Bill Graham

[Petitions, October 4th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition signed by over 150 Canadians from my riding in Rosedale and from as far away as Vancouver. They call upon Parliament to create an environment of justice and equality in Canada by amending the human rights act to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

[Cultural Property Export And Import Act, September 28th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I am certainly not in a position someone in the ministry would be to answer a technical question of the nature the hon. member poses.

I think the question has some general value that I would like to address. First, this bill is not directed to the problem or the issue of just collections of art, porcelain, or other items of that nature. Anything that is of value to society would be perfectly acceptable, as I understand it, to be the subject matter of a museum or another form of institution.

As a result, I would suggest to the member that what this bill does by putting in place this appeals procedure is it ensures that when the institution of which he spoke is set up and when donations are made to it, which they will be, those donations then will be properly accounted for. There is a procedure whereby if there is any debate about their true value it may be appealed to the courts and we can ensure that for the benefit of Canadians and Canadian society and other Canadian taxpayers that will be done in an orderly way. In that sense, the bill does contribute to enabling what the member would like to see done in his riding.

[Cultural Property Export And Import Act, September 28th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to speak in support of this bill today.

As the hon. member for Perth-Wellington-Waterloo so ably said, there is a technical reason for this bill, which is to enable an appeal procedure to be put into place so that the proper amount of taxation deductions will be calculated and applied in the course of allowing citizens to make donations to institutions in Canada. That in itself is an extremely important public policy consideration.

In some respects the bill seems very narrow in scope because it is reinstituting an appeal procedure which existed some time ago under previous legislation. In that sense it is rectifying a situation which needed to be dealt with.

Some of the objections which were raised by members of the third party when we were debating this bill the other day attacked not only the thrust of the bill and the whole purpose of what we are trying to do here, but also the need for an appeal procedure. If members of the third party are sincere about having genuine intellectual problems with this whole idea, they certainly should support the thrust of the bill, which is to ensure that there will not be an arbitrary decision by just one authority as to how these matters will be dealt with, but rather they will be subject to an appeal. They will go to the tax appeal court and from there they can go to the federal court. We will be able to ensure that these matters will be handled by strict, appropriate, legal methods.

This bill deals with an extremely important aspect of public policy concern in Canada, that is, that we should have proper procedures in place to ensure the good administration of all aspects of our justice system. In that sense the bill fits within the whole purpose of what the government is trying to do, which is to ensure that the people in Canada have a judicial system which is fair and open and which ensures proper judicial procedures for all. We should look at that aspect of the bill when we are considering it.

I sat in the House the other day and heard the attacks on the bill by members of the third party, who used, as one so often does in the course of debate, rather outrageous examples. One member stood up and said they had seen a painting that was scurrilous or unattractive. Imagine that. Someone had donated it and received a tax deduction for it. We could all probably go to an art gallery and find some paintings which are unacceptable to us.

In the course of my travels I have been to the Louvre. I was told that some of the finest paintings in the Louvre were, at the time they were painted, offensive, despicable and unacceptable. The whole thrust of the impressionist school when it first came out was quite unacceptable to the public. The paintings which today fetch $50 million were totally and utterly unacceptable to certain people at that time who said: "This is a class of art with which we do not wish to be associated. It does not conform to our traditions. It does not conform to exactly the way we think. Nothing except the way we think is acceptable in this world. We will not accept artistic values or views that are different from what we represent".

That is not the view of the government. It is not the view of average Canadians. Average Canadians know that art, literature and culture must represent a vast gamut of society. There must be tolerance. There must be a willingness to accept that we need an expression of culture in our country that is broad, embracing, and global in nature if we are going to take our children into the next century with a sense of what the world is about.

This bill fits into that. It enables small communities to take artifacts, libraries, and things of real value to those communities and give them to local museums and allow them to stay in place so that people can be a part of their own culture. There is nothing lamentable about that. There is nothing to criticize in that. It seems to me to be an extraordinarily valuable contribution we are making.

When we turn to what the third party was complaining about in the House the other day, the fact that this bill enables wealthy people to make contributions to Canada, I think we have to take this into proportion. We have to look around our country and look at some of the contributions that have been made.

In my own riding of Rosedale there is a museum called the George R. Gardiner Museum, of which I was privileged to be a trustee some years ago when I was teaching at the University of Toronto. Mr. Gardiner donated a collection of extremely valuable porcelain to the City of Toronto. That collection is contained in a part of the museum that the University of Toronto helped to build. That is, to use that much overtaxed phrase, a world class collection. It receives world class attention. It receives visitors from around the world. It contributes to the economy of Toronto. People stay in the hotels nearby. They use taxis to get to it. They eat in the restaurants around it.

It is calculated that during the course of the Barnes collection exhibition in Toronto the spin-off effect for the economy of Toronto was some tens of millions of dollars. We cannot forget that not only are we enriching our cultural heritage when we allow, enable, and encourage, as this government does, this type of activity, we also enable our economy to be strong. We enable a real contribution to be made to our economy in the form of tourism or in the form of people coming here.

I myself have had the privilege of going to Calgary. Many members of the third party must have visited the Glenbow Museum. The Glenbow Museum would not exist if it were not for measures like this. Where would we be if we did not have that wonderful repository of our First Nations' art and artifacts that are found in that fabulous institution that is the Glenbow Museum, which is a pride for all Canadians, not just Calgarians.

It is measures such as this that make the existence of the Glenbow Museum possible. The Glenbow Museum, the George R. Gardiner Museum, the Royal Ontario Museum, and over 300 small and local institutions in this country all have requested this measure to enable them to survive and continue to do the job they are doing so well for Canadians. That is why I support it.

If I go to Montreal, I have the opportunity to see the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. I can visit the architecture museum created through a gift from Mrs. Lambert, an extraordinary museum which has made Montreal famous. People come to Montreal from all over the world to visit these museums which enjoy a worldwide reputation, not merely a local one.

All of these contribute not only to Montreal and Quebec culture but to Canadian culture as well and I dare say contribute to the economy of Montreal and of Canada also.

If we acknowledge that donors, museums, art galleries and professional associations are all lobbying for the right to challenge the decisions of the review board, we must as a government acknowledge that they are justified in making such demands and put into place in the legislation a reliable and valid system for handling this situation.

I would like to conclude along the lines of my colleague from Perth-Wellington-Waterloo, who pointed out that we should keep this in proportion. This is 50 cents on the dollar these people are getting. This is not some huge tax give-away. It is 50 cents on the dollar.

At some point a government, if it is to be faithful to its mandate, must provide cultural objects for its citizens. Do the members of the third party suggest that we should go out, collect the taxes, and then go and buy objects with that tax money? That is a much more expensive way of doing it. This way we get the benefit of the generosity of Canadians who have collected wonderful things during their lives. At the same time, we enrich our communities and we do it in the most tax efficient way possible.

That is why I support what this bill is about and why I support what the government is doing when it tries to ensure that we have a better country that is enriched by the activities of our citizens and we enable them to put their life's work and their life's collections to the benefit of our society and that of our children.

[Aids, September 28th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Health. On Sunday, October 1, over 40 communities across Canada will be walking to raise AIDS awareness and much needed dollars. Would the Minister of Health tell the members of the House what the government is doing to help the 45,000 Canadians living with HIV and AIDS and what measures it is taking to prevent others from becoming infected?

[Excise Tax Act, September 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, in the short time remaining I am not able to give an extensive answer to the hon. member's question. However, the member well knows that what seems on the surface a contradiction in public policy often reflects that different situations call for different measures.

To suggest the magazine industry is in all respects exactly the same as the broadcasting industry would be wrong. We have learned through watching what takes place at the heritage committee that with the new information highway the print media, books, film, radio and television all require quite different solutions. However, ultimately it is the same principle, to guarantee a healthy industry in Canada. That is the principle by which the government operates. We want a healthy industry, whether broadcasting, books or magazines. To get that healthy industry we will have to adopt different measures in different fields. That is the reason for the difference.

[Excise Tax Act, September 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, there is an American conservative philosopher we may have seen on television, George Will. He has often said that free trade ranks somewhere between Christianity and jogging as an item which is much talked about but little practised.

I suggest to the hon. member that if he looks at other nations and at other countries he will find they too seek to protect their cultural industries for the very reason which I urged on him today. Please do not take me as being a protectionist. I am not some sort of Luddite who says we should build up a wall and not let in U.S. television programs. We know technology will make all of that totally and utterly irrelevant. It would be ridiculous to try to do that.

Given that technology is driving more open borders and more access, we should not shut other things out. It is all the more reason to ensure that at least our local industries are operating on a level playing field. That is all we are asking. That is all this measure seeks to do. This measure is not trying to erect some enormous wall. All the other things will still come in. What this measure is seeking to do is to ensure that this frail industry we have in Canada has sufficient financial means that when the bottom line is there it will continue to survive. The bottom line for it is finance, but the bottom line for us as a country is survival. That is why I am in favour of the bill.

[Excise Tax Act, September 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's observation is to some extent legitimate in the sense that we are struggling now to get away from the world of subsidization and special treatment for certain industries or certain products.

However I do not think it is fair for him to suggest to the House or to members of the public that there is an exact parallel between an industry which manufactures a product which then goes out into the marketplace and a cultural industry.

The member asked me my background. I taught international trade law at university and I am involved in a small business and I have some business interests in the United States, in the United Kingdom and in Europe. I have had the opportunity of working through a lot of business problems.

I do not think the member would be wise if he said all businesses were the same and we treat them all the same.

Why is it important to preserve or give special treatment to a threatened industry such as the magazine industry where for example we might not choose to do that in the textiles industry, in the shoe industry or some other industry?

The answer is that when we are talking about trade and when we are talking about competition it is one thing to speak of competition in normal products and goods but another when we are talking about competition in ideas, through which the hon. member's children will determine their view of the world, we have talked a lot about violence in the House. We have talked a lot about the need to preserve our society from violence. Members of the Reform Party continually day after day speak in the House about the need for better criminal legislation to deal with the issue of violence but the member now wants magazines which come across the border espousing and pushing violence on the same footing as everything else.

The reason we need special treatment for this industry is we need a Canadian view of life. We need a way of being able to express ourselves. That is why it is different. It is ideas. It is the future of our generations that we are talking about here. We are not talking about a pair of shoes. We are not talking about a shirt or a tie. That is why we are desperately determined to preserve something that is the way in which we will be able to express ourselves. That is why when we look at radio, television, magazine publishing or newspaper publishing we always consider it with a special provision.

The United States is no different. It pushes its industries in that area extraordinarily hard. Everywhere we go in the world, if we talk to French politicians, to Australian politicians, if we talk to anyone, we are all concerned about the preservation of our cultural values and identity. Why? Because we do not wish to have them submerged in somebody else's concept about what we are about and what we are trying to do.

That is what this bill is directed toward. That is why it is really worth an exception from the general principle.

I subscribe entirely to the member's point that we must get away from a system where government is involved in subsidizing average industries. I strongly urge him to consider that there must be a difference always between industries making ordinary products and those products of the mind which represent our ability to be stable, to be civil, to be tolerant and exist in a world which is becoming more complex, more violent and more difficult to survive in.

[Excise Tax Act, September 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that many of us in this House have been struggling since we first went to school and then university and participated in Canadian society about the way in which we define ourselves as a country, as a society, and ultimately how we survive in a world that is becoming in some ways a globalized world. You can put it as you like, but it would be unrealistic for us as Canadians not to recognize that we have a unique culture in this country. We must work hard to preserve the existence of that culture.

Our magazine industry is an essential component to the preservation of our culture because our magazine industry determines in some respect the news our citizens read. It determines the way in which our citizens perceive events. It determines our ability to reflect ourselves.

We have a very rich cultural expression in our magazine industry. There are many magazines published in this country, and many of them provide extraordinarily beneficial insights into where we are going as a country and where, if I may say from my own perspective as chairman of the foreign affairs committee, Canada should place itself in the world. Those are very important voices, which we must maintain. Those are voices we must encourage. Those are flowers that must be nourished if we are to survive.

We must recognize that if we allow our magazine industry to fail and after that our film industry and after that other industries, we as a country will be left without a voice, without an ability to express ourselves, without an ability to affirm ourselves here in this House, to affirm ourselves in our scholarly institutions, to affirm ourselves in our civic institutions.

I do not wish to overemphasize this, but the richness and diversity of our magazine industry is an important component to the existence of our cultural identity. We can be proud of the richness and diversity of that magazine industry and some of the magazines we are able to read.

The unfortunate fact is that our industry is not on a sound financial footing. The fact of the matter is that it does depend on advertising revenues. I have the figures here. It depends about 85 per cent on its advertising revenues. Our magazine industry publishes for a much smaller population base than its competitors from the United States.

This is where this bill seeks to do something. It seeks to redress a delicate balance with an enormous industry in the United States

with tremendous export potential, with volumes against which we cannot compete in any way. I am sympathetic to the point raised by my colleague from the Reform Party that we have to recognize that there is an export component to this as well. However, there will be no export component to this if the industry does not survive here domestically first. We have to preserve the basics.

This bill does not seek to in any way give an unfair advantage to our domestic industry. It merely seeks to make sure that from a tax perspective American publications that come here are not taking advantage of that enormous market they have and in fact what is the equivalent of dumping in this country. They are dumping not only their product, but they are dumping ideas. They are dumping their civilization. I use dumping in the term of an international trade lawyer. It is coming in here in huge quantities, at a very cheap price and in a way we are not able to compete with.

[Translation]

We must give ourselves the weapons we need to protect ourselves if we want our civilization, our culture, our country to survive in an increasingly globalized world. This is what Parliament, what all parliamentarians should try to achieve.

This is a modest measure to try to achieve that important goal. It fits very well within what our government has said in respect of our trading measures. We have said clearly whenever we have sought to develop trade policy in this country that the cultural industries of this country and our cultural existence are not up for negotiation. We will insist we have a right to adopt laws and measures that protect our cultural existence.

The magazine policy we are looking at here goes back over 30 years. I can remember as a young man being at university and reading about the dispute over Time magazine and the tax policy. Many of the members of the House will remember the same thing. We have grown up on this. It is not an issue that is going to go away. It is not an issue we can afford to let go away. We owe it to ourselves to ensure that we create the sound financial basis in our country for the survival of our own cultural institutions and then deal with it from a trade perspective.

This measure manages to achieve that balance. It gives our industry that breathing room, that sense that we can survive, that we are not going to be completely submerged in the weight and the volume of imports of American magazines that naturally come here. Nobody is saying we will not let magazines in. Nobody is saying we are going to stop anything. All we are saying is that we must ensure the financial viability of our industry, which depends on its advertising revenues for that viability and that vitality.

I come from the community of Rosedale, which is proud of the vitality of the cultural industry in the city of Toronto and feeds on it. Toronto is becoming a cultural centre of international acclaim. Americans come in high numbers to go to our plays, to our musical festivals, to participate in the rich cultural life we have in the city of Toronto.

Part of that rich cultural life is there because we have publications that feed it, fit into it, amalgamate with it and create a sort of a whole of a sense of a vibrant cultural existence that is a part of this country. We owe it to ourselves to continue always to encourage that, to build on that, which is what the minister is trying to do in the bill. It is commendable.

These are extremely complex and difficult issues, particularly in the modern trade climate, which requires that we must recognize there is a balance to be achieved. Overall, what we get with this legislation is a recognition of a problem. The problem is a lack of funding for an important industry. We get a recognition that the way to deal with overwhelmingly powerful competition is to tell our local producers here is something that will give them some marginal ability to guarantee that their bottom line will allow them to survive.

As such, the bill balances these and gives us the ability, when we get down to it, to preserve what is an essential industry in our country if we are to have a country where we know what our ideas are, are able to express them, get those ideas into print, share them with one another, and continue to make as a result a contribution to our country and ultimately to the world as a whole. For that reason, I support wholeheartedly the measure. I hope that other members in the House will support it as well.

I look forward to working with the minister in other areas where we can ensure that the cultural dimension of our domestic and foreign policy will ensure that Canadian values and interests are not only dealt with here but actually have access to the world as a whole. To do that, we must first ensure we are on a sound footing at home. This is where we start. The bill is a modest but important contribution to that start.

[West Bank, September 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday Israel and the PLO announced an agreement to extend Palestinian autonomy in the occupied West Bank. This latest agreement took months of difficult negotiations and is an important step in achieving a lasting peace.

The Canadian government has always encouraged peace efforts in that region. Many Canadians have worked for this. Here is a striking example for everyone to see. Even the deepest divisions can be resolved in the public interest when those in charge work at it in a spirit of goodwill.

I am sure that all colleagues in the House join me in congratulating the leaders of the two sides on their latest achievement.

[Treatment Of Municipal Sewage, June 20th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House at this late hour and be the last speaker on the motion brought by the member for Comox-Alberni.

Like the member for Davenport, I will begin by congratulating the member for Comox-Alberni on his motion and on the presentation he gave which was a very thorough exposition of the nature of the problems in our country and in every modern society dealing with effluent. We have to be very conscious of this. This is an example of the type of debate we can have in the House to search for the best solutions to these perplexing and complex problems from a technological point of view and from a human management point of view.

I suppose as a member of the government one regret I have about the debate is I was disappointed to see it degenerate so quickly on the other side of the House from what I considered to be the high level of the opening moral tone of the member for Comox-Alberni to other members of his party who then used the motion as a way to attack the government for not doing things which we have been doing.

It reminds me of earlier when I listened to the member for Fraser Valley East spending his whole speech complaining that there is no discussion in the House. When members of the third party get up and use these opportunities to attack another party, no wonder we do not get into any discussion.

This is a constructive opportunity to exchange views. The member for Davenport has indicated members of the House on all sides are passionately interested in finding solutions to these problems.

I, as chairman of the foreign affairs committee and the member for Red Deer, who also sits on that committee, are more than aware of the consequence of effluents flowing from Victoria into international waters and our relations with the United States. It behoves all of us to be aware of that.

To suggest that the government is not aware of it is totally ignoring reality. Suggesting the infrastructure program has been deficient in this respect is doubly unfair. The infrastructure program is, as the member knows, a tripartite program conceived in the Canadian spirit. It requires the collaboration of the federal, provincial and municipal governments.

When we look at the way the infrastructure program has been applied around the country and the way it has been used, it co-ordinates the needs and desires of all people. Members of the Reform Party should be happy because at the municipal level we are getting the input from the very lowest level of government in the European sense of subsidiarity, that which is closest to the people, and it is their choice.

There are municipalities that have selected water treatment facilities. In those cases the federal government has participated, encouraged and done its best to make sure the country and the needs of the municipalities are served. Where other municipalities have chosen other priorities, the federal government has recognized that it is their right as citizens and as municipal governments.

I suggest to the third party we should concentrate not only on the question of effluent removal, which is a most important priority, but also on the principle on which the country is founded; a principle of tolerance and co-operation by all levels of government. If we can get all our programs working that way and use persuasion to get the federal government to do its work we can achieve the results wished for by the member for Comox-Alberni without trampling on the rights of local municipalities.