
This is the member for Calgary Centre speaking here. Page 118 of the document states: "We commend the government on its attempt to harmonize the tax with the provinces". Let me read that again. This is amusing: "We commend the government on its attempt to harmonize the tax with the provinces". This is the member for Calgary Centre speaking. That is enough to make hon. members across the way in the Reform Party blush. Even worse, it is enough to make them silent. The Reform Party document goes on:

John F. Bulloch from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business put the harmonization issue into stark terms when he said on March 8, 1994:
"-you do not have a technical problem. There is nothing that is not known about this tax. You have one big political mess on your hands-the problem is how to build a political consensus".

It goes on to say that they support the need for harmonization of the tax. Who said that? The member for Calgary Centre.
That is precisely what the government did. I know we followed the advice of the Reform Party. We do not do it very often but this time we did and we promise not to do it too often in the future.
Having done that, the Reform Party came back to the House and said that the Deputy Prime Minister had not lived up to her promise and therefore she should resign. They asked for her to resign and she did. I hope that she will shortly be re-elected. Then they criticize her for having resigned which is what they asked her to do to start with. She resigned because her government adhered to the policy that the Reform Party had proposed. That is another contradiction.
It gets better. The Reform Party blue sheet said on taxation: "The Reform Party will work toward a simple, visible and flat system of taxation". Later on they proposed the flat tax: "The flat tax is not new to Reform nor is Reform following the American lead. Quite the opposite. The Reform initiative led the way on American tax reform, ahead of the Americans and way ahead of
any other political party". This is the member for Calgary Centre who said that harmonizing the tax for the province was a good idea.
The member for Calgary Centre also said a number of very good things that are worth quoting. He spoke about the way other Reformers were behaving. This is an article from the Ottawa Sun dated May 13, 1996. I am again quoting the hon. member for Calgary Centre who said: ``Would you vote Reform, for a party as disorganized as this?'' He was talking about the fact that the leader of his party had asked the member for Calgary Southeast to resign. She was booted out of the caucus or put in some sort of purgatory.
This is what happened. The leader of the Reform Party found that remarks from two Reform MPs were unacceptable and that they should be turfed out. However, the member who pointed out that the remarks were unacceptable was turfed out because she said that the remarks were unacceptable even though the leader agreed and did throw them out.
This is a little hard to follow but this is the way it worked. If Reform Party members denounce something that is wrong, they are criticized for denouncing that which is wrong even if the leader recognizes it himself by turfing out those who were wrong to begin with.
Here is what occurred next. The member for Calgary Southeast then said that since they were going to turf her out for a little while she did not want to be part of the gang at all and she walked away. The member for Calgary Centre looked at all that and exclaimed: "Would you vote for Reform, for a party as disorganized as this?" The member for Calgary Centre was quoted in the Ottawa Sun and if it is in the Ottawa Sun it is obviously true, as we all know.
Let us quote some more about the Reform Party. This is the party that today talked about ethics and so on. I have in my hand a little book. I will not put it in front of the camera because I do not want to use it as a prop. It is the little green book of reform. I want to read a few quotes from the book because some of them are pretty good.
There is a little quote by the member for Beaver River. She said: "Women are just trying to lift themselves up to the detriment and expense of men". Let us find another one here. This is good stuff on the ethical behaviour of MPs and so on. Here is a great quote from the leader of the Reform Party: "It is a mistake to meet immigrants at the boat or plane and offer them a grant to preserve their culture".
Let us move a little further. We now have the member for Capilano-Howe Sound. This is what the member said: "Having programs in support of single mothers causes mothers to be single and in need of support". Let us have another one. The MP for New Westminster-Burnaby when he was running in his campaign said: "Old age security is welfare for the aged". It gets better. I will read some more. It really gets good here.
Ted White: He got elected.
Don Boudria: I know, this is enough to make Reformers heckle.
Those are not labels, they are quotes. I know it is unfair to quote hon. members across the way using their own words. Unfair as that is, thems the breaks as they say.
The Edmonton Journal wrote about that gang in 1989. Writing about Reformers it said they were shrill and intolerant. The Calgary Herald , not exactly a bastion of Liberal support, said the Reform Party was strident and repugnant. The Globe and Mail said about the Reform Party in 1989 that it was narrow minded and disturbing.
Mr. Harvard: I want to hear more.
Don Boudria: My colleagues are urging me on. I was going to stop but I will continue at the encouragement of my colleagues.
Here is what The New Canada said. This book was written by the leader of the Reform Party. He said: ``Why should a few extremists and eccentrics have more influence with you than I do? Why should they have more influence than the large number of Reformers who are neither extreme nor eccentric?''
This is one of the member for Beaver River's most famous quotes, and it is a good one: "I am basically a Tory". Mr. Speaker, how would you like to make that admission? I ask that rhetorically of course. I would not expect you, being the neutral person you are, to answer a question like that.
The member for Swift Current-Maple Creek-Assiniboia said: "I have been called a red neck. It is a label I wear with considerable pride". The Prime Minister answered him after thinking it was an insult: "As long as it is on the record and he is proud to be a red neck, I will honour him by calling him a red neck. That is what he wants to be".
Let us continue with a few more quotations from the little green book. The former senator from the Reform Party said: "The Canadian government is the kind of organization that would fund the black lesbians from Dartmouth". This is from the only senator the Reform Party has ever had.
These are quotes from that gang, from those people before and after they were elected, and they are reprimanding others? They are talking about issues of ethics and so on?
Mr. Leroux (Shefford): In English only.
Don Boudria: On the contrary. I say to the hon. member across the way, who is criticizing me for having committed this terrible crime, as it appears to him, of having addressed the House in English, there is no reason for me to apologize. I was fortunate enough to represent and to have lived in a community where I can, I think, use one language or the other, with equal, or almost equal, facility.
I have other examples here of quotes from the Reform Party, and we could go on for a long time, but I would prefer, in the few minutes remaining, to tell you about our government's accomplishments. This could keep us going for a while, because our government has accomplished some very wonderful things.
Allow me to remind you of just a few. First, the government has reached the deficit reduction targets. This has to be said. We restored the confidence of the market and created a climate propitious for lowering the interest rate and creating employment. The unemployment rate dropped from 11.2 per cent to 9.3, still too high, but over 600,000 more people are working today than on the day we were elected.
What is more, today we see an atmosphere of confidence in the investment field. The people who heeded us and invested in the Canadian stock market will know just how confident people now are in the Canadian economy.
The Canadian economy is picking up. There is, of course, still too much unemployment, and we are in the process of looking at this area. Today, the Minister of Human Resources Development has tabled an initiative on manpower training.
We could talk of the deficit, which has dropped from 6.6 per cent to 3 per cent of GDP in three years, something no other G-7 country has accomplished. Just today we saw news reports on the productivity levels of our country, and the improvements that have taken place. At this very moment, according to the OECD, we are more productive than Germany, France, Taiwan and a number of other industrialized countries. And why?
Antoine Dubé: Fifteenth in the world.
Don Boudria: My colleague opposite says we are the 15th most productive country in the world. In fact, depending on the study, it varies between 8th and 11th-but nevertheless. I say to him that it is still not so bad in terms of productivity. We are talking about our level of productivity and not our standard of living. If the member opposite wants to talk figures, in terms of standard of living and human development index, I would say to him-
Antoine Dubé: There are also one million poor children.
Don Boudria: -in terms of the human development index, the UN has decided three years out of four that Canada is the best place to live.
I ask the Bloc Quebecois member why they said this, and I just heard someone talking about his sovereignty, yet again. The members across the way think that all they have to do is sprinkle a little sovereignty on an issue to make it more palatable in their riding. I say to them that they are mistaken.
They can sprinkle sovereignty all over the place, but that will not change the facts, that will not alter what the UN said, that will not stop the rest of the world from envying Canada's position, and the inhabitants of most other countries from wanting to live here. The hon. member knows that, the members across the way all know that. They wanted to discuss numbers a while ago, but now that we have some numbers, they do not want to hear them.
What I have told them is true. The members across the way, whether they are Reformers or members of the Bloc Quebecois, should work with this government to make this country, which is the best in the world, even better, not just for us, but for our children and our children's children.
Antoine Dubé: Mr. Speaker, we need to remember a few things. The government whip got carried away. He began by talking about numbers, but these same people who tell us about numbers also tell us that, right now in Canada, one child in five is living under the poverty line. One child in five. He spoke to us about the rate of unemployment, which has dropped slightly since the Liberal Party came to power.
However, what he does not say is that the welfare rolls jumped by 40,000 in Quebec because of the UI cuts. This government has cut spending on social programs by $7 billion since coming to power. Seven billion is not negligible.
He boasts that the government has managed to reach its budgetary targets, but how? By slashing social programs, particularly UI.
I would like to ask him the following question: concerning the GST, if the government was so good at keeping its promises, such as those in the red book, we heard the Prime Minister, during the debates and on television, and it was reported in the papers, say that he would scrap the GST, meaning eliminate it. Eliminate does not mean replace or change.
Soon after this promise, the Deputy Prime Minister said that if they did not eliminate the GST, she would resign. And she did. But she is running again, and says she will be re-elected. The Liberal whip is no doubt well aware of what it will cost to clear her reputation and show that she kept her promise to Canadians. We will perhaps see her again in the House, and I hope we do. I am not
opposed to her coming back, of course, that is up to the people in her Ontario riding and has nothing to do with me.
So what does he think of that? That is good enough, you break your promise, you resign, you run again in a byelection, you come back, and there you go, everything is taken care of? I would like to have his comments on that.
Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I would like to say first of all that I find the hon. member's comments rather interesting, since he says, on the one hand, that the government has not fulfilled enough of the red book promises, although indeed we have.
On the other hand, he accuses the government of having done precisely what it said in the red book with respect to the GST. I have just read that into Hansard already. We also tabled a copy of it a while ago. Are we to conclude from this that the hon. member wants us to adhere to the red book when it suits him, and not to do so when it does not suit him?
Second, I find the comment on the former member for Hamilton East-and the future member, I hope-rather interesting. The hon. members opposite are the ones who forced her resignation. And resign she did. From that very moment on, the job of finding her replacement does not belong to the hon. members across the floor, but strictly to the voters in her riding.
As for those who question Ms. Copp's right to run again, I would say they need to have more respect for democracy. It is the people who choose. I am willing to bet that I know already what the people in her riding have in their minds, but they will be the ones to have the final say and they will decide. When their decision is made, the hon. members over there will have to pipe down and respect the people's choice, as they ought to have respected the choice of the people of Quebec in two referendums when they said no to the sovereignty the people across the way were proposing.
Mr. Elwin Hermanson (Kindersley-Lloydminster, Ref.): Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the negative comments of the hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell. He quoted a lot. He quoted some Reform statements which I would support. However, most of what he quoted was totally out of context, including the dissenting report on the GST. He said that Reform supported harmonizing the GST.
Harmonization by its very nature means that the provinces and the federal government must be in agreement. We do not have harmonization. The Liberals have not kept their promise of harmonizing the GST. Only three provinces have agreed to harmonize the GST at the expense of taxpayers in the other provinces. They have even refused to compensate the province of Quebec, which had previously harmonized the GST federally with its provincial sales tax.
The member is totally out to lunch. He is not making any sense at all. The harmonization which he talked about will raise taxes.
The hon. member quoted Reform members. I have a letter written by the government whip regarding the GST. The letter was in response to a constituent from Ontario and was dated March 1, 1995. I do not think the hon. member wants to hear his own words, but he is going to hear them anyway.
He wrote one paragraph on the GST: "Lastly, concerning the GST, our government did promise to do away with it". Those are the words of the government whip. This is a member who has some credibility in the House because of his position. The government whip said: "Our government did promise to do away with it". Not to harmonize it, but to do away with it. It is written on this piece of paper. The letter continues: "However, we still have four years left in our current mandate to fulfil this promise and, like the others, it will be kept". Like the others it is being broken.
The Liberals are not talking about doing away with the GST. The hon. member himself will admit they are not talking about doing away with the GST. They are now talking about harmonizing it. They are not really harmonizing it because there is no harmony between the federal government and the provinces. It is a bunch of balderdash from the member.
He quoted Reformers out of context. He should look at his own words and decide if he should resign. At least the former hon. member for Hamilton East kept her word. She resigned when she was unable to fulfil her promise to Canadians. Maybe the member did not promise to resign. Maybe he does not think it is important to resign when he fails to keep his word.
Here it is in black and white: "Our government did promise to do away with it". The hon. member is not fulfilling the promise he made in his own correspondence to a constituent, which is wrong. Would the hon. member consider resigning and going back to face his constituents? He did not even have the courage to face 700 of his own constituents on the gun control bill. He did not even have the courage to go to the meeting to talk to his constituents.
The Speaker: Before I give the floor to the government whip of course no one's courage is in question in the House, as we mentioned the other day. I would admonish all of you please. Do not question each other's courage. It is a given in this House.
Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I am sure the hon. member across the way is equally courageous.
When that party was elected it talked about keeping promises. They said they would have a new way of doing politics. They are the worst hecklers in the place. They are the most disruptive people. They got kicked out of the Chamber for bad behaviour and everything else. They talk about breaking promises. They are on thin ice.
Let us talk about the letter given to Rick Anderson's relatives which was brought to the attention of the House by the hon. member when I said that the government would do away with the tax and replace it with something else. I believe that we are replacing the system with one that is harmonized with the province.
I will repeat what it says on page 22: "A Liberal government will replace the GST with a system that generates equal revenues," so it is not a matter of having no tax at all, "equal revenues, is fairer to consumers, a harmonized tax that collects money from consumers once, that is fairer to businesses", it achieves that, "minimizes disruption to small business". It is less disruptive to have one system than two, "and promotes federal-provincial fiscal co-operation and harmonization". That is what we have offered.
So far only four of the ten provinces have joined. It is true to say that Reform MPs approved, and I read from the report of the committee that it was their solution as well. They wanted to replace the system. I read again to them: "We commend the government on its attempt to harmonize the tax with the provinces". "We commend" says the Reform member for Calgary Centre with his usual eloquence. That is precisely what the government proposed.
The members across the way can change their minds five times, ten times or as the health minister said, change their position every single Monday. It will not matter. The Canadian public knows that we live with that promise as we do with all others.
Finally the member accused me and my party of doing exactly what we promised to do on gun control. That is what it means to keep a promise. That is what we would like to do with not only the gun control promise, the GST promise but all other promises as well.
Werner Schmidt: Mr. Speaker, may I welcome you back after your reception with the 21 scholarship winners of the Canada Trust scholarship for special community service. I met them this morning at the Governor General's residence where the Canada Trust official presented the scholarships. It was a wonderful experience to meet with these beautiful young people.
Mr. Speaker, this afternoon you would have been treated to probably one of the most theatrical performances of the Minister of Health, the member for Cape Breton-East Richmond. I have never seen anybody come forward with such rhetoric and such oratory and with such theatrical excitement as we heard here. In fact there was one point at which I thought he should be joining some kind of a ministerial association because he was really bringing about fire, brimstone and everything else that could possibly be perpetrated on the people of Canada.
He also demonstrated extreme skill as a debater. The people of Canada will be the judge of whether or not he spoke the truth.
Similarly, we just heard a performance by the hon. whip of the government. He took certain quotations very selectively from certain documents and made it abundantly apparent to everybody concerned that if one wants to prove a particular point and take words out of context one can prove virtually anything.
The point that needs to be recognized is that in the House, members first responsibility is not necessarily to debate for the sake of debating, but to debate to get the best possible decision, the best possible policies, the best possible laws for the benefit of all Canadians. They are not here to prove each other stupid or make each other look like they do not know what they are talking about or that they are not consistent in the things they say. That is the issue.
Sometimes things happen in this place which should not happen. Members fail to recognize that while they debate and are concerned about the big and lofty issues in the House, the people in the constituencies are concerned about the safety of their streets and whether their concerns are being dealt with. They are concerned about their pensions, their health care. There is uncertainty developing in Canada today.
I cannot help but refer to the hon. whip who just a moment ago seemed to be so proud of the fact that Canada ranks eighth or fifteenth in the world in the productivity of the people. Why cannot we be first? The United Nations has declared Canada to be the most desirable country in the world in which to live. I think that is wonderful and I am proud of it. However, Canada should also be number one in productivity. But it is not. Some people are satisfied to rank eighth or fifteenth in the nations of the world. We can become first, but we need to make some changes.
I want to refer to a letter I received a year ago from 12-year old Joshua Goode of Winfield. "My dad says that Canada is more than $500 billion in debt. Is that true? It worries me because that means one day I will have to pay for it and I did not have a choice in the matter of spending it".
What can I tell him? I have to tell him that not only is it $500 billion but as of this morning it is $582 billion and rising. For Josh and the rest of the constituents of Okanagan Centre, I want an end to unnecessary government spending and I want a balanced budget.
The constituents of Okanagan Centre are debt weary. They are tired of talking about the debt. They want to see results. They want light at the end of the tunnel. Empty words that sound nice do not do any good when it is discovered the truth lies somewhere else.
I was in a grade 12 class not too long ago and we went through what the Minister of Finance indicated so clearly. He said: "Look, our deficit is going down". The students looked at it and said: "That is wonderful. The deficit is going down each year". Then we looked at the fact that each year's deficit is added to the previous year's debt. As the deficit is going down the debt is rising. As the debt rises the interest charges against the debt also rise. That is the natural predator of our social and other programs that people want assurances will continue.
Members need to recognize that things have to change in order for us to give Canadians the assurances they need. The people of Canada know only too well that governments cannot keep spending more than they take in without some day finding that the freedom which is enjoyed today will be placed in jeopardy because of previous commitments and there is no longer the financial freedom to do the things they want to do. People are being asked through a decision by this government to surrender their personal freedom in the future in order to pay the debt which is growing on a daily basis.
They do not want to face the prospect that this 12-year old Josh Goode should have to worry about the debt. My constituents want no more deficits. They want to see tax and debt relief so that their household incomes will stop being eaten away. They want a reformed tax system which is fair and rewards success, innovation and productivity.
What about social well-being in the future? Here I refer to Mrs. Laursen of Kelowna who writes: "I am so very angry hearing about the waste of government spending, when my husband, a senior, and myself have to live on a small amount of income, to make repairs, pay rent, pay gas, hydro, medical bills. My advice to the government is, you had better learn to adjust. We have. You do too".
If the seniors in my riding can adjust, why cannot the government? I submit that it can. Why should Mr. and Mrs. Laursen and people like them have to carry the debt? They do not have to. Something can be done. Something should be done. Something must be done.
My constituents want greater personal security. They want to be assured that the level of support they have for social programs will continue to exist. They want their pensions to remain at the level where they are today and not threatened to be reduced in the future.
They want the quality of their health care to be maintained. They want access to income support programs in periods of unemployment. They want them to be there in sickness and in other personal hardship. They do not want them reduced. They want them to be maintained.
Unless some changes are made in the current fiscal situation, not only will these programs not be maintained where they are but they will be cut back. We will not be able to afford them.
Our young people should have no fear about growing old, to feel that they will not have the security that they need. It is terribly unfair for the government to leave them hanging, wondering what they can look forward to.
I want to suggest to members opposite that we must stop. We can no longer justify unnecessary spending like the most recent invitation to Magna International, a highly profitable company, to be offered $2.4 million for a training program. Who is paying for that training program? It is the taxpayers in Kelowna. It is the taxpayers in Okanagan Centre, the businesses with whom Magna International is sometimes competition. Their tax dollars are going to pay for a training program that Magna International can well afford to do on its own.
What I want for my constituents is courageous leadership that is not afraid to say what needs to be done and then acts quickly to avoid further erosion of our social net in Canada.
Elimination of the deficit is the absolute number one requirement and then retirement of the debt through expenditure reduction, not increased taxation, will give assurance to retirees.
What about justice? I refer to Mr. Oliver who is a resident of Okanagan Centre and lives in Kelowna. He is an ex-officer of a police force. He says: "The death of Margaret Shoup of this city formed part of a series of crimes committed by a 17-year-old youth who blatantly ignored the fact that he had earlier been found guilty of serious crimes and who continued his recklessness and threatening escapades, thumbing his nose at the law at every turn.
"Were the justice minister to tackle the problems of crime, especially juvenile crime, with half as much vigour as has been directed toward gun control, citizens might be inclined to show respect.
"As a former police officer, I hold every sympathy for citizens, especially the elderly, who see the continual erosion of the justice system in our country and who, in many instances, are terrified of continuing violence and the puny measures that our government insists on levelling to combat the same". The justice system is a disgrace according to this ex-police officer.
May I refer to an article that appeared in the Globe this morning. It is a front page news story. I do not have time to read the whole thing. It concerns one of the boys who murdered some of these other young people. The article states that the boy who is well known to police said to the arresting officers that they cannot do anything to him because, under the Young Offenders Act, he is not old enough to be charged with a crime. Why is this so? This is probably one of the most serious statements I have read in a long time, on May 29, 1996.
Dr. Louis Morissette, age 41, who is working with some very seriously disturbed people says this. "Youth today have less hope for the future than we did. When I was growing up, I never thought about the future. The future was there for me to take. It is not true today. It is not true for the jobs. It is not true for the family. It is not true for security in a general sense. It is not true for sexuality, because you can get AIDS and things like that.
"Young people are growing up too soon, too fast and with too little love and encouragement. They do not feel for other people because they have the impression that other people do not feel for them. I do not excuse them. As a society, we have to look at how we take care of our children". That should be our concern. We need to love our children. We need to encourage them, we need to give them role models. By having legislation that deals with young offenders in such a way that they have no respect either for the arresting officer or for the punishment levied will not give the kind of support and direction our young people need.
My constituents want to feel safe on their streets. They want to know that appropriate punishment will exist and will fit the crime and that communities are all taking responsibility for our young people to prevent crime. That is not just a matter for the government, it is not just a matter for the social agencies, it is a matter for everyone of us.
We must place the rights of victims ahead of the rights of criminals, eliminating statutory release provisions for high risk offenders and changes to the parole board so that qualified correctional officers and not political appointees make the decisions.
I refer to unity. I read extensively from a letter I received from two of my constituents. Mr. and Mrs. Sprecher wrote the following on December 8, 1995, addressed to the Prime Minister:

You are making a big mistake. Your proposals for distinct society for Quebec and constitutional vetoes are not sources for unity of Canada. They will divide Canada. Meech Lake and the Charlottetown accord were both soundly defeated by the people. You have no mandate to offer them to Quebec again. You obviously want to sacrifice western Canada to appease Quebec. Are you prepared to alienate B.C., Alberta and Ontario? These are the three provinces that supply the money for the transfer payments so you can buy your votes in Quebec. Canadians do not want a distinct society. We want our country united. You might gain Quebec for a short time, then lose the rest of Canada because of it.
You have not been listening to Canadians. There is no need for special status or veto powers to be granted to any province. Canadians are giving you a strong message that they want fair laws applicable to all equally. You are being grossly misinformed if you believe that an overwhelming majority of Canadians are ready to make concessions to appease separatists and to reward Quebecers for their no votes during the referendum. Canadians are fed up with the eternal costly ranting, whining and threats from Quebec. We are fed up with the huge amount of money spent on bilingualism and repeated concessions made to pacify Quebec. It is time for Quebecers to learn the truth about our country. They should be told they will not be allowed to break up Canada. They should be told that they are not distinct, not part of France, and told once and for all that they are Canadians. There is one terminology, we are all Canadians.
If Quebec wants change the rest of the country must also benefit from change. Any change that gives Quebec an advantage over the rest of Canada is not acceptable. The federal government must know that we will not stand for any additional Quebec handouts, no rewards for staying in Canada with the constant threat of yet another round of separation talks in the future. We do not want another Quebec referendum, ever. No one ethnic group should be treated any better than others. This includes Quebec, native Indians or any other group that think they should receive special status and their own government.

It is high time we recognize we are together in this nation. I was so proud of my colleague from Scarborough who said so clearly what Canada meant to him as an immigrant to this country. That was a wonderful message coming from the heart of that individual. I identified completely with the message he was giving to Canadians and to me as another member of Parliament.
I am proud to be a parliamentarian. I am happy we can have altercations back and forth across the House. What makes me sad is when people take things out of context deliberately to prove a point which was never the point what was intended to be made. The truth ought to stand, and that is integrity. It is not a mark of integrity to take things out of context to prove a point which was never the message in the first place.
Many constituents of Okanagan Centre condemn the government for betraying their trust. Because of the lack of promises being filled there is now developing a cynicism about public institutions, about government, politicians and the political process.
There are two encouraging points. They are willing to help. I quote a letter from Bruce Eckhoff to the Minister of Finance:

I am willing at any time to assist you in determining a constructive means of performing this task.
I wish to advise you that I can no longer tolerate any increases in taxation. In addition, I will not tolerate anything less than meaningful reductions in government spending.
By increasing taxes you are forcing more Canadians to the underground economy. You are taxing the incentives to work out of this country. Many of my co-workers no longer believe it is possible to get ahead, as the government will tax any additional effort away.
It is time to wean the corporations and special interest groups off the government payroll. I am fed up with out of control spending by government. It is time for you to leave the money in the hands of the individual taxpayer and let them make choices on how to spend it. Government has gone too far.
Please do not place any additional burden on the future generations of this fine country. It is time to get the house in order. I am willing at any time to assist you in determining a constructive means of performing this task.
No more taxes. Enough is enough.

There is willingness to co-operate and willingness to help. There is more.
Peter Greer, a columnist with the Winfield Calendar writes: "I am going to vote. I want to vote for a politician who shows true leadership; one who leads, not one who merely wants to manage. I want to vote for someone who truly cares for his fellow man".
There have been special little demonstration of that caring in the House in the legislation presented in the last two years. Not enough caring has gone on. Not enough caring has been demonstrated by the speeches made here today.
We have seen feeble legislation dealing with justice. We have had legislation of a harmonization program of the GST, which really is not an elimination of the GST, which has been so aptly illustrated by a number of my colleagues. The results of that harmonization will not help. It will add additional taxes and additional requirements. People will pay more as a result of this. Other provinces will have to add more to the transfer to those provinces which are being bribed into harmonization.
Canadians do want to help and that is why the Reform Party came into being. However, there can be no help if government is not prepared to listen. None are so blind as those who will not see. None are so deaf as those who will not hear.
May this resolution draw our attention and awaken all of us to a challenge that we as Reformers are prepared to endorse, that we will bring about a better society for Canada, that we can be the best country to live in, that we can be the most productive country in the world where we listen to the people and we will bring to the people of Canada that which they look for, and that is what we will give to the country when we form the next government.
Mr. Nic Leblanc (Longueuil, BQ): Mr. Speaker, I heard the member say that it was time the west stopped making sacrifices for Quebec. I would like to point out to him that Quebec made sacrifices for at least 75 years to develop western Canada. He should perhaps remember his history. We paid for the railways, the St. Lawrence Seaway, and so on.
The hon. member belongs to the Reform Party, a party that supposedly wants to reform the British parliamentary system, to improve things. I am partly in agreement with that. I think some changes are required in the British parliamentary system.
It is still somewhat worrisome to see polls showing that barely 14 per cent of Canadians still trust parliamentarians. It is an important question that must be asked, and I think the Reform Party is right to want to make changes with respect to the British parliamentary system, I grant it that.
The principal method they have chosen, which, in my view, is a good method, is the free vote. In the last few election campaigns, we have seen that governments make promises, they have platforms, they try to please the public with these platforms and these promises, and they win elections on them.
What we are noticing is that, after the election, and this is what the motion presented today by the Reform Party is all about, after getting elected, most of the time the government does exactly the opposite. Unfortunately, as government members have to vote along party lines, the government does pretty much as it pleases.
If members had the possibility of a free vote, governments elected on the strength of promises and platforms would have to deliver on them. I know that the majority of government members are often not in agreement with the government. They often feel a bit dishonest voting against the very issues that led them to run for office.
When I ran for the Conservatives in 1984, I had looked at the Conservative platform and felt that it was the best match with my aspirations. It is very important for me to be able to continue to promote the aspirations which I have and which I have undertaken to promote with the party for which I ran.
I find there is a major flaw in the British parliamentary system, and this is it: the Prime Minister has so much power, has all the power. He has the power to appoint ministers, parliamentary secretaries, committee chairs indirectly, so most of the time he is involved in blackmail, rewarding or punishing his MPs. This creates a system which, when it comes down to it, does not match the public's perception of their MPs. That is one of the reasons for MPs' very low popularity; 14 per cent of the population believe in their credibility.
As parliamentarians we should be counteracting that. I am asking the Reform Party, which has set out to reform the parliamentary system, to go still further. Each time the members of that party vote, they should point out that they are voting freely. If there are two, three, four, five MPs who vote nay, great. Vote against, if you are not in agreement. This parliamentary system must be reformed, slowly of course, but it must be done so that one day some of the public trust will be regained. Otherwise, the parliamentary system will end up being unacceptable; people will no longer believe in us. They barely do now.
I am anxious to see that day come. I know that parliamentary systems cannot be changed over night. I know that it takes a fair amount of time to change old habits, but I hope that the Reform Party will put a great deal of stress on this and will make MPs both more responsible and entrusted with more responsibility, so that the day will come when our governments will be more responsible. When they go before the people seeking a mandate to govern the country, they will have a platform, and it is on the basis of that platform that the government will defend the interests of the public.
I am asking the Reform Party to continue its efforts to reform the British parliamentary system, particularly this aspect of it.
Werner Schmidt: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his endorsement on changing the democratic process and the system in the House. I would like to expand on it one step further because it allows me to make some very specific suggestions. One has to do with a vote of confidence.
Not long ago in the House a government member voted against the budget. The Prime Minister interpreted it to be a vote of non-confidence.
I think that is false. I recommend the parliamentary system be changed. The Reform Party recommends that with regard to any government bill, including a financial bill, it should be possible for members, including members of the ruling party, to vote against a bill. Then following that if they really have no confidence in the government it should be a separate motion which could be voted on separately. Much better decisions would be made, better legislation would be passed and the wishes of constituents could be expressed more clearly.
Another area concerns the other place which is populated only by individuals selected and appointed by the Prime Minister without consultation with his caucus, constituents or the House. We suggest those people be elected in their respective provinces and that each province should have the same number of senators so there could be a balance of representation across Canada and there would be an appropriate balance of regions and effective powers.
There needs to be a checks and balances in the way decisions are made in Parliament. If members of the other place were elected they could carry out the responsibilities of that place the way they should be done.
John Harvard: Mr. Speaker, this afternoon what we got from the member for Okanagan Centre is the usual mantra, the usual tirade, the usual fearmongering from the Reform Party and the usual attacks on certain Canadians, as aboriginals and Quebecers.
Members of the House know I hold no grief for separatists and separatism. Members of the Reform Party go around-
[Intervention]
An hon. member: Tell the truth.
John Harvard: Do you want to listen?
[Intervention]
An hon. member: Not if you are going to lie like that.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Kilger): This is the place for debate but we should conduct it in a parliamentary fashion. Please make all interventions through the Chair.
John Harvard: Mr. Speaker, I was trying to point out the Reform Party would like one day to be a national party. It says someday it would like to govern the country. Yet there is hardly a day when members of the Reform Party do not try to sully the province of Quebec. Not a day goes by that they do not try to sully francophones How do they ever expect to govern the country when they tarnish and besmirch and sully the citizens of the province of Quebec? There is no way a they can govern a country if they choose to attack one group of people day in and day out.
These people who pretend to be such model democrats should actually be very ashamed of themselves for that kind of behaviour.
The member for Okanagan Centre talked about wanting to adjust the economy. Of course we want to adjust the economy for the better. He does not say anything about the job creation that has taken place since the fall of 1993. It never crossed his lips that 636,000 jobs have been created since the fall of 1993. He does not mention that whatsoever.
There have to be changes. He talked about the country only being only eighth in productivity. Maybe we are only eighth in productivity but we are trying to be number one and we are aiming that way. He said the deficit was too high. Has he noticed the deficit is coming down?
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Kilger): It being 5.49 p.m., proceedings on the motion have expired. The House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper.
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from May 15 consideration of the motion that Bill C-205, an act to amend the Criminal Code and the Copyright Act (profit from authorship respecting a crime), be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Mrs. Dianne Brushett (Cumberland-Colchester, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I please to speak in the House today and support Bill C-205, an act to amend the Criminal Code and the Copyright Act to prevent criminals from profiting by selling stories of their crimes.
One of the first lessons we learn in life is that crime does not pay. We are taught that justice always prevails and criminals are always punished. As we grow into adulthood we realize this is not always so. We learn that crime sometimes does pay and that justice does not always prevail. This is wrong. That is why we need legislation like Bill C-205 which will ensure crime does not pay.
This bill is based on two principles, the first being that no criminal should ever profit from telling the story of his crime. This is not an outrageous statement. This is the common law that societies have existed on for centuries. This is why a man who murders his wife cannot collect her life insurance, even as the named beneficiary. However, should that same man make a movie or write a book about killing his wife and make profits from that sale, there is no law that prohibits this. This is unjust. Surely receiving payments for writing a book is as much profiting from the crime as collecting the insurance money.
This bill will put a stop to profiting from authorship respecting a crime. Bill C-205 amends the Criminal Code to include in the definition of proceeds of crime any profit or benefit gained by a person or a family member from the creation of a work based on the indictable offence for which that person was convicted. Therefore the government would be able to seize such profits under the current Criminal Code provisions respecting search for and seizure and detention of proceeds of crime.
This alone would not help if as an example a criminal sells his or her story to a movie or book producer in the United States who then deposits the criminal's payment into a U.S. bank account. In order to deal with such a possibility Bill C-205 will amend also the Copyright Act to provide that the sentence for an indictable offence is deemed to include an order that any work based on this offence is subject to a new section in the Copyright Act.
The bill amends the Copyright Act to provide that in such a work the copyright that would otherwise belong to the criminal becomes and remains the property of the crown forever. This would permit Canada to bring action in any country of the world which is a signatory to the Berne Convention on Copyright to enforce its rights, including seizure of funds paid to the criminal or injunctions to halt the sale of books, movies, videos and the like.
Many people will say the bill goes against society's belief of freedom of speech. This is not so. The second principle of the bill is based on the fact that criminals have the right of freedom of speech and expression provided they do not profit from it. The bill is not imposing a gag order on criminals. It is saying they cannot make money from their criminal activities.
The province of Ontario recently became the first Canadian province to pass a law similar to that of Bill C-205. Under the law criminals and people wishing to capitalize on crime must notify the province's trustee of any deal struck. All profits going to the offender must pass through the trustee's office. The trustee will ensure the money is first used to satisfy awards to the victims. The state of California also recently passed such a law following the notorious Simpson case.
Bill C-205 will also provide much needed protection for victims of crime and ensure their pain and suffering are not exploited. Imagine dealing with the grief of losing a child, a loved one, only to be revictimized by the killer's making stories and profiting from his activities. The effect of such exploitation on victims is overwhelming and unacceptable. Canada must do more to protect victims of crime. This bill will ensure victims' rights and freedoms are respected as well.
We live in a sensationalist society where criminals are quickly elevated to almost a hero status. Even the most horrendous crimes are considered glamorous. One need only remember the Jeffrey Dahmer case in the United States. In 1991 Jeffrey Dahmer was convicted of the deaths and dismemberment of 17 men and boys. While serving his time in prison Mr. Dahmer received over $100,000 from his so-called fans around the world. Even today, after Mr. Dahmer's death, there are several web sites dedicated to him on the Internet. How tragic.
One does not need to look south of the border to find another example of this type of sensationalism. In Canada one need only look at the infamous Clifford Olson. Mr. Olson has managed to provoke publicity over the past 14 years since he pleaded guilty in 1982 to murdering 11 young people in British Columbia. He has established a network of pen pals and groupies around the world and has written stories about his crimes. Recently he has made videotapes entitled "Motivational Sexual Homicide Patterns of Serial Child Killer Clifford Robert Olson". Mr. Olson has even gone as far as to register a copyright on the videos. My heart goes out to the families of these victims. How horrible it must be to relive the crimes through these videos. These families are being victimized over and over again.
Bill C-205 will not stop Clifford Olson from telling his story and seeking more publicity. However, it will certainly prevent Mr. Olson from ever making a cent from these tapes. Perhaps that alone is enough to help ease the pain of the families.
I urge all hon. members to support the bill. It will help to ensure victims and their families are not further victimized by criminals. It will also reaffirm the principle inherent in the Canadian criminal justice system that crime does not pay. It is of paramount importance that this bill become federal law in Canada.
Pierrette Venne: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to add my support to this bill. Essentially, what the member for Scarborough West is attempting to do with this bill is prevent a person convicted of a crime from benefiting from the crime through a book, a video or some other work. It would be inconsistent to condemn an act and yet allow someone to benefit from it. I therefore support the intent of this bill, which is to correct an uncommon situation, but one we saw recently in the Olson case and which could arise again at any time.
It is indeed fairly rare that a person who has committed a crime has the gall to display it in the full light of day in a video or a book. However, since the law currently contains no provision against such behaviour, there is a gap to be filled, and this is what the member for Scarborough West is proposing.
Our role as members of this House is to propose or support measures intended to bring our laws into line with reality. When a member sees a gap and takes the initiative to introduce legislation to correct the matter, we must put aside our differences and vote in favour of his bill.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice, in his speech on May 15, applauded the motives that led the member to want to amend the law to prevent criminals from writing the story of their crime or threatening to do so in exchange for money.
He went on to say, and I quote: "The very idea that a criminal who has committed a violent act or a series of violent acts, such as in the Bernardo case, could actually benefit financially from the recounting of his or her criminal acts is extremely offensive to many. If the victims of those crimes are made to be subject to those accounts, are they not being victimized again?" He added: "It is therefore something which I believe should be addressed and I commend my colleague for attempting to do so through this bill".
However, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice is against this bill because it would unduly limit freedom of expression in a free and democratic society, as stipulated in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In our opinion, we can answer this by saying that section 1 of the charter allows for the restriction of certain rights within reasonable limits that can be justified in a free and democratic society. It is under section 1 that courts can justify random vehicle searches to check the drivers' blood alcohol level.
Section 163 of the Criminal Code prohibits the publication of something obscene or a crime comic. The Supreme Court recognized that this violation of the freedom of expression was justifiable.
While it is true that the bill before us restricts freedom of expression by depriving a person of copyright royalties, there is a rational link between this restriction and the widespread disapproval generated by the release of a video or a book by an offender. This bill seeks, among other things, to protect the privacy of witnesses and victims, so as to encourage them to report a crime and to testify before the courts.
We feel that such an objective justifies restricting the freedom of expression of an offender. Many measures seeking to protect witnesses actually violate certain basic guarantees, but are deemed acceptable by the courts, including provisions allowing witnesses to testify outside the courts or in camera. Even the right of the accused to cross-examine a witness can be restricted in order to protect the victim. In certain situations, the court can also ban the publication of any information that could lead to the identification of the plaintiff or a witness. As you can see, the Criminal Code already provides for several restrictions on freedom of speech in order to protect the witnesses. The restriction proposed in this bill seems to have a similar intent, in my opinion.
The parliamentary secretary has also opposed this bill because this matter is under provincial jurisdiction, dealing as it does with civil rights, specifically the right to write a book and make a profit from it. I can understand this objection, but the intent of the bill is not to regulate artistic creation, but to preserve the anonymity of witnesses in criminal proceedings and deter crime. To the extent that the objective sought is obviously within the jurisdiction of this Parliament, it can decree all the ancillary provisions necessary to ensure that its legislation is effective and complete.
That is precisely what this bill does, and I will therefore vote in favour, despite the fact that the member for Scarborough West objected to my witness protection bill. I have tried not to be influenced by this in my comments today, and especially in my analysis of his bill.
Finally, one final argument raised by the parliamentary secretary in opposition to this bill runs along the lines that the creation of a work by the author of a crime cannot be added to the list of proceeds of crime, since the simple fact of writing a book is not, in itself, a criminal act, even if this book is a recitation of criminal activities for which the author has been sentenced. In this regard, I do not share the view of the parliamentary secretary. I do not see why the definition of "proceeds of crime" would not include money arising from the publication of a work describing a crime. The advantage of using this definition is that the product of the publication can be seized and confiscated.
This is therefore an entirely appropriate technique in order to put some teeth into this legislation, which is an improvement to the Criminal Code.
[English]
Mr. John Maloney (Erie, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak this evening on Bill C-205, the proposed legislation which would amend the Criminal Code and the Copyright Act to prohibit a criminal from profiting by selling, authorizing or authoring the story or details of a crime.
Copyright refers to a system of legal rights that has been developed to acknowledge and protect the intellectual labour and works of authors and creators of every nature: literary, artistic, dramatic, musical. Copyright allows these individuals to control the exploitation of their works, to profit from their works and to protect the integrity of their works. Copyright should not be unduly interfered with, only under exceptional circumstances. Bill C-205 is one of these circumstances.
This bill amends the Criminal Code to include the definition of proceeds of crime as any profit or benefit gained by a person convicted of an indictable offence, or his family, from the creation of a work based on that offence.
This amendment extends to such profits or benefits in the existing provisions of the Criminal Code respecting search for, seizure and detention of proceeds of crime. It provides that a sentence for an indictable offence is deemed to include an order that any work based on the offence is subject to a new section in the Copyright Act.
The bill amends the Copyright Act to provide that in such a work the copyright that would otherwise belong to the convicted person becomes and remains the property of the crown even after payment of any fine or service of any period of imprisonment. The bill does not prevent any person from creating or publishing such a work but prohibits any profit or benefit that might accrue to the convicted person or to his family.
There is an interesting paradox in Canadian society today. On one hand the public decries it should have the right to know the details of a crime. We saw the outrage surrounding recent publication bans with the infamous Homolka trial. On the other hand, many of the same people say that the rights of victims and their families should be paramount. I happen to agree with the latter sentiment. No criminal should ever profit from relating the story of their crimes.
It is clear that the groups representing victims of violence and crime strongly support Bill C-205. In the words of Mrs. Priscilla de Villiers of CAVEAT: "Criminals and their families should never be allowed to accrue rich rewards for their offences anywhere, any time, any place". I agree.
The Canadian Police Association says: "This bill will provide much needed protection for the victims of crime, and ensure that their pain and suffering is not exploited". I agree. A press release from the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime stated: "This bill strikes an appropriate balance between the criminal's rights and the victim's rights". I agree.
Debbie Mahaffy said that despicable, unconscionable entrepreneurs and yes, even the public, were exploiting and profiting by selling their spin on Leslie's murder to the rest of the public which felt it had the right to know the details. The French family from my neighbouring community of St. Catharines said: "The fact that people want to profit from someone else's tragedy is disgusting but the fact that the criminals themselves can profit from crime is an outrage". I agree.
These quotes are overwhelming testimony to the revictimization that occurs when criminals profit financially from their crimes. I share this outrage.
I support Bill C-205 for three basic reasons. First, this kind of legislation has been a long time coming and will go a long way in ensuring that crime does not pay. That principle is a longstanding value entrenched in the Canadian justice system and Canadian society.
The deterrent aspect of such an amendment is of vital importance as criminals continue to be portrayed as heroes. If criminal acts continue to promise heroic status and financial profit both to the offenders and their families, the escalation of heinous crimes will never be deterred.
Second, this bill would also help to ensure that victims and their families are not further victimized by criminals. The effect of such exploitation on victims is overwhelming and unacceptable. Canada must do more to protect victims and to ensure their rights and freedoms are respected.
Third, this bill strikes an appropriate and difficult balance between the criminal's rights and those of the victim. There is concern that a criminal has the right under our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to tell his story in any form, and to pocket the profits. We are faced with balancing the protection of victims and their families with the rights of criminals to freedom of speech.
This bill provides that criminals need not be prevented from telling their stories, provided they do not profit from telling them. There are many of us who wish these horrible accounts could be silenced forever. The next best thing is to send a clear message that no criminal will ever profit financially from a crime.
I commend my hon. colleague for Scarborough West for his research and thoughtful dealing with this issue. Part of this bill deals with changes to the Copyright Act. It provides that a sentence for an indictable offence is deemed to include on order that any work based on that offence is subject to a new section, that in such a work the copyright which would otherwise belong to the convicted person becomes and remains the property of the crown forever.
The government could bring action in any country that is a signatory to the Berne Convention on Copyright to enforce its rights. This would include the seizure of funds paid to the criminal or injunctions to halt the sale of books, movies, videos, et cetera.
Our world is an ever expanding universe of technology with the ability to transfer money abroad. Criminals can access this technology. The enormous financial cost Canada incurs in enforcing law and order and public safety affects the community as a whole. It is only fitting that any proceeds from the exploitation of such crimes should revert to the crown to recompense society for at least part of those expenses. Therefore, I wholeheartedly support the provisions for the seizure of such profits.
I wish to address my hon. colleague's comments regarding the ability of Canadian consumers to make choices on these goods. Murder, violence, degradation, dehumanization and pornography are currently being marketed in novels, electronic games, slasher movies and videos. It could go on and on and must be stopped.
There is already an array of horrific material available. I do not see signs that publishers and directors are being sent a clear message from the public that this is unacceptable. Quite the contrary. It took legislation by this House to limit the sale and import of the macabre serial killer cards.
I thank my colleague again for his efforts to protect the victims and their families and ultimately all Canadians who do not want to see criminals being allowed to profit from their crimes. It is time that our society examined more opportunities to have criminals pay for what they do to victims and to society. The criminal must pay for the crime, not the victim, nor the victim's family.
Public confidence in a just and safe society depends on societal values being reflected by the justice system which is exactly what this bill does. I urge all my colleagues in the House to support this most worthy bill.
Ed Harper: Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak in support of Bill C-205. On behalf of the Reform Party I want to express my strong support for this bill.
I would also like to extend congratulations to the member for Scarborough West for his hard work in bringing this proposal forward and in gaining acceptance and support from all sides of the House.
As the member discovered in the last hour of debate, the Minister of Justice's representative is one of the few members who does not support this measure. The minister and his representative think it is okay for criminals to profit from their crimes. We should not be surprised that he is the same minister who has failed to get tough with criminals since the opening of this Parliament. I believe that the will of the people will be done here even against the minister's wishes. We are going to send a message that crime does not pay.
It is unfortunate that we must consider laws like this, but it has become a sad reality in today's Canadian society that fascination with violence and crime provides a profitable opportunity for publishers, entertainers and the media.
How did we get to such a sad place in Canadian history? What has happened to Canadians that so many take an interest in the violence and the sickness of criminality? How did we come to a place where we believe that crime should pay? Some might like to say that the cultural industry of crime and violence which Hollywood likes to export into our living rooms and our movie theatres has provoked the change. We cannot blame it all on Hollywood. The problem is deeper and it is home grown.
I have an explanation with regard to leadership in Canadian society. It is about the kind of leadership that is being offered in this Parliament by the justice minister and the Prime Minister. For the past few decades we have followed leaders whose philosophy was: Do whatever feels good and do not worry about the consequences. These leaders have failed to encourage personal responsibility.
The proof is in front of this Parliament every day. We are dealing with a massive debt problem because we would not take the personal responsibility to pay for the programs we wanted. Instead we borrowed. We decided to make it somebody else's problem to pay the money back.
We have massive social programs like UI which send the message for those who are job hunting: Go out and do your own thing and if you get into trouble it is not your fault; the government will bail you out.
We have taken that approach with our criminal justice system too. We said capital punishment was just too harsh for those who deliberately took the life of another. Then we said that a life sentence in prison was too hard to serve and that 25 years should be adequate. Then a more recent Liberal government with the member for Notre Dame-de-Grâce as justice minister decided that 25 years was still too harsh. It gave us section 745, the opportunity to get out of jail free after 15 years.
The story of crime and punishment with respect to first degree murder is representative of the decay in the rest of the justice system. Even when the majority of MPs in this House attempt to reverse the trend, as with the proposal to repeal section 745 or as with this bill, the minister and his support in committee oppose the democratic will of the people. They give us leadership but in a direction we do not want to go. They say that crime should pay.
There are many other examples of decay in our justice system. This decay has been accelerated by the charter. The charter is responsible for people literally getting away with murder. Whether it was the recent drunk defence cases or the Askov cases where thousands of criminals awaiting trial were freed because their charter right to a free trial had supposedly been violated, the criminals' rights had become more important than the rights of victims in society.
Our immigration system also displays the same philosophy. We knowingly bring terrorists and other undesirables into Canada so that they will escape so-called persecution back home. None are held accountable for their actions once they arrive here. For these supposed refugees, Canada is the land of escape from personal responsibility.
We have mandatory parole for violent criminals. There is no truth in sentencing. Even if a judge gives somebody the maximum sentence, the criminal can still be back on the streets courtesy of the parole board after serving a fraction of the sentence.
It would not be possible to examine the underlying philosophy of our justice system without examining the Young Offenders Act. Here is the example of justice we provide for our children. No one in this House can deny that young offenders escape taking personal responsibility for their actions. Their names are not published and their sentences are laughable. Their parents are not held accountable either.
If the young offenders are under the age of 12 then they are completely free to do whatever they want with total immunity from the law. If anyone wants proof, talk to the parents of the 13-year
old girl who was violently raped in Toronto recently. Her attacker will never be punished because the justice minister does not believe that 11-year olds will commit crimes. Where is the personal responsibility in the Young Offenders Act? It does not exist.
We have been living with a justice system that for 30 years has continually gone softer on criminals, shrinking their sentences, supplying their cigarettes and cable television, paying for their university education and paying their green fees on the Corrections Canada golf courses. We have sent them and indeed all Canadians the message that crime can and does pay.
It is time to reverse that trend. We can do that in part by making sure that crime will not pay financial dividends to those criminals who try to profit from sensationalizing their lawlessness. If we as political leaders in Canadian society can send a strong message that crime does not pay, then we start to reverse the trend we now see in society. We need to develop a philosophy and personal responsibility in society. As one of my constituents said to me, if you do the crime, you have got to do the time.
Crime cannot be a paying proposition any longer. We must start punishing those who are entering the system as teenagers. Young offenders need to get the message that the consequences of criminal actions are not worthwhile.
If we prevent the Paul Bernardos and Clifford Olsons of this country from profiting from their crimes, we send a strong message that crime cannot and must not pay. Just as we confiscate the proceeds of drug trafficking, we should confiscate the profits of those criminal entrepreneurs. If we as legislators can offer real leadership in reversing the trend toward lawlessness, then we can also encourage others to join in, including the media. Instead of sensationalizing crime we can stigmatize it. Instead of encouraging criminality, especially among our youth, we can set a trend toward respect for the law, authority and our institutions.
Canada's Constitution says that we should foster peace, order and good government. I believe this bill reflects all three principles and I encourage all members to support it.
John Cannis: Mr. Speaker, I will begin by thanking my hon. colleague from Scarborough West for giving me the opportunity to speak on this most important and timely initiative.
Bill C-205, an act to amend the Criminal Code and Copyright Act, will prevent criminals from profiting from authorship respecting a crime. This legislation is long overdue. If passed, criminals will no longer be able to make money off the backs of their victims. They will be prevented from adding to the pain and misery they have already caused their victims and their families.
To allow a person convicted of a crime, especially murder, to receive compensation for his or her story is obscene. How do we explain to the victims or their loved ones that the person who caused them so much grief is now adding to their humiliation by profiting from their crimes?
We should follow the lead of the province of Ontario. In 1994 a private member's bill was passed which gives victims the first right to any profits earned from work produced by a person convicted of a crime. Before any deal is struck by a convicted person, the Public Trustee's Office must be notified. Subsequently, all moneys generated by the work go to that office.
This is the kind of law all Canada needs and must have. The federal government must follow suit with legislation of its own so it will be right across the country and not just in one province. Bill C-205 would accomplish this. Surely if the province of Ontario sees fit to pass such legislation, I believe the federal government should do the same.
I find it hard to believe that this type of legislation has not been adopted in the House in the past. I understand that proposals of this kind have been introduced before, but all have failed to be acted on. Therefore, I urge all members of the House to act unanimously to ensure that Bill C-205 is pursued successfully.
Bill C-205 will guard against further public humiliation of victims and their families. Most important, Bill C-205 will take away the criminal's right to profit from his or her story.
There will always be television shows, movie producers or book publishers who will be willing to pay, and pay well, to get a story. That is fine. We cannot take away that right, but we can dictate where that money goes. How we can justify a person convicted of a crime making a profit from their illegal actions is beyond me. That is exactly what this bill addresses.
Unfortunately, we cannot prohibit a criminal from telling his or her story to the press or other media outlets. However, we can take away the incentive. Hopefully they will be less willing to offer their story to the media if they know they will not see a dime for their efforts.
Do we really need to hear the full story of how Clifford Olson committed his horrible and sick crimes, or how Karla Homolka assisted in the murders of Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy? I do not want to see these crimes sensationalized by the media. I do not want my children and all the children of the world to have access to these horrific tales. The thought of having the authors of these stories profiting from the proceeds makes me sick.
How any responsible journalist, television or movie producer, or book publisher can possibly justify profiting from another person's pain is beyond me. These stories do nothing but glorify violence.
Some paint false pictures of the victims and their families and basically succeed in sensationalizing crime.
It is sad, but there will always be some element of the general population that is interested in hearing or reading these warped stories. That is why we see the market inundated with the so-called true story movies and biographies of infamous criminals and the even more perverse serial killer trading cards and board games. To allow these items on the market is one thing. To allow the criminals responsible for the crimes glorified in them to profit is another. This we cannot morally allow.
Take for example the story that would be told by serial killer Clifford Olson. Do we really need to hear details of how he brutally murdered those poor innocent children? No we do not. However, as I said before, there will always be someone who is willing to print, produce or buy his story. Since we cannot prevent that from happening, we must at least prevent Clifford Olson from profiting from his horrible crimes.
Bill C-205 would amend the Criminal Code to prohibit a criminal or members of his or her family from profiting by selling the story of his or her crime. By taking away any moneys he or she may have made in the future, the incentive would be totally taken away from them.
Perhaps the crown could see fit to put the moneys generated by these movies toward various victims rights groups. It is high time that criminals really paid for their crimes in the true sense of the word.
This bill will further amend the Copyright Act to provide that the copyright of any work based on a crime where the work was created by the convicted person becomes the property of the crown. What this means is that when a book, a movie or other work based primarily on a crime is produced by a person convicted of that crime, Canada would become the sole owner of that work. Any proceeds from that work would go directly to the crown. Further, any sales or distribution of the work would be at the discretion of the crown, meaning that Canada would have the right to prevent future sales and distribution which is very important.
Also, seeing as Canada is a signatory to the Berne convention, which deals with the copyright and ownership of works, this bill would not only have a national scope but an international one as well. Canada could conceivably block any sales or distribution of a work in any country which is also a participant to the convention.
If passed, this bill will go a long way to preventing the sensationalizing of crime and violence not only in Canada but indeed in other countries as well.
Some opponents of this bill would say that it would limit the right to freedom of expression as put forth in the charter. On the contrary, let me emphasize this bill does not prohibit a person from telling his or her story. An individual who wishes to share his or her story is free to do so. All this bill simply states is that the individual would not be able to profit from the sale of the story. Society is always quick to ensure the rights of the offender are upheld. It is about time that we all stood up for the rights of the victim. This bill will ensure that the victim's rights do come first.
As I stated before, many organizations support this bill. The Canadian Police Association has stated that this bill would provide much needed protection for the victims of crime and ensure that their pain and suffering is not exploited.
CAVEAT, which represents Canadians against violence, also supports this bill. It stated that the enormous financial cost incurred by Canada in enforcing the law affects all Canadians. CAVEAT goes on to say that it is only fitting that the proceeds from the exploitation of any crime should revert to the crown.
One of the biggest supporters of this bill is an individual who stands to suffer a great deal if this bill is passed. Deborah Mahaffy is a director of the victims rights group ACTION. She is also the mother of Leslie Mahaffy, one of the young school girls who was violently abused and murdered by Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. Deborah Mahaffy and her family have endured enough pain and sorrow to last a lifetime. We need to ensure that her grief is not further exploited by her daughter's killers.
In closing, I would again urge all members of the House to support Bill C-205. Let us put our political differences aside and vote in favour of this bill. We must use this opportunity to reinforce the old adage that crime does not pay.
Morris Bodnar: Mr. Speaker, I commend the hon. member for Scarborough West on his efforts in Bill C-205. I will deal with some of the problems I see in the bill. I agree with the comments made by previous speakers about individuals not profiting from their crimes, such as in the Bernardo and Mahaffy matter. However, we have to take a look at the bill to see what it does.
First, let me give a summary of how copyright works in Canada. Copyright is a legal system of rights developed to reward authors for their intellectual labour and thus encourage them to continue creating original works for the benefit of society.
Copyright is made up of statutory, economic and moral rights that allow authors to control the exploitation of their works, to profit from their works and to protect the integrity of their works. Copyright protects the expression of the work and not the idea
embodied in the work and comes into existence as soon as an original work has been fixed in a medium.
Categories of protected works as defined by the Copyright Act are literary works such as books, poems and stories, or artistic works which are paintings, sculptures, photographs, dramatic works such as plays, television programs, movies, scripts and musical works, for example, notes transcribed on paper or song lyrics.
The Copyright Act gives authors of works exclusive economic rights and these are the right to authorized reproduction, performance in public, publication, communication to the public by telecommunication, adaptation of certain works, commercial rental of computer programs and exhibitions of certain artistic works.
Moral rights protect the work's integrity and author's reputation. Moral rights can be waived but not transferred. They are the right to the integrity of the work, the right to be named as the work's author or the right to remain anonymous and the right to prevent the use of the work in association with a product, service, cause or institution.
The author is normally the first owner of copyright in a work, but employers normally own the copyright in works produced by employees in the course of employment and copyright ownership is alienable by assignment or succession.
Canadians recognize the importance of allowing authors to earn a livelihood from their works. They understand the benefits to society that derive from the creation of works such as cultural identity, private enjoyment of books, music, art and television and the wealth of information that is distributed through these works.
The issue becomes difficult when society, and this includes victims of criminal acts, believes that a work has been created by someone who does not deserve to make money from such works. More specifically, convicted criminals who write about their crimes and profit financially from their publication.
Bill C-205 offers one solution to the problem: to take away the copyright and proceeds of copyright from authorize who are convicted of indictable offences when they write about the offences they have committed. However, the proposed amendment to the Copyright Act runs the risk of contravening our international obligations under the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. The spirit of the Berne convention limits the state regulation of copyright in the criminal law.
In addition, Bill C-205 is too far reaching. It extends beyond the incarceration period throughout the lifetime of ex-offenders who have done their time and to their family members for 50 years following an ex-convict's death. For example, take someone convicted of drunk driving. This bill covers many offences, not just murder, manslaughter or sexual offences. It covers thefts, mischief, prostitution and drunk driving.
Should a person who has been convicted of drunk driving decide in his old age to write his memoirs, he could not write about the offence without losing copyright or proceeds from the work, even if the work decries drunk driving. His family would also be disinherited although they did not commit the crime. The same applies to individuals who may have been convicted of possessing marijuana and then at a later time writing about their experiences and the bad effects of drugs, could not benefit from such writings.
It is the same for individuals who have been involved in the prostitution trade. Neither the men or women who have been involved and who have been victimized in that trade could write about it years later, damning that type of trade because the copyright would be with the government. It is not a matter of them writing and not being able to profit. It is a matter of them not being able to publish it because the copyright is in the name of the state and the state must consent to publication.
Canada is not a country that is in the habit of taking away rights. It is a country with a strong charter of rights and freedoms that is respected worldwide. There are other solutions to this problem that do not involve the expropriation of rights or discrimination against ex-offenders and their families. Rather they involve choices made by the Canadian public and the respect of the rights of all Canadians.
Books written by criminals about their crimes often appeal to the curiosity of the population. Canadians can choose to buy them or not to buy them. Those who choose to buy them do so knowing that copyright proceeds may go to the author. Those who choose not to buy or read the works of the offenders who write about their crimes are making a statement. If enough Canadians boycott a particular account of a criminal then that person will not benefit financially from copyright.
Let us put our trust in Canadian consumers that they will make the decision for themselves.
John Bryden: Mr. Speaker, I was not planning to speak on this bill but I listened to the people speaking before me and they certainly made it very clear that Bill C-205 is a very important piece of legislation.
However, I think I can add to the debate on a very sombre note. Over the past few weeks I have been reading a series of Alfred Hitchcock mysteries. I have been reading this series of mysteries, which are short stories, in French as a way of practising that language.
As it happens one of those stories deals with a plot wherein a novelist is very successful in writing various kinds of crime stories. The plot revolves around the fact that he gets the sense of verisimilitude or the sense of reality by actually committing the crimes himself. He does a number of murders. He also attempts suicide and the twist of the story is that in order to get the reality for his novels he kills his own child. He is subsequently murdered by his wife as a result.
That may seem a very improbable scenario, just fiction and crime and mystery fiction at that. I draw the House's attention to a reality that has come today. I find it difficult to even speak of it because it is the Bernardo case in which Canadians learn through the reporting of the court case of the torture and murder of two young girls. One aspect of that case that was revealed was the fact that the murderer, Paul Bernardo, took videotapes of the actual torturing of these two young ladies. He did not actually film the murders but he certainly did film the rest.
I am someone who has been in the communications business for a long time. In talking to my friends I learned that behind this business of videotaping a crime, and a terrible crime at that, is an international trade in what are called snuff films. Because of the advances of technology it is possible to very cheaply produce high quality films on video. There has become a very lucrative trade in movies and videotapes which involve the actual torturing or killing of people. This is a trade that is active worldwide.
Obviously this is the sickest of the sickest types of crime, a crime that is motivated by the crass profit of killing somebody and marketing the film. It is a very lucrative trade.
The advantage to Bill C-205 is that it directly addresses this terrible problem in that it will make it impossible for a murderer who is convicted of the crime to take advantage of the proceeds of the film that might be for sale as a result of a murder. I am suggesting a murder that is conducted solely for the purpose of creating a film for sale. This is the type of crime I am talking about.
Unfortunately there is a downside to not having capital punishment. The type of individual who would be so depraved as to kill someone in order to film it and sell it is the type of person who would stop at nothing short of the prospect of capital punishment. This is a person who, when caught, would still be in a position of going to jail and yet theoretically would have the film and still be able to sell it on the international market.
Bill C-205 in my mind adequately addresses this terrible prospect not only because it changes the Criminal Code and makes it impossible for the convicted killer to profit from his crime but more important because it addresses the copyright issue.
Because the crown takes possession of the copyright of any such film, play or novel that is based on an actual crime done by the person who would otherwise owned the copyright, it prevents this type of activity from occurring in Canada. It would discourage someone participating in easy money in creating a film of this nature.
I am not talking about something that is really very improbable. We learned in the news only recently of events on the high seas which demonstrated that the value of human life in other jurisdictions is held very low.
We also learn that there is international traffic in child prostitution and that kind of thing. These things are going on and are part of the really negative costs of the global economy that we are entering.
I support Bill C-205 very much. I took note of the criticisms of the member for Saskatoon-Dundurn who pointed out that there were problems with the Berne convention when other countries might take exception to Canada ruling that criminals cannot have a right to their own copyright and market it abroad. I answer that by saying that Canada leads the way in so many things. This is a case where we should not look abroad for instruction. We should lead the way ourselves. In that sense, I support 100 per cent the initiative of the member for Scarborough West.
This is a fine piece of legislation. I would like to see it get the unanimous support of the House.
Paul Steckle: Mr. Speaker, I take great pleasure in speaking to Bill C-205, which is very important legislation. I felt really confident this afternoon after listening to many of my colleagues both on this side and on the opposite side of the House giving their support to this measure.
If there is something that our country needs at this point, it is assurances to the people on our streets, our families who have children walking our streets, that the streets are safe to the degree that we believe they are.
Much has been said about the fact that when criminals break the law, basically they do not do very much time. There ought to be a recognition that the real victims of crime are the ones who have lost family members in many cases, those who have been robbed perhaps of their property. There is not a community in this country that is exempt from those kinds of things taking place.
In my community a week and a half ago, two break-ins took place where there was a tremendous amount of property stolen. The report from the police was that they would not likely find those people. If they did, their property would never be recovered. The real victims are the ones who have lost property and, more so, those who have lost family members.
There was a murder in our community two years ago. Recently someone was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. It is a terrible thing that none of us can really appreciate unless we know someone who has gone through the experience. Perhaps there are those within the House who have experienced it within their families.
It is important to appreciate that sensationalism attracts people's attention. In arcades we find young people entertaining themselves. Where do they entertain themselves mostly? In those machines where there is a great deal of violence. Our young people are very much subjected to crime and violent acts, even from a very young age. It is my contention that we ought to be doing much more than we are in terms of cleaning up the kind of material being given to our children for viewing on television.
There has been much support for this measure. For the record, I read what has been said. The Canadian Police Association stated:

The Canadian Police Association is pleased to announce its support for Mr. Tom Wappel in his efforts to prevent criminals from profiting from their crimes. Mr. Wappel's private member's bill will ensure convicted criminals will not be permitted to profit financially through writing a book or selling their story. This bill will provide much needed protection for victims of crime and ensure that their pain and suffering is not exploited.

The Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime stated:

The Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime is pleased to announce our support for Mr. Tom Wappel's private member's bill concerning the proceeds of crime. If successful, this bill would prevent criminals from profiting from their crimes if, for example, they write a book detailing their criminal activities.
This kind of legislation has been a long time coming and will go a long way in ensuring that crime does not pay. That principle is a long standing value entrenched in the Canadian justice system and Canadian society.

CAVEAT stated:

We would like to thank you for this private member's bill which addresses the spectre of convicted offenders who stand to profit by exploiting their crimes.
Public confidence in a just and safe society depends on societal values being reflected by the justice system. Canadian society views violent offences in particular with revulsion and distaste. Criminals and their families should never be allowed to accrue rich rewards for their offences anywhere, any time, any place.

Mrs. Deborah Mahaffy, the mother of Leslie Mahaffy, wrote:

I endorse and fully support this innovative, resourceful and compassionate bill that recognizes that criminals must pay for their crimes, not the victims, who pay over and over again. Crime will continue to pay if we continue to let the criminals run our country and our courts.
We cannot afford to not support Bill C-205. Mr. Wappel has done his research and the Government of Canada and the people of Canada shall reap the benefits of prohibiting criminals from profiting from their crimes.

This mother certainly knows what crime is. This mother will forever have in her memory that she at one time had a daughter. She no longer has that family member. I sympathize with that situation, as do many others in the country.
It would behove all of us to give serious consideration to unanimously endorsing this kind of legislation. It is the kind of legislation which would give credence to the kinds of things which we believe are important. It is important for us to support this legislation. I thank the opposition members who have given voice to that support this afternoon. I look forward to their support when we vote on this bill at a later time.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Kilger): The time provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired and the order is dropped to the bottom of the order of precedence on the Order Paper.
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.

Adjournment Proceedings
Jean H. Leroux: Mr. Speaker, Corporal Michel Purnelle was arrested on April 26, 1996 in order to prevent him from providing any information to the Somalia inquiry being carried out by Mr. Justice Gilles Létourneau.
Seven charges were laid against him. He was placed under surveillance for six months. He was relieved of his military duties until June 15, and faces the possibility of permanent suspension or other sanctions. He has been prevented from publishing his book Une armée en déroute .
And why was he harassed in this way? Simply because he had the courage to defy the orders of a superior who wanted to prevent him from speaking out, from telling the entire truth about the 1993 incidents in Somalia involving the Airborne Regiment. He is accused of having given unauthorized interviews to the media and of having taken unauthorized leave from his job.
What is the message that the Canadian Armed Forces are giving to their members? If you tell the truth, if you co-operate with the Somalia inquiry, you will be hauled up in front of a court martial, relieved of your duties, and subjected to blackmail, even intimidation. Sad but true.
Justice Létourneau issued a strong warning to the armed forces when he learned of the decision of military authorities to lay charges against Corporal Purnelle. He pointed out that this decision sent a contradictory message to soldiers who perhaps had relevant information. This message is in sharp contrast to the official encouragement given soldiers to co-operate in any way possible in fulfilling the mandate of the commission. Double talk.
The minister refuses to co-operate. He says to anyone who will listen that no members of the armed forces have been prevented from providing information. Now it is time to shed light on this whole incident. I remind you that a man died in Somalia. This is a source of shame to Canada and Quebec.
As you know, before these unfortunate events, Canada enjoyed a spotless reputation as a peacekeeper. In any peacekeeping mission, our soldiers and especially their leaders, who represent us and who are our ambassadors, must act with dignity and professionalism. Their behaviour must be beyond reproach. They must not disappoint us. Such incidents must never happen again.
This is affecting our troops' morale. As long as the Canadian Forces are led by people who are more concerned about their own personal careers than about the reputation of our armed forces, such situations may come up again. Were our soldiers justified in losing confidence in their leader? Are their leaders worthy of our trust? Is the Minister of National Defence still credible? Who is leading the Canadian Forces? The minister has a duty to shed light on all the cloudy aspects of this unfortunate tragedy. He is accountable to Parliament and to the people of Canada for our armed forces and he must assume this responsibility. If the minister no longer has any control over the armed forces, he can no longer run the department.
It is time for the minister to take his responsibilities. The Bloc Quebecois, representing the official opposition in this House, demands that the minister do all he can to ensure that witnesses like Michel Purnelle will be able to give evidence freely. The minister must not allow any attempt to muzzle or threaten witnesses in any way, so that light can be shed on the unfortunate and tragic incident in Somalia.
Again, the people of Canada want the truth.
Mr. John Richardson (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of National Defence and Minister of Veterans Affairs, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question and for allowing me the opportunity to elaborate on this very important issue, Canadian forces members' responsibilities with regard to the commission of inquiry and with regard to the ongoing responsibilities of Canadian forces members under their code of discipline.
As the minister stated, the commission of inquiry was established precisely to get to the bottom of all incidents that occurred during the Canadian forces tour in Somalia. I am very confident it will do that.
The Department of National Defence and the Canadian forces headquarters have and will continue to encourage people with any information which may be of interest to the commission to bring it forward to the commission.
It has been stated on several occasions in the House that members of the Canadian forces have the right, the duty and the obligation to bring forward any evidence they may have related to the Somalia incidents.
This does not, however, relieve members of the Canadian forces of their obligation to respect their code of discipline. If they choose to disregard their code of discipline they expose themselves to administrative or disciplinary measures.
While soldiers have a duty to come forward with any evidence relating to Somalia, they also have a duty to serve at their post. The two are not contradictory. All a soldier has to do is inform his or her commanding officer that he or she wishes to give evidence and obtain permission to go. It is a simple process.
What a solider cannot do is abandon his or her post on a whim without informing his or her superiors. That is very straightforward. For example, soldiers on peacekeeping duties in Haiti or in Bosnia implementing the peace accord cannot simply walk away from their posts.
I stress that discipline is a very important component of a military system. Discipline must be maintained without exception, for only with properly disciplined troops can we be assured of obedience in times of crisis.
Members of the Canadian forces must be held accountable to respect the code of discipline at all times.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Kilger): The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. The House stands adjourned until 10 a.m. tomorrow.
(The House adjourned at 6.58 p.m.)