Mr. Speaker, I too rise in support of Bill C-54, an act to amend the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act. I do so by asking about the logic of the American bill which inspired this response, the Helms-Burton Act.
The logic is simply this. The principle underlying it, if it is fully implemented, is that a nation may and should provide means for its citizens who have had property in a foreign state confiscated to sue those who are presently enjoying the property for compensation, even those who are not nationals of the confiscating nation, and to sanction those people by denying them entry to the United States.
I have often asked myself what would happen if we applied this new standard of international morality to other revolutions, present and past. What would happen if we applied this new high standard of international morality to American history, to that great revolution which created the United States, the American Revolution of 1776? Would we not in fact have a complete parallel?
From 1776 to 1783 the property of well over 100,000 Americans who were in disagreement with a revolution, who upheld the principles of ordered government and who upheld the principles of private property, were deprived by revolutionary courts in the American states of their civil rights and of their property. Many of them, like the Cubans after 1959, fled from the United States to Canada, to Britain and to the West Indies, being like many of those Cubans who went to the United States after the Cuban revolution, without their property.
Unlike the current situation however, in 1783, at the conclusion of the war between Great Britain and what was to become the United States, there was a treaty of peace signed in Paris in September of that year. Article V of that peace treaty had the Americans agreeing to the restitution of all the estates, rights and properties which had been confiscated. Unlike the Cubans, the Americans promised to give back confiscated territory and property but they did not do so.
If we were to apply the logic of Helms-Burton to the American revolution, we would find that the Americans have completely neglected their own principles. What they did was they ignored the treaty. The Cubans never signed a treaty promising to do anything. The Americans actually signed a treaty. The issue simply was never resolved.
The Americans went their merry way without compensating those 100,000 people who fled: 40,000 to Canada, now three million of us who are their descendants with legal, rightful and unsatisfied claims for confiscated property; another 40,000 to the United Kingdom; and 20,000 to the West Indies. Some of us are asking if what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Is it possible that we could apply the Helms-Burton principle to an earlier revolution, admittedly a little earlier than 1959? We are going back to 1776. What would happen?
In support of this bill, I would like to say that a couple of us are going to be bringing forward a private member's bill. It will be known in response to Helms-Burton as the Godfrey-Milliken bill, which will mimic in every detail the Helms-Burton bill. I have to declare here that as a loyalist descendant I have a lively interest in a certain property in Virginia. My colleague, the member for Kingston and the Islands, has quite a lot of territory coming to him in New York's Mohawk Valley.
The principle of our bill is going to be very simple: it is just and equitable that Canadians who are heirs to loyalists whose property was confiscated, stolen or destroyed by the American revolutionaries should be afforded the same assistance as is provided by the United States government to its citizens who have had property in Cuba confiscated by the revolutionary government there, in our bill we are going to apply exactly the same sanctions.
We are going to establish a list of claims, which I have already started to do so on my Internet site. If I may be allowed to advertise, www.johngodfrey.org is where those of loyalist descent can get in touch with us. We can register the claims and make sure that we hot link them to Senator Helms and Congressman Burton just so they can keep a running tally of how much their folly is costing them.
We will say that any person who has a reasonable claim to an interest in a confiscated property may bring an action in the Federal Court of Canada and that the court may determine whether the claim is valid. If it is valid, the court will order that the property be restored to the people who are descended from those loyalists and that compensation be paid either directly, or damages of three times the value. Sounds familiar. We may also bar from entry into Canada those persons who head up institutions which are trafficking in our property, whether that person is the head of an agency, a department of government or a municipality, a corporation, or is a shareholder or an individual, and indeed their spouse and dependants.
I admit there may be some practical difficulties with the application of the Godfrey-Milliken bill should it ever receive the approval of the House. One person who has been in touch with us informed us that 700 acres of downtown Washington belonged to her family. That would mean the chief executive officer presiding over a great deal of that real estate, the President of the United States, would be barred from entering Canada. Should he still be in place after November, his daughter and rather charming wife would be barred from entering Canada, just as the heads of Canadian
companies are currently barred from entering the United States. I admit it is tough but fair.
In conclusion, the importance of supporting this bill is to realize it can be but the first step of an ever graduated series of responses to American provocation. We have powerful cannons-and I like to think of the powerful cannons of Fort York in Toronto-behind us to give a stronger riposte should they fail to heed our logic.