Betty Hinton

[Oil and Gas Rebate, October 7th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the government's recent announcements on how it is going to save Canadians from the spiralling costs of gas and home heating fuel are nothing but a veiled attempt at vote buying.

It has offered nothing to reduce the GST. It will not remove the tax on tax or the 1.5% deficit tax even though we have not had a deficit in years.

A concerted move toward tax reduction would provide assistance to all Canadians across the board, not merely the 10% included in the government's plans.

As we approach this Thanksgiving, the government should give Canadians something to be thankful for, a tax break.

[Criminal Code, September 26th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I wonder if the hon. member across the way would care to comment on Canada's international standing. I believe the OSCE puts out a report every year regarding Canada's part in slavery, in the white slave trade, et cetera. There are three categories and I believe it is category one that has open borders and allows all of this to happen. I believe it is category three that has the tightest security. I may have those numbers reversed but Canada was a number two and I believe it still is a number two.

According to the report, because of the loose immigration and the border aspect of that, women and young children are brought into this country, are held in Canada for a certain period of time and are exported to another country where child slavery, child pornography or just plain old ordinary prostitution takes place.

I would like to hear the member's comments on that particular issue. Does he know what Canada's standing is this year?

[Civil Marriage Act, June 28th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the member's speech and I have a couple of questions.

The member said that the federal government would be failing in its duty but I believe it has already failed twice in its duty. It first failed to step in before all the provinces went their own way and it is failing again now.

I do not know if the member was present for my speech but I made it very clear how I feel about this particular issue. I actually believe it is intellectual property we are discussing and not human rights. However if we are going to go down this road of same sex marriage in a different venue then I would submit to the member that this is actually about protecting religious rights as well.

We on this side of the House have said that we accept the fact that the country and the world are changing and that we are prepared to allow same sex couples to have the same responsibilities and benefits that married couples enjoy. However our tantamount concern is that religious freedom, which everyone in the country has valued for years, is in jeopardy. I know the member may not agree with that but I can assure her that the way the legislation is written we cannot ensure religious freedom in the country.

My suggestion is that it might be a better idea to wait until summer has passed and until we have had an opportunity to discuss this more thoroughly so we can put the assurances in place to ensure religious freedom is protected. Religious freedom and freedom of speech have always drawn, do draw and will always draw immigrants to this country. If we fail to protect that with this legislation then we have failed miserably.

I wonder whether the member opposite might share any or all of those views.

[Civil Marriage Act, June 28th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I do not recall hearing any of my colleagues say that marriages will be breaking up all across the country if same sex marriage is granted. I think that is the theatrical type of response I have come to expect from those who are uncertain of their ground. It is an emotional argument. That is what I talked about earlier in my speech.

I do not have any qualms about horrid things happening to marriages across the country if same sex couples are allowed to marry. They are allowed to marry now. In many provinces, they have been allowed to marry. They have been allowed to marry because this government failed to give a signal. It did not give a strong signal. It allowed provinces to make their own decisions along the way.

As for what we as the Conservative Party would do about the marriages that are already there, the marriages are there and we honour the marriages. We have made it very clear that we are prepared to accommodate same sex couples. We are prepared to give them the same responsibilities and the same rights as heterosexual couples.

What we are not prepared to do is change the definition of marriage, and we are not prepared to risk religious freedom. Religious freedoms and the freedom of speech are absolutely fundamental in this country. If the member across the way does not understand that at this point, or did not glean that from the speech I just made, there is nothing else I can say to make this stronger for him.

This is seriously flawed legislation. It does not do justice to any Canadian. We need to protect the rights of all. When we want to extend rights to another group of people or a certain segment of society, we have to take into consideration the ramifications for the rest of society. We in this House have failed miserably to do that.

We have jeopardized the things that mean the most to Canadians. There is no explanation for that. I do not understand why there would be any question about it. This has been dealt with for over two years now. There was a split decision at the committee level. Also, it was not endorsed by a vast majority of people. I am sure the Speaker recognizes as well as I do that if we were to do a survey across Canada we would find a split, roughly half and half, maybe a little more to one side and a little more to the other side depending on what part of the country one is located. It is split roughly half and half.

Why would the House not take the time to make certain we protect the things that are the most valuable to us in our country? We can extend benefits and extend all of the things that the government is talking about extending. I do not have a problem with that and neither does anyone in my party.

We believe in equality in this country, but this is not a human rights issue. This is an issue that goes well beyond human rights. As I said in my speech, I believe it is a question of intellectual property. It is the right of the churches to decide who they do and do not marry. If we take away that right, we will have failed all of those who have gone before us, those who made the country what it is today and who have built Canada's reputation worldwide.

[Civil Marriage Act, June 28th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, this is the second time I have risen to speak to this issue. I will preface what I am going to say by telling the House that I sent out a ballot within my own constituency on this issue. Eighty-two per cent of my constituents told me to vote in favour of the traditional definition of marriage. I have done so.

I want to go back a little bit on this and mention a few things that may or may not be relevant to some members of the House. My daughter's godmother has a sign in her place of business that reads, “Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part”. I believe that is a very appropriate saying for where we find ourselves today.

This was a very awkward situation for all. I understand that, but that sign pretty much sums it up, because what we have here is a case of poor planning, poor wording and face-saving. The result is going to be bad legislation. We have tried to put through amendments that would make it a better piece of legislation and would protect religious freedom, but all of those amendments have been thwarted.

I also would like to suggest, as I suggested in my last speech, that this is not a human rights issue. People use the argument that this is a human rights issue because they have to resort to using emotional speeches to get their point across. They cannot get their point across in any other legitimate way.

I believe that is very wrong. As the shadow critic for veterans affairs, I could introduce members of the House to any number of veterans who would be happy to tell the members the difference between a human rights issue and a social issue. As a country, we are extremely proud of these men and women who have fought for democracy worldwide. I do not think we would find a single veteran who would say to us that the same sex marriage legislation is a human rights issue. It is not a human rights issue. It never has been.

In my last address to the House, I told the House that in my opinion I believed that this was in fact an intellectual property issue. I believe that the creation of the ceremony for marriage belongs solely to the churches. I also question why members of the House would stand up and passionately defend intellectual property rights on another issue yet be very casual about protecting religious rights. I do not understand that. I believe that if we were to ask a few of the members here about this, they would be hard pressed to explain it.

Perhaps they do not view this as intellectual property rights, but I do. I believe that when we take the emotion out of this argument and boil it all down, that is in fact what this is. We do not have the permission of the churches to change anything to do with marriage. That lies solely in their hands. I do not believe that government has a place in this, but we are here nonetheless.

I also have made it clear that other things are at stake here. One of the things I would once again like to clarify is about what we sell to immigrants coming to this country. For the very people who built the country, who made the country what it is today and who add to the country on a daily basis, what we sold them on for Canada was freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Both of them are seriously jeopardized in this piece of legislation.

Yesterday the Prime Minister met with the Prime Minister of Vietnam. By all accounts, when the Prime Minister spoke to that issue, he claimed to have told the Vietnamese prime minister that Canada wants Vietnam to honour freedom of expression and freedom of religion. There is an irony there. Is the Prime Minister of our country saying to the Prime Minister of Vietnam “do as I say, not as I do”? This piece of legislation that he is currently endorsing undermines religious freedom in this country. I do not quite understand how he can stand up and say something like that to another country when he has that very problem happening within his own.

Just a few steps outside these doors there is a statue. It is probably 10 paces from the outer doors. It is a statue of Lieutenant Colonel George Baker. Lieutenant Colonel George Baker was the only member of Parliament to die in a war. He died in World War I. From all accounts, he was a man of great honour. This was a man who served his country not only in Parliament but on the battlefield.

Right next to the statue of Lieutenant Colonel George Baker is another plaque. On that plaque is a poem that most Canadians can probably recite by heart. The poem was written by John McCrae:

To you from failing hands we throw,The torch; be yours to hold it high.If ye break faith with us who dieWe shall not sleep, though poppies growIn Flanders fields.

Those words have great meaning to all veterans. They have great meaning to all Canadians. In the opinion of many, that torch has fallen. If we fail in our own country to maintain religious rights and freedoms, we have failed all of those who have gone before us, who have fought worldwide and who have fought for honour in Canada to give freedom of expression and freedom of religion to countries throughout the world.

As Canadians, we are expected to stand up for these things and we have stood up for these things. When we draw up legislation that will affect the lives of every single Canadian and every immigrant who chose Canada for the freedoms we offer, it is beyond reason that we would put together legislation so iffy that we are challenging the right of religious freedom in our own country.

I do not understand it at all. It baffles me when I look about me and see that there are less than 20 people sitting in this room right now listening to what I have to say. This says to me that members are thinking, “My mind is made up. Do not confuse me with facts. I will make my decision based on whatever reasoning I have in my own head and I really do not care to hear anything that anyone else has to say”. I never thought we would see the day when those sorts of thought processes would happen in a house of democracy.

I have been here only a short time, but I am deeply ashamed about some of the things that have happened to the democratic process in the House of Commons. I would like to see democratic renewal, but I have seen no evidence of it.

We have an opportunity right here and right now to take a sober second look at what we are doing with this legislation. What would be the harm in not bringing back this legislation until September?

There will be those who argue that we would be leaving people's lives in limbo, but we would not. There is absolutely nothing stopping same sex couples from marrying in this country right now. If we were to take the summer, have a sober second reflection and really seriously get down to what this is all about, I have no doubt that we could put wording into this legislation that would in fact protect freedom of religion.

As I said earlier, as shadow critic for veterans affairs, I have had the pleasure, the opportunity and the privilege to meet some of the finest men and women this country has to offer. Whether they are senior veterans who fought in World War II or the Korean war, to a man and a woman they will tell us that they value nothing more than the freedom this country has to offer. They have put themselves on the line around the world to preserve it for strangers.

The conversations I have had with veterans tell me very clearly that they are very unhappy about this legislation. Never in their lives did they think that the greatest threat to democracy would be coming from within their own country. We have to take steps which will ensure that everything we are so proud of in this country, everything we stand behind, is protected. Until we can protect freedom of religion, we have failed miserably.

I ask hon. members to remember the words of that poem:

To you from failing hands we throw,The torch; be yours to hold it high.If ye break faith with us who dieWe shall not sleep, though poppies growIn Flanders fields.

[Petitions, June 27th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to present a petition on behalf of my constituents calling on Parliament to withdraw Bill C-17 and any legislation designed to decriminalize the possession and use of marijuana. They want to provide increased funding for the RCMP and Canadian police forces and to eliminate grow operations in Canada.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to make Certain Payments, June 16th, 2005]

I am sorry, Mr. Speaker. Having sat in that chair I know better and you would never yell at me. I apologize. The member across the way may have yelled at me, so I will speak to you.

The Progressive Conservative Party is no longer. I can say without hesitation that in this party, the Conservative Party of Canada, there are four members who sat as Progressive Conservatives. The balance of our 98 members have never sat as Progressive Conservatives.

When the member asks me to defend a party I did not belong to, I cannot do that.

On the other side of the House, the Liberal government, there are more than 19 ministers, if I remember correctly who sat under Mr. Chrétien. If the member is talking about something new happening across the way, there is nothing new happening across the way. It is recycling. I am into recycling but not when it comes to politicians and not when it comes to policies.

In the House since the session has begun there has been literally no new legislation that has come forward. The only new things that we have talked about in the House, aside from the budget, which we are talking about now, have actually been from private members' bills.

That is not much of a record that I would stand on, if I were the member. First of all, I did not call the member across the way illegitimate. I would never do that. I do not know where that comment was coming from.

The other thing the member said was that the Canadian people have spoken. Yes, they did. Three-quarters of them did not vote Liberal.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to make Certain Payments, June 16th, 2005]

Would you like to hear the answer or are you going to yell at me?

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to make Certain Payments, June 16th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know if I can call that a good question but it is an interesting question so I will try to answer it.

First I will try to explain that Mike Harris and Ernie Eves are provincial legislators. They have nothing to do with the federal level of government. There is a huge difference between a provincial government and the federal government. This House is federal government.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to make Certain Payments, June 16th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, if the hon. minister is not interested in what I have to say he has an option available to him. He can go up the aisle and out the door. I do not mean to be difficult, but I was trying to explain something. I was going back to my being in business and having to have a business plan. I was mentioning the fact that a government that is going to make Canada thrive also has to have a business plan. We need to know what we are going to do with the money we take in from taxpayers. We need to know their priorities and their needs and those are the things that must be addressed in the budget.

When Bill C-43 was presented, there were options available to the Conservative Party. We could have followed suit with the NDP and the Bloc and at the first opportunity voted to bring this government down. That would have been easy and, in some ways, it might have been very satisfying, but it would not have been responsible. If there is nothing else that we are, we are responsible. We are responsible to taxpayers, to the next generation and we are responsible for what goes on in the House.

We have an obligation as members of Parliament to try to make things work. We have to make them work for Canadians. When we lose sight of what it is we are here for, Canadians, then we have a serious problem.

We were willing and attempted to make amendments, amendments that met the needs of our constituents, the needs of all Canadians, things that were missing from the budget, things that were not there that needed to be there, the priorities of Canadians that were not reflected. We were told, point blank from the Liberal government, that there would be no amendments and that was the end of it.

However we are patient in the Conservative Party and we decided to wait until it went to committee where we could actually have the opportunity to voice a large opinion on what needs to happen in the hope that common sense would prevail and that there would be acceptance of provisions that would make things better for Canadians.

In the interim, before that stage happened, there was a deal made between the Liberal government and the NDP. Some of the things that the NDP has put forward are things that are very important to Conservatives as well. We care about the environment, about the next generation and about affordable housing, but we are a Conservative Party that is fiscally responsible. We will not give anyone a blank cheque. It takes some trust for us to accept that when we agree to a budget the government will do what it says it will do.

I have only been here five years but I have watched more supplementary budgets go through and I have watched taxes increase and increase and I have not seen a big difference happening for Canadian people. In my own riding I still have residents who are reeling from the impact of the softwood lumber debacle. They have not been supported or helped, and there is no money in this budget for those people. We wanted to make that happen. We wanted to change that in the Conservative Party.

I also have a huge contingent of ranchers in my riding. These are people who have been around for over a hundred years producing food. These are good, stable, honest people whose livelihoods have been ripped out from underneath them because of a government that did not act appropriately or quickly enough. We have gone two years now with that debacle and nothing has happened.

The Conservative Party wanted to see those things addressed but the Liberal government said no amendments. However that story changed rather quickly when it made a deal with the NDP to stay in power. Let us be honest here, that is what that deal was about, nothing more, nothing less. It was about staying in power. Now it is saying, as a government, that it expects us to just agree with this. We should just say yes because, by golly, that is what it has decided to do and if we want to argue about it, it will make us look as bad as possible.

Well the government can go ahead and make me look as bad as it wants because the day I sign a blank cheque that I do not have to cover and taxpayers in Canada have to cover is the day I should head out that door and go home. I would be of no use to Canadians and to my constituents if I were to accept that kind of a deal. I will not accept that kind of a deal.

If we take a look at the budget that has been presented as Bill C-48, it is two pages with a little tiny paragraph at the top. If we take a look at that and we say $4.5 billion, 400 words, which is approximately what is in there, that is $11,500 a word. I cannot agree with a bill that does not show me where the money will be spent and does not reflect the needs of Canadians. It is a bill that allows the government to do whatever it wants. I cannot do agree to that and neither can this party.

Can I endorse some of the things that the NDP party wants to do? Yes, I can. If those could be done in a reasonable fashion or if the Liberal government wants to present me with a business plan showing me how it is going to implement it and tells me what it is going to do, then perhaps they would get my agreement.

In my life I have been a negotiator for contracts. I recognize the difference between the words “will” and “may”. The words in this legislation say “may”. I hate to disappoint the NDP, and maybe none of them have negotiated contracts, but if does not say “will” it is not going to happen.

The NDP has been taken for a ride in exchange for their votes. This is all a big farce as far as I am concerned. It is not going to happen. The government knows it is not going to happen and I know it is not going to happen, but the NDP does not seem to know that it is not going to happen.

The NDP members would be better off if they were to join forces with the Conservative Party. We could put our heads together to convince the government do what needs to be done . However they have chosen not to do that and there is not much I can do about that.

The one thing I really do resent is that we have a government that has gone to the FCM, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and has spun the FCM a tale that says that if this budget does not pass it will get no money. That is simply not true. It will get the money.

What the government has not told the FCM government is that it is the government's choice to tie Bill C-43, which we supported, and Bill C-48, which we cannot support, together. If thee money for municipalities is lost, it will lie in the laps of the Liberal government. It will not be the Conservatives that made this happen. It will be the government itself.

I would like to believe that everyone in this House has the best interests of Canadians at heart. If in fact that is true, no one can sign off on a blank cheque budget that does nothing to help Canadians and adds to what we already have, which is a half a trillion dollar debt.

The people in my riding are looking for help. They are looking for work and they are looking for some kind of optimistic future, something that they can look forward to. This does not offer it to them. Those cuts that are coming to corporations may very well cost 2,700 jobs in my riding.

I cannot and I will not support this and I urge the government to rethink this silly piece of legislation.