Loyola Hearn

[Library and Archives of Canada Act, October 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her question.

I will make my position quite clear. Unless we see changes to the bill as it is presently constructed, I will not be supporting it. I will not speak for anybody else at this stage but I know the new critic on the committee has expressed concerns about the games that were played.

What happened here concerns me. A year or so ago I spent some time on the heritage committee. Unfortunately, due to my workload I no longer could be on that committee. However it is a very good and important committee and, I must say, is chaired by one of the most competent and able persons in this establishment, an individual who not only does a very good job but knows what he is doing.

I know a chair has no real control over how people vote and if the troops are sent in to get something rammed through or to make changes we cannot do a thing about it. That is democracy. I suppose we can blame a lot of things on democracy but that is the way it works.

I am not sure what the member's position is on all this. We may be missing something here and we might hear about it before it is all over but I agree with the questioner. Yes, we have concerns about the way this was done.

We also have concerns about the overall recording of Canadian history. As I said before, maybe this will open the door to some real discussion on who we are, where we came from and what we have done, but more specifically, what we can do.

I believe that one of the things happening in the country is a real lack of pride in who we are. During the summer I set up a youth forum to talk about youth concerns. One of the biggest concerns of course was the cost of education and the fact that it was impossible for some people who live in rural areas and whose parents are not well off, et cetera, to be able to pay the horrific cost of getting an education. That is unfortunate because society has to pick up the bill for the rest of their lives instead of them being contributing members.

They listed another major concern facing youth and listed some things they would like to see changed. One of the top five concerns was the lack of history in their schools about their own province and the history of Canada generally.

In our school system, in some cases, for a period of years there was little or no Canadian history or perhaps a smattering of it at a lower grade where they really did not understand the big picture. All these young people said that after spending years in school and learning about the unification of Germany, and other things because they had studied European and Asian history, and about the cradle of civilization, that they knew very little about their own place. They said that they graduate from school trying to be active participants in their province and their country but nobody even told them how a community council works. That is sad.

Perhaps through discussions like this we might start getting back to what really matters in life and instead of just teaching people how to make a living, we will teach them how to live and what it is all about.

[Library and Archives of Canada Act, October 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I intended to speak briefly on this and talk about the insertion of clause 21 and the effect it has on the legislation, but after listening to my friend from Drummond who raised a number of very interesting topics, I probably will comment on them briefly also.

First, in relation to the answer she gave to the member for Jonquière, let me say that I agree with her fully. If there is going to be a board appointed, certainly it has to be a qualified, independent board. Too often we have seen people appointed to boards and agencies because of who they are rather than what they can do or what they can represent; if one is a friend of a minister or whatever, one gets an appointment. That is not the way it should be unless the people are qualified. That is the name of the political game: people like to appoint friends. That is okay if the friends are qualified. Nobody will argue if that is the case, so let us look forward to who will be represented on the board, if we ever get that far.

However, the bill before us, Bill C-36, is a bill that would integrate the National Library and the National Archives of Canada. Both are separate now but would be brought under one entity to be known as the Library and Archives of Canada.

Originally a lot of people looked at this and said it probably makes sense. However, in analyzing what is really happening here, a number of concerns or doubts are raised. The member for Drummond really laid on the table the concerns that a number of people in different parts of the country face, especially in the older parts of the country.

Having said that, before I get into that aspect of the discussion let me say on clause 21 that what has happened here is something we do not see too often. There is an old saying that there is honour among thieves, and I guess that usually there is honour among politicians. When an agreement is negotiated, as was mentioned earlier today by one of the Alliance members, we expect people to live up to that agreement. The heritage committee basically agreed to take out clause 21. Everyone else seemed relatively happy with the remaining legislation, so they were very surprised that a meeting was called which conveniently happened at a time when the majority of the people there were not only Liberals but Liberals with vested interests, and we saw the clause put in.

This is the interesting question to ask in relation to all of this: Who was pressuring whom to have that clause put back into the bill? Unfortunately it seems completely and utterly out of place; there is no reason for it except that somebody for somebody's own interest wanted the insertion, and some members, being pressured, tried to make sure it was done. It had to go in somewhere so I guess the only piece of legislation that was coming in the near future anywhere near the type that could incorporate such a clause was this piece of legislation.

The clause itself basically states that for unpublished works the law limited the rights of the author's estate to 50 years after his or her death, plus a six year window for the estate to either publish or communicate an intention to do so. It seems pretty reasonable. That was before 1997. An estate had perpetual copyright for posthumous unpublished writings.

The new bill adds between 14 and 34 years of copyright for unpublished works, but only for those authors who died between January 1, 1930 and January 1, 1949. When one starts setting parameters, one raises suspicions. Of course it is called the Lucy Maud Montgomery clause, simply because the estate is pushing for this recognition and Ms. Montgomery, of course, died in 1942.

There are a couple of interesting comments from well known people in the literary and historical field. Mr. Donald LePan, president of Broadview Press, is on record as saying that these copyright provisions in Bill C-36 represent, in his words:

...one of the several significant threats on the current horizon for the public domain. Copyright restrictions in Canada are already more stringent than they need be. It is crucial that we resist further incursions into the public domain.

Therefore, why would such a clause be inserted in a bill such as this? The question is, who will benefit from the provisions of Bill C-36? It is often claimed that authors as a whole benefit from extending copyright provisions. In practice, however, it is typically only a handful of the best known and most enduringly successful writers whose heirs benefit from such provisions in any significant financial way. Very few people, or the estates of very few people, would benefit from such a clause being inserted in the bill. Unfortunately, it puts a bad taste on the piece of legislation and how all of this transpired.

Having said that, we will deal with that when the time comes to vote. Maybe between now and the time we do vote on the bill there will be some method to deal with this, even though nobody made an amendment to the bill simply because a guarantee was given at the committee level that this clause would be taken out. Perhaps the minister, in her wisdom, or the parliamentary secretary who today seems to slam the door shut on any further changes, will find some mechanism to deal with this unfortunate intrusion into the bill.

But even in regard to the bill itself, when we start to look carefully at it, I think we have to ask a number of questions that were raised, especially by the member for Drummond. She talked about interpreting Canada's history and she expressed a major concern about the interpretation of the history of her own province. As we know, Quebec is not just an ordinary province. It is one of the major sections of the country and has a unique history, that of the early days of Canadian history, the days of settlement, long before the west was discovered and before anyone heard the expression “go west, young man,” which I think is probably an American expression. I visited one of the old forts in Saskatchewan. I was taken there because it is an historic site. It is 150 or 200 years old. To the people who took us there, it was extremely historic.

I come from a province which was settled by the Norse in the year 1000. We celebrated the millennium of Newfoundland and Labrador only three years ago. In the western world from a European settlement perspective, Newfoundland and Labrador is by far the oldest, settled part of the new world. When it came to a permanent, established settlement, in 1497 John Cabot landed in Newfoundland and shortly afterward we had an influx of European fishermen. In fact, when Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence River, he visited a little community in Newfoundland, Renews, and took on water. That happens to be my hometown, where I still live. John Denis, who visited in 1502, I believe, just five years after Cabot, wintered his boats in that same harbour.

Newfoundland and Labrador being the gateway into America, not only was it the first point of landing from a settlement perspective. Let us look at recorded settlement. Because of the way in which the British and the French operated, recorded settlement was only created or historically noted when a king or queen would send out somebody to establish a formal settlement, and then we would say that the first settlement in Quebec, the first settlement in Newfoundland, the first settlement in Nova Scotia, et cetera, was a certain place, but that is not the case.

Long before any established settlement was formally recognized by the king or the queen, we had many settlements all around our coast because people went there to fish. They left some of the big ships. They jumped ship and they settled in the little communities. Even though they were not allowed to, they came and stayed and the communities grew. We had significant community growth in eastern Canada long before the days of these formal settlements. History books say that John Guy established the first settlement in Newfoundland in 1610 with the colony at Cupids, but we had people living in parts of Newfoundland and a number of families in communities 110 years before that.

We have to be very much aware of our history or we can lose it. I mentioned earlier that Quebec is unique. It certainly is, because it was the French and the English who really founded this country. We could argue who did the most exploring or whatever, and people could make arguments for both sides, but they played a tremendous role in the development of this country. The two founding nations set up the eastern part of the country in particular, but not only did they establish and settle there, they moved westward. They moved down into the United States. North America generally benefited from the establishment of solid settlements by these two great founding nations.

The development of settlements in this country and the work that was done by these French and English pioneers should not just be lost by lumping together today's sort of perspective of Canada. It is not that way. Certainly from a Newfoundland and Labrador perspective, we cannot forget our part because our province also is unique. When we talk about lumping the history of Canada into one avenue, one of the concerns is that we wonder sometimes how much of the real history is going to be lost. We did not become part of Canada until 1949. Long before that, the Province of Newfoundland, as it was called, made a significant contribution to the North American scene, and not only to the North American scene but to the international scene. Whether it was in trade or in representing our country generally and our hemisphere in the first and second world wars, we were there as a country.

I believe that Newfoundland is the only country in the world that ever gave up its own independence freely. We wonder sometimes if we did the right thing or not; however, there is always the second time around.

We cannot in any way, through the establishment or the integration of any of our agencies, lose the true perspective of Canadian history, whether it be the Province of Quebec with its uniqueness, as I have mentioned, or whether it be the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador with its uniqueness in culture and history.

We must ensure that these things are properly recognized. We cannot overlook the involvement of the provinces in all this. We cannot lose control of our own perspective. People have a way of changing things to suit themselves, which is always a concern. History as written should be history as created. We do not see a lot of that. We see too many convenient interpretations of Canadian history.

We do have concerns with the legislation. We have particular concerns with regard to the games that are being played to insert clause 21. This might be a good time to take our time in dealing with the legislation and to fully analyze and debate how the history of our great country is being and will be recorded and preserved.

As individual players are we getting a fair share and a fair shake? Are we being recognized for our contributions and, more specifically, are the provinces and our founding fathers being accurately recognized for their contributions to our country?

[Privilege, September 30th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I believe the member from the Alliance Party, who raised the issue, does have a very serious concern that could easily be a breach of members' privileges.

As members of Parliament we deal with public servants everyday. We depend on them and certainly we can say that in most cases we get tremendous support and response from them. However, when instructions are given from above, from management circles, from directors or from ministers, where they are basically told “If you are contacted“--and this was the gist of the form as I have seen it--“by a member of Parliament, please note it and the topic and advise us immediately”, then it would certainly create awareness in some person working within the lower levels of any department, the frontline personnel who deal with many of our concerns.

I really think there is intimidation there. I believe our privileges are being interfered with and I ask you, Mr. Speaker, to consider it seriously.

[An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (Cruelty to Animals), September 29th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the legislation before us could cause tremendous problems for a number of segments in our society.

However, I would first like to comment on some comments made by the member for Regina--Qu'Appelle. He is a gentleman who has been around these hallowed halls for quite some time and is much more experienced than most people here. Certainly he can stand with anybody here in relation to his time and dedication in this honourable House. However his view and my view on the Senate are quite different.

I believe that the Senate does play an extremely important role. We can argue, and eventually we will some day, maybe sooner rather than later, about how the Senate is selected. Having said that, some of the best work done around here in relation to thorough analysis, in relation to sound second opinions, in relation to committee work, in relation to dealing with issues which the House of Commons cannot deal with, is done by the Senate. We could argue as much as we would like to as to how those people should be selected, and we will argue about that somewhere along the line, but we should never underestimate the type of sound second thought that comes from the people in the other place.

In this case, I believe its amendments are very legitimate. I listened earlier to the justice critic from the Alliance who made a very well reasoned speech on this very issue. I agree with everything the hon. gentleman said, as usual, as the Alliance and ourselves agree on practically everything. I believe the hon. member hit the nail on the head when he raised some concerns. We do not have to go any further than the first couple of paragraphs in the bill, and I will read them into the record:

182.2(1) Every one who commits an offence who, wilfully or recklessly,

(a) causes or, being the owner, permits to be caused unnecessary pain, suffering or injury to an animal;

(b) kills an animal or, being the owner, permits an animal to be killed, brutally or viciously, regardless of whether the animal dies immediately--

On the surface no one will argue with that. However my concern is that when the courts get a piece of legislation like this and when this legislation is tested in front of some sympathetic judge, I am not sure whether his or her interpretation and the interpretation we place upon it here will be the same. Therein lies major problems. This creates problems for farmers and ranchers, but in particular, it creates problems for people in the medical field.

Probably people sitting in this very House and certainly 95% of the Canadian public who are undoubtedly tuned in to CPAC to watch what we are saying and doing here in the House are able to turn on the television, to sit and listen, to walk, or drive their cars, or play a part in Parliament because of some medical advancements that were discovered or created by scientists and doctors who were able to experiment. Without that experimentation, which is usually done on animals, many of the cures, many of the antibiotics and anti-viruses and so on that have been found would not have been discovered.

Is there pain and suffering inflicted in experimentation? Undoubtedly there is. Is it right to experiment and cause pain and suffering? According to this resolution, on interpretation, a judge could undoubtedly say one cannot inflict pain and suffering. If that is going to ensure that experimentation cannot go on, I am not sure whose rights we are protecting and where the line is drawn. This is a very serious piece of legislation which cannot be allowed to pass if interpretation means by doing so we could be jeopardizing the lives of many people in our country.

Let me carry it one step further to practical happenings outside the experimentation field. What about ranchers and farmers who deal with animals in order to make a living? They are dealing with large numbers of animals and how they are handled in the branding and whatever, some people could interpret it as causing pain and suffering to the animals.

One might say everyone is broadminded enough to know what has to be done. That is not what we are talking about. We are talking about a piece of legislation which we know full well can be interpreted in the courts. People ask who is going to bring it to court. We know who will bring it to court: the animal rights people who will bring anything at all to court. If they have some legal framework in which to bring forth their arguments, it certainly gives them carte blanche to test any hypothesis.

Let me talk about one other issue and that is the seal hunt off the east coast and the north coast of Canada and especially off Newfoundland and Labrador. The seal hunt has been an issue that has drawn a tremendous amount of attention from the animal rights groups. Greenpeace and other animal rights and animal welfare groups, which are certainly too numerous to mention, have drawn a lot of attention, and I would suggest a tremendous amount of funding, to their causes by taking on the seal hunters off Newfoundland and Labrador.

The seal hunters are carrying on an industry that has gone on for years and years. These people subsidize their meagre income by participating in the seal hunt. They are doing something that the government refuses to do and that is to control the massive seal herds off our coasts. We have the same situation in northern Quebec. We have it in your own area undoubtedly, Mr. Speaker, and in particular off our coasts. Our seal herds are ballooning. They have increased sixfold in recent years.

Our fish stocks, our cod stocks and our groundfish in particular have practically disappeared. The people who list the species on the endangered species list are currently looking at placing the northern cod on the endangered species list.

The northern cod was the most prolific cod stock in the world. It was a cod stock that drew people from all nations to participate in the fishery. It was, as we say, load and go. When the cod were harvested using proper techniques, giving the fish a chance to grow and reproduce, the stock remained year after year for 500 years. Then technology caught up to it and governments weakened and we let people, countries, processors, individual harvesters and everyone go out and catch and catch until they got close to catching the last codfish using technology from which the resource could not escape.

Nobody cared. It was only fish and it was only Newfoundland and Labrador. It was only northern Quebec. It was only the Northwest Territories. Who cared? We are the fringes of the country. We are forgotten most of the time so no one paid much attention.

Suddenly people started to realize what was happening to a renewable resource that can create so much employment for the country, that can contribute so much to the coffers of the country. The current ground fishery in Newfoundland is practically non-existent. The fishery is still relatively good because of crab and shrimp, shellfish. Our landed value is more than it ever was but if we took out the shell fishery which was non-existent 15 years ago, the result would be nothing because our ground fishery has practically disappeared.

If we had maintained the ground fishery that we had in 1973 when all of these things started to collapse, if these stocks had been maintained, not even enhanced but maintained, the value of the 1973 landings in today's dollars would amount to $3.38 billion. That is significant. That is just groundfish. If on top of that we added the $1 billion or so that we take in on shrimp and crab, we would have an industry in Newfoundland and Labrador with a landed value at over $4 billion. Just imagine what that would mean to our province. Imagine what it would mean to the coffers of Canada.

One of the reasons our stocks were devastated was that the seals were not controlled. The pressure groups caused the cessation of the sealing industry and for several years the seal herds grew and grew completely unchecked.

The fishery has been reinstituted. However even though the minister, to give him credit, has over the last couple of years raised the quota, it is so minuscule. It is not keeping up with the growth in the seal herd. We still have six million to eight million seals eating the fish. People will argue that they do not eat codfish. A former politician made the statement that they do not eat turnips. What do they eat? They eat fish. We know they eat fish.

Consequently if the seal hunt is stopped or slowed down because of the animal rights groups, it is going to be devastating. If these groups have a piece of legislation that gives them the opportunity to run to the courts and say that the hunt is inhumane or cruel or whatever, and the judge making the judgment has never seen a seal or knows nothing about the seal hunt, then I would not want to bet the few dollars I might have on the decision.

It is a concern particularly for our people, but it is a concern for anyone involved in the resource industries, especially the animal resource industries across the country. It is a concern for people who experiment in the medical field who realize that in order to do the work that has to be done, to cure SARS, to cure AIDS, to cure cancer we have to experiment. If we are not going to experiment on animals, then I am not sure what the result will be.

We have concerns. We think the amendments will alleviate some of these concerns. Consequently, like the member for Provencher, I certainly will support the amendments and I ask the House to do so.

[An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (Cruelty to Animals), September 29th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, when the hon. member was speaking he talked about animal rights and animal welfare. I have absolutely no problem supporting anything that helps animal rights and animal welfare.

However we must also realize that there are individual rights, human rights and human welfare that have to be taken into consideration.

I am not sure what the priorities are with the member's party. I would ask him two questions. First, when his current leader was selected he hired as a member of his staff an individual who was heavily involved in the animal welfare-animal rights movement. Within hours, not days, the pressure from members of his own party, not from the Alliance, not from our party and not from the government, but from his own party, inside and outside caucus, forced the leader to fire the individual he had hired. I am wondering how strong these people are on their stance when they do something like that.

Second, what is the member's position on the seal hunt on the east coast of Canada?

[Intergovernmental Affairs, September 29th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, on September 11, 2001, some 80 planes with about 12,000 passengers landed in Newfoundland. The people of Newfoundland, as usual, opened their hearts, their homes and their wallets to look after these people with assurances from the Government of Canada that they would be reimbursed.

It is now over two years. They have not been reimbursed. The latest rumour is that the government is talking about reimbursing them for half the costs.

What is the truth? When will they get reimbursed for these costs?

[Natural Resources, September 29th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the minister responsible for natural resources is on record as advocating one offshore board for Atlantic Canada.

How does the minister reconcile this with the fact that we have the Atlantic accord which entrenches a joint management board, Newfoundland-Canada, and provides first crack at the provision of goods and services employment to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador?

[Public Safety Act, 2002, September 29th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. friend from the Bloc. He is a gentleman who has always expressed a very keen interest in the Coast Guard.

Let me repeat what I said earlier. I have the greatest respect and appreciation for people in the Coast Guard and in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, under which the Coast Guard comes, and for their hard work and dedication. They must experience frustration with the countless cutbacks they face.

To answer my friend's question specifically, we have been told by people in the Coast Guard that their budget has not been cut. We would respond that it must be because the skippers have been told to slow down their boats at sea. Imagine telling the skipper how to run a ship at sea. The skippers are being told to only go when they have to go because fuel has to be conserved. I have seen a picture of five Coast Guard boats tied up one next to the other in St. John's harbour, yet so much work has to be done.

However it is probably true that budget has not been cut. In fact some people will say they are getting just as much money today as they did in 1993. People then say, “What can be said about that?”

People are not thinking. Does a dollar today buy what it did in 1993? The answer is certainly not. We might have the same number of dollars but we cannot get as much out of these dollars. Consequently, severe cuts have to be made. That is exactly what is happening.

Our Coast Guard properly managed and enhanced can provide a tremendous amount of security. It can also control many of the overfishing issues. The Coast Guard can be more vigilant in relation to pollution in our oceans. It can be more vigilant in relation to the type of tankers and their conditions, et cetera which ply our coasts. There are so many crucial issues for the Coast Guard.

We are one storm, one breakdown away from disaster on many occasions. The one entity that could prevent serious danger, whether it be a loss because of storm, or small boats that are pushed farther and farther out to sea because of the changing fishery or an oil tanker going ashore, is a well-maintained Coast Guard.

In Norway the coast guard comes under the department of defence. Norway takes its coast guard work very seriously. We asked representatives of Norway if they had have enough money to operate the coast guard? They said that it was well-funded and could do what was needed, and that is to protect the Norwegian coastline and the people.

Our Coast Guard can do that also if it is given the tools to do it.

[Public Safety Act, 2002, September 29th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I want to say a few words on the bill because I am not sure what else I can say. This will be the sixth time the bill has been resurrected.

A little over two years ago, we were in Edmonton attending a caucus meeting when our day, and everyone else's day in our country and probably around the world, was shattered when we saw a plane crash into one of the towers in New York City. While we were watching it and thinking that perhaps it was someone learning how to fly who had lost control, boom, a second one appeared in the picture and we saw a second tower being hit. That day changed the world in many ways and it has not been the same world since.

We often talk about the loss of innocence. Innocence was lost for a lot of us because prior to September 11, 2001, we lived in a different world, certainly when it came to worrying about ourselves in relation to safety and security. We knew there was always a crackpot around. Anything could happen anywhere at anytime, but with the security forces we had the likelihood of it happening were slim to none. We came to work each day not worrying about who was on the bus, who was walking behind us, what was in the knapsack, and who was in the gallery. We just took it for granted.

September 11, 2001, changed it all. All we have to do is come up to the Hill to see an entirely different setting. We see fences, security and screening. When we go to an airport, we see tight security which was not there before. Should it have been there before? Well, maybe to some degree. However, we should not overreact. Really, no one saw the need for it.

September 11 came along and changed the world. A lot of people reacted. Some people overreacted, and certainly, in the sense of the word, that is exactly what happened with our own government. It was completely caught, utterly unprepared, and probably not having the personnel to deal with such an issue in an expeditious, responsible and carefully planned way.

We saw the government react quickly. It said it would bring in legislation which would make us a more secure country. Over two years later we are looking at a piece of legislation that has bounced around all over the place. This spring the government closed the House early when there were lots of things on the agenda. If this were a fine piece of legislation that had to be implemented to ensure that our country was secure, then we should have dealt with it two years ago.

The length of time it has taken, the consequences that have ensued, and the changes that have occurred since put into question whether or not we should even be debating this specific piece of legislation.

Do we need to beef up security in our country? The answer is yes. Is our country secure? The answer is no. However, many of the things that could be done to make our country secure are not dependent on this legislation at all. Security could be done by strengthening a number of the mechanisms which we did, and presently do control.

When the legislation was introduced originally, it sent up a red flag. A lot of people said that what this would do is create a mechanism to give government complete control so that the minister could successfully suspend the rights and freedoms of individuals living in this country perhaps without any reason except his own, which he would not have to divulge.

That is a serious thing in a country like ours, where we so strongly defend the rights and freedoms that we have. We pride ourselves in the type of country in which we live because we have these rights and freedoms.

Should rights and freedoms ever be suspended? Yes, undoubtedly, most of us would say there are times for the good of all of us that these things could occur, provided the reason be serious and the mechanism introduced in such a measure be valid, solid and acceptable. That is not what we see in light of the legislation that is before us.

This legislation has been watered down because as time elapsed, changes occurred and some of the things that were suggested originally are no longer relevant. New incidents occurred around the world that created different issues and different responses.

One of the things mentioned in the legislation is the introduction of protected zones. It is great to talk about protected zones. We would pick areas, key harbours and airports, and ensure that we would create the type of defence mechanism that would ensure that no one could penetrate these zones. This would guarantee our safety.

We would ensure that there would not be any smuggling taking place through the harbours of Halifax or Vancouver or maybe even St. John's--however, St. John's is not mentioned. That is easy enough to say. So we bring in our legislation and we tell everybody about the great mechanisms that we would put in place to ensure no terrorists would come ashore in these areas.

Terrorists are not fools. They know where, when and how they can enter a country. We have in our own country, as admitted to by the Ministers of Fisheries and Oceans and National Defence, all kinds of gaping loopholes. We have had immigrants come to our country, land in secluded areas, and nobody would have known they were there except that somebody has accidentally run across them.

In my own riding, in the farthest eastern point in the country, a few years ago a ship just dropped into the ocean a couple or three lifeboats containing a number of Tamils. Local fishermen fishing in the dense fog accidentally ran across them, took them aboard and brought them to shore. This area is the foggiest part of North America.

It was amazing that these people were located by fishermen. If they had not been found and had continued to drift to sea, all of them would have ended up certainly being lost. It was more luck than design that they were found. Undoubtedly, the ship which dropped them off saw fishing boats in the area on the radar and took a chance on the boats finding these people, and they did.

As I say, the skipper is a good friend of mine. As he tells the story, he was sailing along and suddenly saw these little heads appear in the fog. Because the fog was low, the only thing he could see above it were the heads of a few individuals standing in the boat. Then he found the other boats involved and brought them to shore.

Why were they dropped there? Because they knew there was no Coast Guard around. They knew there was no radar surveillance to pick them up. We hear about boatloads of immigrants landing on the other coast in British Columbia. Are they spotted? Not until after the fact. Why? Because they land outside the areas where there is radar surveillance.

When I raised that issue with the minister, he said that they had corrected it. He said the one problem that they had was when boats approached our shore, they were always required to give us 24 hour notice so they then could track them to see where they would go, watch their progress, ensure collisions were avoided, et cetera. That has been changed. Now they have to let them know 96 hours beforehand so it gives them much more time to watch and plan.

This is very good for solid oceangoing traffic when people follow the rules and report as requested. Does anyone think for one minute it makes any difference when a ship is smuggling drugs or individuals into our country, if it calls either 24 or 96 hours beforehand? Of course not. They will sneak in to ensure they avoid radar coverage. If we know where the gaps are, surely they know. It is amazing and certainly not coincidental to see the boats land just a few miles outside the radar coverage in the respective areas.

These people are professionals. They know what to do and how to do it. How can we ensure they do not do it? One way is by greater radar coverage. Another way is to build up and strengthen our Coast Guard. I admire tremendously the work the people of the Coast Guard do with what they have. Their hands are tied. They tell us that security is not their job, however, the very words coast guard basically gives them some assurance that these people are guarding our coasts.

I know their duties are refined, defined and specific. However, we should ensure that the Coast Guard plays an extremely important role in guarding our coasts so that the traffic which frequents our coasts is not polluting our coasts and that oil tankers which travel our waters are solid and will not break up in the smallest storm causing major damage to our coastlines.

They also have to ensure that vessels which should not be in our waters are checked and the issue dealt with in relation to why they are here. If a ship does not have enough fuel to go from one harbour to another or if boats are tied up in port because government does not provide the funding to do the job and people are overfishing on one side or trying to land drugs or immigrants on another, then we have a major problem.

The government for 10 years now has been procrastinating over providing helicopters to our forces, helicopters that would play a major role in the security of this country. We have wasted three times the amount of money that the original helicopters would have cost if the government had accepted the deal instead of cancelling it back in 1993.

Our forces throughout are underfunded and mismanaged. We have major concerns with general security. Is it the fault of the people who work in that field? Is it the fault of the Coast Guard people who go to work every morning? Is it the fault of people who are in our forces? Absolutely not. It is the fault of the government which has totally and utterly neglected the forces and the security generally in Canada.

What we see now is reaction and panic. Instead of the government bringing the bill forward for further debate, it should perhaps scrap it completely, take it off the table, go back to the drawing board, look at the specific needs required to provide proper security in Canada and then put the money where its mouth is.

We are just regurgitating what has been said before, not only by us, but by all parties on this side and many members on the other side of the House. It is about time the government started to do things. Maybe when the new prime minister, whomever he or she might be, is in place we might see something. However that is not a reasonable expectation. The problems I raised such as lack of funding for our forces, cutbacks to fisheries, the Coast Guard trying to operate with practically no budget, show a complete and utter lack of planning. They all depend on funding.

Funding comes through the Department of Finance. The person who passes out the money, the person really responsible for such decisions is the Minister of Finance. The person most people think will be the next prime minister is the individual who for most of the past 10 years was the minister of finance. However it will not be the people who will pick him. He will automatically assume that job because he will win the leadership role in the party. The election might prove something else.

Maybe we should be asking who is responsible? Instead of people expecting so many things to change, they might say that this is not a new entity, that this is a person who has a record and that record should be reviewed. If we want to know what a person is like or what a person can do, we just have to look at what the individual has done. We should not listen to what the person tells us he or she will do.

In campaigning I prefer to tell people to look at what I have done and not listen to what I say I will do. All politicians make great promises. The individual should be judged on his or her record. In this case, as in many other cases, I believe the record of the minister of finance will probably paint an entirely different picture from the one being painted by his spin doctors.

Hopefully the government will do the right thing and bring in legislation with the money involved, legislation that will not take away the rights and freedoms of people, but will ensure that they live in a country where they have rights and freedoms and that they are also properly protected.

[Human Resources Development, September 26th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the government is pushing and pulling at the same time, and there is another expression similar to that.

Right now, infrastructure in Canada is crumbling. It will take $400 million to bring the wharfs up to standard, and now the Newfoundland-Canada Labour Market Development Agreement is soon going to be out the window.

Will the minister responsible for HRDC immediately reconsider cutting the labour market development agreement and put $130 million into an area where it can do good, not only for the government but--