Mr. Speaker, growing up in small town Saskatchewan the RCMP was a strong symbol of authority. As young children we knew that if we were to get in trouble the RCMP would be there to correct it. We also knew that if we were not breaking the law or doing anything wrong we did not have to fear the RCMP.
Other countries did not have quite the same situation. I remember as a university student being challenged over one Christmas holiday to see if I could read the Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. I managed to get through it and got a picture of the viciousness of a regime where the government controlled the police force and used it to its own ends. Governments move consistently to bring all things under their control and to have greater control. Its goal is to expand itself.
The legislation concerns me not for what it addresses but for what it misses. It begins by ignoring the recommendations of the Hughes report, a $10 million report that called for the separation of police and politics.
The Hughes report revealed the extent of political involvement that took place at that APEC conference. Mr. Carle from the PMO was clearly influencing the RCMP's conduct and was directing police activities. The commissioner of the RCMP continues to be at the deputy minister level. Problems arise when police and politics get tied too tightly. My concern with the legislation is that rather than severing those ties it more tightly ties the RCMP to its political masters. Clause 10.1 states:
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has the primary responsibility to ensure the security for the proper functioning of any intergovernmental conference in which two or more states participate, that is attended by persons granted privileges and immunities under this Act--
Subclause 10.1(2) states:
For the purpose of carrying out its responsibility under subsection (1), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police may take appropriate measures, including controlling, limiting or prohibiting access to any area to the extent and in a manner that is reasonable in the circumstances.
We already had problems in Canada and the APEC conference was one example where those problems arose. I will talk a bit about another situation where we have an example of the abuse of the relationship between the police and state powers.
Farmers in western Canada were being squeezed tightly by lower prices in the early 1990s. Prices were dropping and the prices in the United States at that time were considerably higher. A number of farmers in desperation decided that they needed to try to do something about it.
Dave Sawatzky was a young farmer from Gladstone, Manitoba, who needed to pay his bills. In the early 1990s he had a growing need for cash on his farm. Between that and his exasperation with the grain handling monopoly in Manitoba it prompted him to begin hauling wheat to the United States.
The book Jailhouse Justice , written by Don Baron, states:
He started with grain from his own farm, then began hauling for friends and neighbours and returning with their needed cash. He was soon being offered more grain by grateful growers than he could handle going day and night. He hired other trucks and moved about 600 truckloads in 1993 and 1994, crossing at Manitoba border points. At times he was buying grain from farmers and hauling it. Some observers say now that at least a dozen farm families would have lost their farms without Sawatzky's efforts. To say nothing of his own farm.
He moved 600 loads of grain in 1993 and 1994. This movement began to build up as dozens of farmers joined in trying to get a decent price for their product. The reaction was interesting. Early on the Canadian Wheat Board issued a press release in which the chief commissioner said there was nothing that the Canadian Wheat Board could do about it.
It was interesting that as more farmers began to haul wheat there was a change in that attitude. The wheat board became concerned and felt it needed to stop this movement of grain. It began to work under the auspices of the agriculture minister and the minister responsible for the wheat board at the time, who then began to bring in some other government departments. It began to involve the customs division, the RCMP, as well as the justice department. Soon producers were being charged with illegally exporting grain as the full weight of the Canadian government was used against them.
The way the situation worked was that farmers would go to the United States with their loads of wheat. They would come back to the border and they would be ticketed at customs. They would get in their vehicles, drive their own trucks away from the border and then the RCMP would be called to arrest them.
By 1995 there were 100 farmers supporting Mr. Sawatsky. In May 1996 Judge Arnold Connor ruled that the permits were not required at all. The government took massive steps to try to stop the farmers and did it illegally. To this day that was an illegal action. The Canadian Customs Act which was used against the farmers did not require an exporter to provide customs officers with a permit to take grain across the border. It was on these grounds that farmers had been challenged.
I would like to read from Jailhouse Justice , another example of what happened a month earlier to a farm family:
The headline screamed out the astonishing news, “Farm Family Terrorized in Middle of the Night”. And the news release went on, “Armed men entered the home of Norman and Edith Desrochers...very early in the morning of April 10th (1996). Edith was just home from the hospital after major surgery. The intruders marched across the kitchen floor and disconnected all the phones. The Desrochers could call no one for help. Yet other intruders were in their farmyard taking one of their trucks”.
That news release went on, “These were not gang members, not the Mafia, but five RCMP officers and 10 Canadian Customs employees. Mr. Desrochers had exported his own grain a few days earlier without permission from the Goodale Wheat Board. This permission would have cost him thousands of dollars because he is a Western farmer, but it is free of charge to farmers outside the Wheat Board Area”.
The word was soon out that this furious assault began in the 5:15 a.m. pre-dawn darkness. Mounties and Customs officials entered the farm at Baldur in south-west Manitoba, where the Desrochers had farmed for years and had raised daughters Coreen and Monica and sons Clayton and Jeffrey. The intruders came in without knocking, triggering a time of terror for the occupants.
One well-read and perceptive supporter of these growers soon reported an almost unheard-of-twist--the Desrochers' search warrant had been altered to read “by day or night”.
Yes, this family had suffered the shocking and terrifying experience of a late night police raid on their home. That invasion and intimidation was carried out...because Norman had been involved earlier in challenges to the Board's tight grain monopoly. He and other growers had sold their own grain. And they were convinced the government board wanted farmers like them jailed.
This brutal attack was caused by political interference. The Canadian Wheat Board and the Canadian Wheat Board minister overreacted. Justice officials overreacted or were manipulated and farmers were intimidated and persecuted. RCMP and customs and revenue officials ended up being used by cabinet ministers against normal Canadians trying to live their lives and make a living.
These were not the only farmers who were punished by these immoral actions. Probably the most notable example of that involved a farmer named Andy McMechan who had been hauling barley to the United States. Again Jailhouse Justice states:
—his need for revenue became critical and his saga returned to the media. He again defied Ottawa's monopoly and in March '96 hauled grain to the U.S. without an export licence. On his return to the border crossing, a Customs officer and three RCMP offers met him. His tractor was ordered confiscated. He refused to give it up.
The next day he and a neighbour hauled 1500 more bushels across the border to his farm in N.D. Again when he returned Customs and RCMP officers were waiting. Andy explained what happened next. “I sat there for 15 minutes and no one came out, so I left and went home. About 9 p.m. that night I was arrested at home for theft over $5,000--”
Mr. McMechan was put in jail. He spent 155 days in jail in 1996 from July 9 to December 10 for selling his own wheat. He experienced more than 50 strip searches while in prison.
My concern this morning is that these farmers clearly did not want to be law-breakers. People who are trying to make a living are put in prison, strip-searched, raided in the middle of the night and harassed. They are driven to bankruptcy and fined exorbitant amounts. This is an example of a bureaucracy gone crazy and the bill continues that.
For that reason I think we need to scrutinize, amend or, if at all possible, defeat the legislation.