Brian Fitzpatrick

[Judges Act, March 12th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the member from Nova Scotia touched on a number of areas that I think are of interest here.

One of the comments was in regard to the question of bribery. I would have thought that for most men and women in law school who were told that some day they would have the privilege of serving on a court of appeal or the Supreme Court of Canada the first thing that would come to mind would be service above money.

Second, it seems to me that the need to have this vetting process is very important in order to make sure that the people we are appointing to the courts are people who we are satisfied have high levels of integrity and personal behaviour. That is something I think this process could identify. Even if they have different ideologies from mine, I can respect that they are honest people and of good integrity.

Actually if money ensured high levels of integrity in our world, Hollywood would be the best place in the world to go to find that. The sports world would be another area. Presumably the people who are getting the most money would be the people who would conduct themselves with the highest standards of integrity. I am not exactly sure the money issue is as big as people make it out to be. I am willing to guess that $190,000 a year would put someone in the top 1% in the country. In some provinces it would be one-tenth of 1%. In Saskatchewan there are not many people who make $190,000 a year, and I am sure that in the province of Nova Scotia they are few and far between as well. In Toronto or Calgary it may be a different situation.

There is another area I am concerned about, and I raise it for my learned colleague from Nova Scotia. It is the vast disparity in lawyers' incomes in this country. I practised law in Saskatchewan for 25 years and I looked in envy at the income levels of lawyers in Toronto and Calgary. There are big differences. Maybe in a place like Toronto, where a $500,000 a year income level is not unusual for skilled lawyers, there may be a problem attracting people, but in Saskatchewan there would be no shortage of competent lawyers available for judicial appointments at a salary of $190,000. They are competent people and the lineup would be a long one. I am not exactly sure that the bill addresses that sort of concern about the vast disparity in incomes.

I cannot explain this vast disparity in incomes in these regions. I know that Alberta and Ontario are like the beacons on the hill in this country. They have booming, growing, prosperous provinces that attract thousands of people and lawyers from other regions of the country in massive numbers, and they do very well economically. However, I am not from one of those areas. I am from one of those areas where we have had a different philosophy and a different way of doing things and our standard of living and our incomes are much lower. Maybe the member from Nova Scotia could address this concern. Maybe we need some flexibility in our levels of remuneration based on the region of the country one comes from.

[Judges Act, March 12th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the comments of my friend from the NDP were very good comments. There are a couple of matters I want to point out to him.

He mentioned something about it being easy to criticize the courts in Canada. I know it is easy to criticize an umpire or a referee in a hockey game and to deal with that, but I can say as a practising lawyer myself that one has to be very careful about what one says about judges and their judgments. It is far easier to say things in the House than it is outside the House, unless we want to find out what the rules are for contempt of court. I point that matter out.

I want to put something in perspective too. Comments were made about the American system of justice. I can think of a lot of great supreme court judges in the United States: Justice Holmes, Justice Warren and Justice Marshall. They were appointed but went through a very rigorous appointment process. They have a lot of power like the judges in Canada. The public there believes it has a right to know what agenda these people are bringing to the courts. This is vetted and is publicly dealt with.

A person who I personally and politically had a lot of admiration for during the Reagan era was Robert Bork. He was turned down in that process. That would probably make my NDP friends happy. It did not make me happy but it showed that the system worked.

In our system we do not get any scrutiny on that. Basically, my own reading of how one gets to be a judge on the Supreme Court of Canada is to be a good donator. A person who earns $110,000 a year is going to have a lot better chance of getting into our Supreme Court of Canada or our courts of appeal. Another thing would be to be a good fundraiser. That means being a lawyer, but if someone has one of those criteria and is with the right party, chances are pretty good he or she will be there.

I am not exactly sure the public or anyone else would say that is the proper way of determining who should be in the courts. I want to put a few of those points in perspective. There have been a lot of excellent judges on the supreme court of the United States over the years. We can criticize that system all we want, but I think the level of judicial decision making that has come out of the U.S. supreme court generally has been far superior to our system here.

I want to perhaps get my learned colleague's reaction to these comments. I do not think we are advocating electing Supreme Court of Canada judges but we are talking about having a good independent system in place to make sure we get the very best men and women as our judges.

[Transportation, February 23rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, when the government was confronted with the Air Canada-Canadian Airlines merger it was quite apparent there was no review process in place for such a merger.

The Canadian travelling public has paid a very high price for this crisis management approach to mergers. Other than the ineffective Competition Act, when will the government have a meaningful rail merger review process in place?

[Transportation, February 23rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, Canada has no established process to deal with rail mergers. The transport minister claims that the government will not be caught flat footed, as it was with the Air Canada-Canadian Airlines merger.

As CN and CP both operate in the U.S. they would be subject to a very substantial review process while Canada has no similar process. There is much discussion about a possible major rail merger. Does the transport minister have a plan and a process in place to deal with any such merger?

[Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization And Divestiture Act, February 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, almost anyone who would look at the history of the 20th century would say that the market driven economy clearly is a superior model to a state command dictated type of economy. Why does my learned friend keep on bringing up a model that has obviously failed as an economic model for creating wealth, opportunity and jobs?

[Eldorado Nuclear Limited Reorganization And Divestiture Act, February 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, this topic concerns me. I should like to address what I think is a deficiency in the bill, the 18% ownership by the Government of Canada of Petro-Canada.

I come from Saskatchewan. I should like to draw on the history of that province in dealing with this topic. In 1944 we elected a Baptist minister as the premier of that province who embarked on a different way of doing things. There was a lot of state intervention, state ownership and state control of the economy.

At the very same time in our sister province to the west we elected a Baptist minister who believed in self-reliance and the market system. At that time Saskatchewan had approximately one and a quarter million people. Saskatoon and Regina were far larger centres than Edmonton and Calgary. Alberta had approximately 600,000 people. At the end of the last century we now see which model has worked.

Saskatchewan has a million people. Many of the members sitting on this side of the House from Alberta are transplanted Saskatchewan people. Even some of the Ontario people are transplanted Saskatchewan people. We have been great at exporting people from our province. Alberta has three million people today.

This 18% ownership is a reminder of a flawed, failed policy in the seventies where the federal government decided to use the Saskatchewan model to embark in the economy in a major way. It cost the Canadian economy a lot of money. It created a lot of unity problems that are still lasting in the country.

I wish the Minister for Intergovernmental Affairs were here today so we could deal with some of the grievances out west which he says do not exist.

I think the 20th century was a contest among many things. One of the big contests was a contest between a free market driven economy and state controlled command style economies. The verdict came in loud and clear—

[Grain Transportation, February 9th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the farmers of eastern Saskatchewan are a long way from traditional ports. The port of Churchill is approximately 800 miles from most delivery points in my riding.

Mr. Justice Estey recommended that competent third parties have access to CP and CN rail systems. Implementing this recommendation would mean that the farmers of eastern Saskatchewan would benefit by having access to the port of Churchill at much reduced freight rates.

Canadian farmers are suffering severely from circumstances beyond their control while the government misses yet another opportunity to help our producers by implementing this recommendation.

I therefore urge the transportation minister to give back to farmers some real control over their industry by opening up the rail lines. Let us help our farmers help themselves by giving them the choice and the opportunity to reduce their costs.

[Supply, February 8th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I remember how that was such a charged issue in the early 1990s. Much of the public thought that was a sign that this place was irrelevant when these things were happening.

I believe the predecessor party had a major impact on effecting the regimes in every province. Alberta seriously reformed its gold plated pension plan. It was one of the first things Mr. Harris did in this province. In Saskatchewan Mr. Romanow reformed its pension plan.

The only place that really has not reformed its pension system in a meaningful way I would say is the House. The only way it is ever going to be changed is if people on this side of the House get more than 151 people on that side of the house.

[Supply, February 8th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I would remind the member of what I believe I said and that was that I was coming to the House with an open mind.

Where I come from the reality is a large number of people firmly believe that the House of Commons is irrelevant. The polls show that. I am here to try to make this place relevant. I want to see this federal system updated and reformed with a small r to make it relevant to people across the country so that everybody feels that they are part of it. Then we would have no need to talk about alienation or disgruntled people.

If the learned member on the other side of the House does not realize that this system has to be updated in Ottawa, then he is living in a world that is out of touch with reality. We have got to update our federal system and this is the time to do it.

[Supply, February 8th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I have some preliminary comments on the matter.

I am a new member of the House. Many voters told me in the last election that I was wasting my time coming to the House. In their view, their members of parliament did not have an effective voice or say in the government of this country. Many of them did not believe they were on the bus. They were not in the back seat. They were on the outside looking in.

Many of our academic people today have examined our parliamentary system and know it very well. Basically, their conclusion is that we are creating a system of government which is presidential and does not really have any effective checks or balances built into it. Mr. Diefenbaker many years ago pointed out some of the things that were happening in the House.

I come to the House with an open mind. I come here with the idea that we, as members of parliament, can improve the system of government, and I will give it a fair trial. However, I come to the House with a lot of doubts in my mind. Some of the things I heard this afternoon only confirm some of my worst beliefs about this place.

The question that I would like to start off with is; can Mr. Wilson, the ethics counsellor, given the process established by the Prime Minister's office, truly carry out this mandate in an impartial, objective and independent manner? In no way do I question this individual's integrity in any way. I believe Mr. Wilson to be an honourable and decent individual. However, it has been my experience in life that a system dictates the results. Excellent systems create excellent results, average systems create mediocre results and bad systems produce poor results.

In my view the process that has been established to investigate and report on serious wrongdoings by the Prime Minister or the ministers is a flawed, poor system. People who work in a poor system are helpless to deal with that system and to affect the result.

I intend to point out some of the obvious defects with the system which have been created. First, the Prime Minister's office has established the code of conduct for the Prime Minister and the ministers. This is like asking the hockey coach to make up the rule book.

Second, the ethics commissioner is hired by the Prime Minister's office and in all apparent respects is placed in a position of master-servant with the Prime Minister being the master. Once the ethics counsellor is finished with the allegation, he reports directly to the boss, the master, who is the subject matter of the very investigation. The ethics counsellor is not directly accountable to the men and women who have been elected to the House to govern the country.

There is a very old saying in our justice system, and I am sure all members have heard it before; not only must justice be done, it must appear to be done. Because of a very flawed process, thousands upon thousands of Canadians do not believe in the integrity of the findings of the ethics commissioner. They simply do not believe that those are correct results or an accurate assessment of what has taken place.

Much has been said about Saskatchewan. I am a member from Saskatchewan. Anybody from Saskatchewan would realize, based on our experience, that we have to prevent these sorts of abuses of power from occurring again. That means fixing the system and having a system in place that prevents those sorts of abuses of power.

In many respects the circumstances I heard in regard to this incident remind me of the sorts of incidents that occurred in Saskatchewan, but this is the Government of Canada. I think many people in Saskatchewan see many similarities in some of these circumstances. Everybody in the House should be concerned about those sorts of problems.

For this system to have the appearance of fairness and objectivity that people expect, the ethics counsellor must be dealing in a complete arm's length position, vis-à-vis the Prime Minister. It is fairly apparent that a person with that type of position should be very akin to a judge. He should have that sort of independence that we expect to find in our judiciary.

Those two points, as far as I am concerned, are not even close to being reality. I would encourage all members of the House to support this very worthy motion.