Debates of March 14th, 1996

Privilege

[An hon. member]

Oh, oh.

[Jim Gouk, Reform, Kootenay West—Revelstoke, BC]

I see Jeff is back already. I do not know where Mutt is but Jeff is back carrying on with his routine without his partner.

A short time ago I asked for unanimous consent to delete Standing Orders 78 and 57. There was a great scurrying of little furry feet and other types too, I suppose. They came scurrying out from points beyond shouting: "No, no, no. We cannot have that".

For those Canadians watching the debate what I was asking for in the request for unanimous consent to delete Standing Orders 78 and 57 should have pleased the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands. I was asking for them to cancel the motion to invoke closure. The Liberals say the Reform Party is getting wound up about nothing, that we are not even prepared to raise enough speakers to carry this on anyway. Then why did they object to our asking for them to withdraw closure? Because they know that part of what we were talking about was the democracy of this House.

It seems kind of silly for us to stand up and be railed on by these people about the fact that we are concerned about the democratic process in this House. The democratic process in this House suggested the hon. member can take time along with everyone else.

Of course now the Liberals have put their feet in it. The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands has stated that the debate will collapse, that we will not keep it going. Of course now he has backed himself into a corner. He cannot stand up and talk because he himself would be carrying the debate beyond the point which the Liberals predicted it would fall.

There is no point in carrying on debate when the Liberals do not listen, when they try to turn our words. We feel we are making our point and our point is very clear. The Liberals turn each piece of information that comes to this House. They twist it and try to present it to the public in a very questionable manner. That was done when they started suggesting it is a worse offence to ask Canadians for their opinion than it is to ask our soldiers to swear allegiance to someone other than the government they serve.

Why did we table this motion? We tabled this motion because Canadians all across the country asked for this type of action. Long before this issue came up I found myself in the unenviable position of responding to constituents who asked: "Why has the Bloc not been charged with treason? How can we possibly have a Parliament where we use our tax dollars to bring people into this Canadian house of democracy to preach and rail against the country that is paying their way? Their former leader has taken his Canadian pension and gone back to promote separation from within". How can I explain to these people that because we are democratic we allow people-

[Ronald J. Duhamel, Liberal, St. Boniface, MB]

Talk about pensions.

[Jim Gouk, Reform, Kootenay West—Revelstoke, BC]

Oh, the hon. member wants to talk about pensions. I know he is going to sally up to the trough. Fifty-one or 52 of us over here will not, but he certainly will. If he wants to talk about pensions, I would love to go on for a long time on that one.

I found myself saying to my constituents that as long as this is a democratic House, we will allow them to bring forward their points of view. We have never tried to bring forward any motion even remotely like this concerning the Bloc for simply stating their opinion in this House. This particular action went way beyond the stating of opinion.

As I said at the beginning, if the Bloc had simply said that in an independent Quebec these are the opportunities that will be available in the military, we would not be bringing this motion forward. But what the Bloc has done is it has essentially advocated desertion from the Canadian military swearing allegiance to someone other than the crown to whom they originally swore their allegiance. The facts of this are very clear. We have the letter. It is not some comment someone said a member of the Bloc made. It was a letter sent out from this House.

It does need an investigation. Unlike the Liberal Party we are not saying to bypass the investigation, hang him from the yard arm before anybody reviews this and call him before the bar, like they wanted to do because we asked Canadians for their opinion. We simply want this investigated. We want it investigated openly. We believe there are a great deal of problems with what the member for Charlesbourg has done.

We think it should be viewed as seditious but nowhere did we say it is an act of sedition. We said we believe it should be viewed as sedition and we certainly believe it is an offence to the House.

As such we believe it constitutes a contempt of Parliament. Consequently we ask for it to be examined by a standing committee of the House.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh.

[Jim Gouk, Reform, Kootenay West—Revelstoke, BC]

We hear all kinds of people going on on the other side. It will be interesting to see if they rise to deal with this question themselves or if they simply, as I have said before, want to continue to use other members' times. Again that is a queer notion of Liberal democracy.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Kilger)]

Maybe it is because of the distance of the Chair but I see more than one member standing, more than one member speaking. So there is no confusion I recognize the hon. member for Kootenay West-Revelstoke.

[Jim Gouk, Reform, Kootenay West—Revelstoke, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thought the Mutt and Jeff act was going into a trio or a quartet. They had not given me my lines. They seem to know theirs so well.

I do not feel I need to go on further with this. I am sure the hon. members will now stand and start expressing their opinions when the Canadian public can actually listen to them, instead of small shots coming from the other side. I am sure if they have a real opinion they will share it with us. Otherwise I guess they will continue to talk when other members are up.

This is an important motion because it represents what we are hearing from the Canadian public right across the country. When I talked to these people defending the right of Bloc members to express opinions in the House, I said they had the right. However, with this letter that was sent out they have crossed the line.

There are some people who thought it should have happened long ago. It was a grey area at best. We gave them the benefit of the doubt. However, with this letter to the military they have crossed the line. Action needs to be taken. The Canadian public demands this and the Liberals should support examining this and following through.

Do not take it into committee and simply put it to sleep, as many of the members across do when debate is going on in the House. Deal with it in committee. Bring it back to the House and follow through with it. Do not simply shove it into committee and leave it

there forevermore, never dealing with the question. It needs to be dealt with, it needs to be dealt with properly.

If the hon. members across the way who are being quiet for a moment-I do not know how that ever happened-have a point to make I wish they would rise and make it. If they have something sensible to say I would hate to miss it the one time that might happen.

[Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral, Bloc, Laval Centre, QC]

Mr. Speaker, based on the remarks made in this House by many of the members of the third party, I have the honour of informing you that you have before you an enemy of Canada. Except, there is something I would like to know, and perhaps you are asking yourself the same thing. Who are the real enemies of Canada? Would they by chance be those who dare to believe in Quebec's sovereignty and who abide by the rules of democracy or would they be those who have no qualms aout trampling on democracy? Because it is indeed democracy we are talking about.

The motion introduced by the Reform Party with respect to the communiqué by my colleague for Charlesbourg is, in fact, a denial of freedom of expression, the first step to trashing democracy.

This motion goes far beyond the words in the communiqué at issue. The debate on the alleged seditious intent of this communiqué cannot reasonably be based on the articles of law defining sedition and even less so on the principles of democracy known to all of us and respected by most of us, I hope.

Section 59 of the Criminal Code defines seditious intention as follows: "-every one shall be presumed to have a seditious intention who teaches or advocates, or publishes or circulates any writing that advocates, the use, without the authority of law, of force as a means of accomplishing a governmental change within Canada." Quite an undertaking, that.

In addition, section 62 of that same Criminal Code discusses sedition in relation to military forces, indicating that anyone encouraging members of a force to insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny or refusal of duty is guilty of an act of sedition.

The communiqué as such, you will agree, contains nothing of the sort. No passage in this communiqué can justify this matter's becoming a topic of debate, and still less it's being referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

The communiqué from the hon. member for Charlesbourg had only one purpose: to inform Armed Forces personnel of what would happen in the aftermath of the referendum if there were a yes victory, just as several other communiqués were issued during the referendum campaign concerning federal public servants.

In addition, the creation of a Quebec army after Quebec attained sovereignty was part of the program of the Bloc Quebecois and of the Parti Quebecois, and has even been addressed by specialists in military affairs in major dailies, Charles-Philippe David in La Presse in particular.

Moreover, the attempts by a Montreal lawyer, Mr. Tyler, to go before the courts of Quebec and Ontario with the matter lead to failure. According to the courts, there is nothing in this communiqué to give rise to a charge of sedition.

We are therefore entitled to wonder what the Reform Party's true intentions are in tabling this motion. Is it really motivated by respect for the law? I doubt it.

In light of what we have heard from the various Reformers in recent days on this question, it is increasingly clear that, in the eyes of sensible Quebecers and sensible Canadians, this court room farce is aimed at the Bloc Quebecois and their plans for sovereignty. Proof of this lies in what the hon. member for Kootenay East said yesterday: "This seditious activity of the member of the Bloc Quebecois cannot stand. This is the line in the sand. We go no further. There are people in Canada who see those who would take Quebec out of Canada as being the enemies of Canada." There are many such people, Mr. Speaker, if we are to judge by this speech. The member went on to say: "I will tell you that I am one of them and I am speaking for those people".

At the very heart of this debate is freedom of expression. To the members of the Reform Party, the very words of Quebec sovereignists are seditious, and I would go so far as to say that the very existence of sovereignists is seditious, hence the present motion. Rather than participate democratically in Quebec sovereignty, they prefer to take issue with the basic right of freedom of speech.

The referendum debate in October 1995 took place in an unparalleled climate of democracy. At no time did either the yes or the no side in Quebec attempt to deny the other's right to debate its option, and each side informed people of its position.

Thus, in introducing this motion, the Reformers want to punish the member for Charlesbourg for speaking on the option he defends. His only crime was that of not sharing the vision of the Liberals and the Reformers on Canada's future. The motion therefore denies the right to freedom of speech of Bloc members and thus of Quebecers who support sovereignty in Quebec.

It is therefore of some concern that, in this House, which is a part of the highly democratic institution of the Parliament of Canada, freedom of speech and the right to defend one's position in a democratic context recognized by all citizens are being called into question.

With their amendment, the Liberals are choosing to hide their heads in the sand and refer the question to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, rather than defend the democratic principles guiding debate in society.

Would this strategy be part of plan D, E or F? Otherwise, why threaten to bring those who exercise their freedom of speech to promote sovereignty before a committee in order to judge them on the legality of their remarks? Despite the threats of partitioning and other inflammatory remarks made by Stéphane Dion, which were, moreover, never condemned by the federal Liberal Party, and even less so by the Reform Party, we hope that this Parliament will refuse to approve a motion which is such an incredible breach of democracy.

It seems to me that this unprecedented attack against freedom of speech would have justified Liberals putting aside party politics and their alphabetical plans and vigorously defending-as we do-the very foundations of our democratic rules.

The attitude of the Liberal government is disquieting in a society that boasts it advocates respect for human rights. As a matter of fact, according to the Reform Party's logic, everybody who, during the referendum campaign, discussed the creation of an army in a sovereign Quebec deserves to be accused of sedition. This would include not only all the members of the Bloc, but also all the reporters who discussed the topic or wrote about it-and why not also those who dared to read them or watch them on television?

The interpretation made by the Reform Party of the notion of freedom of speech threatens the rights not only of the sovereignists but also of all the Canadians who oppose in one way or another some public policies or some of the Reform Party's positions.

The Reform Party's motion is in fact a throw back to some of history's dark moments when democracy was trashed-Chile under Pinochet, Greece under the colonels or Spain under Franco.

That is why I will vote against the Reform Party's motion, against the Liberals' amendment and against the amendment to the amendment presented by the Reform Party.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Kilger)]

Pursuant to order made earlier today, the question on the amendment to the amendment is deemed to have been put and a recorded division requested and deferred to Monday, March 18 at 6.30 p.m.

The House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m.

(The House adjourned at 6.43 p.m.)