Brian Fitzpatrick

[Agriculture, May 3rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, during a debate in the U.S. congress this week, Congressman Nick Smith from Michigan said that the attempt to cap farm subsidies had utterly failed. In short, Congressman Smith said that the U.S. farm bill provides unlimited farm support for the next six years.

What is the Liberal government going to do to protect Canadian farmers from these new American subsidies?

[Hockey, May 3rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, sport competitions are great unifiers and they make communities proud. That is certainly how the citizens in my riding are feeling this week after the tremendous victory of the Tisdale Trojans in the Canadian Midget Hockey Championship.

Last Sunday the Trojans took the Air Canada Cup, the ultimate prize in Canadian midget hockey, in an impressive 6 to 2 victory over the Dartmouth Subways. The star player in the final game was Myles Zimmer, the son of Tisdale Mayor, Rollie Zimmer. Myles scored a hat trick and made his father and everyone in Tisdale very proud. Head coach Darrell Mann hails from Sylvania, a community just south of Tisdale.

Tisdale is a town of 3,800 people. It has tremendous civic pride. Congratulations to the town of Tisdale and the Trojans on this magnificent victory.

[Firefighters' Pensions, May 2nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I support the initiative and the thrust of the motion. This has been going on for at least eight or nine years, I surmise. Firefighters have been to Ottawa on an annual basis and I have often wondered what kinds of interests the government is trying to protect in that it does not free this thing up and allow this sort of thing to happen. Who is behind the scenes and who is doing it?

We have made some gains, but I want to throw out a word of caution on the whole thing. Personally I will support the motion, but it is worded “consider”. We have talked about what the age of consent for minors should be and the government has told us that it is a complex matter and we should consider and study it. It has studied this for nine years. We have had the same thing arise with the defence of artistic merit on charges of pornography. It has studied that for nine years without any action, so I am a little worried about the word consider.

I wish the motion were worded so that we would take immediate action to implement this now and not throw it into more studies, more committees and more considering. These folks have been very patient on this issue. They have been working at it very hard. To me, the word consider is a big loophole in the motion and I wish the motion were straightened out.

[Supply, April 23rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, how do we know it happens?

I have a problem with Mr. Justice Shaw's reasoning on artistic merit. If I understand the decision correctly it was not intended for distribution. That was one aspect of his decision. If I look at the Mona Lisa or read Mark Twain there is a consumer or critic at the other end who makes the judgment. I have a lot of problems with the judge's reasoning in the decision.

The way the section of the criminal code is worded it seems if one can find anything of artistic merit it becomes an absolute right and defence. However I remind the House of what Oliver Wendell Holmes said about freedom of expression. He said if one stands in a crowded theatre and yells fire there is no such thing as absolute right to free expression. If the legislation is worded as an absolute right it is incumbent on parliament to fix the problem.

If there is a conflict between the protection of children and artistic merit we should weigh in favour of the child and not the artistic merit argument. Could my hon. colleague comment on the balancing act that must take place in this area? I would hate to see children lose out to the argument of artistic merit every time.

[Supply, April 23rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I find it interesting that the Bloc member would be shocked that a party would want to use the notwithstanding clause. I think in his home province of Quebec, the provincial government, with Bill 101, did in fact exercise the notwithstanding clause to deprive minorities of language right freedoms. It seems an unusual criticism coming from a Bloc member.

I want to make something perfectly clear. We do not intend to criminalize the victim in this situation, which is the child. The Bloc member surely cannot be saying that if an adult exploited an 11 year old or a 12 year old that we would charge the 11 year old or the 12 year old and bring that child to court. That is absolute nonsense. That is not the intent of this motion. The intent is to criminalize the actions of adults.

The member says we are trying to politicize the matter. In most United States jurisdictions the age of consent is 16 years. In England or Great Britain it is 16 years. In Ireland the age is 17 years. In Australia the age is 16 years. What we are proposing is pretty much in synch with what I consider as the civilized world.

The member says we want to complicate things. He indicated during his speech, and I am sure he does not want to be identified with the group or people who are asking for this, that some were even advocating lowering the age of consent to 10 years. The question I have is very specific. Who in the world in this country, who is responsible and reasonable, would advocate lowering the age of consent to 10 years? I would be curious to know who that is.

[Supply, April 23rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, my question does not get into international conventions, the Internet, global accords and so on. It deals with real circumstances and situations.

A lot of the problems with the law in Canada cannot be cured by making more laws and making them thicker and higher. A lot of the problems have to do with making our laws more effective. We must see the defects in legislation and fix them so the problems are resolved.

The government says it wants to protect young people from sexual exploitation. We came up with a specific amendment that would go back to what we had before 1990, something which worked for decades and did not create any problems.

The circumstance I will deal with is a real one. It is not isolated to myself. As a former lawyer I had a case where I was asked for advice. A couple in their mid-thirties had a 14 year old child who was living with a man who was 40 years of age. The couple asked me what they could legally do. I looked at the criminal code. I am not a criminal law expert. Parents have a duty to provide the necessities for their children but the age of consent was 14.

Can the minister tell me whether the duty to provide for the necessities of a child extends to 14 and 15 year olds? If it does, what will the government do so parents can exercise that right?

[Supply, April 23rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the government's policy of protecting children with alleged tough legislation against sexual exploitation has a big hole in it. That is the defence of our artistic merit under the so-called charter of rights freedom of expression ambit.

There is no absolute right in this world. Rights always have to be balanced. When somebody exercises a right that imperils or seriously endangers the rights or the security of someone else, especially children, the law has to step in to protect those people. The government has failed to do that.

It has two clear ways of dealing with this matter and managing it. I will put both of these to the hon. member and I would like his response to them.

The first is to clearly define the limits of the defence of artistic merit and put some real meaning behind this thing rather than leaving it open-ended and leaving it to a judge, probably a Liberal-leaning judge, to interpret what is meant by this defence. Our children need something better than that and that is why we are here. We are here to make laws for this country and we seem to be reneging on our responsibility by not dealing with that matter.

The other option is to do what the fathers of the charter of rights intended; that the House would have an override when the public was crying for some action.

My interpretation of the Sharpe decision is that from coast to coast, and I will not use all the other coasts to which my friends across the way always like to refer, there is real anger at that decision. People feel that children are being left vulnerable and that the government is unwilling to act.

However Pierre Trudeau and the 10 premiers who created the charter of rights fully understood that the House, under some extraordinary circumstances, would override a Liberal-minded court that made decisions which flew in the face of what the public expected.

Why will the government not take emergency action to define clearly what is meant by artistic merit and remove it from the interpretation of Liberal-type judges or exercise the notwithstanding clause in the name of protecting our children against sexual exploitation?

[Supply, April 23rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I want to make some comments about age and then turn to a question. For young offenders the age is 18 years. In most provinces one has to be 16 to drive a vehicle. To gain employment and not violate labour laws, one has to be 16. Parents are required under the criminal code to provide the necessaries to children under the age of 16. The right to vote is given at 18. In a marital breakdown, the non-custodial parent is required to provide support to the child and it extends well beyond the age of 14.

I am curious. I would like to address this question to the hon. member. What would motivate a federal government to reduce the age of sexual consent to 14 and deprive parents of the ability to protect their children from sexual exploitation in view of all these other requirements that the government has seen fit, in its wisdom, to impose, such as minimum ages and so on? They are much higher than this one. Why would a government see the necessity to lower the age for sexual consent to what I think is the extraordinarily low age of 14?

[Species at Risk Act, April 16th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, more government, more regulation, more intrusion into our day to day lives, a heavy-handed approach to basic fundamental rights: this is increasingly becoming the agenda of the government. This legislation is representative of that approach.

I think every member of the House supports the intended goal of the legislation to protect endangered species. That is not the problem. The difficulty here is that there is a whole host of stakeholders who are opposed to this legislation. When we analyze that, the root cause of that opposition is lack of consultation. The government and the bureaucracy have an approach to mandate and legislate results without consultation or co-operation. There is a tremendous amount of opposition to this piece of legislation.

I am from Saskatchewan. This legislation, along with other intrusive pieces of legislation from the government, will have a negative impact on rural Saskatchewan and I suppose other parts of the country as well. What are some of these concerns?

I mentioned that it is running roughshod over fundamental rights. Property rights are the heart and soul or our economic system. The free enterprise system could not work without our concept of property. It would totally break down.

The other day we celebrated the 20th anniversary of the charter of rights. When the Liberal government created the charter of rights, it deliberately chose to ignore the inclusion of property rights in our constitution as a basic protection. I can see why the Liberals did not want that in the charter of rights. It is this type of legislation we are looking at today that underscores their contempt for the concept of property rights.

In a modern democracy, all we can expect is that if the government needs property, at least we will have due process in expropriation proceedings and we will receive fair compensation. The government refused to guarantee those basic rights in this legislation. That is dangerous.

As far as interfering with basic rights is concerned, a second danger point is criminal justice principles. In many ways a hallmark of a western democracy is how we treat the accused in our society. One of the principles of our criminal justice system that is pretty strong and basic is that we do not make criminals out of citizens who did not have mens rea, the intent to commit the crime.

This legislation has serious consequences for someone who innocently might cause damage to habitat or an endangered species. No matter how innocent, he or she could face five years in jail and $250,000 in fines. In my province many of the farmers are corporate farmers. They have been required to incorporate to deal with taxation issues and other matters. The sanctions are even heavier for a corporate entity, some $1 million in fines.

We are observing the decline of rural Canada. In a lot of ways, if the government is not the cause of the decline, it has helped to accelerate it. I had the privilege of driving through North Dakota not long ago. There are five pasta processing plants in that state near the Canadian border. A few years back a group of entrepreneurial farmers in the prairies wanted to develop their own pasta plant. The Canadian Wheat Board regulations would not permit them to do so. Their project was aborted because of government regulation.

In rural Saskatchewan today, any sort of minor roadwork, ditch digging, putting in culverts, removing an old bridge or anything along those lines now requires environmental impact studies due to the legislation of the government.

The government's rail transportation policies have been a disaster for rural Saskatchewan. They have been a disaster for our small towns and our rural highway network which is falling apart.

The government's income support programs have been a disaster as well. When I talk to farm people back in my province I am told these programs are lean on results and very heavy on bureaucracy and complication.

There have now been a few more things added to this legislation including cruelty to animals amendments which are going to have a huge negative impact on rural Canada.

We have already debated the firearms legislation many times in the House. It sends out dangerous and hostile signals to people in rural Canada.

The government should be looking at policies that encourage growth in rural Canada instead of coming up with policies that accelerate the decline of rural Canada, some of which I just mentioned. There are many more. The government is perceived in my part of rural Canada as a hostile, alien entity. Its agenda is not compatible with the interests of rural Canada.

Emerson and Thoreau did not like city life. They preferred instead to get close to nature, to get out to the forest and away from the craziness of urban life in the United States. I have spent a good deal of my life in rural Saskatchewan. After spending a lot of time in an urban area it is very refreshing to get back into a rural area close to nature.

People who live in rural Canada are much more sensitive than their urban cousins are about the environment and endangered species. They have much better knowledge of that as well. Quite often the government gets its inspiration from urban society. It may have good intentions, but as Shakespeare and others have said, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The government should be listening to rural Canadians when bringing in policies of this nature.

It gets a bit scary to hear the words “the government should do something about that” because every time the government takes on a task, its cure is quite literally worse than the problem. It has a bad habit of doing that sort of thing. The government wants to regulate and control our day to day lives. It wants to respond to every request from a group in our society for the government to do something. In response it comes up with more bureaucracy, legislation or something that interferes with our basic fundamental rights.

There has to be a refocus because the country is in decline. When I came back from the United States in 1969 our dollar was almost on par with the United States dollar. Our standard of living and our tax rates were equivalent to those of the United States. Today our standard of living is 30% lower than that of the United States. I do not know what the dollar is today, but yesterday it was still in the 62¢ range. Canada is slowly headed in the wrong direction.

We need a government that creates an environment that challenges people to aim for the gold medal, not the bronze medal. With this government we are dealing with a lead medal. We are not even aiming at third place any more.

We do not need more government interference in our day to day lives. We need some positive signals from the government that encourage growth and give people hope for the future. This legislation is just one of many pieces of legislation which send out the wrong signal.

[An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (Cruelty to Animals and Firearms) and the Firearms Act, April 11th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, that is another part of our heritage in Saskatchewan that the government and its do-gooder friends do not recognize. They want to revise Canadian history their way and get rid of the traditions in our country.

Maybe we should take a lot of our Liberal colleagues out there and get them to participate in our gopher derby, then they might understand that it is not such a bad deal before the radical animal rights--