Loyola Hearn

[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--

[Human Resources Development, September 26th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, while the new Liberal leader is gallivanting around the country promising new money to the urban centres, rural Canada is under attack.

HRDC has announced it will be cutting funding to the Newfoundland-Canada Labour Market Development Agreement on October 3. This agreement has an annual budget of $130 million, which is directly aimed to rural communities in Canada. At the same time, rural post offices are being stamped out and lighthouses are in the dark as to their future.

How can government justify this double standard in this great country?

[Government Contracts, September 25th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, several departments have been tainted by the allegations that some of their employees may have accepted gifts from Royal LePage. These include Public Works, Treasury Board, DND and the RCMP.

Would the Solicitor General tell the House if the RCMP conducted an internal investigation into these allegations? If so, what were the conclusions of that investigation?

[Government Contracts, September 25th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, when we hear that the whole country is very excited, now we have proof of it.

Like the infrastructure throughout the country, the Royal LePage scandal only gets worse by the day. Allegations of officials accepting gifts from Royal LePage involved more than one department.

Will the Minister of National Defence tell the House if an internal investigation, launched by the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service into the matter, is complete? If so, what were the findings?

[Government Contracts, September 25th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, first let me thank the Prime Minister for referring to our leader as the leader of the official opposition. I presume he meant the real opposition in the House.

[Privilege, September 24th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I gave you the required notice of a question of privilege arising out of answers given in question period last Thursday and Friday. This relates to answers given by the government over the Royal LePage scandal.

We assume that the government speaks to the House with one voice, one set of facts and its version of the truth, but the House has been left with two versions. It is time to give the government an opportunity to tell the truth to the House.

On Thursday the following exchange took place between my leader and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services.

The member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough asked:

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Public Works must know that a senior procurement officer in his department invited a Royal LePage vice-president on a Caribbean cruise.

Will the minister also confirm that the RCMP is investigating allegations that public works employees accepted gifts from that same company that won a $1.4 billion contract?

Will the minister finally assure Canadians that his department's cruise for contracts procedure practice has ended?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services answered as follows:

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for the question, but I am certain he knows from the many years he has sat in the House that we do not comment on RCMP investigations.

On Friday, the following day, the following exchange occurred in relation to government contracts. I will quote directly from Hansard the question I asked, which was answered by the same parliamentary secretary. My question:

Mr. Speaker, government officials have confirmed the public works department's fraud investigations unit was involved in probing the circumstances surrounding the Liberals' cruise for contracts policy and the $1.4 billion relocation contract for Royal LePage. The Solicitor General has admitted the RCMP has been called in to investigate.

Will he now table the internal audit which led to the investigation and can he tell us if there are other departments involved in this $1.4 billion scandal?

The same parliamentary secretary who had answered the question the day before answered again. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services answered:

Mr. Speaker, we are not aware of any RCMP investigation in this file. Issues were raised and the minister and the department have retendered the contract.

My second question to her was:

Mr. Speaker, this investigation goes beyond what government is willing to admit.

Will the minister confirm that eight other members of the evaluation committee, representatives from the Department of National Defence, Treasury Board and the RCMP, attended various Royal LePage sponsored golf tournaments at no cost to themselves?

Has the RCMP investigation branched out to include other government departments?

Will public works re-evaluate the way contracts are tendered to ensure this practice is discontinued?

The parliamentary secretary answered:

Mr. Speaker, as I indicated previously, we are not aware of any RCMP investigation into this particular contract. Issues were raised to the minister and he felt it was better to turn around and retender this contract.

Any reasonable person would assume that the House was told on Thursday that there was an RCMP investigation and on Friday we were told that there has not been an RCMP investigation.

I now turn to your ruling on February 1, 2002, Mr. Speaker. In that case the Minister of National Defence had left the House with two different versions of the facts and he failed to inform the House of his error in giving two versions of the facts to the House. In ruling that this constituted a prima facie contempt, the Speaker stated:

The hon. member for Portage--Lisgar alleged that the Minister of National Defence deliberately misled the House as to when he knew that prisoners taken by Canadian JTF2 troops in Afghanistan had been handed over to the Americans. In support of that allegation, he cited the minister's responses in question period on two successive days and alluded to a number of statements made to the media by the minister. Other hon. members rose to support those arguments citing various parliamentary authorities including Beauchesne's 6th edition and Marleau and Montpetit. In this regard, I commend to the House a citation from Erskine May, twenty-second edition, quoted by the hon. member for Pictou--Antigonish--Guysborough as follows:

“The Commons may treat the making of a deliberately misleading statement as contempt. In 1963 the House resolved that in making a personal statement which contained words which he later admitted not to be true, a former Member had been guilty of a grave contempt”.

The authorities are consistent about the need for clarity in our proceedings and about the need to ensure the integrity of the information provided by the government to the House. Furthermore, in this case, as hon. members have pointed out, integrity of information is of paramount importance since it directly concerns the rules of engagement for Canadian troops involved in the conflict in Afghanistan, a principle that goes to the very heart of Canada's participation in the war against terrorism.

Mr. Speaker, as I said, I was quoting you. The Speaker went on to quote from Marleau and Montpetit as follows:

There are...affronts against the dignity and authority of Parliament which may not fall within one of the specifically defined privileges...the House also claims the right to punish, as a contempt, any action which, though not a breach of a specific privilege, tends to obstruct or impede the House in the performance of its functions; [or that] obstructs or impedes any Member or Officer of the House in the discharge of their duties...

The Speaker ruled as follows:

On the basis of the arguments presented by hon. members and in view of the gravity of the matter, I have concluded that the situation before us where the House is left with two versions of events is one that merits further consideration by an appropriate committee, if only to clear the air.

There is a difference in gravity here but the government is still required to tell the truth and we have been left with two different stories.

Two sitting days have passed since the matter was raised last Friday. The government has not come forward to set the record straight and the House still has two positions coming from the cabinet.

It would be a simple thing for a minister of the crown to rise and set the record straight and offer an apology. I ask the minister to do that. If not, we are left to sit here with two versions of the facts from the same government, from the same parliamentary secretary.

You should find in my favour, Mr. Speaker. I am prepared to move that the matter be referred to a committee for consideration and report.

[Questions on the Order Paper, September 19th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I will sum up quickly to give somebody else a chance to speak to the bill because I believe we have put our points clearly on the table.

This is a rush job to facilitate the incoming Prime Minister of the country. There is no other reason for changing the process. It takes time to ensure we have good voters lists to encourage many people, especially young people, who are never added to the lists. About 25% of the people under 30 years of age vote in this country, and that is a terrible figure. The reason for a lot of this is because they are never enumerated and nobody goes after them.

We should not worry about rushing this through. We must do it right and ensure it is good for the country, not just good for the incoming Prime Minister.