Debates of Oct. 20th, 1998

Supply

[Rey D. Pagtakhan, Liberal, Winnipeg North—St. Paul, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I was listening earlier to the NDP movers of the motion and now to the Reform. What is interesting to observe is that they had focused in their argumentation to a large extent on the very crucial issue before the commission itself, allegations I submit in respect of the commission that they had alleged on the floor of the House of Commons. Those are the very allegations that the commission will determine in its wisdom, whether they are based on solid ground and therefore relevant to the discussion of funding.

The public commission is almost like the Winnipeg police commission, almost like the unemployment insurance commission, almost like the CPP tribunal, the veterans appeal board, the workmen compensation board or the labour board in a province. They are quasi-judicial tribunals. When citizens with grievances against the bureaucracy of government come before these tribunals, I have not heard from the NDP in the House, from the Reform Party in the House, from the Tory party in the House or from the Bloc in the House whether those citizens with grievances have a right to legal representation.

I have appeared before these tribunals. The one distinction that we must make is that quasi-judicial tribunals, as the RCMP public complaints commission is, were created by parliament precisely to avoid the need for the formality of a knowledge of the rules of evidence and the rules of procedure. In other words, citizens without full legal knowledge can appear before them and could even have representations of laymen. Therefore I ask where is the precedent being created?

[Jim Abbott, Reform, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I can only assume that the member was not in the House, either that or he had ear plugs, when I made my presentation.

The fact is it is the Prime Minister, the solicitor general, the justice minister, the Liberal government that have made this a political process, an adversarial process.

Count it. There are over $2,000 an hour of legal fees either protecting the RCMP or protecting the Prime Minister in this process.

I cite again my example where with very high skill level the solicitor for the RCMP managed to twist the comments of the protester, of the complainant, and furthermore took documents that should never have been used. Had he a properly prepared lawyer on his behalf, Mr. Jones would never have seen those documents end up in the public record.

I saw what actually happened. Mr. Macintosh was asking Mr. Jones questions on the basis of the Jones-Milewski documentation. After he got Mr. Milewski's name into the record a couple of times he very quickly folded like a cheap deck of cards and sat down on that issue. He did not pursue it any further in spite of the fact that he had buck an unprepared Mr. Arvay. I say with the greatest respect unprepared because he does not have funding and did not have time to prepare himself.

Mr. Arvay was trying to stop the irrelevant insertion of these documents into the court proceedings. What the RCMP lawyer did by introducing that, I submit again, was to get Milewski off the case and the Prime Minister without the terrier on his ankle.

[Svend Robinson, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, somebody over on the Liberal side asked what about Mr. Considine.

Mr. Considine is the independent counsel to the commission and while he may be able to intervene to defend some witnesses against overly aggressive cross examination, he does not have a role to vigorously cross examine witnesses from the Prime Minister's office, from the RCMP and elsewhere. That is not his role. That is the role for counsel for the students.

[Jim Abbott, Reform, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in this case Mr. Considine did not have time to look at these documents to determine relevance. He handed them over to Mr. Macintosh with Mr. Jones' approval on the assumption Mr. Macintosh was going to determine relevance himself. Mr. Macintosh did not only not determine relevance but he used documents in the case against Mr. Milewski, thereby tainting the whole news gathering process. I believe he did it—

[Richard Marceau, Bloc, Charlesbourg, QC]

I rise with some sorrow today to speak on the motion by my NDP colleague. In my opinion, this is a waste of the House's time, because it should be taken for granted that the federal government will assume the students' legal costs.

It is not necessary to repeat the facts surrounding the brutal repression of the students at the time of the November 1997 APEC summit. I would like to say this, however: during this peaceful demonstration, the students were roughed up and subjected to strong-arm tactics as well as pepper spray.

And now what is happening? The same thing all over again. Now this government wants to use the legal system to again subject them to legal strong-arm tactics, to pepper them all over again.

On the one side, we have the Liberal government with its high-priced lawyers at $150 or $200 an hour. Then we have the RCMP with its high-priced lawyers as well. On the other side, we have the students, with no legal representation, unable to afford it because they are students.

As a lawyer, I know this. Heaven only knows, in our system, if someone does not have a lawyer, the dice are loaded against him right from the start. It seems that this government, as usual, has decided to side with Goliath against David. The brutal repression at the APEC summit reminds us of the bad old days in Eastern Europe and the systematic repression so representative of the methods of dictator Suharto himself.

Worse still, the Prime Minister had the nerve to joke about this, to say the least, troubling situation on several occasions. Again yesterday, he lightly dismissed the RCMP's heavy-handed response, which he himself ordered.

Beyond the regrettable facts I have just presented, there is also the mystery of who authorized the brutal repression so at odds with the human rights principles of all Canadians and Quebeckers.

The government justifies trade with various countries where democracy is non-existent, or very nearly so, by saying that Canada will be able to serve as an example of an open, democratic society that respects freedom of expression, but the Prime Minister is promoting a completely opposite image of the country. Instead of exporting our tolerance and our democratic system, the government is importing brutally repressive and, at the very least, reactionary tactics unfortunately still common to many countries.

We can only think that the Prime Minister himself took a personal hand in the security arrangements for visiting dignitaries. This attitude is utterly unacceptable.

For nearly two months, the government has been using the Solicitor General and the Prime Minister himself to divert opposition questions in every possible way, to conceal the truth, and to make sure Canadians do not really know what really happened in this affair.

Hiding behind phoney arguments, the government appears to be adopting the same cover-up approach as it did in the Somalia affair. This government is starting to make a habit of doing this. The desire for a cover-up is so strong that this government is refusing to help get at the truth by providing the students with assistance with their legal fees. There is only one reason for this, and I am weighing my words carefully: to conceal the truth.

By refusing to pay the students' lawyers, the Liberals are trying to muzzle the students, while the RCMP and the government are being represented by lawyers who are on the public payroll.

Again yesterday, in the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, several motions were tabled with a view to casting some light on this matter. Unfortunately, to my dismay as a young activist, the Liberal backbenchers acted like well-trained puppy dogs. When the government tells them to do this or that, they do it. They would jump off a bridge if they were told to. They have absolutely no independence, they cannot think for themselves.

Yesterday, all we wanted was for the Solicitor General and our NDP colleague to come and give their versions of the facts. The Liberal members voted against that motion. What we wanted yesterday was not to put the Solicitor General, or our NDP colleague, or any one else on trial, just to get at the truth. So, it would appear that this government is unfortunately allergic to the truth.

As I was saying earlier, it is a sad day for Canadian democracy when we have to discuss this matter in this House. As far as all Quebeckers and Canadians are concerned, funding for the students is a matter of course. It is totally absurd to have the Solicitor General keep repeating that the commission has to be allowed to do its work as the Liberals reject the commission's requests.

As last week's Maclean's pointed out, this entire business reveals the veritable regime almost of terror the Prime Minister imposes on his cabinet and on the dog and pony show of members making up his caucus. This autocratic Prime Minister, who can even joke about one of the blackest periods in Canada's recent history, brooks no dissent and no independence.

I appeal to the mind and conscience of all members of this House, regardless of their political party, in asking them to vote in favour of this motion. No partisan consideration may be invoked to justify a vote against this motion. If there were ever a time to set aside partisanship, it is today.

Rather than contemplating the reprisals the Prime Minister might heap on them, the Liberal members of this House—a number are watching me today—should contemplate the position they occupy and the primary role that is theirs to play, that of representing their electorate. It is their duty to represent them well. They must have a sense of debt toward their electors.

At the end of the day, those who oppose this motion will be marked as collaborators in this violent act of repression and will have to live with the consequences.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very glad to have heard the remarks from the member from the Bloc. It was a very reasonable and balanced position and there is nothing I could not concur with in his remarks.

I draw special attention to one point regarding our trading with certain countries and the longstanding position of our government making the argument that we have an obligation to carry on trade relationships with some of these countries even though their human rights records are very poor because that will help to elevate the standards of their human rights circumstances. Obviously what we have seen in the APEC summit was that we are harmonizing our human rights standards but we are harmonizing to the lowest common denominator. We are being pulled down to their level of human rights conditions.

I was at the APEC summit, as were the member for Burnaby—Douglas, the member for Vancouver East and the member for Yukon. All of us managed to avoid being pepper sprayed that day but certainly we can speak from personal experience that if this is the type of harmonization that takes place it speaks to the larger issue of the globalization of capital. I would be interested in hearing the member expand on that thought.

[Richard Marceau, Bloc, Charlesbourg, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his remarks.

I realize that what we are talking about here today in discussing brutal repression and its political consequences is indeed the role Canada might play. Canada may blaze the trail, and Canadians can play this role because they are a free and democratic society.

Unfortunately, as my colleague said, by some form of osmosis, instead of western, liberal values—in the philosophical and not the political sense—being propagated around the world at such meetings, instead of being propagated from Canada to somewhat less democratic countries, the virus traveled the other way around. Human rights standards were indeed harmonized: everyone has been brought down to the same level.

I totally agree with my colleague, and this is at the core of this issue, a core issue. In a society such as ours, if peaceful, idealistic students out to change the world are not allowed to speak out loud and clear, then, on behalf of my colleagues in the Bloc as well indeed as the four opposition parties, I must say this is not the government we want; we want one that respects the rights and freedoms of all, and of young people in particular. We must not forget that they are the future of our society.

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I will make my comments and questions short. I want to also commend the member. He spoke very eloquently and is rapidly making a name for himself in the House as a defender of human rights.

My question is to the member as a lawyer who has appeared in a courtroom and has taken part in the adversarial process that can occur in a courtroom. I would like to give the member the opportunity to voice an opinion on what he feels will be the outcome of an inquiry where we have students. I have had the benefit of seeing these students on television but I have not been to the inquiry personally.

Where is the fairness in having these students representing themselves, their ability to effectively cross examine government witnesses, to effectively put forward arguments against the trained legal team assembled by the government and this process that has been undertaken? How can these students effectively rebut the case that is going to be presented by these government lawyers?

[Richard Marceau, Bloc, Charlesbourg, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal member opposite said that these students are very bright. They are indeed. But they are facing a half-dozen paid lawyers who have had years of training, not only through the law faculty, but through the bar and years of legal practice, to give a different spin to what students say and to cross-examine them. I say to members opposite that no one, whether that person is bright or not, stands any chance of making his or her point against a team of well-trained and well-paid lawyers supported by the government machine.

As someone who has represented clients in court, I appreciate my colleague's comments. I can tell the hon. member that a lawyer's role is to make a point, it is to be able to cross-examine someone and make that person say what he or she did not mean to say.

These capable and bright students do not stand a chance against a team of well-trained and well-paid lawyers, and that is unfortunate.

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to take part in this debate and to follow previous speakers who have very accurately and articulately, on the opposition side at least, put forward an argument as to why this government should be reconsidering its position.

I am pleased to speak on behalf of the Progressive Conservative caucus to the motion that has been brought forward by the member for Winnipeg—Transcona, my counterpart within the NDP caucus as its House leader and a respected parliamentarian.

This motion, it is fair to say, is a very worthwhile measure. It is a motion that deserves the support of all hon. members regardless of political affiliation. This motion touches on basic human issues of fairness and equity and we in the Progressive Conservative Party support this motion.

I commend the member for Winnipeg—Transcona for bringing this forward at this time. It is a very timely intervention and it is certainly an issue all Canadians are very concerned with, for we in this Chamber and we outside this Chamber should be truth seekers first and foremost, not the hiders of truth. Unfortunately there are many who would castigate parliament and parliamentarians for just that and if we are to rebut those feelings among the general population we should be starting today.

A former leader of the Progressive Conservative Party and a former prime minister, the Right Hon. John Diefenbaker, was a passionate defender of human rights in Canada and around the world. Under Mr. Diefenbaker's government Canada proclaimed the Canadian Bill of Rights and although the bill of rights has been superseded in many ways by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms entrenched in our Constitution in 1982, it continues.

In that original bill of rights there was a phrase which I suggest calls upon us to reflect today: “I am a Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think is right and free to oppose what I believe is wrong”.

John Diefenbaker described these principles as the heritage of freedom. Sadly, Canada's heritage of freedom seems to have been forgotten by the current government both in the months, weeks and days leading up to and including last November's APEC summit and in the summit's aftermath leading up to today.

The RCMP public complaints commission is presently investigating the RCMP's use of pepper spray and force on student protesters at the APEC summit. I have raised serious objections to the limits of the commission's mandate and with the appropriateness of this particular body's conducting an independent review of the entire APEC affair. I suggest adamantly that the mandate itself does not include the ability for this commission to go into the area of political interference.

I nonetheless recognize that the commission should be as arm's length as possible from government, that it must be fair and treat all witnesses and potential witnesses in a just and equitable fashion. Yet there is no fairness in a commission in which some witnesses and some participants have access to legal representation paid for by the Canadian taxpayer while other witnesses do not. This is not a level playing field. Justice as represented by the scales we so often see is not a balanced approach.

Canadians who believe in fairness for all recognize this very basic principle. I find it difficult to believe that no one in this Chamber would recognize it. The public complaints commission recognizes the principle and wrote to the solicitor general twice to seek federal funding to cover the costs incurred by the students.

We have heard members of the government, in particular the solicitor general and the Prime Minister, time and time again tell us in the opposition and Canadians to have faith in the process, to let the commission do its work. They say the government believes this commission will get to the truth.

The commission has twice requested funding for these students. Once again we see this government exercising very restricted hearing, selective hearing. It hears what it wants and it says what it wants. The solicitor general has refused this request twice. He said no. I quote the Liberal government's own talking points in response to last Friday's decision. This government has expressed confidence in the commission yet it expresses no confidence in the commission's judgment in requesting funding for the students.

It is very perverse. I find it deeply disturbing that the Prime Minister, the solicitor general and the government were able to express so much faith in this commission and its judgment until the time the commission requested funding for the students. It is a convenient double standards that undermines an already precarious process.

The APEC double standards are not new to the Liberal government. It was this solicitor general who stood in the House and who in response to questions from the opposition repeatedly told parliament that the commission would not suffer from any political interference. The solicitor general then turned around and spoke freely in a public place about APEC without any regret or responsibility, none whatsoever. That was the first breach of his oath to office but not his last. Let us remember the issue of political interference by this government casts a very long shadow on the commission's consideration of whether the RCMP was justified in its use of pepper spray.

The gild is off the lily and the sheen is gone from the Prime Minister and this government. How can this government remove the stench of political interference when it uses taxpayer dollars to provide legal representation to every organization or person under its authority but gives nothing to the students, the alleged victims in this case? The students did not intentionally seek to have their lawyers in this public complaints commission process. One of the lawyers initially filed a motion early in the process to keep lawyers out of the inquiry and to maintain the commission's mandate as a non-adversarial fact finding body. Again I am quoting from Liberal talking points.

Did the government support this motion? No. It objected strenuously and demanded that lawyers be allowed to intervene on behalf of the commission's participants. I guess those participants did not include the complainants. The government in essence threw down the gauntlet at that point. Any claim that this was not an adversarial process had to be thrown out the window with that. The government has turned around and refused the same support for legal representation for students on two occasions.

Is there a single Liberal member of parliament who can pull his or her eyes from the prepackaged talking points and explain to Canadians why some commission participants get tax funded lawyers while other participants get nothing? It is completely perverse and indefensible.

Instead of quoting these talking points, Liberal members would be well advised to remember the words of a former Liberal member of parliament and a former minister of justice, the hon. Ron Basford, who spoke eloquently at this weekend's Liberal Party meeting in British Columbia.

He said that surely we believe in the right to protest, the right to speak out and the right to be defended and that the best way to get to the facts in this inquiry where all people are represented is to put the facts forward and test them through vigorous cross-examination. Obviously that includes having students represented by proper legally trained minds.

Meanwhile I am unable to locate a line anywhere in these Liberal talking points that would explain how providing lawyers for some while depriving lawyers for others ensures a non-adversarial fact finding body.

For the Liberals to sit in the House and say this is fairness is like the commissioner of baseball saying that the New York Yankees and the Montreal Expos can fairly compete against each other regardless of a $60 million gap in players salaries. Perhaps this is something that the current solicitor general can understand. The government has given one-sided resources to defend its interest before the commission while providing nothing to exclusively defend the other.

The Prime Minister has a taxpayer funded lawyer while the students do not. That is very curious, given the fact that the Prime Minister is not summoned, is not on the witness list and has indicated his reluctance to appear before the commission. Yet he has government funded layers there representing his interests.

For a process to be truly non-adversarial there must be a degree of commonality in the resources available to participants. The Liberals persist in contending that the government can fund lawyers for some but not for others and maintain a non-adversarial process. As soon as there was government insistence on having lawyers there the non-adversarial nature was gone.

In Canada we believe in legal equality for all, not special privileges for the government's chosen few. Good Liberals have been rewarded, will faithfully follow the talking points and will no doubt say that it is the government's role in the commission to protect the interest of the complainants. However, without those lawyers it is unable to do so.

In conclusion, I urge all members of the House to support the motion brought forward by the member for Winnipeg—Transcona. This is the place and the time we should be debating this issue if Canadians are to have confidence in the process.

[Rey D. Pagtakhan, Liberal, Winnipeg North—St. Paul, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member alleged—and I believe he is a lawyer—that only the presence of lawyers in commissions like this one could ensure the resolution of the facts, could ensure the facts are established. Were we to accept that conclusion and the logic of the member who has just spoken, we would have to conclude that all previous grievances before the other quasi-judicial tribunals before which citizens did not have lawyers did not arrive at the truth.

In all modesty I have appeared before such tribunals and I say that quasi-judicial tribunals that do not need lawyers for representation of citizens have seen to it that the resolution of the facts, the search for the truth, was ensured. Therefore I have extreme reservation about the presumption of the member who has just spoken that only the presence of legally trained minds—and I have a son who is a lawyer—would ensure arrival at the truth.

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the logic of the question and the premise are completely lost on me because that is not what I am saying at all. I am saying if it is to be a level playing field we cannot have one side represented and the other side not represented. Within my remarks the House will find a reference to the fact that it was the students who first put forward the premise that perhaps there should be no lawyers involved.

I am guilty of being a lawyer and I do not for a moment suggest that the process cannot work without the presence of lawyers. What the process cannot do, if it is to be equitable, if it is to be fair, is stack one counsel table with trained legal minds and not the other. As the member for Charlesbourg indicated, members of the bar in Vancouver who have extensive legal experience as counsel are sitting at one table and the students are sitting on the other side of the room, at an empty counsel table, unable to articulate themselves in the same way and with the same vigorous legal training as on the government side. It is absolutely perverse to suggest otherwise. To stand here and defend the indefensible is further proof that the members of the backbench of that party are becoming nothing more than whipped dogs.

[Peter Mancini, NDP, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to ask a question of the hon. member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough. For the most part I concur with his comments.

Another member asked whether it was only with the presence of lawyers that we could have some kind of justice, at which point my response was to have the government pull its own lawyers from the commission. Then, with the RCMP lawyers gone as well, we would have a level playing field.

I direct a question to the hon. member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough who is a lawyer, as I am, as was my hon. colleague from the Bloc Quebecois who spoke earlier. Would he agree that my experience reflects his in the courtroom, that people who are not represented, whether it is in court or before a quasi-judicial body, are often at a great disadvantage? They do not understand the rules of evidence. They do not understand the maxims that often apply to administrative tribunals.

Most members in the House have dealt with constituents who were trying to get Canada pension plan disability payments and have had to deal with social assistance boards. Would he indicate that his experience is like mine and reflects the inability of people to understand the process without legal counsel?

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's comments are on all fours with mine. The process itself can be intimidating and overwhelming for members of the public. That is why lawyers are often called upon to intervene. That is not to say that it is any reflection upon people's intelligence or ability to defend themselves. They are in an atmosphere that has certain rules and precedents that have been set down in years previous.

We are talking about a system of equity, justice and fairness. Judges when crafting a sentence will look at a person's ability to express remorse. That is what has been completely lacking on the government side, a feeling of remorse and an admission that something was done inappropriately.

[Dick Proctor, NDP, Palliser, SK]

Mr. Speaker, today I am rising to speak in favour of our party's opposition day motion that the complainants, namely the students appearing before the RCMP Public Complaints Commission, be provided with separately funded legal representation. Before I get into the substance of my remarks, I will be sharing my time with the leader of our party, the member for Halifax.

As has been noted by previous speakers in the debate today, what was done last November was not done for reasons of security but because the Prime Minister wanted to spare President Suharto, a dictator from Indonesia, any embarrassment while he was visiting Vancouver at the APEC summit meeting. As a result dozens of people were arrested, mainly students, and police may have interfered with the human rights of hundreds of those individuals.

Professor Pue, a professor of legal history at UBC, has said that if these principles can be clearly violated then the political use of police forces to harass journalists, political opponents and other inconvenient individuals is no longer unthinkable. A very slippery slope lies between the APEC protesters and the rest of us.

As an aside, I go back to what happened two weeks ago today on the question of privilege concerning the solicitor general to say that in my brief tenure here it was the most shameful moment I have witnessed in the House of Commons. The solicitor general stood in his place to categorically deny and to be personally offended at what I had overheard him saying to the gentleman who turned out to be Mr. Toole from Saint John, New Brunswick.

I can understand why on the day that the questions were raised there might have been some doubt and some uncertainty in the mind of the solicitor general. Upon reflection, upon sleeping on the matter and then getting up to essentially deny, deny, deny is unconscionable, and people over there talk about ethics in this matter.

With respect, what kind of message does that send to our young people? Does it not say they should just keep refuting the story and have all their friends stand up and applaud what they are saying? If they say it long enough and loud enough, the world will move on and talk about other issues. It is a great message for my children's generation or for any generation, for that matter.

Let me read into the record one of the many letters I have received. This one is actually an e-mail from a business person in Toronto who said “In the real world if I talked about a client, their business, my firm's relationship with that client, or if any other aspect of my firm's business and was overheard in public, the following would happen. I would be barely back in my office when I would be summoned to report to the CEO and be promptly fired on the spot. This would occur without opportunity to appeal, rebut or waste my partner's time with an explanation. It is in the voters (shareholders) best interest to have no tolerance policies when it comes to breaches such as the one you uncovered. With all due respect, only in politics or public life do serious indiscretions in conduct and judgment go undisciplined. Unfortunately this reflects poorly on the political process in democracies such as Canada and the United States. Members' credibility as effective and trusted managers of the public purse is once again challenged ultimately to the detriment of the constituencies they represent”.

I would add that the solicitor general's actions or lack thereof not only reflect poorly on him but on all of us. Had he done the right thing and offered his resignation, it could have elevated our collective miserable reputations.

The solicitor general has been saying that he is not prejudging, that he has not prejudged the public complaints commission. Hypothetically let us suppose that we have a real, genuine hearing in Vancouver, that the students are funded legally, and at the end of the day the commission reports that in its opinion four or five RCMP officers acted with excessive force during a five minute period and recommends that Staff Sergeant Hugh Stewart take the fall, be disciplined or be dismissed from the force.

How can the solicitor general stand in his place and say that he has not prejudged the inquiry? That is exactly what he told Mr. Toole on the infamous flight on October 1. I believe I was doing my duty to bring that public discussion and debate forward in the Chamber.

If the solicitor general is careless in what he says in public—not only did he not say it in the House but admonished others not to say it, not to prejudge—I would have been derelict in my duty not to have brought it forward. His utterings were highly irresponsible on that flight but I ask the House not to take my word for it.

Let us listen to Patrick Monahan who teaches law at Osgoode Hall. I am sorry the member for Willowdale is not here. He was a former policy adviser to that member's brother, Ontario Premier David Peterson. Patrick Monahan said “I don't see how the solicitor general can maintain that this was a private conversation. Certainly he seemed to be discussing private matters, but the issue is that it was taking place in a public place. An airline certainly is public in the sense that there are people sitting visibly in the area where you are speaking so your conversation can be overheard”.

He goes on to talk about the member for Palliser not acting in a deceptive way whatsoever. He said “He was simply sitting on the airplane immediately adjacent to where the solicitor general was sitting so he was sitting in full view and listening. He was not using any kind of special hearing device to pick up the conversation. To allege that there is anything improper about taking notes about a conversation, there is no basis to that”.

John Grace, the government's own former privacy commissioner, said that “an airplane is a public place and when a public figure in a public place begins to talk about public issues within earshot of others he or she should expect that others will listen”.

Today's motion simply asks that the government provide separate funded legal representation for the complainants at the APEC inquiry. I think that most Canadians listening to this debate or following this story basically cannot believe that this has not been automatic on the part of the government. It very much appears to any fair-minded observer that the government has deprived these young people of their basic human right to protest peacefully in order to cosy up to the Suhartos of the world. Then it turns around and denies those individuals legal assistance to help them get adequate representation. It is truly a David and Goliath story that we are witnessing.

It is a shameful incident in this country. The Liberal cabinet knows it, the Liberal back bench knows it, the solicitor general knows it perhaps better than most of us, and I think the Canadian public instinctively and intuitively knows it.

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I commend the hon. member for his comments. I know that on a personal level he became very embroiled in this entire matter and unfortunately suffered the slings and arrows of the spin doctors on the government side of the House in their attempts to deflect, throw up smoke screens and detract from the greater issue here.

I would like the hon. member to tell us his feelings on the appropriateness of the solicitor general and the Prime Minister, who may become the focal point of this inquiry on the issue of political interference, being tasked or given the discretion to fund the accusers, and the appropriateness then of those persons who may suffer from the public exposure given to the students at the inquiry and the appropriateness of those persons who become the focus in deciding whether those students should be given funding for lawyers.

[Dick Proctor, NDP, Palliser, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I think that one of two things should happen. Either the students themselves should receive adequate legal representation or, as has been suggested earlier, we should remove the lawyers from the other side, or sides as the case may be, so that it is a level playing field.

It has strange credulity when the Public Complaints Commission, the commission that the solicitor general has so much faith in and wants it to go ahead and do its work, has asked twice publicly for funding for the students appearing before the inquiry and the government then turns around and denies that request from the Public Complaints Commission. It just does not add up.

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Broadview—Greenwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member for Palliser attentively. I do not want to get into all of the details of his supposed recording of the minister's comments on the plane, but I would like to deal with one specific part of the so-called written transcript.

Apparently the minister said something about this RCMP officer looking a bit excessive. We have watched the CBC treatment of the pepper spraying 1,000 times. Would that not be just sort of a natural, common sense reaction of any member in this House of Commons if he saw that clip on television? Did it not seem that the RCMP used a little—

[An hon. member]

He is the Solicitor General of Canada.

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Broadview—Greenwood, ON]

It is common sense. I put that question to the hon. member.

[Dick Proctor, NDP, Palliser, SK]

Mr. Speaker, if the member for Broadview—Greenwood, the member for Palliser, the member for Winnipeg Centre or almost anyone else here had said that, it would have been a fair comment and it would not have been worthy of recording or reporting. However, when it is the solicitor general of the country who is, in effect, prejudging the outcome of the APEC inquiry four days before the inquiry even begins, then it certainly is outside the bounds of decency and good taste.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the motion that we are debating today is about the fundamental requirement that those of modest economic status be able to hold those of wealth, influence and position to account for their actions and their conduct. It is about something very dear to Canadians: justice. It is about something as simple as fairness. It is about asking the government to do something that should be second nature, namely, ensuring fair treatment for those seeking to uphold rights; rights to freedom of expression, assembly and protest; rights which together constitute the most sacred tenets of democracy.

I urge hon. members opposite to reflect carefully on the significance of this motion before they succumb to their whips' orders.

We are asking the federal government to provide specific financial assistance to allow the complainants before the commission to benefit from legal assistance. Such a request was made twice to the solicitor general by the commissioners, but was rejected both times.

This is a bad decision, a decision that goes against public opinion and that is very unfair.

The refusal of the Prime Minister and solicitor general to establish a level legal playing field will render the findings of the commission suspect. It will also erode Canadians' confidence in the public complaints process. The decision goes against the grain of widely held public opinion and flatly contradicts the weight of opinion in the legal community.

Once again the government has chosen to let short term political expediency obstruct its view of the right and just thing to do. It is a self-interested decision that will not go unnoticed, but Canadians will be the arbiters of that. It certainly has not been ignored by others. The public commission itself, Federal Court Judge Barbara Reed, the Law Society of British Columbia, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, former Solicitor General Warren Allmand, the Liberal MP for Vancouver Quadra and the B.C. Liberal Party have all called for the government to reverse its decision and do the right thing.

The arguments in favour of funding legal representation are clear and persuasive.

First, there is a clear case of conflict of interest. The Prime Minister and the solicitor general have a manifest stake in the commission's findings. This means that they should not be in the position of deciding whether the student complainants receive financial assistance.

Because of his comments, the solicitor general is in a conflict of interest situation. Everyone in the country can see that, except him and the Prime Minister.

Second, the tough cross-examinations conducted by government lawyers clearly demonstrate that the complainants need the help of a lawyer. To think otherwise is to be naive.

To imply that the commission counsel, Mr. Considine, can represent the interests of one of the parties is to seriously misunderstand his role.

Furthermore, only professional litigators can hope to get at the truth from government and RCMP witnesses.

The Prime Minister said yesterday in this House that the students have nothing personally at stake here. He is dead wrong.

Let me cite the Canadian Civil Liberties Association's submission to the solicitor general:

Such hearings have the capacity to inflict substantial injury on the reputations of everyone who participates. Damaged reputations, of course, are frequently accompanied by a plethora of unhappy consequences. That being the case, elementary justice requires that the complainants, as well as the officers, have recourse to government-funded counsel.

Recent high priced additions to the Prime Minister's legal team suggest that he is more than a little concerned about damage to his own reputation.

The Law Society of British Columbia has urged the solicitor general to recognize that:

An essential principle of a democratic government is that all people are equal before the law, and are entitled to fairness and due process. The complainants appearing before the Commission are acting as representatives of the public interest. That they should have to do so without legal representation is contrary to the principles of justice and equality to which we, as a democratic country, aspire. If equality before the law is to have any meaning, equality of legal resources is needed.

In her decision, Federal Court Judge Barbara Reed makes the very same argument. She wrote:

—when decision-makers have before them one party who is represented by conscientious, experienced and highly competent counsel—they prefer that the opposite party be on a similar footing. They prefer that one party not be unrepresented. An equality in representation usually makes for easier and better decision-making.

Precedents exist from other tribunals and inquiries in recent Canadian history. The Grange inquiry into deaths at Sick Children's Hospital in Toronto and the Alaska pipeline inquiry both included funding for aggrieved parties to the dispute. I would submit that the APEC affair is no different.

Justice doit être faite. This House has a moral obligation to see to it that justice is done.

[Bill Matthews, Progressive Conservative, Burin—St. George's, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the hon. leader of the New Democratic Party for her comments, as well as all of those who participated.

As one member of this House of Commons I wonder really what is going on in the minds of Canadians when they reflect upon this APEC situation. How can they understand that the Prime Minister and the solicitor general will not provide legal counsel for those students?

How can anyone have faith with the whole process? How can anyone have faith in us as parliamentarians when we see a government take action such as it did against the former chairman of the fisheries and oceans committee and against the member for Vancouver Quadra who basically spoke the opinions of Canadians?

Polling shows that what the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra said is really the wishes of Canadians and the wishes of the students, that legal counsel be provided.

I ask the hon. leader of the New Democratic Party how she thinks Canadians view this situation. How can they have faith in the legal system of this country? How can they have faith in the operations of this very parliament when the Prime Minister and the solicitor general have denied a basic right to those students?

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the question. It is not an exaggeration to say that this is a dark moment in Canada's history. If the only problem resulting from the APEC fiasco and the government's disastrous handling of the APEC fiasco was an erosion of confidence in the Liberal government, in the federal government, then we would be hypocrites to be rubbing our hands with concern and saying “Is that not a terrible thing?” But let us be clear that what is so deadly serious about the government's mishandling of this matter is that it shakes the confidence of Canadians in our justice system. That is what is so very very serious.

In addition to that, I can speak for my own constituents and I can speak for people from all across the country with whom I have been talking and from whom I have been hearing. I know my colleagues in my caucus are finding the same thing, that overwhelmingly Canadians understand that the justice system depends upon two very important things. One is the impeccable impartiality of the solicitor general. It has been demonstrated that that impartiality does not exist with the current solicitor general as evidenced by his mishandling of this matter. The other is that the justice system depends upon there being legal representation available to parties who are appearing before such an inquiry. That goes to the very heart of our justice system.

The fact that the government feels completely warranted to overrule, to reject the pleadings of the public complaints commission in itself is astounding. The commission is saying that this process cannot work and justice cannot be done unless the Government of Canada responds to the representations for legal council. Yet the Prime Minister and the solicitor general have completely refused to acknowledge the conflict of interest which they are in by overruling the recommendations of the commission.

I have already referred in my comments to the long list of legal experts and judicial figures who have expressed their support on the side of the argument for legal representation. That is the motion which is before the House. I think it is going to be a test of whether there is any sense of justice and decency left, at least on the backbenches of the Liberal government.

[Ted McWhinney, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, you know the respect that I hold for all members of the House, members of the opposition. It is one of the strong points in our parliamentary system that we live and work in an atmosphere of mutual respect.

Members will allow me then to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the glorious revolution of 1968 that brought Pierre Trudeau to power by citing one of his best aphorisms. He was referring to Lord Acton that power corrupts. He then said “but absence of power corrupts absolutely”. He was using this as a way of distinguishing the different roles of government and opposition MPs. It is the duty of the opposition to attack a government. It is the duty of the government to seek solutions. It sometimes means in the pursuit of the opposition role that we get some very strange combinations.

I am reminded of a reverse image of the biblical gathering at the cave of the Adullamites, a strange collection that brings together all four opposition parties in spite of the disparateness of their ideology, and one might even say their personalities and their conception of life. But there it is, an unholy alliance is there. I do not denigrate the motives or the contributions made by opposition members. I would simply say to three of the opposition parties, welcome aboard.

It is true the NDP raised this issue on November 25. I thought I was the first; I raised it on December 1, 1997, but I am happy to have the correction. It seems to me the other three opposition parties joined in only a few weeks ago, which is an interesting fact.

Mr. Speaker, I neglected to say that I am sharing my time with the hon. member for Mississauga West, a very honourable member.

To get on to this issue, the role of government MPs is basically an issue of problem solving and producing solutions. I have had certain experience in this area. Sometimes in Canadian politics the problem solving role appears to be more difficult and complex than it was in negotiating with the Russians during the cold war. But there it is. We have interesting and diverse personalities. Our role has always been to make sure that the issues involved which I saw on television in the APEC meeting at UBC are debated fully, that the constitutional issues and the possible collision of constitutional values are properly heard.

There is in fact a certain antinomy. The 1973 treaty on protection of visiting heads of government codifies customary international law. It is the fourth in a series of anti-terrorism treaties, in respect to two earlier ones of which I was the chairman rapporteur of an international commission that did the drafting. But there is also the matter of the charter of rights, the right to free speech, which includes the right even of objection to visiting foreign dignitaries. How to make the balance is what we have been referring to.

In my first communication with the solicitor general I urged the convening of this RCMP complaints commission not because it necessarily is the best of all commissions but it is the one available, it is there. That is the first point. When the issue of the commission being created was established, I raised the funding issue. I have a series of communications which I will deposit in the National Archives. Mr. Speaker, you will be around 30 years from now and will be able to read them with great pleasure and enjoyment. I have maintained that point.

Let me bring us to the events of the last several weeks when the solicitor general advised that in interpreting his office he could not make funds available for individuals appearing before the commission other than the RCMP officers. When the solicitor general raised that issue, I and others began exploring other alternatives.

One of the questions raised was could the commission itself in its discretion use its powers and its funds to fill gaps, lacunae in the legal argumentation. That has taken a good deal of time and a good deal of work and it is an ongoing process. I am able to assure the House that in communications with the government, it has been established that there is the extra supplementary budget, $650,000. It is in the commissioners' discretion to use those funds.

It has been suggested that there are legal objections or obstacles in the way of the commission. One of the issues raised is there is a legal opinion by a professor, there is a ruling by a government agency and there is an opinion by an unnamed government official in the justice ministry. These are not, I would say from my own experience as a royal commissioner, insuperable obstacles. In fact I do not think they are substantial.

I have had the advantage of talking at length with the gentleman referred to earlier in this debate, the hon. Ron Basford who was Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. We believe those objections could be overcome.

Basically I think the ball is now in the commissioners' court. It is for them to make the judgment.

I was able to attend one day of the commission's hearings in Vancouver. I myself felt that the role of the commission was more muted than it should have been. Frankly I felt that the commissioners might have interrupted the examination or cross-examination. It seemed to me it got into the very issues I am talking about, the 1973 treaty and the balance with the charter of rights. That is the sort of issue in my judgment in which the commissioners could decide that they need supplemental legal argument and if I were they, I think I would do so.

In other words we are saying that funds are available. There is a discretion there. My own inquiries establish in my mind that there will be no blocking to their initiatives and there will be co-operation in removing legal articles.

In a communication to the government, I had originally suggested that a special supplementary grant be made. I suggested $50,000 to $100,000 which was in no way intended to be a cap. But I am also worried about fees for lawyers. In France at administrative tribunals no one is entitled to a lawyer. That makes it simpler and less expensive. I am assured again that there is not a cap, that in other words it is open to the commission to ask for more funds.

Two of the three commissioners are young and they struck me as decent, honourable people. If they seize the initiative, they can make sure that substantive justice is done to all people involved. This has involved a good deal of work for a number of people on the government side. It is quiet work that gets no headlines. It is not the sort of thing that can turn a phrase in a newspaper editorial but it is part of my responsibility as a government member to exhaust all possibilities.

I place more expectations in the civil litigation pending before the Supreme Court of British Columbia. Because of the backlog of court business, there are delays in when that will come to court. It has been the policy of the justice ministry to fund ordinary private litigation where substantive constitutional policy issues arise. Why should the taxpayer not fund private litigants when they carry the burden of making in effect constitutional law? It is constitutional law in motion. In the logic of events, the case for funding of the civil litigation is very clear.

It is often forgotten that the charter of rights rests on what Dicey called the common law rights of Englishmen. Today we would say of Englishmen and Englishwomen. It is also in the American bill of rights. These are decisions of individual courts in individual concrete cases. In Dicey's view the constitution is not the source of the rights but the consequence of the rights as defined in litigation. In civil litigation before the courts, I would have the expectation of a definitive ruling. The case for funding there is very strong. I would be very surprised if it does not occur.

In the meantime with the limited mandate of the commission, my advice to the commissioners is to exercise more control over counsel. They are entitled to. They should also exercise their discretion. If they feel they need more light on the legal issues, fund it and let others set up the legal objections.