Maurice Bernier

[Return To Canada Of Karim Noah, October 1st, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity today to rise in support of the motion of the hon. member for Rosemont and also to raise another aspect of this question which was mentioned by the hon. member for Rosemont and the hon. member for Laval-Est.

Aside from the human aspect, it is necessary to give hope for parents who experience this kind of situation. I just heard the government whip tell us about what happened to people he knew, and the situation has not been cleared up yet at this moment, so that the family, the mother still wonders whether she will ever see her daughter again.

One would also expect, and this is not intended as a partisan remark, the government to do more than just being understanding. I heard what was said by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. It is all very interesting to hear the Secretary of State say that he sympathizes with the family, that he understands the problem very well, and that he hopes we will find a solution will be found to the problem now facing Mrs. Tremblay, but I think they should also tell us-not only tell us but do something-they should also tell us what they are going to do in concrete terms to find a solution to this problem.

Unfortunately, I have to say that this government's past record does not hold out much hope for Mrs. Tremblay and others in a similar situation. We saw this in the case of Trân Trieu Quân, which my colleague from Louis-Hébert has raised in this House on several occasions. As far as the government and the Minister of Foreign Affairs are concerned, the case is closed.

As in the case before us today, no specific action was taken, so that Mr. Quân is still in prison in Vietnam. For the past three years, Mrs. Tremblay has taken legal action upon legal action to obtain the return of her child, of whom she has custody. Unfortunately, three years later we are asking the same questions and making the same requests.

I do not want to waste your time, but I want to tell this government's representatives that they must approach the Egyptian government in order to find a definite solution. Of course we can deplore the fact that Egypt did not sign The Hague Convention concerning this type of situation, but we must find a concrete solution. The government must stop talking and start acting.

I refuse to believe that the Minister of Foreign Affairs cannot intervene directly with the Egyptian government and make it listen to reason in this particular case.

[Supply, September 26th, 1996]

Or Paul Martin.

[Supply, September 26th, 1996]

Not in absentia, as my colleague said, but they are trying to link people who are not linked in any way. He criticized Mr. Parizeau for the comments he made the night of the referendum; he also criticized Mr. Landry's comments and those made by Mr. Villeneuve, which were condemned by everyone in Quebec.

Our colleague's remarks were dishonest and, if he is an honourable man, he will withdraw them.

He should tell us why someone who is so pure, so intent on finding the truth, is not asking his government to disclose all the facts on the family trust matter. This is what the Bloc Quebecois wants, what the auditor general wants, what the people of Canada and Quebec want: to shed light on the huge amounts of money leaving the country without a penny in tax being paid, as we have been saying for the past three years. Year after year, they cut over $5 billion a year from the programs aimed at the unemployed.

That is what we want to know. We do not want to be treated as the hon. member, who talks through his hat more often than not, has treated us.

[Supply, September 26th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I listened to my colleague from St. Paul's comments on the motion before us today. It is hard to believe that the hon. member for St. Paul's can make such insulting comments not only about Bloc members but about all Quebecers.

This shows-as the people listening to us will realize-how the Bloc was justified in putting forward the issue of family trusts, how this hurts the Liberal government across the way, how they are not defending the interests of taxpayers in Canada and Quebec. It is the interests of those who contribute to their election fund they are looking after.

In 10 minutes, he managed to talk about the experts he claims the Bloc Quebecois is denigrating. He forgot to say that the experts who appeared before the finance committee were invited by the committee chairman himself and that these experts come from firms that, as we said before, contribute generously to the Liberal Party's coffers.

When someone as credible as the auditor general came before this committee to shed light, to tell the truth, he was harassed. They would have fired him if they could, because he had dared to tell the truth.

Then the hon. member for St. Paul's paints everything with the same brush. This is called condemnation in-

[Supply, September 26th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, again, we will have another representative at the Just for Laughs Festival. I cannot believe the comments made by the hon. member from Ontario, who, usually, takes positions that show he is capable of thinking and also of being critical.

I understand that, when we are dealing with money, finances or election funds, money talks. So, like all his colleagues, the hon. member from Ontario must rise in this House to defend the foxes lurking around the henhouse.

In response to the hon. member, who asked me why I do not look at my colleagues and ask them what they are doing about family trusts, I can tell him that I am quite happy to turn to my colleagues, especially the former leader of the Bloc Quebecois who is now the premier of Quebec. He himself raised this matter in this House several times during the 1993 election campaign-we could show you the many speeches he gave on this and the questions that were asked about family trusts. No, I am not ashamed to turn to my colleagues who used to be in the Conservative Party, because they have done an extraordinary job as Bloc representatives in this House. Those who are still among us continue to do so.

I wish I could say the same about our Liberal colleagues. Again, I hope they will change their minds and shift directions. The credibility of our institutions is at stake. Your credibility and that of the finance and revenue departments is at stake.

When we ask people to pay taxes and to do their share to correct the current situation, everyone must pull his or her weight, including the rich.

[Supply, September 26th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, before addressing the motion before us today, I would like to begin by informing you that, henceforth, the Bloc Mps will be dividing their time into two periods of ten minutes, and that my colleague from Trois-Rivières will be speaking immediately after me.

When the matter of the family trusts resurfaced to become a source of concern to all Canadians and all Quebecers, thanks to the efforts of the members of the Bloc Quebecois-I shall come back to this point-and when the official opposition suggested that this opposition day be devoted to the matter of family trusts, I made it known to my colleague from Ste-Hyacinthe-Bagot that I wanted to intervene in this debate. I am far from claiming to be a tax expert, which is why I will let others explain the matter in detail-as my colleague for Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot has already done on several occasions, moreover-but I would like to draw the attention of this House to the context surrounding this whole affair.

This matter of family trusts is one that has been of concern to the Bloc Quebecois almost since its inception. In the last campaign, the Bloc raised the issue on numerous occasions. After the Bloc obtained 54 seats and gained recognition as the official opposition in this House, the Leader of the Opposition at that time, Mr. Bouchard, raised the question of family trusts on a number of occasions during his interventions in this House.

The auditor general's report fully justifies our concerns, proving that we were right to raise the issue in recent years, while the Liberals on the other side of this House have clearly sought to stifle this shameful scandal by every means possible.

I just heard the hon. member for Willowdale. I suggest that he audition for the festival "Juste pour rire" next year in Montreal, or "Just for laughs" if he prefers, since there is an English version, because his comments outside this House, in committee and here in the House today should be good for laughs. We cannot afford to take them seriously.

The auditor general put his finger on a major problem in the tax system. The government may argue that the loophole pointed out by the auditor general goes back to the previous government. As the hon. member for Trois-Rivières just said, if the Conservative government was responsible, why is this government reluctant to shed every possible light on the problem?

It is pretty obvious, and this has been said time and time again, that there is only one reason why the government does not want to shed light on the matter. It wants to protect its own interests and the interests of those who support it. It is a big joke to hear the hon. member for Willowdale describe these experts as people whose credibility is undisputed, although it is public knowledge that they belong to companies that finance the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party. That is public knowledge. It is not gossip or libel. It is a fact that representatives of these companies finance the Liberal Party.

For the government to invite experts like these, competent though they may be, is like inviting some foxes and asking them for tips on protecting the chicken coop. That is what happened. They invited experts who consistently provide funding for the Liberal Party and told them: "Could you tell us whether it is right to take money out of Canada and invest it elsewhere, to avoid paying

income tax?" It would have been astonishing indeed if the experts had not answered the way they did.

Take the Minister of Finance. A week ago on Radio-Canada, a journalist asked him whether he had a family trust. He answer is on the record-and I took the trouble of listening to the news bulletin again to be sure I did not misquote him-and it was as follows, and I will quote him verbatim: "There are many family trusts. When you have young children, you do that. In case I die, I would want someone to take care of my children". But that has no connection with income tax.

When he said this, the Minister of Finance admitted that he himself had a family trust, and that the reason was to protect his children. But who in this House will protect the children of the unemployed, victims of cuts that have been made for the past two or three years? The same finance minister says, admits in each budget he brings down that, with the unemployment insurance fund, he makes $5 billion in profits every year at the expense of the unemployed and of single mothers who do not have even enough to support their children. Who is the Minister of Finance trying to protect? The answer is obvious. Now who will protect these families living on unemployment insurance which, contrary to what the Minister of National Revenue said, cannot escape the Income Tax Act because they cannot afford to have family trusts?

It takes some nerve to state, as the Minister of National Revenue did in this House, that anyone can have a family trust. It may be true of seniors who decide to move to Florida. What seniors in Canada and Quebec can afford a family trust when their pensions are being cut back? Who, among the unemployed, I repeat, can afford a family trust?

They are mocking people. Mocking people and undermining the credibility of our institutions. And because of that, the people have lost faith not only in our tax system, but also in governments and their elected officers.

I will conclude by reminding the House that the Bloc Quebecois has given itself a mandate to promote sovereignty, and we will keep promoting sovereignty. We have also given ourselves a mandate to represent the interests of Quebec in this House. Our work on the family trust issue is a perfect example of the kind of work we have done here over the past three years. And the auditor general agrees with the Bloc Quebecois. His message is that someone in this House has to be free to stand up and condemn these unacceptable actions on the part of this government.

[Member For Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, September 19th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, on October 27, the chief government whip will be the star of a benefit rock show to help those who deliberately broke the Quebec Elections Act during the last referendum.

The member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell did not settle with funding civil disobedience in Quebec using federal public moneys, he called upon sponsors such as Canadian International, the official carrier for all those who love Quebec, The Ottawa Sun , famous for its Quebec bashing, and the parliamentary channel, which is funded by Canadian cable companies.

No matter how hard the government whip tries to look like a rock star and how many heritage minister's flags he waves on stage, his government's music will always sound off key to Quebecers.

[Criminal Code, September 16th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, first of all I want to commend the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce on his speech. It is refreshing to hear such comments in the House.

I would like to say that I wanted to speak in this debate not as an expert or a lawyer-God forbid, I do not have those qualifications-but as one who would put this debate into the perspective of a better society. I think that is the objective we have in mind. That is what I heard in what was said by the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce and by those of my colleagues who spoke before me, with the exception, of course, of our Reform Party colleagues who see a return to the death sentence, and nothing else, as the only solution in this context.

The Bloc Quebecois is opposed to Bill C-45 now before the House for the fundamental reasons that were explained previously. What we object to in the government's handling of this bill is this eagerness to respond to a section of the population that asks for a stricter rule for conditional release measures, and meanwhile there is no opportunity for genuine debate in which all points of view can be heard and no opportunity to make a decision which, as I said at the beginning of my speech, would have the effect of improving the society in which we live.

This afternoon I heard the hon. member for Wild Rose expose the views of the victims. With all due respect for our Reform Party colleague, who is entitled to his opinion-and he certainly presented a point of view shared by other people and especially by the families of murder victims-nevertheless it does not represent the general view or the consensus that exists among the public and especially in Quebec.

I would like to take the next few minutes to give you the victims' point of view. These are also parents who lost their child in horrific circumstances. On June 30 this year in Sherbrooke, a young girl, Isabelle Bolduc, was kidnapped. Subsequently, it was found that three individuals were involved. For several days she suffered indescribable agony. There is evidence that she was raped, and then finally killed in circumstances I would rather not mention.

Again, she suffered indescribable agony. Nobody will deny it, certainly not her parents, nor her friends. In a similar situation, if my daughter or my son were to meet such a fate, I would be inclined to wish a similar fate on the perpetrators of such a crime. On occasion, I have imagined I could take justice into my own hands, dealing with these individuals the way they had dealt with a member of my family.

But if you give it some thought, do you really want to go back to the wild West, as some would have us do? Are we going to solve this problem once and for all? Are we going to make our society better? Of course not. We are not going to get rid of violence through violence.

To go back to the example we had in our area this summer, the victim's father, Marcel Bolduc, whom I know personally, and who has been and still is devastated by his daughter's death, set up a foundation, the Isabelle Bolduc foundation, together with friends of the family, shortly after these events; this foundation is at work in the Eastern Townships and throughout Quebec, circulating a petition to tighten the parole system.

Mr. Bolduc, in spite of pressure from some people around him and in his area, has refused to consider the death penalty as a solution to such crimes.

The goal of the Isabelle Bolduc foundation is to improve the system. It wants to make a suggestion to parliamentarians, not for their immediate debate, but for their consideration over the coming months. The Isabelle Bolduc foundation would like to launch a pilot project in the Eastern Townships whereby individuals would participate in the decisions of the parole board. It wants to create a watchdog committee comprising ordinary citizens whose function would be to review the decisions, the reasoning, the process and the follow-up on all decisions made by the parole board.

We are certainly not calling for the reinstatement of capital punishment. Let me remind you that one of the originators of this proposal is the father of Isabelle Bolduc, the victim of a crime in our region.

This is what we should be thinking about during a debate like this one. We must ask ourselves what we can do to improve the situation. The Isabelle Bolduc foundation is proposing one means of doing that. I know a request has been presented to the justice minister to have the pilot project implemented as soon as possible. I hope he will agree, because this is the only way to improve the situation.

What the foundation is asking for is very simple. People know, they are convinced that rehabilitation is the best way to go in this area, and I agree. Every effort possible must be made so that these individuals who have committed odious crimes-let us not mince our words-can hopefully go back into society one day and live normal lives.

Sure, there are hard cases. When we refer to the example that was used to introduce this bill, the Clifford Olson case, that is a hard case. It is about monsters that no one wants to see out, on the street.

Several murders were committed for a variety of reasons, but several of these murderers were able to be rehabilitated, with some support and supervision. That is what parents of victims wish for. That is what is happening now, in our region.

I want to point out, I repeat and I insist upon demonstrating that there are not only individuals who wish to get their revenge in our society. There are ordinary people, no law experts-I have nothing against these-who are thinking and want to propose their own solutions.

Mr. Speaker, since you are indicating that my time is up, I will conclude simply by expressing the hope that the government will take into consideration the suggestions that were made by the official opposition to improve its bill, and also the suggestions made to it by the Fondation Isabelle Bolduc to improve society.

[Volunteers, June 18th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon, an exceptional citizen of Mégantic-Compton-Stanstead, Mrs. Jacqueline Myre, who is present in our gallery, received an honourary certificate from Voluntary Awards Canada.

Mrs. Myre started several original initiatives to help our senior citizens in the regional county municipality of Haut-Saint-François, in the Eastern Townships. In addition to helping create eight mutual aid networks and four natural helpers' groups, she

chairs the Senior Independence Committee and the Senior Citizen Abuse Awareness Project. She also developed a regional structure for the Active Living Program, which provides our senior citizens with fitness classes adapted to their needs.

Mrs. Myre, you have all our admiration. Please accept our most sincere congratulations for that well deserved honour.

[Criminal Code, June 10th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, my colleague from Quebec was absolutely right to say that, as my party's human rights critic, I had to intervene in this debate. I would like to add a few points to her comments.

The human rights standing committee has been discussing and is still discussing the issue of human rights outside Canada. Canada being a country with a good international reputation, we have the responsibility to also give a clear message about human rights around the world.

I had the opportunity on several occasions to condemn the current government's policy, particularly the one of our Prime Minister, who is showing laxness about human rights. More often than not, human rights are used as a bargaining chip in international trade. That is not the policy that should be followed. Of course, we must be open to international trade with all nations. I consider that, very often, boycotts are totally useless, but a clear message must also be sent regarding respect for human rights.

This issue allows us to take action in that direction, first, by sending a clear message to our own fellow citizens, telling them we will not accept that they go outside Canada to abuse young people. The second message is, we must be concerned about these victims, because, as I said earlier, we must be aware that even the best legislation will not be enforced perfectly. So, the best way to solve this problem is to ensure these people, who are in an unacceptable and terrible economic situation, can improve their lot.

We will do this, first, by supporting economic initiatives, but also by asking these countries to adopt democratic rules, that is, to allow their people in general to express themselves in free elections, since, very often, they find themselves in systems where democracy is totally disregarded, and by providing services to their people.

I said earlier and I repeat, and this seems fundamental to me, if the children we are talking about today, who are abused everywhere in the world, were in school, in other words, if they were in the same situation as our own children here in Canada, if the families of these children could take care of them, provide food and shelter, ensure they go to school, take them in hand and keep an eye on them, we would not be discussing this problem, at least not as much as we are doing now. So, we must consider the two aspects.

As my colleague mentioned earlier, it is really as a critic, I do it personally because I believe in these issues, but it is also as the official opposition critic for human rights that I want to bring this aspect to the House's attention.