Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to Bill C-63.
Mr. Speaker, although I may not be talking specifically about Bill C-63, I can assure you that all of my remarks lead into that document most thoroughly. I hope members on the other side of the House do not get their noses out of joint too quickly and will pay close attention to where this is going.
I am especially pleased to speak to this bill because I am a citizen, a new citizen who came to Canada in the late sixties.
I came to Canada with the intentions of fulfilling a contract to teach in a school in Sundre, Alberta, my hometown. It was only supposed to be for a year. I came here in the sixties with my wife and small child and it only took a few months for us to fall in love with the country and the people.
I particularly liked the school system at that time in comparison to the one from where I had come. The schools in the United States were leaning toward some very serious social engineering. Problems were starting to develop and discipline was disappearing. I was disappointed that was occurring down there. When I came to Canada and saw what a fine system was in place and how it was being run, I had a strong desire to become a citizen of this country.
I made application to extend the contract. It was agreed that it would be extended if I would take out landed immigrant status, which I did, and if I would agree to become a citizen when I became eligible, which I agreed to do and also did. Upon entering the country my wife and I and our one-month old child had to go through some very stringent medical exams. I had to go through a lot of security checks. I was checked strongly in that whole area. Financial obligations had to be met.
My wife and I did not object in the slightest bit to all of those things. A number of immigrants who came in at that time and who even lived in the same town felt as I do, that all that was fair and right. They felt the government needed to do a thorough screening of the people who come to this land seeking to become residents and future citizens.
I do not know where we have gone and why we have gone the way we have in regard to immigration policy or where we are at with the refugee policy. It is really disgusting. I will not go into any great detail on that because members who spoke prior to me have done a very thorough job of explaining where we are coming from in that regard.
I will talk about the early years. After four or five years I became eligible to become a citizen. Then I saw things starting to come into the education system and I did not understand why. I commented to some of my friends and people associated with education as to why they were allowing some of these things to happen in the school system. They had already been tried in the United States and they had failed desperately. It was not good for any education system to go in that direction. A lot of them did not know because these things were just happening.
The great white towers of government were bringing down mandated things that were going to take place. Nobody in any community on any scale was ever conferred with as to what kind of school or community they wanted. Things just started happening. Mr. Speaker, you will remember the era of Mr. Trudeau, the prime minister in the early seventies. That is when things started taking place that did not make a lot of sense to me.
I am not arguing with whether the metric system is good or bad but I remember when it was decided to go metric. I had not yet become a citizen so I did not want to be too boisterous in my feelings. Down south there were signs up to think metric and all kinds of things were being done to promote the metric system. The people south of the border in the United States spoke strongly and were heard by their government. The United States did not go metric because the people did not want it.
I searched around my community for quite a while and I could not find anybody who wanted to go metric either. Most of the people said no. I thought surely there would not be any problem since the people did not want it but lo and behold, we woke up one morning and now we have the metric system in this country. I asked people “Why did you let that happen? You people pay the bills, you are the taxpayers, why do you let these things happen?” They said that they could not do anything about it. That is just the way things are.
Then lo and behold up comes a certain bill that was being debated very strongly but apparently nobody across the land was very fond of it. They did not like the bill and did not want it to come into being. That was the language law. It seemed that the country was operating pretty well before all of that. There was a lot of debate and they said no, let us not do it. But lo and behold, we woke up one morning and we had to go through the process of changing signs because we now existed under the language law.
Once again I asked “Why did you let it happen? Why do you let these things go on? You are the taxpayers. You are supposed to be the boss. The members of parliament are supposed to be your servants, not your dictators. Why do you let it carry on?”
I can give example after example clear up until the mighty GST. I could not find a person anywhere who supported the GST. In a massive way people tried to illustrate it through petitions asking that parliament not implement the GST, but guess what? They got it.
Before that, I decided that if I was going to be a citizen in this country then I would have to get involved. I would have to speak out. Because I remembered what the country was like when I came here as an immigrant and I suddenly saw where it was going and I thought good grief.
Out comes the charter of rights. It was not debated to any great extent. Only a few of us noticed at the time that there was not an inclusion of property rights. I asked people “Do you realize what you were getting into? A document that does not have the freedom of property rights in place. Are you sure you want this?” I said “Mark my words. With some of the clauses in there, there will be a day down the road when you will have courts, judges and other judicial bodies making decisions that will affect your lives”. It became law.
Lo and behold, the most blatant example we could have is a judge in British Columbia saying that it is okay for a fellow to have child pornography in his home. He declared that, so that is the way it is. And we are supposed to sit back and say that is the way it goes, this is Canada.
A government of the people, by the people, for the people. The best description of democracy I have ever heard. I have yet to see it occur. We continually allow those things to happen.
Then along comes Bill C-63. I also remember a House of Commons committee that was put together four and a half years ago. It came up with some proposals and some ideas of what we should do to put together some corrections to immigration, to refugees and to citizenship. The recommendations were brought forward by the people of Canada through an extensive consultation program. The people stated loud and clear what they would like to see.
This piece of legislation comes out and it does not reflect one thing that the Canadian people said they wanted in this document. Not one. Why? Because those people over there always know best: “Those poor Canadian people out there do not understand. We are the smart ones. We have been elected and put in this place. We will solve all their problems”. They are supposed to sit back, shut up and take it.
Being an old sheep herder back in my farming days, if I was moving sheep from one place to another and I wanted to get them across some water to the other side, I had to drag one through the water and it would be bleating, screaming and kicking. I would sit it on the other bank. One was not enough so I would drag another one across and there would be two over there. Once I got three sheep on the other side, the rest of the sheep would say, “There are three sheep over there. As bad as we hate water, we are going to plough through it”.
And what do I see here? Bills like this one. We know it is going to pass because two or three here have crossed the water and all the rest of the sheep will rise to their feet and vote in favour of the legislation because those guys know best.
Stop the dictatorship.
