John Bryden

[Department Of Citizenship And Immigration Act, June 13th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Calgary North for her very fine remarks. I think we are all very much in agreement in this House that the problem of refugees is a very delicate and sensitive one. Although I do not agree in the case of the inland refugee situation right now that there has been laxity on the part of the government, it is certainly true those who are here have an advantage over those who are not. We certainly should bear heed to what she says. We must be very careful to try to be as fair and just as we can.

My comment pertains to a little slip the hon. member made in her speech. When she began she referred to the department as the ministry of immigration and citizenship. I immediately took note of that because of course in this bill we are talking about combining citizenship and immigration in the ministry. If I may say so it is citizenship and immigration rather than the other way around.

The very important point I am about to make is that it struck me as very wrong because there is one thing I would have changed in the bill. I would have changed it to immigration and citizenship instead of the other way around simply because immigration is the body of this country. When immigrants come here they come to be fed and to find shelter, heat and warmth and to sustain their physical selves. I would say that citizenship is the soul of this country. It is what the people of this country give in terms of their minds and whole beings.

[Young Offenders Act, June 6th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I fully support the bill but my colleague opposite raised a concern that I share, that is the whole issue of young people 16 and 17 years of age having to prove to the judge that they should not be transferred to adult court. I agree with him that this would appear to be a problem where the accused is forced to prove his innocence.

However I note the minister said in his remarks today that the final decision on whether or not a young person goes to adult court, if I interpret the minister correctly, is entirely at the discretion of the judge. Surely that answers my concern and the concerns of my colleague opposite.

[Battle Of Normandy, June 6th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, 50 years ago today, Canadian troops landed on the beaches of Normandy to begin their mission to free France. The three major Allied powers, the United States, Great Britain and Canada, joined forces to liberate Europe from the Nazis, to restore democracy and to deliver the millions suffering under the iron grip of fascism. The battle was hard-fought and many soldiers lost their lives.

So many years later, we remember that day when Canadian soldiers, francophones, anglophones and allophones, represented all of Canada. The language spoken mattered little when the freedom of the world hung in the balance.

[Scout And Guide Parade, June 1st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I have a riddle for you. What city has the longest annual parade in North America, if not the world? Mr. Speaker, your share of my minute is up. The answer is Hamilton in my riding.

Last Saturday it hosted its 56th annual scout and guide parade: 9,500 children and leaders took part, 230 guiding groups, 220 scouting groups, cubs, scouts, brownies, sparks and beavers. It took two and a half hours to pass the reviewing stand, a colourful procession of boys and girls as far as the eye could see.

This event, unique to Hamilton, was inspirational. I wish all my fellow MPs could have been there to witness it with me. It would serve to remind us all that our duty to Canada is to its future, to its children.

[Budget Implementation Act, May 31st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciated the remarks of my colleague opposite and I listened to them with great attention. I certainly appreciate the sincerity with which he made many of his points and I think all of us on all sides of the House are very conscious of the fact that any changes to unemployment insurance have to be done with great care and forethought. Certainly to extend the number of weeks of eligibility for unemployment insurance is to bring a certain amount of hardship to some people.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague if he feels that unemployment insurance as a concept is something sacrosanct, that can never be touched, that can never be reformed. We really

do have to look broadly across the social services in Canada which I think he will acknowledge we are having difficulty as a country affording.

In that context, if he is going to answer yes to that would he then take the concept of unemployment insurance and go the other way? Would he reduce the number of work weeks in his area for eligibility and if so how can we pay for that?

[Supply, May 12th, 1994]

Very briefly through you, Madam Speaker, I believe Amnesty International defines solitary confinement as a form of torture. I wonder if the member would comment on that.

[Supply, May 12th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I quite appreciated the remarks of my hon. colleague. However I must ask her a question.

The hon. member said she did not feel that poverty or social circumstances were the cause of youth crime and illustrated this by saying that there are many people who come from similar circumstances, poverty and dysfunctional environments, who are honest, and even cited members of the House.

I am curious to know if she could explain whether she feels that all people are essentially the same. Does she not feel that we are all individuals and that as individuals we might react differently to the circumstances of poverty, and consequently some people might be prone to crime whereas other people might be prone to honesty given the same circumstances.

Further, I might ask the hon. member if she would explain that bit of logic but if she might go further and define what she thinks is the cause of young people turning to crime?

[Party Fundraising, May 6th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, briefly, I must say that I have great sympathy with this motion. However, it is a little disconcerting that the members opposite assume that someone like myself had large corporate donations to my campaign. I would like to set the record straight.

My total personal election spending contributions totalled $17,000. The largest contribution I received was $1,000. I received absolutely no money from the Liberal Party, it was all obtained from individuals. Also all the money was obtained during the election campaign. They were donations from individuals. I held a barbecue and did the customary things.

I find myself in sympathy because I feel it is right and proper that MPs who represent the people should be supported primarily by the people rather than by corporations. I want the members opposite to know that the Bloc and the Reform have no monopoly on receiving donations only from individuals rather than from large corporations. I did not enjoy that either.

I support the amendment, however, because the total amount of donations that I received only amounted to $17,000. If I had received a donation of $5,000 it would have been significant, almost one-third of what I had available to spend. I would be afraid in such a situation that the person giving me the $5,000 donation, whether an individual or corporation would expect some sort of favour in return. They certainly would have expected some sort of influence.

I find that the original motion has a weakness in stipulating a sum as high as $5,000. By supporting the amendment I believe we offer the government an alternative. The motion is flawed not because of any lack of proper motive on the part of those who have moved the motion but because it is something that requires very careful consideration by the government.

If I have a minute or two more, I would like to add to the debate an anecdote which may be of interest to members. When I was campaigning I had the pleasure of being accompanied at one point by an American television crew from the "MacNeil-Lehrer Show". They had come up to my riding of Hamilton-Wentworth because it was seen as a bellwether riding in the election. It had been a Tory riding for 22 years and they were very interested to see what would happen. The camera crew followed me as I went from door to door, as I am sure all members of this House did during the election. I would knock on the door, shake hands and go on.

Driving back at the end of the day the producer of this crew asked me how much I expected to spend in total in the election. I said I thought it would be at best about $30,000. I was counting the amount of money I had raised by donations and the matching money that would come as a consequence. He said: "That is just amazing because in the United States a congressman running for election would expect to spend at least $180,000". When I asked why he said it was because they would have to spend money on radio and television advertising and that kind of thing.

I hate to say this but he told me that is one of the reasons American politics has such difficulty with corruption and influence peddling. It is because the average individual cannot possibly run for Congress without substantial financial support from corporations and special interest groups.

I asked why they needed all that money. He said: "Because we as Americans cannot do what you as Canadians can do. We cannot go door to door as we saw you doing today. The simple

reason is that in the United States, in my Detroit, if we went door to door like that on a campaign, we would be shot and killed or attacked".

I leave that thought with you. No matter what we do as MPs, we do live in a democratic society and a political environment that is absolutely second to none.

[Israel, May 6th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, this week a historic agreement was signed in Cairo between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Israeli troops are now free to pull out of the Gaza strip and the west bank. After 27 years of strife peace in the Middle East is at last at hand.

A few weeks ago the children of Beth Jacob Hebrew School in my riding gave me a poem they had written. I would like to share their words:

Peace is special, it means love The symbol of peace is the dove Peace means to hope and care And make new friends everywhere There has been a lot of wars We don't need this anymore Enough of all the fighting, killing Too much blood is all we are spilling.

The prayer of these children, all between 10 and 11 years old, has been answered. The dove of peace flies over Jerusalem.

[Foreign Affairs, April 21st, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I speak to this issue deeply troubled because I have listened to the debate this evening and the one thing that is very clear is there is no easy solution. Whatever way we go in this situation there will continue to be killing. There will continue to be strife in Yugoslavia and we will continue to be at risk with not only our soldiers but soldiers from other countries of the world.

I would like to look at a couple of points and express in my way how I feel about this dilemma. I am actually opposed to an air strike, certainly an air strike that is not tied to a strong show of ground forces. An air strike in Bosnia at this time might knock out some hardware but it will not knock out the Serbian troops gathered around the enclave.

I think the example of history tells us that the more an invading force is injured, the more likely it is to resort to atrocities when it finally does conquer. If the Bosnian Serbs suffer casualties from our air strikes there will be no doubt they will take their anger out on the Muslim civilians as soon as they occupy the city.

The other side of that equation is if we do not have an air strike what is the consequence of that? What we face then is sending a message to the Bosnian Serbs and any other peoples around the world who would like to resort, shall we say, to a military venture that we are helpless and they are able to do whatever they wish. We could expect to see this type of action spread around the world and certainly our chances of preserving the other five enclaves in the former Yugoslavia would be just about impossible.

Therefore, I do not envy the decision that is facing our ministers this night, nor the decision facing the other members of NATO as they wrestle with this very difficult decision.

Where do we go from here? Regardless of whether we have air strikes in Bosnia we are facing civil war. Again as an example of history, wherever you look in history, the absolute lesson is that you cannot intervene successfully in a civil war. The combatants in a civil war will fight it out.

I give the example of Afghanistan where the Soviet Union at the height of its power tried to intervene and it was a complete failure. It had to pull out. The classic example is Vietnam which really was a civil war all along. Again, one of the most powerful nations in the world failed to really effect any kind of outcome there.

There are many examples, Sri Lanka for one. What would we do in Sri Lanka? We cannot change the course of history in Sri Lanka. These are ethnic hatreds which we fought over. Rwanda is another one. What can we do there? What we are looking at here is a situation that is increasingly going to face the democracies of this world as the countries of the world resort to more and more tribalism and more and more ethnic fighting.

I would like to say something with respect to our 2,000 soldiers in the former Yugoslavia. I remind the government of Hong Kong and what happened there when we sent troops just before the Japanese declaration of war in 1941. Our Canadian troops fought bravely. When we look back on that incident we realize that they not only did not affect the outcome of the war, they did not affect the outcome of Japanese intentions. If anything, it cost more casualties. If there had not been a fight for Hong Kong there would have been fewer deaths in that area. We have to ask ourselves about that.

I strongly believe that the tradition of the Canadian troops is to be brave, to help the disadvantaged and to intervene but always as peacekeepers. I do not see us as a nation of combatants. I really do caution our government if it feels it is drawn into a situation where our troops may have to join with other NATO troops in a role that goes far beyond peacekeeping.

Finally, I would like to direct a comment toward the question of ethnic hatred. One thing that we should be very clear about is what is happening in Yugoslavia and we can take this to Afghanistan, Vietnam and many, many other countries is that we are not dealing with something that has anything to do with race, colour or visible minorities and we are not dealing with anything that necessarily has anything to do with religion. Muslims and Christians world-wide in many countries coexist most happily and indeed there is much in their religions that teaches them that they ought to cohabit.

What is happening in Yugoslavia is a return to the wrongs of the past. I think if you look at most ethnic fighting you will find it is because the people in the present are looking to the past and they are deriving the hatreds of the past. Instead of looking to the future or looking to the present and seeing what can unite them today, they look to the wrongs of long ago, sometimes even centuries ago.

What I would like to say in this debate is that I hope all of us worldwide, but most especially this country, take heed of that fact and remember not to look to the past for what went wrong and the wrongs we did to one another in the past, but to look to the future and what can unite us.