Brian Fitzpatrick

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, October 11th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the member has referred to a vision. My question is in regard to vision and where we are going with the Speech from the Throne.

There was mention made in the throne speech about expanding the Official Languages Act in the area of health care. I would like the member for Mississauga West to explain where he sees this expansion of official languages into the area of delivering health care. Where does he see the government going with this?

[Committee Business and Reinstatement of Government Bills, October 7th, 2002]

It's in the motion.

[Committee Business and Reinstatement of Government Bills, October 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would remind the House that the government has had the species at risk bill on its table for nine years. Now all of a sudden it is bringing in closure and ramming this thing through. It is a disgrace. The government has had nine years to deal with this matter. To break parliamentary rules and traditions with closure to deal with this sort of thing is astounding.

I want to raise another question on the cruelty to animals legislation. The House leader says it is popular. It is not popular among farmers. We are introducing American-style tort law into our criminal law. I have visions of the American style of trial lawyers, well financed by animal rights groups, challenging every practice existing in western Canadian farming today. These people cannot afford to deal with this matter. They are fighting for their survival right now. I would ask the House leader to explain what specific protections are in that legislation to protect our farmers from harassment by the American trial-lawyer style of people.

[National Parks, October 4th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the spruce budworm is absolutely devastating Prince Albert National Park. The government to date has refused to do anything to deal with this problem despite the fact that BTK, an organic based chemical, is an effective and safe treatment.

Why has the government embarked on a massive expansion of national parks when it refuses to manage the existing parks?

[Species at Risk Act, June 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to address some of the comments raised by members from the rural Liberal caucus in regard to clause 64. I have looked at clause 64 and the amendments under that clause. The members seem to have the impression that landowners need not worry now, that there is going to be protection in law for fair compensation, perhaps even fair market value compensation.

From what I can see in this legislation, if a landowner is standing before a judge and has to rely on what is in clause 64, with all due respect I do not think they have very much to stand on. There is a lot of wiggle room and discretion involved in the clause. There are no clear guarantees of property rights under those provisions. The word “may” is a permissive word. There is no mandatory requirement with that word. I really think they are misreading the impact of these amendments under clause 64.

The real problem with the legislation is a heavy-handed, command and control approach with respect to affected landowners. I have said this before, and I certainly believe it: The government believes that it can get results by simply ordering and commanding those results. I think that in the modern age it is becoming more and more clear that if a person wants results, a person manages those results and relies on co-operation and an understanding of all the processes involved to get those results. Just simply ordering results will not get those results.

This type of approach, as the member for Lethbridge pointed out, has been employed in the U.S. We have that as a laboratory we can use to see how this sort of command approach has worked. There are hundreds of cases in the United States that show how this approach actually threatens endangered species.

I want to share just one case. There are many, but I just wanted to go through one case to underscore the problem. The name of the individual in this case is Ben Cone. He owned 7,200 acres of woodland in North Carolina. The 7,200 acres had been clear-cut in the 1930s and through good management practices it had been restored in the 1970s and 1980s. The Cone family had managed that woodland and made a living out of it by a careful, selected harvesting of that woodlot. In 1991 the wildlife service entered his property and declared that approximately 1,500 acres were to be set aside as a habitat to protect 29 woodpeckers that had been listed and had been identified in that area.

The effect of this was that Mr. Cone could no longer harvest the 1,500 acres of property. He could not really do very much with it. It lost its economic value. It lost its use to the Cone family. The value of the property was something like $2.3 million. After this process was over, the value had dropped to $83,000. They had lost that much value. What did Mr. Cone do with the remaining 5,800 acres of land? He clear-cut it. He abandoned his selective forestry practices and reverted to clear-cutting practices because he did not want the wildlife service coming in, finding another species at risk in his area and having it affect more of his land.

However, Mr. Cone also had a lot of neighbours who had woodland and timberland just like he had. We can guess what they did. They clear-cut the land. Thousands and thousands of acres were clear-cut in this North Carolina area for one simple reason: They did not want the wildlife service coming in and in effect expropriating their property by declaring any portion of their land habitat.

I think this underscores the point that this heavy-handed, command and control system does not protect species at risk. In fact it endangers those species, and this case simply underscores that fact. There are a lot of cases like this, and I am surprised that the government is not aware of those unintended consequences.

I have a few other comments about the legislation. There are no guaranteed compensation rights in Bill C-5. Relegating it to regulations and bureaucrats is not reassuring to landowners. There is no clear process in the bill for determining compensation and it should have been dealt with. Another deficiency in the bill, something that was missed, is the fact that there is no co-operative approach for creating and funding good conservation and stewardship programs.

However, there is something that would not be missed. I do not know of any initiative taken by a Liberal government over the last 30 or 40 years whereby a seed was planted and did not grow into a large empire, an empire with a lot of civil servants and bureaucrats. The firearms registry legislation is a recent history of this fact. I do not know of a single seed planted in this town for any type of legislation that did not lead to a bureaucracy.

There are government departments in every province and territory in this country. Departments like fisheries and oceans are armed with people heading out into rural Canada to intrude into the lives of people who are just trying to make a living. I can see a big shift of wealth. People who create the wealth and pay the bills in this country are seeing their money going to the government to fund another empire. That is another area of the legislation that concerns me, and I do not think the committee paid much attention to that aspect of the bill. I do not think the committee looked into the economic impact of this sort of legislation and what it entails.

I want to emphasize the fact that Canadian Alliance members and the Canadian public want effective policy and legislation to protect species at risk. Unfortunately, this legislation, because of its failure to accept and recognize some basic rights such as property rights of owners, will drive those folks underground and the real victims in this legislation will be the very thing that the legislation intends to protect: species at risk.

It is really unfortunate that the amendments proposed by the committee to address these concerns were not dealt with. I think the government wants to push this stuff through and put the cost of species at risk onto the shoulders of landowners in rural Canada. In all fairness, urban people probably cause far more harm to wildlife through their overconsumption and the toxic waste, pollution and so on created by urban life. Those things have probably caused more problems for animals and species at risk in this country than any rural individual has, but the cost of the legislation is being imposed on the rural population and the landowners of rural Canada, not on urban people, and that is very unfair.

[Species at Risk Act, June 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the minister has referred to fear. I do not want to get into where all this fear comes from, but the folks in Saskatchewan who I have talked to are very fearful that if their habitat is adversely affected by this legislation they will not receive fair compensation for that.

In a legal sense this matter could be dealt with very simple language in the legislation, not in regulations or assurances from the government. Someone who is adversely affected should receive fair market value as compensation. That is a clearly defined term.

Why could the minister not alleviate a lot of the fears in the legislation, make that minor amendment and assure landowners they will receive fair market compensation for adversely affected land?

[Question No. 148, June 4th, 2002]

With regard to the provision of certain paid prescription drugs by Indian Affairs and Northern Development Canada for aboriginals in Canada: ( a ) why have certain drugs been delisted; ( b ) is there a plan to coordinate with the various stakeholders to ensure that Treaty Indians receive coverage through alternative sources such as provincial health plans; ( c ) if not, is this consistent with the government's commitment to ensuring that all Canadians have access to essential health services?

[Question No. 147, June 4th, 2002]

Regarding the current trade issues with the United States with respect to the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB): ( a ) what percentage or proportion of the legal fees and costs incurred by the CWB will the federal treasury absorb; ( b ) is there any portion not covered by the federal treasury; and ( c ) is this consistent with the federal government's position with respect to other industries and sectors such as Bombardier?

[Public Safety Act, 2002, May 27th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, we have passed Bill C-36 and now we are on Bill C-55. As my colleague was just getting into, these pieces of legislation are designed to deal with a new paradigm, a new phenomenon that we have the world today, the threat of international terrorism which became so evident last September 11.

The problem is we have this new paradigm but how does the civilized world deal with that problem? What are the facts with this phenomenon of international terrorism?

For the past decade or decade and a half throughout various locations in the Middle East thousands and thousands of people have been trained to become international terrorists. They are distributed throughout the world in the form of sleeper cells. It is a highly sophisticated network. It was designed to operate without a central command system. Perhaps we have destroyed or fragmented the central command and design behind the network but the sleeper cells exist.

What has the government's response been to this new paradigm? It seems to think if there is more government bureaucracy, more regulations, more laws, more infringement of the rights and privacy of Canadian citizens and more taxes that somehow the problem will go away, that it will have been dealt with.

The bill is deficient, as is Bill C-36. We are missing the boat. The way to deal with this matter is in the areas of security, our armed forces and immigration and refugee policy. Maybe I am missing something but I have not seen a whole lot of action by the government in regard to those three areas. The military and the security system are starved for resources. The immigration and refugee policies seem to be virtually the same as they were before.

Warren Buffet, the president of Berkshire Hathaway, has interest in some of the biggest insurance companies in the world. At the annual meeting not very long ago he made it abundantly clear there is an absolute certainty that these sleeper cells will strike again and will cause no end of harm and damage to the western world. About 10 days ago U.S. Vice-President Cheney reiterated that it is an absolute certainty that these people will strike again and that they will strike very hard.

A concern I have and one which the government certainly should have is that it has been sleepwalking through this. I think many government members believe that the crisis is over, that it has passed and we can get back to normal business. They seem to think that a $24 air security tax will solve the problem.

What will end up happening, but I hope it does not happen, is that we will wake up some day with a repeat of September 11. Something else will happen. I hope the people behind that action will not have come from Canada. If that were to happen, my prediction is that our trade with the United States would come to a slamming halt within 24 hours. This country would be in serious difficulty. People would look back at this period of time and say that the government had the opportunity to put policies in place to deal with this threat but ignored it. They would say that the government was too busy with cash for contract agreements and all sorts of other things to deal with the issues that were very apparent to Canadians.

I am talking about foresight. I know hindsight is 20:20 but the government has not addressed the real root of the international terrorist threat. It has ignored the core problem and is not dealing with what we should be concerned about. I cannot emphasize it enough.

If we had a repeat of September 11 and it could be pointed out that a leaky immigration or refugee system in Canada caused the problem I am almost absolutely certain the border with the United States would never be the same again. We would pay a heavy price in every sector of the economy. The problems we have experienced in the last year would be minor compared to what we would be facing at that stage.

I wish I could look through a bill like Bill C-55 and see real action by the government with regard to the three areas I have mentioned. However I do not. Creating military zones and giving ministers more power would not deal with the problem. We would be dealing with something after the fact rather than before. The government should be more concerned about taking the necessary steps to prevent something from happening in the first place rather than trying to react to it afterward. Reaction to this sort of problem would be too late. Our country would be in serious difficulty at that stage.

What is a bit perturbing about the legislation is that rather than dealing with the real problems we are facing as Canadians and taking steps to minimize the risk, it would concentrate more power in fewer hands with less accountability. That is not a good thing in a democracy.

Our society was built on being open. It was built on the rule of law and transparency. It was built on giving citizens freedom, liberty and the ability to make decisions. These things are the backbone of our western way of life. Any time governments get more power and are not accountable they can do things in secret, rise above the law and trample on privacy and other issues. That is not a healthy sign. In a democratic society a government moving in that direction like the Liberal government has been doing is in a lot of ways helping international terrorists.

International terrorists want to destroy our way of life. They do not value our individual freedom and liberty. They do not respect our economic or political freedom. They do not respect the rule of law or our open civil society. In their minds it is the enemy and they are out to destroy it.

The government is rushing to create more power for the cabinet and Prime Minister in a secretive, star chamber atmosphere without any transparency. In doing so it is not dealing with important issues like the need to increase our military resources and security forces. It is not taking a hard look at how to close the leaks in our immigration and refugee system. Under the guise of dealing with security the government is seeking to grant more power to the Prime Minister and his little group of people. That is not the answer to the problem. It will not deal with the issue.

[Assisted Human Reproduction Act, May 24th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I knew the rule but in the heat of my speech it escaped me. I apologize to the Chair and members of the House for overlooking that point.

There are other aspects of Bill C-56 I will comment on briefly. These comments do not deal with surrogate parenting. We are not pursuing a lot of areas that other countries are pursuing. The U.S. is debating the whole issue of therapeutic cloning. European countries are into that sort of thing and so on.

I will raise another hypothetical question. We ban stuff in Canada. A lot of us do not feel the research will go anywhere. However let us say it does. Let us say we had effective treatments for something like Lou Gehrig's disease. Can anyone in the House seriously tell me that someone who tried to seek treatment would be a criminal? Would we jail these people or something along those lines? We need to think about these things.

There is one thing history teaches us. Even if we do not agree with something, once it is out of the bottle we cannot get it back in. Science has brought lots of things into the world we do not like but we cannot put them back in the bottle. I have never seen anyone do it. We need to think about this. Banning and criminalizing things is not necessarily the answer. To have some control over the process, a lot of times we would be better off treating problems with common sense and regulation rather than leaving the whole thing open ended or criminalizing the procedure.

The surrogate parenting thing still bothers me. If a perfectly healthy person was born out of that situation what would his or her status be? Would we criminalize the whole activity? For the life of me I cannot see the logic of it.