Debates of Sept. 17th, 1996

Referendums

[The Speaker]

I must ask you not to forget, dear colleagues, that you must always go through the Chair.

[Allan Rock, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, all Canadians must be consulted in the decision about the future because it is their country that is in issue.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear.

[Allan Rock, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

The hon. member cannot and should not suggest that there is not a deep respect for the decision that the population of

Quebec must make. We shall do everything in our power to persuade them to vote for Canada if there is a future referendum. We recall for everyone that they have twice voted for Canada in the past.

If democracy and the will of the people is what really motivates us, then we have to worry about a scenario in which there is a consultative referendum, then the next day a small group in the leadership of the government decide unilaterally to declare that the country is separate and that Canada has come to an end. That is not consistent with the rule of law.

There must be the law and democracy hand in hand and that is the way that Canadians wish to have us approach this issue.

Somalia Inquiry

[Jack Frazer, Reform, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the defence minister spoke of due process in the Somalia inquiry. Yet on August 28 before General Boyle had delivered his testimony and before Colonel Haswell had even started to testify, the minister publicly exonerated General Boyle and commended him as CDS. Those comments amounted to a blatant interference with the inquiry.

How can the Prime Minister condone this improper violation of due process by the very minister who commissioned the inquiry?

[David Collenette, Liberal, Minister of National Defence and Minister of Veterans Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, one of the hallmarks of Canadian society is our fairness. It is our fairness to allow everybody to be heard, to have everyone's rights respected.

What that means in the case of the Somalia inquiry is to receive all the documentation, hear from all the witnesses and then to have the impartial commissioners make a judgment. When they report, which is due in March of next year, the government will respond to that report. In the meantime, it would be fundamentally wrong and a denial of due process to comment on any of the proceedings.

I would ask the hon. member to follow his own admonition.

[Jack Frazer, Reform, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this minister and his department have hampered the inquiry proceedings. He has intervened inappropriately, he is court marshalling a corporal who wanted to testify and he has taken the information commissioner to court to prevent him from doing his job.

How can the Prime Minister fail to see that his defence minister has condoned or even supported a culture of containment and cover up at national defence headquarters?

[Jean Chrétien, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, this government is one of complete openness. It is the first time that we have had a complete inquiry. They have spent eight months debating all the elements not on Somalia but of the operation of the department. Now they have moved on the mandate to look into what happened in Somalia and they will report in due course. Let them do their jobs. I want everybody to let the chief of staff do his job and the minister of defence do his job.

National Defence

[Pierre Brien, Bloc, Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.

Yesterday, in this House, the Prime Minister expressed his complete confidence in General Boyle and in his Minister of Defence. However, during his testimony before the Somalia inquiry, General Boyle admitted having violated the spirit of the Access to Information Act, and what is more, his own military police even concluded that he had lied to them.

Is there not an ethical problem when a Prime Minister so blithely states his confidence in an individual who has admitted violating the spirit of a statute and who has made false declarations to the military police?

[David Collenette, Liberal, Minister of National Defence and Minister of Veterans Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, once again we have to be fair. We have to be fair to everyone that appears before that inquiry and avoid jumping to conclusions.

Making premature judgments, jumping to conclusions is a denial of a basic right that Canadians have and that is to be heard in an impartial setting. We have established the inquiry to provide that setting. I am sure that everyone in the country appreciates the process, if not the hon. member across the way.

[Pierre Brien, Bloc, Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my supplementary is directed to the Prime Minister.

General Boyle himself admitted to the Commission that there was a lack of communication with his subordinates, that he did not know about the army's cover up operation, thus confessing to serious oversights.

How could the Prime Minister state yesterday, and I quote:

General Boyle [-] is doing his job as he must. And he must continue to do so.

Does this mean that the Prime Minister approves of General Boyle's inept, and that is the least that could be said, performance of his duties?

[Jean Chrétien, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, General Boyle stated what happens to everyone, which is that there arise in large administrations situations where the boss does not know all the details. He came right out and said so to the Commission. The Commission will draw the appropriate conclusions in the context of an inquiry that has already gone on for nine months.

We would all sometimes like to see certain documents that are not shown to us, but in so far as we accept responsibility for a department and our duties, and do not shirk them, we must now wait and see what the Commission will have to say about this matter, and about everything to do with the Somalia inquiry.

[English]

Mexico

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville—Milton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there has been considerable confusion about the Minister of Foreign Affairs' recent advisory about travel to Mexico. Is he advising Canadians not to travel to Mexico at all? Could the minister explain the situation and clarify it for the House?

[Lloyd Axworthy, Liberal, Minister of Foreign Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for the question because I think there has been a good deal of misunderstanding and misapprehension.

The Department of Foreign Affairs regularly issues travel advisories. There is nothing exceptional for the country of Mexico. We do them every month or so. All we have done is as we have done for the past several reports, which is to note that in certain Mexican states there has been some civil unrest. We are simply cautioning travellers or tourists not to go into those areas or to stay within the tourist areas and to carry identification. In no way does it constitute a warning. In no way does it say not to go to Mexico.

I would tell any members of Parliament who have received requests from their constituents that we would be glad to supply full information on the travel advisory. Although the Reform Party clearly cannot read or does not care, I think most members of Parliament care about their constituents who must travel to Mexico.

Somalia Inquiry

[Preston Manning, Reform, Calgary Southwest, AB]

Mr. Speaker, in the replies of both the Prime Minister and the Minister of National Defence today on the question of the mess at that department, we have received the ultimate in hypocritical answers by saying let the Somalia inquiry decide.

It was the defence minister himself who tried to get a friend of the government appointed as a commissioner of the inquiry. It is top military officials and officials of the department who have been implicated in fixing documents to be supplied to the commission. It is the government itself that has given legal help to some participants in the process but not others.

My question is for the Prime Minister. If the Prime Minister believes in letting the commission do its work, why does he not fire the Minister of National Defence and General Boyle for failing to do so?

[Jean Chrétien, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, the commission has been sitting now for seven or eight months. It has asked questions day after day on national TV. Lawyers are asking questions. They are grilling public servants as if they were almost criminals. Everything is out in the open. We could not have a more open government. The three commissioners have been named. I know only one personally. One of them is a judge who I guess was appointed by a government other than ours. I do not know him at all and have never met him. No one can say that it is not an inquiry which is independent, open and has all the resources. In fact it is getting very expensive to look into the problem.

We wanted to look into the Somalia incident as this House was committed to do. It has now taken seven months and it will probably take many more months. Even the Watergate affair in the United States was settled in six or seven weeks.

[Preston Manning, Reform, Calgary Southwest, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister did not address any of the points that I raised. If this is an open inquiry and we are supposed to let the inquiry do its work, why did he not comment on the defence minister's attempting to influence who were the commissioners? Why did he not comment upon the attempt to alter documents before the commission? Why did he not respond to anything about the uneven legal help that is given to some participants and not to others?

The Prime Minister is getting pretty close to participating in the cover-up by the military.

[The Speaker]

My colleagues, in our questions and our answers we are getting very close to using unparliamentary language and attributing motive.

I would ask the hon. member to be very judicious in his choice of words. I did not hear a question being posed yet I saw the Prime Minister moving to make some kind of response. I did not hear the question. If there is a question, I want the hon.-

[John Harvard, Liberal, Winnipeg—St. James, MB]

There is no question.

[An hon. member]

The truth hurts over there, right?

[The Speaker]

Order. Order. I would ask the hon. member to put his question forthwith.

[Preston Manning, Reform, Calgary Southwest, AB]

Mr. Speaker, to ensure that there is no ultimate cover-up in the Somalia inquiry, will the Prime Minister guarantee to this House that the results of the inquiry will be made fully public before the next federal election?

[Jean Chrétien, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, I think that the leader of the third party needs more than a new haircut.

Of course when the report is finished, the report will be tabled. I think the way the leader of the third party is acting in the House today, he will be competing very closely for the same level of votes in the next election as another reform leader in the United States, Mr. Perot, of 5 per cent.

The Television Production Fund

[Gaston Leroux, Bloc, Richmond—Wolfe, QC]

Mr. Speaker, be patient. It is not Wednesday yet.

When she announced the television production fund, which will get 75 per cent of its budget from Heritage Canada, the minister told us that from now on, her department would sit on the fund's board of directors, which is unprecedented for a department with a cultural role to play.

My question is directed to the Minister of Canadian Heritage. How does the minister think she will improve cultural production by doing away with a long tradition of independence vis-à-vis government in the distribution of funds to creative artists?

[Sheila Copps, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Canadian Heritage]

Mr. Speaker, I believe that the decision to announce this programming fund was well received, not only by the Government of Quebec but also by the Minister of Culture, who said it was a step in the right direction for culture in Quebec.