Bill Graham

[Peacekeeping, October 23rd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise this evening to raise again a question which I originally raised with the Minister of Foreign Affairs respecting the role of our election supervisors or election observers in Bosnia.

At that time I asked the minister if he would be good enough to respond to the concerns which Canadians had as to what the role of our observers actually was in an election of that nature and the response was given by the Secretary of State for Latin America and Africa. She pointed out the important role that our observers have played in that particular community.

In following this up tonight I think it is worth reminding members of the House and members of the public of the very important role that our observers play in local elections. I have not had an opportunity to do this, but as chairman of the foreign affairs committee I get regular reports on this form of activity and have often had the opportunity to observe the role that Canadian parliamentarians and others have played not only in Bosnia but in Nicaragua, in Palestine and in many other countries where there are really serious concerns about the credibility of the election process.

It is appropriate that my opportunity to follow up on this issue comes this evening on the heels of the debate which has taken place on peacekeeping. In many ways the role that our observers play in this type of activity is very similar to the role that our troops play in peacekeeping. They are there to ensure the credibility of the democratic process. They are there to ensure that peace will be maintained in the region because there will be elections which will replace the need for violence.

This is an extraordinarily important process and it is important for us to be assured by the ministry that our observers are actually performing the role which they are called upon to do and are able to do it.

I ask the parliamentary secretary for the minister if he would be good enough to elaborate on the role that our observers play. I would like him to tell us what the prospects are for peace, particularly in Bosnia, in the former Yugoslavia, now that these elections have been held. What can we see from the fruits of all the labours of our observers and peacekeepers? What can the parliamentary secretary tell us about the present prospects?

In particular, I would ask him if he is able to comment on a recent suggestion by the president of the war crimes tribunal, which is seeking to bring to justice potential war criminals in the former Yugoslavia. The president of that tribunal has actually gone so far as to say that he is considering resigning from his post. He is concerned about the integrity of the process of that tribunal because of its failure to actually bring before the tribunal many of the accused. Some 74 persons have been accused and only seven people have been arraigned before the tribunal because many of the accused are still in the former Yugoslavia, still unassailable, still inaccessible and cannot be brought to justice.

I would like to take this opportunity to invite the parliamentary secretary to elaborate some more on the answer which was given before and assure the House that the role of our observers is an important one, that they have achieved success in the former Yugoslavia and that there is now ongoing opportunity for peace in that region, including justice to be served by the international tribunal.

[Exports, October 23rd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister for International Trade.

When I have a second, I will be able to ask my question.

The government strategy is to increase exports and double them by the year 2000. Could the minister please inform the House how he intends to meet this target, and how the government will achieve its jobs and growth strategy by the beginning of the next century?

[Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act, October 8th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak on the second group of amendments to the anti-Helms-Burton legislation which was introduced in the House today.

Before turning to some of the technical purposes behind these amendments I would like to add to some of the comments which my colleagues in the House have made, particularly the hon. member for Terrebonne, the hon. member for Peace River and the hon. member for Burnaby-Kingsway. All of them have indicated that they are in agreement with the principles espoused in the bill and with the purposes of the amendments.

The hon. member for Terrebonne expressed some reservations in respect of the timing of the amendments. The hon. member for Peace River felt that we should be more aggressively pursuing action against the Americans. Perhaps he is getting the tanks in Peace River ready to drive down the highway toward the U.S. border. His grain trucks will be surrounded by mounted patrols. We will see what we can do in that respect.

I would like to remind members of the House about the principle reasons for which the bill was introduced and then turn to the amendments.

The hon. member for Peace River put it well when he said that we are entering into a period when we have to recognize that while we live in a world of free trade rhetoric, in fact, there are constant threats against the free trade regime of which the United States government purports to be the greatest proponent. The United States while talking free trade has long been an active user of other non-free trade vehicles.

The U.S. uses unilateralism, as it does in section 301 of the Trade and Tariff Act. It says to countries: "If you do not do it our way we are going to hit you with trade sanctions, even if it may be contrary to our international legal obligations". It does it particularly offensively when it uses extraterritorial measures as a way of trying to bring other countries to heel.

This is an old problem. We lived through this in the 1950s when Ford Motor Company was told under the U.S. export control laws that it could not export trucks to Red China from Canada, even though it was a Canadian company doing business in China. Canadian workers suffered and Canadian jobs were lost, but the U.S. made Canada do that because it was part of its foreign policy.

Similarly, anti-trust laws were applied in an extraterritorial manner to enforce American anti-trust laws which, however laudable they might be in their own way, when they are enforced in another country contrary to the espoused political purposes of that country are unacceptable.

As a result, in the last Parliament the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act was introduced and adopted by the House. It follows the model of British legislation and French legislation which has both blocking provisions in it and an opportunity to claw back excessive damages which have been awarded by United States courts. That is another unfortunate aspect of the American legal system. That legal system is such that it allows what are called treble damages claims.

This is the threat of Helms-Burton if we want to get into the legal nicety of it. The problem that Helms-Burton and much of this American legislation when it is applied extraterritorially represents is that a Canadian, a non-United States citizen, is threatened with a legal action in which $5 million in damages is claimed, multiplied by three, which is $15 million.

These are used as interim measures to drag people into the U.S. courts or ultimately to achieve what has been achieved to some extent by this Helms-Burton legislation, a chilling effect. It says to people that if they have assets in the United States, if they carry on business in the United States, the Americans are going to make it so expensive for them that it is not going to be worth their while to go to Cuba. It is not going to be worth their while to go to Libya. It is not going to be worth their while to go anywhere the Americans do not approve of. That is where we have problems with the Helms-Burton legislation.

We have problems with it because it has been applied in a way that is totally contrary to public international law. It gives a cause of action for expropriation not to people like the Americans who had property in Cuba at the time it was taken. That might be acceptable. But it gives it to people who were Cubans at the time. These actions will not be started by people whose property was expropriated. It will be started by their families, their grandchildren.

We sympathize with people whose property was taken. We do not believe that in public international law property should be taken, but it is very clear there have to be rules in public international law which set out the parameters under which actions of this nature can be undertaken. That is where Helms-Burton goes beyond and gives a cause of action for the political reasons the member for Burnaby-Kingsway alluded to in his speech to people who in normal situations would not have it. As such it is extremely troubling to international trading arrangements.

I have pointed out to my American colleagues what is going to happen if Canada decides to do the same thing for example with Ukraine. There are one million Ukrainians in this country. Why not give a cause of action about all the property that was taken in Ukraine? How would we ever be able to do business with Ukraine if we adopted that type of approach?

What will happen to the United States of America when China says to the United States of America that it is going to adopt Helms-Burton type legislation in respect of Taiwan? What will be the principled response of the United States of America when the Chinese government with all its force says to the Americans: "If you carry on business in Taiwan, you will not be able to carry on business here. We will do the same to you for the same legal reasons that you say you are using for Helms-Burton". What will be the response?

The Americans will have no response and that is why fundamentally the bill is not really in the interests of the United States of America. It is not in the interests of anyone who believes in an open trading system because if other countries choose to adopt similar measures, we will soon have created a world in which no business, no capital and no labour will be able to move around the walls that have been created by these treble damages actions.

The response we have in Bill C-54 is a principled response to that problem. It blocks American attempts to enforce the judgment here. It gives a clawback which we are not talking about in connection with these amendments. It also increases fines against companies which carry on American policy decisions out of this country instead of Canadian policy decisions.

We believe that an open trading system with Cuba is the best way to advance the cause of liberty in that country, the cause of human rights in that country, the cause of justice in that country. We have pursued those goals consistently and we will continue to pursue them. It is not something we are doing on behalf of Mr. Castro or some regime in Cuba.

This bill ensures an open trading system. We believe if properly applied it will ensure that we have open doors, that we will have cultural exchanges to enable the Cuban people to see the benefits of democracy, the benefits of an open system. That is the way in which we will achieve change in that country. We have applied that principle consistently in other countries, for example, Vietnam and China. There is no logical reason why the same approach cannot be applied in respect of Cuba.

The second group of amendments which I am presently addressing are basically of a technical nature. They address problems which relate to the fact that we have had to specifically make Helms-Burton unenforceable in Canada. I appreciate the acceptance of the amendments by the opposition parties. I appreciate their comments that these came forward after the bill had been introduced in our committee. The members were there when we discussed it.

It was felt on mature reflection that we had to address a specific problem. The problem is if we in Canada are threatened with a treble damages lawsuit in the United States, it is all very well to say: "When that is over, we will get an order from the Minister of Justice to block the application of that order in Canada and we will be safe in Canada". But our lawyers are going to ask us how we know we will get that order from the Minister of Justice, how do we know we will not be dragged into that American lawsuit.

The lawyers will probably say that we will have to go to the United States and defend ourselves. We will probably have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even millions of dollars, in these large, complicated United States lawsuits to defend against a claim which is unmeritorious and should be totally unenforceable in this country.

For greater certainty, the government has introduced a provision which says that right here and now, no judgment under Helms-Burton will be enforced in this country. This is a clear marker to enable Canadians doing business in this country to know that they do not have to participate in a U.S. lawsuit.

In my view, this and the other amendments which we are presently discussing on the same issue, are clearly a way in which we enable our citizens and others carrying on business here to know they will not have to participate in that expensive litigation game the Americans like to play. They will not have to worry about a treble damages lawsuit.

I will finish by making just one comment.

To conclude, I will make comment on the statements made by my colleague from Terrebonne. He said we have been waiting for seven months.

Mr. Speaker, you know, and members of this House know very well that international negotiations with the Americans are tricky and difficult. We acted very responsibly by waiting to see what the President of the United States was going to do, since he had a veto on this law.

As soon as it became apparent that the President would not exercise his veto authority on this law, we took action. We took action as soon as possible. We introduced this bill to the House at the opening of this session. We could have acted more rapidly, but I think we could not have acted reasonably to protect Quebecers and Canadians on the international trade issue.

[Committees Of The House, October 1st, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present in both official languages the second report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade on Bill C-54, an act to amend the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act. The committee has agreed to report this act without amendment.

[Criminal Code, September 25th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, in June I had the opportunity to ask the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and the Status of Women how the government intends to ensure that the special needs of women will be considered in the reform of the Canada pension plan. I am happy to be able to follow this issue up this evening because it is an extremely important one.

The pension needs of women are different from the pension needs of men. Several of my constituents have brought this to my attention on many occasions, but particularly during the time of the recent cross-country consultations led by my colleague, the member for Winnipeg North Centre.

I often have the opportunity when I am in my riding to meet with women, particularly elderly women who are living alone, to discuss with them the problems they have in meeting their needs and surviving in increasingly difficult circumstances in many cases.

When the CPP information paper was released, it was criticized for failing to include a gender analysis of the various options presented. The importance of pensions to women cannot be understated. The majority of the senior population is presently female, and this proportion is presently on the increase. Therefore the issue of women's economic independence and security in their later years will take on even more importance.

During the consultations on the CPP, women's groups strongly supported the CPP system saying that it has worked well for them and is a vital concern to them. My understanding is that the CPP offers a number of advantages for women not found in private sector pension plans. For that reason it seems to me that gender analysis reform to the CPP system is crucial.

When we reflect on the change in patterns of work and in the contribution that women today are making to the workforce and their ability to be flexible in that contribution, it is most important that we should concentrate on the needs of the pension system to

reflect both the needs for that new flexibility and for the needs that women will have as they increasingly become employed in the workforce.

That is why I would like to ask the parliamentary secretary to update the House on how this aspect of the reform process has progressed. During the CPP consultations, women's organizations advised the federal and provincial governments against reducing the number of dropout years, of deindexing pensions or raising the age of entitlement. They noted that these types of measures would impose a disproportionately onerous burden on women.

It was pointed out that any reform of survivor benefits should recognize that many women have low paying jobs. There were also some calls for a homemakers pension plan.

These points, it seems to me, all have merit. Can the parliamentary secretary comment on them?

[Bosnian Elections, September 17th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Last weekend Bosnians participated in an important election in their country which was watched with great interest by Canadians who are anxious to see a successful implementation of the peace process in that country.

Could the minister please advise the House as to the government's position on the results of those elections and also tell us of the contribution that Canadians have made to that important democratic event?

[Committees Of The House, June 19th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade in relation to small and medium size enterprises and their access to export markets.

[Canada Pension Plan, June 3rd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the government and the provinces are in the process of reviewing the Canada pension plan. Surely this process must recognize that in the matter of pensions women have very different needs from men.

Can the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and the Status of Women please inform the House how this government will ensure that the special needs of women are accounted for in the process of CPP consultations?

[The Senate, June 3rd, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak on this motion.

I am rather confused by the priorities set by the Bloc Quebecois and its vision of the priorities of all Canadians, including Quebecers, in introducing the motion today. I can hardly believe there is serious indication that there is any interest among Quebecers in

pursuing a divisive interest like Senate abolition at this time in the country's history.

What is more, in connection with what the member who has just spoken has said, he knows very well that the Parti Quebecois in power in Quebec has no intention whatsoever of pursuing such a motion, since to do so would require that party and the Quebec National Assembly affirm the Canadian Constitution. Is that likely?

Perhaps, under the circumstances, it would be a good idea to accept abolition of the Senate. That would be the price to pay to gain Quebec's total endorsement of the Canadian Constitution. But I can tell you straight that, here in this House, the Bloc members are all perfectly aware that the Government of Quebec has no intention of following suit. Under those circumstances, then, the motion we have before us is a waste of time for the House, and does not show the respect of the institutions the hon. members claim it does.

Furthermore, there is no guarantee that other provinces would approve of these changes. For example, smaller provinces like Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, which together represent only 6 per cent of the national population but which hold 19 per cent of the Senate seats, would gain nothing from its abolition.

Canadians have told us there are more pressing priorities which must first be addressed. In addition to economic concerns, as my colleague from Simcoe North noted earlier, national reconciliation is one of the fundamental priorities the government is committed to achieving.

I remind my hon. colleague that in the referendum of October 30, 1995 Quebecers chose to stay in Canada. At that time the Prime Minister acknowledged that Quebecers also indicated they wanted change. Thus renewal is the priority of Quebecers, of all Canadians and of the government.

To this end the Prime Minister was quick to lead us on the road to reconciliation by introducing in the House of Commons a resolution recognizing Quebec as a distinct society, a resolution the Bloc Quebecois refused to support.

The Prime Minister also extended a veto to Quebec and initiated changes that would make it possible to bring government services and the decision making process closer to citizens in accordance with the wishes of Canadians across the country.

The Prime Minister has acknowledged that Canadians throughout the country want to see the federation modernized, adapted to today's economic realities and to the needs of all citizens. That is the vocation of the government. That is not in any way the purpose of the resolution we are debating today.

The government understands the desires of Quebecers and of all Canadians for change and has made this central to its mission. Among other things, we are committed to establishing clear lines of responsibility between different levels of government, eliminating unnecessary duplication, ensuring the viability of our social safety net and reducing barriers to internal trade.

The government has also limited its spending power. As set out in the speech from the throne, the government will not use its spending power to create new shared cost programs in areas of exclusive provincial jurisdiction without the consent of a majority of the provinces. Any new program will be designed so that non-participating provinces will be compensated, provided they establish equivalent or comparable initiatives. This is the first time any federal government has undertaken to formally restrict the use of its spending power outside constitutional regulations.

Madam Speaker, I note that you are informing me that my time is drawing to a close. I understand that this debate will be resumed when this motion next comes up and I will be able to complete my remarks at that time.

[The Constitution Act, 1996, May 3rd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to debate this motion. I congratulate the member for Capilano-Howe Sound for the work he has obviously put into his proposal. I know he is a very reflective person, one who has studied these matters deeply, being an economist. Being a lawyer myself I will refrain from the usual economist jokes about the gloomy profession and I am sure the member will be pleased that I am so doing.

Perhaps he will forgive me if I start by saying I had some problems with this bill from a technical perspective when I first looked at it in terms of how it would work. Having heard the member introduce it I now have some profound problems about where it is coming from.

I was listening to the member and I wondered why he did not propose we go back to the gold standard. It might have been about the same sort of proposition to achieve the same ends, to create a

rigid system within which governments cannot function, cannot move out of straight-jackets and which is generally to the benefit of the moneyed classes, generally to the benefit of those who have large investments because they can be guaranteed that governments will not impinge on them by inflation or other measures which the member referred to.

The member began by reminding us, and quite appropriately so, that we in Canada have become familiar with the fact that deficits are dangerous things, that we are mortgaging our children's future if we spend unwisely and put it into debt. I respect what the member had to say on that.

However, the conclusion he came to was rather startling for me coming from the Reform Party. Its members day after day in the House hesitate to say how they are voting because it must be made very clear that they wish the appearance at least to be there that whenever they vote they are reflecting the immediate wishes of their constituents. How often have the member's colleagues stood in the House and told us "I am not voting on this, my constituents are voting; I have consulted my constituents and I am the representative of direct democracy"?

The member introduces the bill by telling us he does not believe in democracy. The bill is an anti-democratic bill. The member wants to introduce a constitutional change which will inhibit his constituents, my constituents and every other Canadian from voting for individuals or governments that intend to address economic problems in a way that would be inconsistent with the bill. It would put a straight-jacket around government functions in a way that is quite extraordinary. That this is coming from a party which pretends to be in favour of democracy is quite extraordinary.

This party will not vote a change to the human rights code to prevent discrimination against a class of individuals based on their personal characteristics, but it will propose a bill which would make it impossible for the government to affect the economic well-being, the money they have in their pockets.

The member is assimilating the bill to the charter. The member does not even know about the charter. The charter contains in it a notwithstanding clause. Did the member for Capilano-Howe Sound not realize that? It has a provision whereby if Parliament wishes to deal with something outside the constraints contained in the charter both the federal and provincial houses can do that.

He does not even propose that in his bill. His notwithstanding clause is a narrow technical clause which gives war, acts of God and revolution an opportunity to get around the provisions of the bill, and I will come to that when I move into problems with the way the bill operates.

I start by fundamentally pointing my finger to my real philosophical problem with the bill. It is totally and utterly inconsistent with every precept of government and democracy that I have heard advanced by the members of the Reform Party so far in the House.

That being as it is, it is passing strange but it often happens in politics that people propose inconsistent measures. It is curious that inconsistency from that party comes when it comes to a question of protecting money but there is no inconsistency when it comes to protecting basic human rights of human characteristics.

The second problem I have with the bill is its inspiration is, I believe, fundamentally American in nature. This is an American concept. One can understand the American concept of government. In the congressional system one can understand why members of Congress have proposed such a bill. They are trying to constantly deal with that struggle between the legislature and the executive as represented in the president. The bill which has been introduced in the United States is a part of that dynamic of the constant fight between Congress and presidential authority. Congress is seeking a way to impose its will on the president and on the spending of the president as well.

That may make sense in the American system but it does not make sense in a parliamentary democracy like ours where we function under very different rules.

Those are my basic problems with the bill. I now will deal with the recognition by the member that such a strait-jacket could never be automatically applied. Even the member has said we could not lock a government in completely. I recognize his intellectual honesty in that. Then we have to be straightforward and honest about it. We have to look at the nature of exemptions which he has provided in the bill. War is an obvious one.

I suggest that in an international interdependent world in which Canada presently lives creating a bill as simplistic as this does not recognize the problems that will come. The Mexican currency crisis was one. There will be others like that. We will be called on to be involved in many international events that will be imposed on us.

I am not suggesting we as Canadians wish to adventure outside the country into foreign adventures. The integrated world we live in will be imposing things on us which are unforeseeable and unforeseen in the bill. They will then require expenditures. They may involve peacekeeping. These are large expenditures of billions of dollars in order to preserve the integrity of Canada. Whether we are talking about its security, its environment or its health, these expenditures will be necessary.

Because the bill imposes a strict limit on the expenditures of government the inevitable consequences will be that this will be paid for out of the domestic side of the economy and the social programs of Canadians, their health, their unemployment insurance. The guarantees they have for a healthy productive society will be threatened because we have not been able to deal flexibly with the immediate challenges which are bound to come in 21st century.

I leave it with the member that my other problem with the bill is I do not think it is adapted to the modern world in which we are entering. I do not think it is adapted to the enormous complexity of the new international world into which we are moving which will require a great deal of flexibility on behalf of Canadian governments.

Another problem I have with the bill is that it fails to recognize, if I may go back to its anti-democratic roots, the nature of the Canadian people.

In electing this government with the promise it made to reduce the deficit to 3 per cent, by efforts it has been making to do so, it is clearly foreseeable that within two years Canada will be the lowest deficit country of any of the G-7. We are on the deficit reduction track.

Canadians have, through the course of this lesson, learned what are the consequences of overspending. All of us are pulling in what we are doing. In my riding of Rosedale, which is a downtown riding in an urban centre, there are enormous problems of social housing, crime and issues that require a lot of government action and attention, most of the citizens there have willingly recognized that we have to rein in what we are doing.

We wish to discipline ourselves in an intelligent way. We do not just wish to discipline ourselves automatically. The member from St. Paul's called it hitting the nail with a hammer because you happen to have a hammer in your hand and nothing else.

What we need in today's social circumstances is a surgeon's scalpel and not a hammer. The member has provided us with a hammer. In so doing, he will not allow us to adjust in a way in which the government is already indicating governments can adjust and will adjust.

I will conclude by saying that the government has a different approach. It was shown in the last budget, and I am sure that future budgets will show it as well.

In conclusion, this proposal is fundamentally undemocratic and impracticable, and serves only the interests of the richer members of society, not those of average citizens.