John Godfrey

[International Development (Financial Institutions) Assistance Act, April 17th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, I suggest, with the agreement of the House, that this matter now be referred not to the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade but rather to committee of the whole.

[International Development (Financial Institutions) Assistance Act, April 17th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, I rise before the House today to table the second reading of a bill that will authorize payments made to the multilateral fund for the Montreal Protocol and the Global Environment Facility.

These organizations were established in 1990 as primary international financial mechanisms to protect the global environment. Since then the multilateral fund for the Montreal Protocol or the MFMP has served as the main financial mechanism for projects aimed at reducing ozone depletion in the developing world.

Similarly, the Global Environment Facility or GEF is the principal international mechanism through which donors can support developing countries in the areas of biodiversity, climate change, the ozone and international waters. It was endorsed as such at the landmark 1992 Rio conference on the environment and development.

As you know, Madam Speaker, we honour our commitments to international institutions in full and on time so that they can carry out their vital work unencumbered by financial shortfalls. To do so in this case it was necessary to add the GEF and the MFMP to the schedule of financial institutions under the International Development (Financial Institutions) Assistance Act. An order in council to this effect was approved on November 15, 1994 and published in the Canada Gazette on November 30, 1994.

The international development act also stipulates that the order in council be tabled before Parliament no more 15 sitting days after it is approved. Due to an administrative oversight this obligation was not met within the specified time.

The bill I am tabling for second reading today will correct that oversight. On this matter I am sure that I have the full support of members on both sides of the House who know the value of environmental protection and want to see Canada continue to meet its financial obligations uninterrupted.

[Canada Water Export Prohibition Act, April 16th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, there is good reason to applaud the initiative of the hon. member for Kamloops in introducing the bill. The government supports the objective of sustaining Canada's water resources and Bill C-232 proposes one way in which we could do it.

I am concerned, however, that the prohibition of water export by interbasin transfers may be too narrow an approach to a complex issue. Access to adequate clean water supplies is critical to our health, to our quality of life and to Canada's competitive position. Much of our economy and jobs are tied directly or indirectly to our supplies in water from farming, forestry and industrial development to tourism and recreational sectors.

Growth in these areas will depend on sustaining the benefits of adequate and clean water resources.

To put it another way, water is an essential part of all ecosystems, from the functions and life support provided by lakes and streams to the role of the global hydrological cycle in sustaining water in all its forms.

Our drainage systems do not conform to political boundaries but continue to unite different parts of our country through travel and commerce and through co-operative efforts to conserve and protect these waterways and their ecosystems.

The Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River connect most of eastern Canada, as the north and south Saskatchewan Rivers link the prairie provinces; the Fraser, most of British Columbia; and the Mackenzie River and its tributaries, much of the north.

Current initiatives such as the Great Lakes, Fraser River andSt. Lawrence action plans are excellent examples of all levels of government working together and with industry and non-government organizations to address health and sustainable development within these aquatic ecosystems.

It is essential that our decisions reflect a comprehensive approach to sustaining water resources. On the question of water export, we must ask ourselves at what point water removal may result in damage to an ecosystem. It is clear that interbasin transfers have the potential to cause the most significant social, economic and environmental impacts.

What about other means of withdrawal of water for export purposes such as the use of supertankers taking water from coastal lakes and streams, the mining of groundwater reserves or the cumulative impacts of a series of small scale withdrawals from the same source?

Without doubt Bill C-232 is consistent with the federal water policy which explicitly opposes water export by interbasin transfer.

I have to take issue with the hon. member in his interpretation of the NAFTA when it talks about water as a good and refers to it as bottled beverages. It does not refer to the large scale exports of water to which he alluded.

Interest in water export has shifted away from proposals for the construction of megaprojects, despite the obvious vested interest of civil engineers, which would result in large scale interbasin transfers of water, the focus of Bill C-232. Large scale exports through massive engineering work such as the Grand Canal proposal are not considered viable under current market conditions. The costs associated with the delivery of water would greatly exceed the prices that users would be willing to pay for water. That is not to say that future water shortages could not result in prices that might meet the costs of such export proposals.

The current focus of water export proposals, however, is by tankership using water from coastal lakes and streams or by tanker trucks or pipelines carrying water from surface to groundwater sources.

Not only have the economics of water export clearly changed in terms of capital investment needs but our understanding of the scope and extent of potential environmental, social and long term economic impacts. Water is possibly the most basic and unifying element in ecosystems.

As I have already stated, water export must be viewed from an ecosystem approach. Concerns relating to all forms of water export which were not considered in the 1960s now must be factored in. These include the effects of climate change for which recent predictions suggest losses of water availability of about 20 per cent for some of the settled regions of the country; the potential biotic

transfer and contamination resulting from the discharges of ballast supertankers withdrawing water from coastal streams and lakes; the fragility of our ecosystems, particularly northern ecosystems, to disturbance; the concerns of First Nations whose ways of life are intimately tied to the cycles of abundance of water; the displacement of communities or depletion of water resources available to downstream communities; and the loss of recreational and commercial benefits.

The measures we propose to address the water export issue must reflect both the current and future focus of export proposals and the broad environmental, social and long term economic impact of such proposals. Bill C-32 fails to do.

This leads to a second concern. We should take action to address the broad range of concerns facing fresh water in a comprehensive way rather than limit ourselves to the one concern of water export. The need for such an approach is based on the growing recognition of the importance of water, the diverse and complex jurisdictional responsibilities associated with sustainably managing water, and the pressures on governments to continue to manage these responsibilities effectively in the current climate of financial restraint.

All Canadians have stewardship responsibilities for water. It is important that we consult with them in developing a comprehensive approach to water export and to the many other freshwater issues currently facing us.

Over the past 10 years the government has consulted Canadians on a wide variety of water issues, most recently through a series of workshops held across Canada to identify water priorities and directions for the next century. Contrary to the suggestion of the hon. member we are not silent. We are taking action. We are currently conducting a review of our programs and legislation relating to sustaining Canada's water resources. It is through this review that a comprehensive approach to water can be developed, including legislative measures to address water export.

I will conclude by reiterating that, first, it is imperative we address the full range of water export options to ensure the sustainability of Canada's water resources and the continued health of our ecosystems. We must adopt measures whether in legislation or by other means which provide a clear approach to resolving the issue and which reflect the concerns of all Canadians.

Second, we must not limit our actions to the single issue of water export in addressing the challenges facing fresh water. Taking a piecemeal approach to the broad range of fresh water issues reflects the ways of the past. We need an integrated and comprehensive solution to sustaining environmental, social and economic health, which depend on water.

[Excise Tax Act, March 20th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, let me turn first to the opening comments in that question which deal with the whole question of efficiency.

The devil is clearly in the details. The purpose of the GST was to replace the manufacturers sales tax and to create a more efficient tax to net out the same amount of money. In harmonizing the sales tax we retained that goal of wishing to have exactly the same amount of money but arrived at in a more efficient way. This will indeed allow us to lower the overall tax rate in the direction which was supported by the hon. member.

As to the hon. member's second point about 36 tax increases-

[Excise Tax Act, March 20th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, there are three parts to the answer.

Any system which removes a layer of administration, that is to say so that a tax is put together and collected by only one group of tax administrators, must by definition be more efficient than two separate tax regimes. That is the first answer.

The second answer is that opinions are clearly divided regarding the efficiency and ultimate consequence of this tax because those in other provinces such as New Brunswick, take a totally different view. They see this as a tremendous economic advantage.

The third response is that the government has shown itself to be remarkably flexible in wanting to accommodate the wishes of the individual provinces to overcome the deficiencies that may be present in such a scheme. It is that third element of flexibility,

negotiation, reasonableness and working together which I would wish to emphasize, because it is in that spirit that this country will move forward.

[Excise Tax Act, March 20th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the harmonized sales tax. I see it, as many speakers have said before me, as being part of a more efficient system of national taxation. I see it as being part of the wider construction of an economic foundation for Canada, allied with our efforts on deficit reduction and program review.

To me the real significance of the harmonized sales tax is the message it sends out to Canadians about our ability to work together. The real significance is the progress we have already made with the province of Quebec and with some of the Atlantic provinces in establishing the basis for a national harmonized sales tax.

If we can work together, as we have, on such a thorny question as the harmonized sales tax, what other good things can we achieve in that same spirit? What is the foundation that we are building and what is the future which we will build on top of that foundation?

We have to move beyond these economic foundations to some kind of view of ourselves which is grander and more important than the ones we have been concentrating on to date. We have to realize that out there beyond the harmonized sales tax is a series of greater projects, national projects which will allow us to attain greater goals. In order for that to happen, as we have done with the sales tax, we need to set timelines and priorities. We need to measure progress and outcomes.

Most of all, we have to recapture the spirit of working together in the execution of these projects because it is only by working together that all of us can recover our collective sense of optimism and hope as a country.

In his 1996 budget the finance minister set out a vision of Canada for the new millennium. Successful countries do more than occupy a place on a map. They live in the souls of their people because they are relevant to the betterment of their lives. So for Canada it is time to set goals anchored in our shared values and our shared aspirations.

We have done that throughout our history, in the days when we dared speak of a national dream and then built it, in the days when we aspired to a kinder society and then created it. We have set great national challenges, not small ones, because it is only by reaching as high as we are able that we will discover how far we can go.

Why can we not decide together in the House and in this country that ten years hence Canada will be regarded as a world leader in the new industries of the new economy, in biotechnology and environmental technology, and in the cultural industries of the multi-channel universe? Why not decide that ten years hence increasing child poverty rates will be a thing of the past, that illiteracy will be erased from our communities and that when it comes to international tests our students will not simply do fine work but will be the very best? Why can we not decide together that medicare ten years hence will not simply survive but that it will be the most successful system in the world, a system which will be second to none?

Why not decide that 10 years hence our streets will be the safest they can be, not because we have the largest number of prisons or police but because we have faced squarely the causes of crime? I ask with the finance minister why not indeed.

Moving from that vision and those goals will require what the Prime Minister referred to last year as a domestic Team Canada. It simply means all of us working together. The harmonized sales tax has been an example, a difficult, trying example of us working together with the provinces to achieve a more efficient and fairer Canada.

National goals and national projects are not simply federal, they are national. They require all levels of government, federal, provincial and municipal, to work together. Beyond the kind of co-operation we have had with the harmonized sales tax, national projects require the participation of the public and private sectors, of trade unions and social activists, of professionals and volunteers. Above all, national projects demand the full participation of citizens.

National projects are of a scope and scale that no one sector of society can achieve in isolation. National projects allow us to mobilize all our resources as a country to achieve a great collective purpose. National projects remind us of why we need a country in the first place.

The role of the federal government, as it was in the case of the harmonized sales tax, in promoting national projects, is to think of the interests of all Canadians. The federal government must put before Canadians a series of goals and invite their comments and participation, as we did in 1993 with our red book. The federal government must act as a strategic broker in forming the partnerships that can achieve national projects. The federal government can neither dictate, implement nor fund national projects by itself.

National projects demand that we put aside our differences and see Canada as a collective enterprise, a fate sharing vessel. We have to see ourselves as a society of mutual obligation, not simply a collection of provinces, interest groups and individuals. It requires thinking of ourselves as a national society to reach national goals by creating national projects.

In the 1996 budget the finance minister outlined an ambitious series of goals for the next decade. Our task as a government for the next four years, if we should be re-elected, is to choose four or five of these national projects which will have the strategic effect of fundamentally improving the lives of Canadians.

One such national project would be to set for ourselves the goal of making Canada the best country in the world for the care and nurturing of young children. If we could say of Canadian children from birth to the age of six that Canada has the lowest poverty rate, the lowest rate of child abuse, the best prenatal programs, the best parenting courses, the best child care programs, the best rate of school readiness by the age of six, the positive consequences for Canada would be enormous.

By this single national project we would have gone a long way to achieving many of the goals set out by the finance minister. Not only would we have reduced child poverty, we would have dramatically improved literacy rates and we would create solid base for future academic success and for employment success in the new economy.

If we could produce six year olds with the best coping and learning skills in the world, this would be the single greatest investment in improving subsequent adult health status that any society could make. These same competent six year olds will dramatically lower drop-out rates, delinquency rates and crime rates as they grow older.

What would be required to achieve such a project? Nothing less than a mobilization of all our resources, professional and voluntary, public sector and private, community by community, province by province, coast to coast. By enumerating and configuring all our existing assets, by setting goals, objectives and timelines, by measuring and monitoring our progress, by sharing results nationally through the Internet and by each level of government and each sector of society taking their share, eliminating duplication, co-ordinating efforts and filling gaps, this national project is eminently achievable. Why indeed should we not attempt such things in our next mandate?

The harmonized sales tax creates a climate of working together which makes such national projects possible. It has been difficult but it shows us that such things can be done and that what we have to do is broaden our vision of a better Canada for the 21st century.

[Petitions, February 17th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition which points out that the second phase of the National AIDS Strategy will expire on March 31, 1998. The petitioners request that Parliament ensure that dedicated AIDS funding beyond March 1998 be guaranteed and that the National AIDS Strategy be renewed now.

I support this petition from members of the public of Don Valley West.

[The Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act, October 9th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is not only praising me but he is also a mind reader. I had no idea I was saying so much. Sometimes the subconscious speaks more powerfully than one knows. It is nice to know that what one says has such resonance as to afford this kind of interpretation.

I would simply add this final thought. If we are to break the logjam with Cuba, and let us face it, it is not a regime that anyone here particularly approves of, but it is precisely the spirit of confrontation which is being perpetuated by the Helms-Burton bill which perpetuates the Cuban regime. It is a symbiotic relationship between the president of Cuba, Mr. Castro, and Senator Helms. They each need each other to perpetuate their own bogey people.

If we can intervene and bring Cuba back under the rule of law, as my colleague has pointed out has already occurred so effectively in the fisheries, then we will have done a great service for ourselves,

for Cuba, for the western hemisphere and particularly for the United States.

[The Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act, October 9th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, of course it is a point of view as to whether this approach actually makes a mockery or draws attention to the illogicality of the act. I guess that is up for debate and discussion.

I would say this about property rights. As the member may have possibly heard over the past few question periods, the government believes in the rule of law. It is the rule of law and the rule of contracts which govern relations between people and relations concerning property.

This particular bit of law we are talking about today, Bill C-54, simply reaffirms a principle of international law. That is what has been violated. The notion that one country unilaterally can impose its standard on the rest of the world without consultation, without agreement, without consensus, is unacceptable to any sovereign country. It is particularly the case of this sovereign country.

[The Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act, October 9th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I too rise in support of Bill C-54, an act to amend the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act. I do so by asking about the logic of the American bill which inspired this response, the Helms-Burton Act.

The logic is simply this. The principle underlying it, if it is fully implemented, is that a nation may and should provide means for its citizens who have had property in a foreign state confiscated to sue those who are presently enjoying the property for compensation, even those who are not nationals of the confiscating nation, and to sanction those people by denying them entry to the United States.

I have often asked myself what would happen if we applied this new standard of international morality to other revolutions, present and past. What would happen if we applied this new high standard of international morality to American history, to that great revolution which created the United States, the American Revolution of 1776? Would we not in fact have a complete parallel?

From 1776 to 1783 the property of well over 100,000 Americans who were in disagreement with a revolution, who upheld the principles of ordered government and who upheld the principles of private property, were deprived by revolutionary courts in the American states of their civil rights and of their property. Many of them, like the Cubans after 1959, fled from the United States to Canada, to Britain and to the West Indies, being like many of those Cubans who went to the United States after the Cuban revolution, without their property.

Unlike the current situation however, in 1783, at the conclusion of the war between Great Britain and what was to become the United States, there was a treaty of peace signed in Paris in September of that year. Article V of that peace treaty had the Americans agreeing to the restitution of all the estates, rights and properties which had been confiscated. Unlike the Cubans, the Americans promised to give back confiscated territory and property but they did not do so.

If we were to apply the logic of Helms-Burton to the American revolution, we would find that the Americans have completely neglected their own principles. What they did was they ignored the treaty. The Cubans never signed a treaty promising to do anything. The Americans actually signed a treaty. The issue simply was never resolved.

The Americans went their merry way without compensating those 100,000 people who fled: 40,000 to Canada, now three million of us who are their descendants with legal, rightful and unsatisfied claims for confiscated property; another 40,000 to the United Kingdom; and 20,000 to the West Indies. Some of us are asking if what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Is it possible that we could apply the Helms-Burton principle to an earlier revolution, admittedly a little earlier than 1959? We are going back to 1776. What would happen?

In support of this bill, I would like to say that a couple of us are going to be bringing forward a private member's bill. It will be known in response to Helms-Burton as the Godfrey-Milliken bill, which will mimic in every detail the Helms-Burton bill. I have to declare here that as a loyalist descendant I have a lively interest in a certain property in Virginia. My colleague, the member for Kingston and the Islands, has quite a lot of territory coming to him in New York's Mohawk Valley.

The principle of our bill is going to be very simple: it is just and equitable that Canadians who are heirs to loyalists whose property was confiscated, stolen or destroyed by the American revolutionaries should be afforded the same assistance as is provided by the United States government to its citizens who have had property in Cuba confiscated by the revolutionary government there, in our bill we are going to apply exactly the same sanctions.

We are going to establish a list of claims, which I have already started to do so on my Internet site. If I may be allowed to advertise, www.johngodfrey.org is where those of loyalist descent can get in touch with us. We can register the claims and make sure that we hot link them to Senator Helms and Congressman Burton just so they can keep a running tally of how much their folly is costing them.

We will say that any person who has a reasonable claim to an interest in a confiscated property may bring an action in the Federal Court of Canada and that the court may determine whether the claim is valid. If it is valid, the court will order that the property be restored to the people who are descended from those loyalists and that compensation be paid either directly, or damages of three times the value. Sounds familiar. We may also bar from entry into Canada those persons who head up institutions which are trafficking in our property, whether that person is the head of an agency, a department of government or a municipality, a corporation, or is a shareholder or an individual, and indeed their spouse and dependants.

I admit there may be some practical difficulties with the application of the Godfrey-Milliken bill should it ever receive the approval of the House. One person who has been in touch with us informed us that 700 acres of downtown Washington belonged to her family. That would mean the chief executive officer presiding over a great deal of that real estate, the President of the United States, would be barred from entering Canada. Should he still be in place after November, his daughter and rather charming wife would be barred from entering Canada, just as the heads of Canadian

companies are currently barred from entering the United States. I admit it is tough but fair.

In conclusion, the importance of supporting this bill is to realize it can be but the first step of an ever graduated series of responses to American provocation. We have powerful cannons-and I like to think of the powerful cannons of Fort York in Toronto-behind us to give a stronger riposte should they fail to heed our logic.