Madam Speaker, when I saw the bill come before the House I specifically asked to speak to it. I immediately thought that the bill encompassed both some of the best intentions and worst ideas that I have ever seen in a piece of legislation to come before us.
It is not uncommon for good intentions and poor execution to be commingled in the same political project as we have before us today, which of course is to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act to essentially prohibit discrimination on the basis of social condition, whatever that means.
I am disturbed that this is a Senate bill originating in that other place which would happen to be the one that does not have any democratic legitimacy. That would be the chamber filled with unaccountable, unelected, patronage hacks. Dozens of thoughtful private members' bills have come forward from members of this place who happen to be elected and accountable, whose ideas happen to come from the voters and not from their ivory tower. Private members' bills that originate from this place ought to be deemed votable by the private members' bill committee but rather it gave one of the very few votable spots available to empower individual MPs to a senator in the case of Bill S-11.
That in my humble opinion is sufficient grounds to vote against this or any other bill that originates from a completely absurd anachronism of an institution which should have died with the 19th century from whence it came.
I do not think there is a member of this place or citizen of the country who does not oppose poverty and unjust discrimination. I certainly do not. I prefer to demonstrate my compassion for those who have economic circumstances less fortunate than my own through private charitable activities and contributions. I happen to believe that compassion as Mother Teresa reminded us literally means to suffer with. It does not mean to legislate good intentions.
When I hear the intentions of the movers of the bill, when I hear the member for Shefford say, as I believe she did in this place, that Canada's obsession with the debt and the deficit demonstrate that we really despise the poor, I frankly find that bizarre in a country that has spent untold billions of scarce resources by taxing money away from struggling families, many of whom are below the so-called poverty line. In this enormous project of wealth redistribution to say that Canadians somehow despise the poor because they want to pay their bills is a gross statement of hyperbole which does not belong in this place or this debate.
What would the bill seek to do? I do not think anybody really knows. I read the transcripts of the Senate committee where Bill S-11 was examined. Witness after witness was asked how social condition is defined. There appeared to be no clear consensus or no clear definition.
One thing is clear. To prevent the public sector, parliament, from discriminating against people on the basis of their social condition, it would have some very interesting but unintended consequences. For one thing it would take what is right now a steeply progressive tax system and turn it into a completely flat tax system. Right now the top 1% of income earners, those who report income of over about $150,000 a year, represent about 9% of the income reported in Canada but pay over 20% of the taxes.
The current tax laws very clearly discriminate against people on the basis of income. The lowest income people, I would argue quite appropriately, pay no taxes. We have this enormous case of discrimination on the basis of social condition.
Do the movers of the bill intend that it ought to be interpreted in such a way that the tax laws of the country would no longer be able or that social benefits should no longer be able to be targeted on the basis of income?
Do they suggest the clawback that exists for various social payments ought to be eliminated and that billionaires ought to have the same entitlement to social payments as do the indigent poor? Probably not but they have not addressed that question.
What is it that they are attempting to do? I would suggest they are trying to impose a radical egalitarian, frankly socialist idea which is Marxist in its origins on the private sector to restrict liberty and freedom.
We just heard the parliamentary secretary suggest that if this law were passed it would change the way that banks deal with the poor, with people who are in poverty. What do these people mean by that? Do they mean that if such a statute or amendment were passed a bank or a financial institution would be compelled by force of law, as interpreted and implied by an unelected and unaccountable human rights tribunal, to supply a loan to somebody with no income, no assets and no reasonable prospect of assets or income?
Is that what is implied? If it is not, then why have we not defined that kind of interpretation in the bill?
The lack of definition surrounding social condition is wide open. Is it merely an oversight? No, it is clearly not. Clearly the advocates of this radical egalitarian socialist idea have in mind allowing a wide open interpretation so that our friends, the robed Solons on the bench, may interpret and apply this law in whatever manner they deem appropriate.
In other words, the advocates of potentially radical legislation such as this do not want to paint a picture for democratic discussion as to what the consequences of such legislation would be, they want the courts to do it.
I refer to Professor Martha Jackman of the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa who appeared at some length before the Senate committee on this issue both in November 1997 and May 1998. She made some very interesting statements defending the lack of definition.
She says “I would strongly discourage you from including the notion of a definition within this bill because this would be anomalous. There is a significant amount of literature about the idea of race being essentially an artificial concept”. We have race, religion and other grounds within the bills that courts and commissions have wrestled with successfully from the perspective of radical leftists such as Professor Jackman.
She goes on to say “I would discourage the committee from the idea of defining social condition within the bill because that freezes the definition at a particular time that is antithetical to the approach that has been taken in human rights statutes”.
She goes on to talk about the case of Vriend in Alberta where the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the sovereign democratic legislature of the people of Alberta was contravening the charter of rights by not having included in a particular statute a term which now exists in the charter of rights. In other words, the courts decided to legislate from the bench in the Vriend decision. She says that if we pass this well-intentioned amendment of social condition we will be empowering the courts to do the same thing in respect of social condition as they did with respect to social orientation in Vriend.
She said “Based on precedence, recognition under provincial and federal human rights statutes is in itself a criteria for finding an analogous, non-enumerated ground under the charter”.
What she is saying is “Please, parliament, pass this bill so we can then empower the courts to use this bill as the basis of reading in a new constitutionally protected ground of non-discrimination”.
I submit that if the proponents of this remedy wish it to be entrenched in the Constitution they ought to do it directly, honestly and transparently by introducing an amendment to the charter of rights and freedoms and not through the nefarious back door of this statute.