Bill Graham

[Petitions, April 16th, 1997]

The second petition with over 200 signatures from the organization Don't Tax Reading Coalition requests that the GST not be applied to reading materials.

[Petitions, April 16th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House to present four petitions with signatures gathered from concerned citizens throughout Toronto.

The first petition calls on the federal government to join with the provinces to upgrade the national highway system.

[Petitions, April 14th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition with signatures gathered from across Canada. It requests members of Parliament to support the immediate initiation and conclusion by the year 2000 of an international convention which will set out a binding timetable for the abolition of all nuclear weapons.

[Budget Implementation Act, 1997, April 14th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be recognized to speak on the important budget we were privileged to assist in presenting to the House recently. I could not disagree more with the words of the member for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca. The budget responds to the needs of the country. It responds to the needs of the people of my province of Ontario. It strongly responds to the needs of the people who live in Rosedale.

Rosedale is a complicated riding. It is an inner city riding with a great diversity of talent and background in its population. Its workforce is spread between those who work in some of the major financial institutions, mining companies and other big companies located in Toronto and those who have modest earnings in the southern part of the riding, some of whom are subject to the pressures of living in an expensive urban environment where they are dependent on social housing and welfare to survive.

It is important that budget has achieved the need to get our fiscal house in order. It has stayed the course in that extraordinarily important enterprise. As a result we are seeing the fiscal integrity of the country being restored. As a result of interest rates being low we are seeing more investment and a return of jobs for Canadians. In that sense the budget is making its most important contribution to the underlying economy of the country and the well-being of all Canadians wherever they may be located.

It is a budget, however, that does not follow the tenets of the party the member from Esquimalt spoke for. It does not seek to achieve fiscal rectitude on the backs of the poor and the disadvantaged. On the contrary, the budget has enabled us to address some very serious problems in society. I do not intend to go into all of them, but in my riding there is no doubt the budget's concentration on the need for reform of the old age security system country and the Canada pension plan has enabled seniors, the most disadvantaged, to say we are looking at a system that will address their needs. We are guaranteeing the preservation of a healthy, sane and intelligent policy for sustaining the seniors population into the future. That has to be one of the great contributions of the budget.

In the budget we have addressed another great problem facing many of us, the extraordinary issue of youth poverty. We cannot afford and should not further tolerate the problem of young people and children living in poverty. Nothing can be accomplished overnight. The seeds have been sown in the budget. The child tax benefit and other measures taken in the budget will help address this extraordinarily important social problem.

The budget contains a hopeful message for youth. It contains specific programs for youth employment, some innovative, useful and important programs to enable young people to get their first jobs.

The budget addresses the future, perhaps one of its most exciting aspects. The Minister of Finance made it clear to the Canadian people, to the government and to those of us in the House that we must have an intelligent policy for our future. If we are to have a future at all in a complicated, integrated global society in which we must remain competitive we must be able to deal with knowledge. We must deal with our survival in the most sophisticated manner. We must have a proper balanced approach to investment in research and development.

In that sense the construction of the Canada Foundation for Innovation is one of the most innovative and important steps any government has taken in a long time in this respect.

I would like to take the time of the House to read the comments of one of my constituents, the president of the University of Toronto, on the budget. He drew the attention of the public to the importance of the budget from a university perspective. In a recent publication he wrote:

February was a banner month for the University of Toronto and all other Canadian universities. The federal budget, containing the best news for Canadian research in many years, represents a new beginning for Canada and moves universities to a central place on the nation's agenda. It deserves the enthusiastic support not only of

universities but of all U of T alumni and all Canadians who believe in a more prosperous future built on ideas and innovation.

The budget commits the government to critically important investments in Canada's future. It allows us to begin restoring the international competitiveness of our universities and teaching hospitals; it helps students and their families meet the rising costs of higher education; and it encourages the private sector to give more generously in support of public purposes.

The $800-million Canada Foundation for Innovation announced in the budget is a historic reaffirmation of the federal government's responsibility for research and innovation. We are extremely proud of the fact that the foundation will be headed by Dr. John Evans, an alumnus and one of U of T's most distinguished presidents-The foundation will help build critically important research facilities across Canada, facilities that will attract and retain Canada's outstanding scientists and enable them to unleash their full creative potential. In full partnership with the provinces and the private sector, this program will create new opportunities and jobs for the next generation of Canadians.

The decision announced in the budget to make the federal Centres of Excellence program a permanent part of our national science and technology policy ensures a secure foundation for partnership between universities and the private sector. The overwhelming success of the centres over the past 10 years fully justifies this vote of confidence.

The president went on to say that the tax incentives to be provided for students are a very important contribution to enable affordable university education for students and that the improved tax treatment of charitable donations would help unlock private wealth for public purposes. The budget has thus contributed as well to the welfare of our universities and other public institutions.

I believe that we must say a few words about this centre, or foundation, for innovation, because a number of Quebec MPs have criticized the budget and also the creation of this foundation.

It must be acknowledged that the purpose of the foundation is to enhance Canada's R & D capacity on the national level. In deciding which projects will be funded, therefore, the foundation will be more concerned with research excellence than with allocation by province.

A significant research potential is available from one end of Canada to the other. For example, Atlantic Canada distinguishes itself in the area of ocean and fisheries research; Saskatchewan, in biotechnology; Quebec and Ontario, in pharmacology; and Alberta and British Columbia, in sustainable forestry, to give but a few examples.

The foundation has the capacity to examine in depth all of the proposals for funding research and other crucial sectors, giving priority to quality projects. What is more, the bill calls for the foundation board to reflect regional diversity and to have equal representation from research and from business.

Everything points to the regional representativity of the council and the expertise of its researcher and business leader membership guaranteeing a fair and equitable distribution of funding while reflecting regional realities.

I would like to add that the president of the University of Toronto's reaction to the announcement of the foundation's creation in last February's budget was that it would make a huge contribution to the national infrastructure required to promote a knowledge-based economy.

I was, therefore, interested and somewhat astonished to hear the hon. member for Verchères criticize the budget and express regrets that the Varennes tokamak project in Quebec was no longer being funded. Yet it is that budget which has funded a major institution in order to enable it to carry out such research, and if this project merits funding, it will have the opportunity to get the money it needs. And that is exactly what has to be done.

In closing, I will return to what I said at the start: this is a well-balanced budget, and one which has acknowledged the need to bring the deficit under control, while making it possible for the less advantaged in this country to survive.

On behalf of my constituents of Rosedale in Toronto Centre, I wish to state that this budget will be accepted as one of the best the Parliament of Canada has ever seen.

[The Prime Minister, April 10th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, this week Canadians watched with interest and pride as our Prime Minister made his first official visit to the United States.

The spirit of this visit demonstrated that balance the Prime Minister has achieved in our relations with the United States: an independent Canada asserting its interests when faced with excessive U.S. power; yet a good neighbour able and willing to co-operate with our ally and most important trading partner when in our interest.

Indeed, Canadian initiatives internationally, such as our free trade agreement with Chile and our domestic fiscal success, enables our Prime Minister to provide useful examples for our American friends.

The value the American president places in the special relationship that our Prime Minister has developed was in turn reflected in his firm statement about the importance of Canadian unity.

The agreements signed will be useful to everyone. We can all be pleased with the success of a visit whose outcome and timing show the special nature of the relationship that the Prime Minister was able to establish with our powerful neighbour.

[Hiv-Aids, March 19th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, the fight to stop the spread of HIV-AIDS is of great concern to all Canadians.

The HIV trials network is an important and innovative part of the federal government's national AIDS strategy and keeps Canadian scientists and doctors at the forefront of research and treatment. Yet we hear concerns about the funding of this vital program extending beyond 1998.

Will the minister assure the House that the funding of this important trials network will continue beyond March 1998?

[Peacekeeping Or Peace Enforcement Commitments, March 12th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, this is an important motion and this is an important issue. All members of the House are concerned about the handling of information about the way our peacekeepers are deployed and the way authorization is given for that deployment. Above all, we want to ensure that it is a transparent process so that all may know the consequences of what we are doing.

The motion proposes very little in the way of changes to make Canada's peacekeeping policy process more transparent. The simple reason is that the process is already extremely open.

The suggestions that unilateral decisions are being made behind closed doors have ignored the facts. Such assertions have no basis whatsoever in reality. The process, as it now exists, is one of the most open in the world. How many other countries have established Internet sites and conducted surveys to determine public support for involvement in peacekeeping missions?

I argue that such countries are few in number, yet our hon. colleagues insist the existing Canadian system is opaque and in need of reform. These statements are difficult to accept.

Furthermore, the principle underlying such a motion supports the thrust of government policy. It has been and will always be our policy to put to this House directly or through its Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade all issues

involving peacekeeping. When it has been possible and necessary to do so, that is what the government did.

We recognize the importance of thoroughly and freely debating all proposals to deploy Canadian forces personnel and we attach considerable importance to the opinion expressed in this House. For these reasons, the government is working to ensure that Canada's peacekeeping commitments are debated each time the occasion arises.

Furthermore, the minister and the government have indicated a willingness to adopt new and interesting procedures to enable this to take place.

The mover of the motion, the hon. member for Red Deer, knows very well that we have had the occasion in the foreign affairs and international trade committee to examine the deployment of troops in Haiti. On an extensive basis we were able to hear witnesses. We were able to have a frank, open debate in circumstances which were, I would submit, preferable to an exchange of views in the House which often tends to be adversarial in nature. We should be looking at that way of dealing with it. That is how we will deal with issues raised by the member for Wild Rose. He said that these were very costly and dangerous and must be evaluated. We are able to do that in committee in many ways far better than we are able to do it in the House.

I urge members of the House who are concerned about this matter and about the way Canadians feel about peacekeeping to examine some simple figures. In 1995, in spite of what the member for Wild Rose said, the results of a study documenting Canadian opinions on foreign and defence policies found that 79 per cent of those polled considered peacekeeping important for Canada.

A February 1996 study showed that 75 per cent of Canadians wanted our current commitment to peacekeeping to be maintained or increased. A similar percentage of respondents indicated that they believed peacekeeping to be a very positive source of Canada's international reputation. It is obvious the Canadian public recognizes the importance of peacekeeping to Canada internationally. Furthermore, Canadians firmly support our involvement in peacekeeping.

The high level of support shown leads us to wonder about the real value of this motion. The argument that the issue must be put to a parliamentary vote so electors may have their say simply does not hold water. They have already had it, in a much more significant way than they have for years. The same is true for the members of this House. Cabinet has not acted unilaterally behind closed doors in considering peacekeeping commitments. This House has had many opportunities to debate the issue, and the government has considered members' opinions.

What is quite concerning about the motion is the possible detrimental affect it could have on Canada's ability to effectively participate in international peacekeeping efforts.

For the last 40 years Canada has been an open international leader in peacekeeping. Our unparalleled reputation has resulted from our willingness to act in difficult circumstances and on short notice. These characteristics have become even more important in recent years. Gone are the days when peacekeeping was turned to only after a superpower had brokered a ceasefire between two states. Now the international community finds itself having to respond to internal conflicts causing humanitarian disasters of unprecedented magnitude.

Given the nature of those crises the international community is often confronted with, it has become obvious that the UN and its members do not have sufficient capability to react quickly. Canada has been a leader, making suggestions and looking for ways to develop mechanisms to increase the capability of the international community to react quickly to complex emergency situations.

A Canadian report entitled "Towards a Rapid Reaction Capability for the United Nations" has been an important contribution in this exercise. The UN has implemented a number of recommendations in this report, including the establishment of permanent headquarters for the rapid deployment of peace missions that will give the UN a whole new capability.

Nationally the Canadian Armed Forces has developed the disaster assistance response team or DART to respond quickly to international humanitarian disasters. Canada has also come forward in actual times of crisis showing the leadership for which we are renown. During the recent crisis in eastern Zaire, Canada stepped forward to lead the international community to action.

What a terrible irony it would be for Canada, one of the most ardent international supporters of rapid reaction, to take measures to make its own system cumbersome, in fact in some cases virtually useless.

That will be the likely outcome of this motion. Making Canada's peacekeeping commitments dependent on a vote in Parliament would be detrimental to Canada's leadership and effective contribution to international security.

The amended motion demanding that all proposals for peacekeeping or peace enforcement commitments be put to a vote in Parliament would considerably reduce our ability to make a timely contribution to international efforts. Whether it is the commitment of a unit the size of a battalion or just a couple of military observers, the difficulty would be the same. Obviously, we could not keep the leading role we now have in international peacekeeping if our participation were subject to such constraints.

Therefore the motion has implications not only for our international reputation but also for the lives of those people we are seeking to assist. It has become increasingly clear in recent years that without a rapid response from the international community countless lives which might have been saved will indeed be lost.

Canadians such as generals Dallaire and Baril know this all too well. The imposition of additional constraints on our ability to act nationally would fly in the face of all that we have tried so hard to achieve in the international arena.

In moving this motion, the hon. member neglected several highly significant realities about the world of today. First and foremost, it must be realized that events develop quickly, often with tragic outcomes. To insist that Canadian peacekeepers be reduced to doing nothing until the House can meet and debate the issue, while innocent people are suffering as the result of a conflict or a humanitarian disaster, is foreign to the interests and values Canadians hold dear.

The international community has learned one thing from the tragic events of recent years: we must act promptly when we are called upon. The motion in question could totally prevent us from doing what we have demanded of other members of the international community: providing a rapid response.

The hon. member also seems to ignore an even more immediate reality. As I have said, the government has consistently endeavoured to bring matters related to Canadian peacekeeping commitments before the House or before the appropriate committee for debate and informed discussion.

Furthermore, it has provided the Canadian people with a direct means to express their views concerning their country's peacekeeping policy. The Canadian public has expressed its opinion. It firmly believes in and supports Canada's role in international peacekeeping.

The Canadian government and the Canadian public are proud of the lead peacekeeping role Canada has assumed in the world. Our role in this area is important for Canadians, for Canada, and for the world.

We cannot support this rather unwise motion, which can only serve to diminish Canada's role in the noble enterprise of peacekeeping.

[Supply, March 10th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, is the member from the Reform Party asking me why the government did not apply time allocation to this bill?

I do not know that, but I find it singularly reprehensible on behalf of the member for the Reform Party, who screams about the use of time allocation when it is used by the government, to be encouraging its use at this time. It reminds me of the member's statement when he was talking about the gun control bill.

[Supply, March 10th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I thought I made it clear in my remarks that is precisely the purpose of Bill C-45. I thought that the member for Crowfoot made it very clear in his remarks. I am sure the member for Vegreville would agree that if Bill C-45 were applied in this case, Mr. Olson would have applied to a judge. I cannot believe that a judge would have granted the success of such a hearing and of course this would not have had the terrible impact that it is having on the victims and the families of the victims of Clifford Olson.

I have no sympathy for Clifford Olson whatsoever. He is repugnant in every way. I have every sympathy with the families of his victims. I understand the terrible turmoil they are going through. We have tried to adjust the criminal justice system in a way to take into account that which represents the integrity of the whole criminal justice system.

In answer to the member's question: Will the members of the families of Clifford Olson's victims never again be troubled by this matter? That is something that is outside of the power of the state. It is a terrible thing for people to live through. Any of us who have had to deal with people who have had to live through these sorts of tragedies know there is no end to the pain and suffering one suffers as a result of this situation.

The criminal justice system has been mended in a way to ensure that the best possible protection for families of victims in these circumstances. I genuinely believe that Bill C-45 does precisely address that. We will work on it to make sure that it does address it and it addresses it in humane and proper ways.

[Supply, March 10th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I hesitate to say that I agree with the member for Vegreville on very many occasions but I certainly agree with his opening sentiment that he did not really wish to be participating in this debate. I think many of us in the House share that preoccupation. This is not a debate we wish to participate in. It is a debate, however, that has been brought by his party and it is incumbent on us to challenge and at least look at the real reasons behind this motion and what we should be doing as responsible parliamentarians about it. Let me take the last matter first.

Many members have expressed a deep desire to see a proper balance in criminal law, as the hon. member for Vegreville said. We all must achieve that balance.

I am not a criminal lawyer but I had the opportunity to study criminal law many years ago. I remember being taught that the purpose of criminal law was threefold. First was to punish, not with a view to punishing for the sake of punishment but with a view to deterring crimes for the protection of society. Second was to serve as an example. This too was for the protection of society so that others would not follow a bad example. Third, equally important in any civilized system, was that of rehabilitation, to rehabilitate those people who had committed crimes. This too is in the long term interest of society. Criminals should be rehabilitated and not incarcerated forever at a cost to society.

The hon. member for Vegreville brought up a new preoccupation in criminal law and one equally worthy of weight. What about the interests of those who are victims, those who must suffer as a result of terrible crimes such as those committed by Clifford Olson? We owe to those people the best concern we can develop in the context of creating a system that has integrity and guarantees a stable criminal justice system which will achieve all the objectives I set out at the beginning.

If we look at the history of this matter we can see that 745 was designed to do that. Until 1976 Canada had the death penalty for first degree murder. In 1976 Parliament abolished capital punishment and replaced it with mandatory life sentences for high treason, first degree murder and second degree murder. Parole ineligibility periods were established at the same time. They were 25 years for high treason and first degree murder and 10 years for second degree murder, with the judge having the power, after considering any recommendation from the jury, to increase the period up to 25 years.

Why did Parliament consider it was necessary to provide for a reduction in the ineligibility period in certain circumstances? The first reason given was that at the time the minimum sentence of 25 years was longer, and I stress the word longer, than the average prison sentence served by murderers whose death sentence had been commuted to life.

Until 1976, the average sentence served by these offenders before parole was about 13 years. For non-capital murder, it was seven years. Parliament was also aware that in other countries with values similar to ours, the average time served before parole was

15 years. Even in the United States, individuals convicted of murder who were not executed served an average of 18 years.

Subsequently, to make the law more balanced, last January we adopted Bill C-45. Until this bill came into force, an offender convicted of murder could apply to the chief justice of the Superior Court of the province in which he was convicted for a review of the parole ineligibility period. The odious nature of the crime, the anti-social behaviour of the murderer in prison, the fact that he was practically certain that the period would not be reviewed, all this did not exempt the chief justice from the obligation to empanel a jury to hear the application.

It was exactly for that reason that the Minister of Justice introduced Bill C-45 in June of 1996. The solicitor general discussed with the House the background of Bill C-45 and its important provisions. I would like to just very quickly speak to those issues as well, to remind the House that Bill C-45, which we recently adopted, has tightened the process in three important ways. It has denied the application of section 745 to multiple murderers, it has added a screening process before a convicted murderer is allowed to apply to the chief justice for judicial review of the ineligibility period, and it has substituted the rule of unanimity for the rule of two-thirds decision by the jury.

In all three areas, multiple murderers will no longer have the benefit of this early release or even to apply for it. A screening process for all section 745.6 applications means that before proceeding to a hearing before a section 745.6 jury, applicants will be required to persuade a superior court judge to whom the application is made that the application has a reasonable prospect of success. The screening is conducted on the basis of written materials only in order to spare the victims' families the ordeal of testifying in cases that are manifestly undeserving. I will come back to that because I think that point is capital in the debate that we are having before the House today.

Both the crown and the applicant are allowed to submit evidence by affidavit. Where the applicant is screened out the judge may decide whether and when the applicant may apply again but it can never be before two years. Any subsequent application will be again subject to the screening process.

The third point is all members of the jury must be unanimous in their decision. Obviously a unanimous decision is much more difficult to obtain and where the application is denied the jury may decide if and when the applicant can apply again but under no circumstances would an applicant be allowed to apply within two years of the application.

Clearly it will be much more difficult to meet the requirements of the new section 745.6 than it was before Bill C-45. It will be more difficult to get a hearing. The hearing will be much less likely to be successful. As a result, only successful applicants will have a public hearing and at that point the unanimity rule will apply.

The member for Crowfoot specifically said that the reason the hearing for Mr. Olson tomorrow is being held is precisely that Bill C-45 did not get through this House in time to deny that hearing. He laid the fault of that at the foot of the Bloc. That is all very well for him to say but what he forgot was that he is basically undermining the whole purpose of what he is standing up here today to say. He admitted clearly before the Canadian public that in fact if we had been able to get Bill C-45 through in time Mr. Olson would not be having his hearing tomorrow and we would not be having this debate.

This brings me to my question of the leaders in the Reform Party. Why are we having this debate today? We are not having this debate today because I, as the member for Crowfoot suggested when he introduce his motion, when I asked him a question, was somehow duplicitous, not interested in the true justice system and I was some sort of evil person trying to benefit from victims. That would be totally ridiculous.

The real people who are calling this debate today are Reformers who clearly by the debate have demonstrated that they know that now under Bill C-45 a type of hearing such as Mr. Olson will have will never be held again because of the changes that have been made. Yet they persist on crying across the House suggesting that we are culpable and guilty of some conspiracy to do exactly what they are doing today, which is to stir up people's emotions and create grief for the victims.

The real crime of today's debate is that it is being held on the backs of the victims of people like Clifford Olson to give the Reform Party some political credo for the next election. That is the real reason for this debate today.

It has nothing to do with the reform of the criminal justice system. The criminal justice system has been reformed by Bill C-45. It has been reformed by this government. It would render any such application of Mr. Olson's tomorrow absolutely impossible. Reformers have admitted that in the House today. Yet they chose to bring this debate. Why did they choose to bring the debate? They chose to bring this debate because they wish to profit from the suffering of families of innocent victims of Clifford Olson. That upsets me a great deal. I am shocked that is the reason for it.