Mr. Speaker, it must be fairly obvious to anyone watching the proceedings today that it is only opposition members who are getting up to speak on the bill. The reason is that we are the only ones in the House who are concerned about private property rights and the fact that the government wants to confiscate property without any compensation.
It is a shame that there are no media people here to record this and tell the public what is going on. I realize they are very busy with the Warren Kinsella affair and do not have the opportunity to be here right now. Actually, I will bet that the Liberals opposite wish that Warren Kinsella had stayed in North Vancouver the way he promised to when he ran against me in 1997. He said that he had made his new home there and he was staying there. I can tell the House that I am glad he went over to those folks over there.
I think it is incredible that we have a situation here where, at the discretion of the minister, there will be compensation or no compensation for the confiscation of people's land. There are no standards by which a landowner will be able to judge whether or not he will get compensation. There will not be any guarantee, because if the players change, the people making the discretionary decisions change. There will be no certainty for those landowners. I believe the end result will be similar to what has happened in the United States: kill it and bury it if there is the slightest chance that there is something on your land that will cause the government to confiscate your property. This will not work in the interest of species at risk. It will work against them.
I have a constituent in my riding who owns property in the Kamloops area. He has a known species at risk on his land. He has deliberately produced a roadway that goes right around and well out of the way of this species so that he can protect it. However, he has told me that if he gets wind that the government is coming in and will not allow him to have that road to the other part of his land he will just make sure that this species disappears before the government finds out.
This is a really key thing that the government does not seem to be realizing. It has not given it enough thought. I think that is typical of a lot that the government does. It simply does not give legislation sufficient thought.
For example, I see the Minister of Justice sitting opposite. Obviously there was never enough thought given to that ridiculous gun registry that has blown away $700 million. There was never enough thought given to that stupid DNA registry that allows convicted criminals to escape giving DNA samples.
There is simply not enough thought given to the legislation that comes from that side of the House, but the Liberals had no trouble today blowing away $115 million on a ridiculous humanities research project. As if there was not already enough money wasted in that Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, they will blow away another $115 million.
I well remember being at a cocktail party with Pierre Trudeau and a former member of the House, Ian McClelland, one night. Ian McClelland said to Pierre Trudeau “Great group of social programs that you introduced there, Pierre. It's a shame you never thought of how we would pay for them”. Does anyone know what Pierre Trudeau said? He said “Yes, when I think about it we should have given it more thought at the time”.
That is my point. Still today the government is not giving enough thought to the legislation it rams through the House. That is why opposition members, one after the other, are getting up on the bill to try to defend the property rights of Canadians who will have their property taken away from them.
I think the problem comes down to what I call the politics of envy. It is the politics of left wingers who hate free enterprise, hate success, hate people who have managed to accumulate a bit of wealth and hate people who have private property. They think the government should give them everything and that it should own everything. It is that type of people who have no sympathy for homeowners and landowners who run the risk of having their property confiscated as a result of the bill. It is the people who have worked hard and who have made a success of themselves whom the opposition members are trying to defend today.
It makes me think again of Pierre Trudeau and his disdain for private property rights, the refusal of the Liberals to put private property rights in our constitution and the ongoing desire to waste taxpayers' money. There is $115 million that will be thrown away on this humanities research thing. I suppose it will spend money like the social sciences humanities research council already does on things like $125,000 for the Tell Madaba archeological project and its investigations of urban life in the semi-arid highlands of central Jordan. Or there is $40,222 for a project called understanding rural household, farm and village: reconceptualizing the dynamics of gender relations in Iran.
Are these good uses of taxpayers' money? The Liberals blow away the money on this stuff, but they will not compensate landowners for confiscation of their land.
There is $78,000 for isotopic studies of infant feeding practices in archaeology. This is the type of thing this Pierre Trudeau humanities council will waste our money on. It is an absolute waste of money that should be dedicated to looking after the Canadian people when their land is confiscated. There is $77,000 for behaviour and biology of early southern African populations and $65,200 for visual representation and social practice in classic Maya households.
I have pages and pages of this stuff. We try to get some sense out of the social sciences humanities research council. We ask why it is giving this money away. It says that is private. It cannot give us the files. It cannot explain why the grants were made.
The money that is blown away is a disgrace, such as $38,600 for history and aesthetics of television medical dramas in North America. Are they studying Dr. Kildare? Who cares? There is $23,740 for a study of mass media pornography. Are they spending their time on the Internet surfing and signing up? There is $86,726 for the use of time by teenagers and young adults, an international comparison. It goes on and on. There is not enough thought given to it.
Before the members opposite blew away $115 million today on a useless Pierre Trudeau foundation, they should have looked at what they are already wasting in the social sciences humanities research council, just like they should have looked more closely at this bill and what they are doing with their confiscation of private property without compensation. It is a disgrace. They should be ashamed of themselves. It is not only the Minister of Justice sitting there with a smile on her face, acting like everything is fine. She is not even the Minister of Justice any more. They should be ashamed of themselves and we should vote down the bill when it comes to a vote.