Ted McWhinney

[Canada Student Financial Assistance Act, May 24th, 1994]

I thank the hon. member for Medicine Hat for his thoughtful question.

The cases I was referring to-that I have handled personally in the last few months-in fact a species of income adjustment has been reached in the administrative disposition of the cases with flexible responses on the part of the administrators. Whether this should be generated into a general rule is a matter that could be referred to a House committee. I must say I am not familiar with the activities of the committee in charge of this bill, but it seems to me it would be a thoughtful and helpful suggestion to pass on to the committee. As I say it can be reached through administrative arrangement.

Members should not underestimate their ability in raising a case for their constituents with administrators to get an appropriate response. However a more general rule through a committee would be helpful.

[Canada Student Financial Assistance Act, May 24th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, one must congratulate the Minister of Human Resources Development on Bill C-28, an imaginative approach to updating and modernizing a measure that has been on the books for some years.

We work in an area of some constitutional doubt. That has existed since the immediate post-war period when Prime Minister St. Laurent and his successors ventured into the field of higher education in the knowledge that without a national presence, a national leadership, we might fall behind in the race to achieving and maintaining world standards.

That remains the situation today. There are limits to constitutional power. They necessarily condition what it is possible to do at the federal level in the field of higher education, although with imagination and some civil courage governments are doing their utmost in that area.

It is also important to remember that we live in the era of budgetary restraint now with us. There are limits to what you can do in any area without taking away from other priority areas.

What this legislation does is change something that has not been fundamentally changed in 30 years. It is very noticeable in terms of the financial provisions, the benefits available to students, which were frozen by the preceding government at 1984 levels. It is very much to be welcomed that the minister has taken the lead here with the substantial increase in the loan limits, a figure of 57 per cent, reflecting the growth in education costs borne by students over the intervening 10 years.

In fact, if you examine the projections for the next five years, the value of aid for students from the federal government would be $6 billion, an increase of $2.5 billion compared with the previous five years. That recognizes the commitments made by the Prime Minister during the election campaign to bring our standards of education in line with the best of the world community, that we would meet the standards of Japanese education, German education, education for society on the leading edge of technology. This is without derogating from the necessary provision which we all respect for the arts and other areas apart from the natural sciences.

Investing in students in higher educational institutions is an investment in Canada's future. The government is honouring its commitment made during the election campaign.

I think there is merit in examining the sensitiveness with which federal-provincial relations have been handled here. For provinces which for their own historic reasons, related perhaps to different views of the role of education, want to opt out of the program, provision is made for compensation so that the students in those provinces can benefit from the increases in federal provisions.

The other measures in the bill relate to rationalization, streamlining and updating the legislative scheme in existence for the past 30 years, increasing the loan limits for full and part time students and special opportunity grants to meet exceptional education costs of students with disabilities, high need part time students and women in doctoral studies, and establishing objective but regionally sensitive approaches to assessing needs.

The issue of repayment of student loans is one which all candidates in the last election who have institutions of higher education within their constituencies or who themselves have experienced education in higher institutions are aware of. It is a matter of extreme concern in a period where summer employment has largely dwindled away and where the economic opportunities and the times of the affluent continually expanding society are no longer there.

Many of us in the last few months have been concerned with approaching the minister or the officials in charge and arguing on a case by case basis the merits of flexibility and adjustment of the terms of student repayment of loans. I must report, although this has been a certain amount of work for my staff, that we have been delighted to assume the burden and that we have had a good success record.

This raises one of the issues which is always true for students of law and society. How much do you try to do by legislation? How much do you try to produce in your legislation an exhaustive code of many many pages? How much must you leave to administrative discretion with proper controls over the discretion to ensure that it is exercised with flexibility and compassion where that is needed?

I believe in amelioration of the conditions of repayment of these student loans. In particular I noted the repayment terms become income sensitive. Borrowers are able to choose between floating and fixed rates of interest based on lender to prime. I think these are measures from which we can take great encouragement.

I would suggest more flexibility in the timing period. There are ways of doing this administratively and, as I said, on a case by case basis. I and I am sure many other members on both sides of the House have experienced a warm response on the part of education officials when we raised the cases with them.

The importance of this is that all eligible students across Canada continue to have access to Canada student loans whether it is directly through the federal government or through their own provincial governments in the case of those provinces that

have opted out or may wish to opt out in the future from the national plan.

The costs of the reform are controlled through development of a consistent method of assessing student need. This is being developed jointly with the provinces. The federal aid sharing approach is caught up with the larger inquiries now being made for harmonizing and improving federal-provincial relations and administrative machinery in the areas where the federal government makes grants-in-aid to the provinces.

On this particular aspect I think the government has already made considerable progress. What is here essentially is a program of updating, modernization, with more flexibility, more compassion, more understanding, if you wish, of student needs that is related to the realities that there are limits to federal power in the field of education. This government and preceding Liberal governments have done their best to interpret federal powers flexibly in the light of the higher policy needs.

There is also the recognition in a period of genuine budgetary restraint that if you grant in one area you cut in another. What is very impressive here is the high priority that this government gives to education. Higher education is the key to our future. It is the key to the job strategy at the beginning of the 21st century. Education that is put forward now trains people with the technology that is necessary to build our industrial recovery and expansion in the next century.

[Rwanda, May 9th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

With the tragic communal strife in Rwanda now transcending national boundaries, will the minister ask the United Nations Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali to request the security council for emergency action under chapter six of the United Nations charter?

[Spinal Health Week, May 5th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the week of May 1 to May 7, 1994 is Spinal Health Week. The program was established in 1985 to initiate and maintain good spinal health habits in children.

It is sponsored annually by the Ontario Chiropractic Association, a voluntary membership organization that represents more than 1,350 Ontario chiropractors. Its objective is to provide public education and promote research to improve the quality of health care for the citizens of Ontario.

Eight out of ten Canadians suffer from back pain during their lifetime. The incidence is increasing. A healthy lifestyle including proper posture, exercise and good nutrition is the key to prevention.

Please join me in wishing the Ontario Chiropractic Association a very successful Spinal Health Week.

[Recall Act, April 29th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to follow the hon. member for Beaver River. She speaks with thoughtfulness. She is always interesting and she is good humoured. I hope to enter the debate with those same qualities.

It is an interesting question. I think we are all interested in participatory democracy. It was, after all, Pierre Trudeau who coined the term. This Parliament is marked by a feeling that transcends all parties to change the system to get more direct involvement by people, more participation by members.

It should be understood, though, that we operate within the context of two different antinomies or sometimes conflicting principles of liberal constitutionalism today in western societies and western influenced societies. One is the concept of government by assembly, which is returning power to Parliament after more than half a century in most western societies of executive dominated regimes.

The other is direct democracy, getting people involved in decision making in its logical conclusion or what my friend, Professor Mirkine-Guetzévitch, called plebiscitarian democracy. Sometimes those two trends run counter to each other. Without anticipating the work of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, the committee of the House of Commons now studying these issues including the institution of recall, I would refer to some changes that are already apparent.

The office of prime ministership is in the process of change. It is always true that the office depends on the man or woman in it. The prime ministership was different under Mr. Churchill from that under his successor, Mr. Attlee, or under Margaret Thatcher

and her successor whose name is often forgotten. The same is happening in Canada.

The Chrétien model of the prime ministership is a very kinder and gentler Prime Minister who rests on collegiality, consensus and a heightened respect for Parliament. Some would say after the last eight years that was very much needed. It is the Pearson model and it is changing Parliament interestingly and constructively.

There is also a heightened sensitiveness among individual members of their responsibilities to their constituents and getting their opinions and, by the way, no particular fear of referenda as such.

I happen to think referenda are fully part of democratic constitutionalism. The Quebec referendum of 1980 was healthy. It cleared the air. The Charlottetown referendum was healthy. I never accepted the view of the prophets of gloom and doom that the country might come to an end as a result of that referendum. The decision has been accepted loyally and with goodwill by all concerned and we are now on to the economic business of the country.

Referenda should not of course be used as an instrument to harass governments or to preoccupy the public agenda. I would warn that there are constitutional limits. If referenda proposals are deliberately ambiguous and confusing or they are repetitive, repeated every year, there are ample constitutional means for controlling them through the Supreme Court. Maybe at some future stage some people, including myself, may have to return to that issue.

Let us get on to recall, the institution as such which the hon. member raised with such ardour and such persuasiveness. It is in many respects antithetical to the main liberalizing constitutional element I have already referred to: government by assembly giving more powers to members of Parliament, not merely opposition but government members, getting away from this presidentialized prime ministership we see in so many British influenced societies.

I would have to raise some questions to the hon. member. I have lived in Switzerland as part of my professional life. I have a great admiration for the Swiss system. However I am always reminded of the particularity of constitutional institutions in their own society and the difficulties in translating an institution from one society to another, unless the basic societal and cultural conditions in the one are sufficiently replicated in the other. It is one thing to have recall in a Swiss canton where everybody knows everybody. I knew all my neighbours; I knew everybody in my canton, I think.

Try translating recall to a constituency. Not even speaking of the hon. member for Ontario's seat which has 220,000 voters, but a seat like my own of 100,000, how do you prove 50,000 or 40,000 signatures on a recall petition? It does not even take a good lawyer to tie an issue like that up in the courts for 17 years requiring everybody to prove their signatures.

I can foresee very great difficulties, endless litigation and expense in carrying this proposal out if it were to be adopted. I wonder if the liberalizing thoughts of the hon. member might not be better directed to other institutions of participatory democracy which I think are already receiving some early favour with the standing committee.

There are more effective ways for Parliament itself to control its own procedures and to ensure dignity and mutual respect among its members. It must never be forgotten that Parliament is a high court of Parliament. It is a vestigial judicial institution too. It has enormous disciplinary powers which are sometimes forgotten. It has the power to scrutinize its own MPs.

There are constitutional limits to this and political dangers. As an academic commentator I warned during the U.S. impeachment debate about confusing legal grounds for impeachment with political grounds for impeachment. That is to take us back to the bad days of the 18th century instead of the golden days of the 17th century in which constitutionalism in England was more vibrant. One is also reminded of the last days of the Weimar republic when majorities used their power to exclude minority members.

Nevertheless, this having been said the standing committee would do well to re-examine Parliament's power itself to discipline its members. It could look at these issues for taking care of some of the pathological examples the hon. member cited where recall in the absence of other more effective mechanisms might be the constitutional instrument to look to.

I would ask the hon. member if she could put her proposals in the context of a larger constitutional vision which includes a revived Parliament where members do have something to do, where the executive exercises modesty and self-restraint in relation to opposition members and government members.

There are changes here that we are on the verge of making. We have a sympathetic Prime Minister. I cite again the example of Mr. Pearson. He and his great colleague, Paul Martin, Sr., were great parliamentarians. This can be a House that will literally reform itself.

Contributions such as the hon. member opposite has made are constructive and helpful. They start the debate. They are the raw material for the overburdened standing committee with a strange double barrelled name. Nobody dares use the word constitution but let us face it, it is a constitutional committee that we have in Parliament, the Standing Committee on House Management and Procedures, and it can act.

Her contributions will add to the debate and I do believe she will see results, perhaps not the particular institution she is advocating. It does need more thought on the modalities, how to get it through, how to overcome those battalions of lawyers who will descend and those 17 years delays but it can be done.

[Nuclear Disarmament, April 29th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is addressed to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Remembering Canada's record of leadership in the United Nations General Assembly over the whole post-war period under St. Laurent, Pearson, Paul Martin Sr. and Trudeau, in the movement for nuclear and general disarmament under international law, will the Minister of Foreign Affairs consider intervening in the World Health Organization process now pending before the World Court in The Hague on the illegality of nuclear weapons?

[Pacific Salmon Treaty, April 26th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.

The most recent session of the 1993-94 Pacific salmon treaty negotiating round has failed to make any progress. The negotiation with the United States once again is at an impasse. This impasse will have important conservation consequences in 1994 and in future years. It will also have bilateral fisheries and international relations consequences for Canada and the United States.

Would the minister please advise the House what further action the government will take to reach an agreement and to protect Canadian fishermen and Canadian resources under international law?

[Sahtu Dene And Metis Land Claim Settlement Act, April 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, would the hon. member make a distinction between land use control, oil and gas development and self-government as such? Does he see an intrinsic difference between them?

Obviously oil and gas development would not be compatible with the structure and powers of a municipal set of governments.

[Skopje, April 21st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the European union's legal action in the European Court of Justice against the Greek government, because of its non-acceptance of the breakaway Yugoslav republic of Skopje's appropriating the name and symbols of Greek Macedonia, ignores the fact that European union member countries may have contributed to state succession problems in the Balkans by premature recognition of Skopje in conflict with classical international law rules on recognition of new states.

[Non-Confidence Motions, April 18th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, after hearing the thoughtful address by the member for Mission-Coquitlam, I was unfortunately reminded of a recent movie entitled "Back to the Future".

The ideas of the Reform Party on the Constitution seem sadly out of date, as if they had been reading pre-1914 textbooks. Without any derogatory reference to the member for Mission-Coquitlam, I would rather have heard the other Jennings invoked. I refer to the Jennings whom you know, Mr. Speaker, and I know and who taught briefly at the University of British

Columbia before going on to greater fame in other arenas, Sir Ivor Jennings.

It is a fact that by the 1920s and the 1930s it had been recognized generally throughout the former British Empire and the British Commonwealth that the defeat of a government on a measure does not automatically warrant its resignation. It requires a qualitative judgment.

Indeed, to speed matters up I would remind the House that in the spring of 1968 when the government of the day, the Pearson government, was defeated by accident-the failure of some members to return in time from other places-it was not felt necessary for the government to resign.

I appeared on nation-wide television with the then NDP leader and others and we concluded that the precedents that Canada accepted at that stage did not require an automatic resignation.

In the 1979 episode when Prime Minister Clark was defeated, as it was said, by bad counting, his whip had failed I think to count up the numbers in government and opposition, Mr. Clark concluded that perhaps he should resign. He went to Government House. It is believed that the Governor General tried to suggest to him that the precedents did not require that particular course of action.

As we know, Mr. Clark's request for dissolution was not granted immediately. The Governor General suggested he return to Parliament and he phoned him later.

I am simply saying that the issue of confidence is not interpreted today in 19th century terms. It is a matter for a qualitative judgment. Here again I regret that the Reform Party has not paid enough attention to Canadian parliamentary practice.

The Prime Minister rightly reminded us in an address to the House of Commons on January 20 that the House is not a group of independents who have been elected on their own. We are dealing with a team. Law-making today is a sophisticated process of give and take, of exchange and discussion. It is a dialectical process of law in the making.

To cite only my own experience in the brief time that I have been a member, I receive the views of my constituents as a member. I communicate them to the members of my provincial group. We meet once a week. We meet also once a week in a regional caucus with members from all four western provinces. We meet again in a national caucus and we discuss. There is a give and take. There are the all-party committees. That is the reality of law in the making today, that members do not have to participate by simply voting yes and no. If they do that they are voting after the event.

The dynamic process of law-making today requires contributions, give and take discussion while measures are evolving. That is how one influences the law. I think that is how we have to undertake to interpret our role as members in a modern contemporary sense.

It is to say that constitutional law is in full evolution. There is a danger with the best of intentions that the member for Mission-Coquitlam has of attempting to legislate constitutional conventions. The life of constitutional conventions has not been logic. It has not been legislation. It has been experience. It is this and error testing process. The interesting thing about law making today is that all parties participate in the all-party committees. To cite only the two to which I belong, the members of the Reform Party have contributed significantly and constructively. I have welcomed that. I have seen the changes in measures that might otherwise have been drafted or put forward differently, and that is to be welcomed.

It is not a matter of saying that members do not represent their constituents or do not fully represent their constituents' views. Any member who does not do this has been neglecting his or her function today as a member to consult regularly with the constituents, to bring it back to the provincial caucus, to speak out in the regional caucus, to speak out in the national caucus, and to discuss it in the all-party committees.

That is the life of Parliament today. That is the reality of law making. It is not the way it was in 1914. It is not the way it was before the other Jennings wrote his beautiful works. These works have been studied in Canada and they are part of our practice.

I would welcome the Reform Party joining with us in moving forward into the future and recognizing the changes that have been made and not trying to legislate and therefore stultify and I think arrest a process already in creative evolution today.