Debates of Oct. 21st, 1996

Petitions

[Murray Calder, Liberal, Wellington—Grey—Dufferin—Simcoe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to present six petitions. Three of these petitions call on the Government of Canada to provide in Canadian law that no criminal profits from committing a crime.

[Murray Calder, Liberal, Wellington—Grey—Dufferin—Simcoe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to present two petitions that call on the Government of Canada to proceed with amendments to the Criminal Code to ensure that persons convicted of impaired driving causing death carries a minimum sentence of seven years and a maximum of fourteen years.

[Murray Calder, Liberal, Wellington—Grey—Dufferin—Simcoe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the last petition calls on the Government of Canada to legislate a comprehensive ban on the production, export, trade or transfer of anti-personnel mines and to advocate strongly a worldwide ban on land mines.

[John O'Reilly, Liberal, Victoria—Haliburton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure, pursuant to Standing Order 36, to present a petition from people living in Victoria-Haliburton.

The petitioners humbly pray and call on the Parliament of Canada assembled to enact legislation to ensure that Canada remains one country, undivided, from coast to coast to coast.

Questions On The Order Paper

[Paul Zed, Liberal, Parliamentary secretary to Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, Question No. 56 will be answered today.

Question No. 56-

[Derek Wells, Liberal, South Shore, NS]

Have any tenders been awarded in the past 12 months by Public Works Canada where any condition or provision provided for in the tender document was waived and the contract awarded despite the non-compliance with this provision or condition?

[Diane Marleau, Liberal, Minister of Public Works and Government Services]

It is Public Works and Government Services Canada, PWGSC, policy that bids be evaluated solely against the criteria set out in the tender document. In addition, all contracts issued are subject to compliance audit. In two recent audits of contracting, in both headquarters and the regions, and based upon a random selection of files, no cases were identified in which mandatory bid evaluation criteria were waived.

However, suppliers who believe that PWGSC has failed to comply with the stipulated criteria in a tender have recourse to the Canadian International Trade Tribunal, CITT. Over the past 12 months, approximately 60,000 contracts have been awarded. During this time the CITT has found that on two occasions, PWGSC through error did not conduct the evaluation according to the criteria set out in the bid solicitation.

PWGSC strives continually to ensure that errors of this nature are not repeated. Systems and procedures are constantly evaluated and "lessons learned" maintained in order to improve our performance in this regard.

Questions Passed As Orders For Returns

[Paul Zed, Liberal, Parliamentary secretary to Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, if Question No. 14 could be made an Order for Return, the return would be tabled immediately.

[The Speaker]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Question No. 14-

[Ted White, Reform, North Vancouver, BC]

With respect to the Squamish Indian Band in North Vancouver, what has the Federal Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development determined to be ( a ) the total number of Band members living on the Reserve, ( b ) the total amount of funding provided to the Band in each of the years from 1990 through 1995 from all federal govermnent sources including, but not limited to, transfers and grants for any purpose, government leases of land from the Band, housing costs, education and training, special purpose funding, and ( c ) income from the Park Royal South Shopping Centre lease collected on behalf of the Band?

Return tabled.

[Paul Zed, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.

[The Speaker]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Paul Zed, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I have not had an opportunity to consult with the other parties, but if the House gives its consent could we revert to presenting reports from committees?

[The Speaker]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Committees Of The House

[Paul Zed, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present the 38th report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs regarding the associate membership of the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs.

If the House gives its consent, I move that the 38th report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs be concurred in.

(Motion agreed to.)

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-51, an act respecting the water resources of Nunavut, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Nunavut Waters Act

[The Speaker]

Just before question period the hon. member for Kootenay East had the floor. It is around 35 minutes that he still has left.

[Jim Abbott, Reform, Kootenay East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, members will be happy to know that after the first five minutes I am already half way through my speech which does not change the fact that we are going to be opposing this bill for three fundamental reasons. Just before the break we were dealing with reason number one which is that it represents bad government.

Good government has to do with having people elect some leaders who are responsible to ensure that public services are provided at a cost people can afford by the level closest to the people best able to perform the service efficiently.

Instead, the Nunavut water board is appointed by the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development who in turn was appointed by the Prime Minister after being elected by the people of Sault Ste. Marie, a long way from Nunavut. Its costs will be paid by the people of Canada who have no say whatsoever about the board; all we get to do is pay for it.

Regarding my second reason for opposing Bill C-51, namely the process the government used, the government has been ridiculously slow. The Nunavut land claims agreement passed in 1993. It required the federal government to establish three major governing institutions, including the Nunavut water board within three years, by July 9, 1996, or the board members would be appointed and proceed as though the legislation had been passed. This Nunavut water board has been up and running for several months without the limits imposed on it by legislation.

We are all aware that Bill C-51 was tabled so late last spring, on June 14, that there is no way it could have passed before the July deadline. It was totally irresponsible of the government to delay its consultations about the Nunavut water board with both industry and northern residents until August 1995. Because it was a foregone conclusion that especially given the great distances and the severe climate of the Northwest Territories it would simply not be possible to receive widespread public input and draw suitable legislation to get through Parliament before the July deadline, this government should have started the necessary consultations very shortly after it took power three years ago.

Were the officials in the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development so lax in their duties that they failed to make the fact known to their minister or did the minister simply not care? Clearly the Liberal government is totally unfamiliar with the process of thoroughly consulting with the people of Canada's north. Despite a lot of fine talk, the federal government has been run by unaccountable bureaucrats both in the south and especially in the north who, plain and simple, do not realize that it takes time for people to provide input.

The result is that this legislation was not brought to Parliament with enough time for proper debate before the July 1996 deadline.

Another defective part of the government's process is that it has repeatedly refused to provide a briefing to our caucus critic and other members of the Reform caucus despite our repeated requests ever since Bill C-51 was tabled last June. Only on the morning of Friday, October 11 this year when Bill C-51 was quite possibly to be debated that same day did the government offer to brief the Reform caucus on Bill C-51. Clearly once again the government is treating this House with contempt.

Parliament is not a rubber stamp and the Reform Party is doing everything possible to thwart the Liberals' efforts to depreciate this Parliament and the democratic process in Canada. That fact should probably be raised as a question of parliamentary privilege because the lack of a departmental briefing on legislation proposed by the government makes it extremely difficult for my colleagues and me to perform our proper role of holding the government accountable and providing our own thorough input about the content and likely effects across Canada of legislation that the government is proposing.

However, this government does make it a practice to trample on the rights of parliamentarians, which means trampling on the rights of the voters who elected us. Now we must proceed with consideration of Bill C-51, even without a departmental briefing.

This enactment creates the Nunavut water board to license uses of waters or deposits of waste on other water users. The board must also establish agreements providing appropriate compensation for any loss or damage due to changes. The board must work closely with the Nunavut planning commission and has input on all Nunavut land use plans involving water, which is to say that this Nunavut water board will have a remarkable influence once it is in place within the new illegal province of Nunavut with its sweeping powers. The powers are so great that Parliament had to add a special clause to ensure nothing in the original Nunavut bill gave this illegal province greater powers than those enjoyed by the legal provinces. That clause is subsection (2) of section 23 of the Nunavut Act, which should never have been allowed to pass this House in the first place.

This is my final point of objection and certainly the most serious. It was raised in the book Our Home or Native Land? , written by constitutional scholar and lawyer Mel Smith of Victoria, B.C. Mr. Smith wrote that perhaps the only way out of the terrible waste and

over government of the Nunavut deal would be to declare the entire issue unconstitutional. I quote page 22 of his book:

Since 1982, the Canadian Constitution requires that the establishment of new provinces requires the approval of not only Parliament but also at least seven provincial legislatures having 50 per cent of the population of Canada. If this new territory is not tantamount to establishing a new province without the consent of the other provinces and therefore subverting the constitutional requirement, then I do not know what a new province would look like. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, the chances are it's a duck.

Therefore I ask my hon. colleagues, very few of whom were elected to Parliament when it passed legislation to create the vast new bureaucracy called Nunavut, to join me in opposing Bill C-51, the Nunavut waters act, not only because it represents bad government and was advanced by a bad process but because the original Nunavut legislation should be declared unconstitutional.

[The Speaker]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Speaker]

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.