Madam Speaker, I will share my time with the hon. member for Laval East.
I rise in this House today to speak on a motion of utmost importance. It is a matter of equity, justice and freedom in the face of the arrogance and cynicism of a Liberal government that will stop at nothing to please a foreign dictator.
The motion before us today is simple. It asks that the government allocate sufficient, separate funding to the students repressed by police to ensure fair and equitable legal representation.
So far, in debating this motion, we have gone over every connection between the Prime Minister's Office and the pepper spray used to repress students peacefully demonstrating against the presence of Indonesian dictator Suharto at the APEC summit held in Vancouver, in November 1997.
Previous speakers also noted the Prime Minister's arrogance in pointing out every move made by his office to hide his real involvement in the repression of students campaigning for the right to speak.
That is why I will be speaking today about how crucial the vote on this motion, following this debate, will be. In point of fact, this vote will show how far the Prime Minister is prepared to go to crush any dissidence on the part of Liberal members who may have been in favour of ensuring fair and equitable representation for students subjected to repression.
I would tell the hon. members across the way, who have been deprived of their most basic right to free speech, just as the students were before them, that they should thank their lucky stars they have a civilized Prime Minister. There is one thing they can be sure of, that the leader will not use a baseball bat to make them toe the line.
Unfortunately, the Liberal members have every reason to be afraid of their leader today, if they heed their consciences and vote in favour of equity and freedom of expression. They need only look at what happened to their colleague from Vancouver Quadra, who was forced to keep quiet after commenting that the RCMP Public Complaints Commission could not cast full light on what had happened at the APEC summit.
If this is not enough to convince them there is no freedom of speech left within their party, they just need to recall what happened during the vote on financial compensation for all Hepatitis C victims. At that time the Liberal MPs, who had always come out in favour of full compensation, were forced to vote against their consciences.
If that is not enough, they can also hark back to when female Liberal MPs were forced to keep silent when this government broke its promise and refused to obey the Human Rights Tribunal's decision on wage equity. That time it was their turn to get the prime ministerial pepper treatment.
The Prime Minister does not draw the line at just restricting freedom of speech on the streets of Vancouver or within his own caucus; he also goes after journalists.
Last week, in fact, the PMO tried to intimidate all journalists by unjustly attacking the reputation of one of their number. His office wrote an unjustified, and unjustifiable, complaint against an eminent CBC reporter, wasting no time in making sure the complaint was widely known so anyone who had not yet got the message would understand the price to be paid for telling the truth about the Prime Minister.
This is further evidence that the Prime Minister is prepared to do anything to impose his view of things, even to the point of accusing a journalist of lacking objectivity, when the journalist in question won a Gemini award for the quality of his work on the dubious events surrounding the APEC summit.
From now on, no one can talk of isolated facts. Repeatedly, the Prime Minister has acted to threaten the freedom of expression of those who do not think as he does. He uses cayenne pepper if he wants the RCMP to repress young students, threats when he wants to muzzle the members of his party and official complaints when he wants to intimidate journalists.
There is no longer any doubt about the attitude of this old politician at the end of his career. This is why he is today denying the students who were victims of the RCMP repression access to fair legal defence against the police and his government, which have a battery of lawyers and communications experts who are being paid out of the public purse.
In addition to denying basic legal aid to the students, the Prime Minister keeps making jokes about the repression they faced. Yesterday, he was back at it and pointed out to them that they were lucky they were peppered with cayenne instead of being beaten with a baseball bat. He even tried to calm the students by saying that the RCMP carried towels to wipe away the effects of the cayenne pepper.
However, intimidation, threats and arrogance are unacceptable, and it will not take the Prime Minister long to discover that. A big organization like the CBC was able to dismiss the Prime Minister's threats by standing behind the integrity and objectivity of its journalists.
The Prime Minister has learned it is difficult to destroy the credibility of a person with the means to defend himself. This is why he will do all in his power to deny the students the public funds that will give them fair representation before the battery of lawyers defending him and the police at our expense.
All of the opposition members are prepared to provide this financial help to the students so this entire matter may come to light.
I solemnly appeal to the members of the Liberal Party today to liberate themselves once and for all from the attitude of their leader and to vote according to their conscience. I appeal especially to the Liberal members from British Columbia, who already gave their support for funding to the students, but who may well remain silent today in the face of the thinly veiled threats of the Prime Minister.
These members should rise and vote in favour of the most elementary justice. It is time they set the example for all who still believe in freedom of expression and for their Prime Minister, who has yet to understand that this freedom underlies our democratic system.