Bill Graham

[Petitions, June 16th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to present a petition requesting discrimination against same sex relationships be removed by amendments to the human rights act.

I endorse this petition. I have four petitions to that effect which I would like to table in the House.

[Cuba, June 16th, 1995]

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

Senator Jessie Helms and others in the United States continue to attack Canadians for carrying on perfectly legitimate business activities in Cuba. They threaten actions that violate basic principles of international law, undermine trading rules they have argued for and act as if they have the right to dictate conduct to all countries in the western hemisphere.

What is the government doing to tell the American government it does not decide where Canadians go, what we do and that our perfectly legitimate business activities are our concern and not its?

[Criminal Code, June 15th, 1995]

Believe me, the police in Toronto are telling us it is needed. The member is fooling himself if he does not understand that.

[Criminal Code, June 15th, 1995]

We have provisions in our Criminal Code that make it illegal, for example, to preach hatred against others. These are issues that go to the root causes in society.

Earlier I referred the member to the problems in the former Yugoslavia. We are looking at problems in the world today that he and I lived through as we watched a world war evolve and watched the hatreds in sectarian areas around the globe evolve. This bill is seeking to deal in an intelligent and I would suggest a very well thought out way the root causes of those evils, which extend beyond the consideration of the mere issue of violence to which the member is referring.

Criminal acts can be differentiated as one type of criminal act or another in terms of their anti-social consequences. This bill is telling our judges that is what they should look to. In that sense, I support it. It is intelligent and it is needed in the country at this time. The police in my riding are telling us that these types of crimes are on the rise and that this bill is needed.

[Criminal Code, June 15th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I have some sympathy with the member's position. There is no question that we do not want to tolerate the type of anti-social behaviour he referred to. But the member is totally ignoring the incredible importance in this of being able to deal with other social causes.

[Criminal Code, June 15th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I think those are two very good questions from the learned chairman of the justice committee.

We are struggling here trying to understand our role as parliamentarians with respect to giving instructions to courts and judges on how to review these cases. The hypothetical case the member has put illustrates clearly that what the judge is being called upon to do is weigh this in his or her mind to determine the social evil there and be able to add to the sentence that would otherwise be handed down. There is no question that if the assault is particularly vicious and if the assault calls for the maximum penalty, the judge is perfectly at liberty to give that penalty to anyone who commits an assault.

We are seeking to give our judiciary the opportunity to send a signal to society. The purpose of sentencing is to send signals to society; it is not just retributive justice. The purpose of sentencing is to send signals to society as to what conduct is tolerable in a civilized society and to enable the court to give extra time for such behaviour to indicate to people that this type of behaviour will not be tolerated. That is precisely what the member's question illustrates, that we have here an opportunity that will enable our courts to speak to the issues and deal with them. In that sense, it is a very intelligent addition to the rest of the sentencing bill.

[Criminal Code, June 15th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, our committee received a report from the B'nai Brith called "The Extreme Right: International Peace and Security at Risk". The report of some 350 pages shows that there are still virulent strains of anti-Semitism and racism present in the world which need attention. The report also draws a link between racism, anti-Semitism and homophobia. They are in accordance with the report one and the same thing. The report makes clear that they are the same voices that call for the elimination of people who are different.

When speaking of extremism in respect of the United States, the report indicated:

A major focus of extremism is on homosexuality. Believers have every right to maintain that homosexuality is inconsistent with their theology, but when anti-homosexual campaigns move outside the church and in the public arena characterize gays as sick, disease ridden, perverted by choice, and unfit comrades for clean living solider boys then this is clear extremism. Gay Americans have become the major new scapegoat in their country, perhaps to an extent unknown in other democratic nations, and just as surely as Julius Steicher's Der Sturmer was a direct contributor to Nazi anti-Semitism with all that it led to, so arguably the homophobic outpouring from religious extremists leads to gay bashing and murder.

When I hear comments from members of the House about relativism and about characterizing one group as being outside the bounds of protection afforded by civilized society and refer to natural law, I think of that quote and I shudder. My natural law is found in the Supreme Court of Canada in Egan v. Nesbitt which holds that discrimination is outlawed in the country.

When members on the other side of the House talk about extremism and the problem of violent incidents, I could cite dozens of violent incidents in urban ridings in the country. In my own riding of Rosedale, like the member for Vancouver Centre, I know of people walking down Church Street and having had cars pull up and people jump out who have beaten them up, crying that they were gay.

In August 1989 Alain Brosseau, a young man who was perceived to be gay, was thrown to his death from the Interprovincial Bridge between Ottawa and Hull, which we can see from this building. His attackers testified in court that they were just out to roll a queer. One of the attackers stated that he had put an imitation gun "to the gay's head and he freaked out-I started laughing". Another of the youths dangled him upside down from the bridge, said: "Oh, I like your shoes", and then let go.

In this same city two strangers approached a man returning to Ottawa from Hull and asked him where he had been. When he gave the name of a local gay bar they remarked: "Oh, you are a fag" and beat him so badly that he was in the hospital for two days.

I heard cries from across the House as the former speaker was saying: "Give me a break". Nobody gave those people a break. One of the reasons they did not get a break was the sense that they were fair game as put out in speeches such as we have heard here that allow people to be attacked for their comportment, their religion or their race because they fall outside a tolerated group by certain groups in our society.

This is no longer tolerable conduct in a civilized society. We must not allow it to continue. We must address it in the criminal law. We must frame a criminal law that has as its source a notion of what civilized behaviour is about, which tells our citizens that if they go down this road they will be going into the dark hole that led Nazi Germany into the wars of the past that have ruined Europe. We live in a tolerant society. We live in a pluralistic society. Let us not be fooled by the suggestions put forward that the bill will somehow lead to unintended consequences like condoning pedophilia and other crimes.

The minister has agreed to an amendment which was legally not necessary but one which addressed the issue by saying that it would not make lawful any previously unlawful conduct. This was never a real suggestion. How could it conceivably be said when a judge is considering the appropriate sentence to hand down on a given case, the weight to be given to the surrounding circumstances to prevent further like crimes, that it is relevant? We must not forget that the bill deals with sentencing and how to prevent anti-social conduct. The judge takes these circumstances into account.

How could that conceivably ever lead to an increase in pedophilia, which is a criminal offence known to every judge? It is a total red herring. It has been raised by those who want to discredit the notion of a modern, compassionate, intelligent criminal law that seeks to root out or extirpate evils in society: hatred, racism, homophobia and other forms of intolerable civil behaviour.

We live in a land in which we have had the privilege of peaceful enjoyment as citizens of the country. We are fortunate. We can walk down every street generally free from fear. That is not to say, as members opposite have said, that if we walk around in the middle of the night we too might never be the subject of an attack. I do not deny that. It is a possibility.

However, I am asking members opposite and other members of the House to think of what the bill is doing for people who walk, every day of their lives, down the city streets and are targets of attacks that go to the nature of their humanity and the nature of their being. It is not because they happen to be a haphazard article of attack. The member for Wild Rose said he might be attacked because he was fat.

The member is quite right. I have been accused of looking too English and might one day be attacked for that. However that is not a risk that the member for Wild Rose or I take every day of our waking lives, knowing that we could be the specific targets of people's abuse just because of our human nature, our race or our religion.

This comprehensive sentencing bill was the result of years of study. Sociologists, criminologists and the most learned jurists of the country are trying to come to grips with how we can have a modern Criminal Code that will ensure that all Canadians will be able to live in this blessed land and be able to move into the 21st century in a pluralistic and tolerant society, one in which all of us can be proud to live with as much ease and security as possible in the modern, civilized society of today.

That is the reason I am proud to speak on the bill and I am proud to be a member of the government that has introduced it.

[Criminal Code, June 15th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great privilege to speak on the important piece of legislation before the House today.

We have heard a lot about the legislation. I asked myself three questions when I looked at the nature of the legislation. First, what does the legislation do? Second, is it necessary? Third, are there any unintended or unfortunate consequences arising out of the legislation? We have heard a lot of talk about some unfortunate things that might arise out of the legislation.

What does the legislation do? It is a comprehensive revision of the nature of sentencing, something that has been advocated by law reform commissions, jurists and criminologists for the last 20 years. We have called out for a comprehensive, important revision of the standard under which sentencing will be conducted. This is an omnibus bill that addresses those issues. It is an extremely important bill that results from studies to grasp the nature of punishment that will prevent crime and at the same time rehabilitate. The bill is directed to that.

It is most unfortunate that discussion in the House has turned around section 718.2 which requires the court to take into consideration whether a crime was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on national origin, language, colour, race, religion, physical disabilities, sexual orientation or any other similar factor. Since third party members have spent their whole time talking about nothing but this and accenting it, let me turn to that question and deal with it.

Is there a need for this provision? Yes, there is. We have heard the parliamentary secretary speak. We live in the century of World War II and of the Holocaust. We can look at the former Yugoslavia about which we have debated in the House. What is taking place in Bosnia today is based on years of hatred brought on by sectarian strife, by people hating one another and holding one another in contempt. In the foreign affairs committee we heard from the B'nai Brith that knows something about this matter. You might listen to this, over there in the third party.

[Committees Of The House, May 17th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the fourth report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade relating to the reform of international financial institutions for the agenda of the G-7 summit in Halifax.

The report makes 20 recommendations aimed at strengthening Canada's position heading into the G-7 economic summit in Halifax in June. It is a unanimous report of the committee.

Pursuant to Standing Order 109, the committee is asking for the government's response to the report.

[Physiotherapy, May 1st, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, last week was national physiotherapy week. This year also marks the Canadian Physiotherapy Association's diamond jubilee.

National physiotherapy week is an annual campaign sponsored by the Canadian Physiotherapy Association to increase awareness of physiotherapy. This year's theme was: "Physiotherapy: Celebrating the Past, Shaping the Future". The theme related to the evolving role of physiotherapists in Canada's health care system.

For over 75 years, physiotherapists have helped Canadians get into top physical shape. In addition to this important role, they are now increasingly involved in promoting good health.

I join Canada's 12,000 physiotherapists in reminding Canadians of the important role physiotherapists play as members of our important health care system.