Betty Hinton

[Supply, May 8th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague from Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre.

I would like to address my remarks to all clear-headed and decent Canadians, like those in Perth—Middlesex and in my own constituency. I think I can safety state that the people in these two ridings hold the same values and share a common philosophy.

Recent court decisions are a concern of most Canadians. Canadians do not hold our courts in contempt but Canadians think they have reason to believe that our courts have contempt for them, for their beliefs and for their values.

On the issue of child pornography, we witnessed the use of the defence of artistic merit. Where is the artistic merit in written or visual material that deals with the sexual exploitation of children? How could anyone buy the argument that graphic depictions of children being sexually manipulated against their will by savage predators has any artistic merit? Yet we have the court accepting this specious and brutal argument.

Decent and normal Canadians reject that argument because they know child pornography is clearly harmful to children and must be the subject of criminal prosecution. It is not only our right as parliamentarians, it also is our duty and moral responsibility to eliminate the defence of artistic merit by repealing that section of the Criminal Code.

Most Canadians have never seen or read any of this unspeakable material with no wish to be exposed to it. I have seen the light of innocence and trust in a child's eyes extinguished by the horror and pain of this terrible exploitation.

The Canadian Alliance invited the most senior Toronto police investigators from the child pornography squad to visit our caucus and give us their opinion on what was being done and what needs to be done.

To this day, those terrible, horrible, depraved photographs are seared in my memory and still tear at my heart. If I am impatient for change to our laws and angry when members in this chamber argue against this motion, I will explain that it is because I have seen the evidence.

Now the Liberals and their friends are going to attempt to further confuse Canadians. The latest scheme is to allow lawyers to argue that perhaps there is some public good to be found in child pornography. Public good and child pornography do not belong in the same sentence. There is absolutely no merit, artistic or otherwise, in child pornography. There can be no public good in it either.

It is simply repugnant to Canadians that the government would allow anyone to consider that somehow the public good can be served by the production and distribution of child pornography. How can the public good be served by such depraved material? How can the corruption of innocent children be considered some sort of contribution to the public good?

Canadians want legislation declaring child pornography indefensible on every level. They also want harsh sentences handed down to the guilty. While we are at it, we should raise the age of consent from 14 to 16, while maintaining the close in age exemption.

Why can we not give our children the gift of an extended childhood to give them the greater gift of freedom from legal exploitation? Why is it that the Liberals and their friends so harshly reject the notion that children under 16 deserve our protection? Why do the Liberals and their friends buckle in the face of Supreme Court decisions that rob our children of their innocence, trust, dignity and, most important, their childhood?

That old refrain of respecting court decisions is wearing thin. How can Canadians be expected to continue respecting our courts when they increasingly believe that our courts do not respect Canadians? We can remedy that right here in this Parliament. Insofar as child pornography is concerned, we can eliminate the defence of artistic merit in child pornography that is clearly so harmful to children.

This is the people's Parliament and children are people. Children are owed the love, the respect and the protection of their Parliament.

If all hon. members stand together in the House, we would be sending a message to Canadians and to our courts. That message would be very clear. Any obscene material, any pornography that depicts the exploitation of children is legally, morally and totally repugnant to Canadians and to their Parliament.

The other court decision that rankles us as well is the idea that pornographic sexual predators can serve their sentences under house arrest. It is totally unacceptable. What about children who walk up to that front door in all innocence or, even more frightening, a child who runs to that house for shelter against a threat? The inhabitant of that house could be just as dangerous, or more so, for that child than the one from whom he or she is trying to escape. It simply does not make sense. A criminal is a criminal and a child predator is most definitely a criminal. They belong in prison, not in the comfort of their own homes.

If Parliament adopted a national child protection strategy and allocated the necessary financial resources, we would be taking a step in the right direction.

Plain and simple, the priorities of Canadians are not the priorities exhibited by the Liberals. The police and crown lack the necessary resources to ensure the investigation and prosecution of child pornography, and related crimes receive the appropriate priority. What greater priority could there be than the safety, trust and innocence of our children?

I stress that this is not a partisan issue. It is simply and only an issue of children and their protection. How could anyone with a clear conscience stand and disagree? How could any member of Parliament turn his or her back on Canada's children? How could members look another child in the eye if they do not support what it is we are here speaking about today?

We have to stop child pornography. How could any member ever approach a voter, who is also a parent, and ask for that person's trust and vote if we deny them this simple right?

Let us switch to another part of the motion. I think the majority of Canadians are wondering why the Liberals and their friends here in Ottawa are eroding many of the cherished beliefs, values and standards of Canadians. It is no surprise that Canadians are beginning to wonder who is in charge of their country and their destiny.

Liberals should have the right to denounce or support the motion, this whole concept, if it is what they and their constituents deem appropriate, without having to ask for the authority of the whip or face party discipline.

Another part of the motion echoes again the beliefs of the majority of Canadians. Law-abiding citizens and victims of criminals do not accept that prisoners should have the right to vote in Canadian elections. Prisons are places where people pay their debt to society. The fact that they receive pay from society while in prison still baffles many Canadians, but that is an argument for another day.

There is not a thinking Canadian anywhere who supports the notion that prisoners should have all the rights and privileges of those who live outside the prison walls and within the law. There is not a thinking Canadian anywhere who would agree that murderers should enjoy the same rights as his victims.

It devalues the vote. In fact, it inflates the value of the prisoner's vote while deflating the vote of citizens outside the prison walls.

If the right to vote is held as an inalienable right, a right that people have fought and died to win or retain, what value does it hold when a mass murderer enjoys the same right?

The Liberals and their friends make a tired argument that criminals are victims of society. If that were believed to be true, then we would have a question to ask, and I would challenge any Liberal across the way to answer the question. What did some innocent, law-abiding citizen do to society to deserve a brutal and agonizing death at the hands of his or her murderer? What did the innocent victims of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka or Clifford Olson do to society to deserve their deaths at the hands of these beasts?

Canadians do not believe the argument that criminals are the victims of society. Canadians do not believe that a vote from within a heavily populated prison should swing the results of an election. Canadians do not want prisoners to have the right to vote.

This is a non-votable motion. Having heard many speakers from other parties, especially the Liberals, I am left pondering one question. Because of the Liberals, New Democrats, Bloc Québécois and Progressive Conservatives who argued against this motion, can we assume from that that they would not vote to protect children from being exploited at the hands of beasts involved in the child pornography industry? Do they believe that children at 14 years are old enough to be exploited by those who would do such things? Do they believe that Paul Bernardo, Karla Homolka and Clifford Olson should have the right to vote, the same as law-abiding citizens?

We will be reminding Canadians in the next election who stands where on the issue of protecting children. Right now it appears that the Canadian Alliance is the only party standing for Canadians.

[Child Pornography, May 8th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians know there has never been any artistic merit in child pornography and Canadians know there is no public good to be found in depraved illustrative material that exploits children.

When will the Minister of Justice do what is right and what Canadians want and introduce legislation declaring that child pornography is indefensible at every level, and lay down strict sentencing guidelines for those found guilty of trafficking in it?

[Child Pornography, May 8th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, all over the world governments are uniting to wipe out the scourge of child pornography. Only in Canada do we have a government that allows this industry to continue to exist.

Having been told repeatedly by Canadians that there is no merit, artistic or otherwise, in such filth, the Liberals have decided there might be some public good to be found in graphic illustrations of child exploitation.

Will the justice minister explain to Canadians how he can defend the existence of child pornography by searching for evidence of some public good?

[Supply, May 8th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened very carefully to the speech made by my colleague from the Bloc. I have a very serious concern about some of the things he said today.

Yes, it is a sickness. I would agree completely that it is, but it is a mental sickness. It is not a sickness like cancer or diabetes or something that is curable. This is an incurable disease and we need to keep children safe from these kinds of people.

I would ask the member if he could answer just a very simple question for me. Does he believe that there is any artistic merit in child pornography?

[An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, May 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I will be really careful what I say. I will not repeat what my colleague has just said but I will tell him that this is the first time I have been made aware of his private member's bill and I can hardly wait for it to come to the floor. It is the most common sense I have heard and the freshest breath of air in a long time. I will definitely be supporting it. I would agree that it would be the way we would have to go. One simply should not be able to own a firearm, and if one could actually do that now under the law, after five years, that is a major loophole. That is something that should have been looked at more seriously.

We should maybe start concentrating on what is actually important to Canadians and what keeps them safer, such as, on spending a billion dollars on a wasted gun registry, think of how many RCMP we could have put on the street to actually make people safe.

[An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, May 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, first, I did not raise that question and I never once said that we were opposed to control in some form. We have had controls since 1940. What we are opposed to is registration. Second, the Charter of Rights mentioned by the member intentionally omitted property rights.

What we are talking about and the lesson I want the member to learn from past mistakes, which I took the time to go through, is that we cannot criminalize innocent people because it fits our agenda.

I went through this and explained all the different categories of people who, over the last century, have been targeted. The target we have today is duck hunters and ranchers. If you do not understand the lifestyle, then you need to learn to understand the lifestyle before you start condemning these people, these honest people who built this country, as criminals because they own firearms.

[An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, May 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I have enjoyed that yarn as much as anybody else in this room today, but I am sure you have listened to enough of this discussion that you would like to hear something maybe a little different. Therefore I will give you a history lesson.

By the way, Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague from Battlefords—Lloydminster.

The history of firearms registration is history replete with racism, bigotry and intolerance. Both Liberals and Conservatives should hang their heads in shame for being so intolerant toward so many minority groups in Canada.

As far back as 1837, the governing elites of this country targeted the Irish, and only the Irish, with firearms control legislation. Yes, the ancestors of the Liberals and the Conservatives were as bigoted as any elites anywhere on Earth. They decided, unjustly and unfairly, that Irish-Canadians were threats to peace, order and their corrupt style of governing.

When the rebellion broke out in Upper and Lower Canada, legislation was introduced prohibiting unlawful training of persons in the use of arms, “and it authorized seizure of arms “collected or kept for purposes dangerous to the public peace”.

Forty years later, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald targeted the Irish with that legislation because he feared the Fenians in the United States might invade Canada. Sir John A. Macdonald was a political grandfather to those across the way and that tiny group sitting way off in the left of the corner in this place. John A. Macdonald called himself a liberal Conservative.

We are here today listening to Conservatives call themselves liberal and Liberals describing themselves as conservative. No wonder Canadians cannot tell the difference between those two parties. There never was any difference, going right back to their political birth.

It was not only Sir John A. who believed minorities and the Irish were less than equal. In 1878, after riots in Montreal, the Liberals, under prime minister Alexander Mackenzie, denied an accused person's right to a trial by jury and ordered the licensing of firearms owners in certain districts of Canada. Most of those certain districts were Irish neighbourhoods. The justice minister of the day was eager to embrace legislation based on the statutes in Britain that were aimed solely at repressing and abusing the Irish.

Today things are a little different. Liberals have the right to abuse absolutely anyone who will not vote for them.

Only a few years later, Sir John A. Macdonald and the liberal Conservatives found a new minority group to target and abuse. After the Riel rebellion in 1885, aboriginals, Metis, disloyal white settlers and who knows what other visible minorities in the Northwest Territories were forbidden to possess improved arms. They could carry and use ancient old smoothbores, like muzzle-loading shotguns and rifles, but nothing with an improved or rifled barrel.

We are only up to 1885, and the minorities targeted by the bigots in the Liberal and Conservative parties are aboriginal, the Irish, Metis and the so-called disloyal white settlers.

Let us skip ahead to 1913. This time it was the Conservatives, feverish with anti-immigrant hysteria, deciding to license handguns. Robert Laird Borden, the Conservative prime minister, thought immigrants were dangerous and he wanted to ensure that they did not have access to handguns. By passing legislation forcing the registration of handguns, he could use the RCMP and local police to ensure that immigrants did not have access.

Of course any good citizen of Anglo-Saxon stock could register them, and by now the Irish were no longer despised by the Liberals and the Conservatives. Liberals and Conservatives know a valuable voting block when they see one.

I would guess the Liberals and Conservatives of 1913 said to each other, “Let's pretend we don't despise the Irish and they will vote for us”. They were still bigots and racists but they hid it better than they had previous to 1913.

It must be embarrassing for today's Liberals and Conservatives, having such a foul legacy of bigotry and racism.

In 1919 another invisible enemy was spotted that required more action on the firearms front. According to Allan Smithies and W.T. Stanbury, writing in the Hill Times , the Winnipeg strike of 1919 raised fears of a Bolshevik revolution.

Robert Laird Borden was calling himself a unionist prime minister. That means that he had both Liberal and Conservatives behind him. Let me quote from Smithies and Stanbury in the March 10 Hill Times .

The federal government responded to the establishment's fears of a Bolshevik revolution that were erroneously attributed to non-British “alien scum” by prohibiting non-British immigrants from owning firearms and ammunition. The government was convinced that non-British immigrants with their “...bad habits, notions and vicious practices,” were “...thorough-paced Bolsheviks, disciples of the torch and bomb,” who showed “...a greater readiness (to) resort to the use of weapons than do our own people”.

That by the way was taken from a speech by the minister of justice in 1919 and Smithies and Stanbury found it in Hansard . Does it not sound a lot like Liberal justice ministers of today? Their kind of people do not hunt, do not target practice and do not own firearms. If their kind of people do not, then no Canadian should hunt, target practice or own firearms. After all, it is their kind of people who really count in Canada. Those who do not count are those who do not vote Liberal.

In July 1920, old bigoted Bob Borden ordered the licensing of gun owners and the registration of rifles. Some Canadian residents had money and Bobbie Borden needed it. British subjects who owned shotguns were exempt. The Liberals and Conservatives eagerly trotted after bigoted Bob, agreeing that only white people of Anglo-Saxon stock were to be trusted.

What all this means is that Liberals and Conservatives did not like people from the Ukraine, Russia, Greece, Germany, Denmark, China, Japan, India and every other country except Great Britain. They did not like anybody but British subjects and they did not trust anybody but those from Great Britain.

Liberals and Conservatives share a common history of racism, bigotry and intolerance along this line.

Moving along to the Great Depression in 1934, federal legislation was rushed through in 10 days. This was after the Communist, Tim Buck, drew greater crowds than Conservatives and Liberals were able to draw. The legislation to which I refer put the RCMP in charge of handgun registration. Smithies and Stanbury say that it was because the RCMP were the first line of defence against internal disorder. They were the most reliable for breaking strikes, smashing the radical trade unions, controlling the unemployed and hounding political dissenters.

In addition to being anti-immigrant, bigoted and intolerant, the Liberals and Conservatives shared another trait in common, a tendency toward fascism.

Smithies and Stanbury say that confiscation of firearms from non-white or ethnic persons was common, dating back to the first world war. Registered firearms were seized from Japanese Canadians who also saw their homes and possessions seized and handed over to friends of the governing parties.

But there is more.

The Liberals' anti-Quebec tendencies came into play in 1940. Fearing fifth column activity among enemy ethnic communities, the Liberals introduced universal firearms registration in 1940. What they truly feared was insurrection over conscription.

I wonder if the present justice minister is proud that Liberals had so little trust in Quebeckers that they saw fit to have them register all their firearms. The prime minister of that time was Mackenzie King, the man who loved his dog, himself and the Liberal Party. He never forgot them in his prayers.

In the west when the government insisted during World War II that all guns be registered, there was evidence of more bigotry. Those who did as the government asked and brought their rifles and shotguns in to be registered discovered who was a good Canadian and who was not. People with names that were eastern European had their rifles and shotguns seized. People with good respectable Anglo-Saxon names were allowed to register and retain possession.

The reason for my little history lecture today is transparent. If we do not learn from past mistakes, we are doomed to repeat those mistakes. Let us learn from the errors of the past and not go back to labelling our ranchers or duck hunters as disloyal white settlers. They made the country.

These are good people like Paul Reibin from my riding who is a recreational gun owner, Rolf Pfeiffer, a resident of 100 Mile House and hundreds of law-abiding citizens who refuse to accept this infringement on their rights and the government's blatant disregard for private property rights. They stand loud and proud against the gun registry.

The bill fails to take into account lifestyle and private property rights. How can we call ourselves democratic while we endorse legislation that tramples the basic rights of our citizens? What a legacy, what a fraud, what a scandal. Canadians deserve better.

[Fisheries and Oceans, May 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, this is not a case of new law. It is a case of convenient interpretation of existing legislation. This was a deliberate Liberal choice. The minister knows those inland waterways have been uncharted for many years under the Liberal watch.

How can the minister demand that municipal or regional governments assume federal responsibilities and meet higher standards than those that were in place when the work was done by his department?

[Fisheries and Oceans, May 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans has been sailing some rough water lately. Although he is trying to hide it, a new issue is quietly emerging. Users of inland waterways deemed uncharted are being abandoned by Liberals and put in peril.

The minister's intent is that the charting and marking of inland waterways no longer be a federal responsibility. Why are the Liberals ignoring the threat this poses to recreational sailors and the liability factor faced by municipal and regional governments?

[Canada Airports Act, April 29th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with my colleague on some of the problems that have transpired. I believe that the problems with Air Canada began long before 9/11. They began when Air Canada began playing Pacman with other industry airlines, and started eating them up and taking on their debt.

In terms of government interference or getting in the middle of things, I think that entrepreneurs and business people are in a far better position to decide what has to happen in industry than any government. In fact, if the member is asking me to be perfectly honest, the very last entity in the world that should be involved in business is government. I could give hundreds of examples of how it has managed to easily foul up what was working well before it got involved. I do not believe that we need to have government interference. We need to level the playing field for all air companies, and I believe that my caucus member from Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam has eloquently spoken in the House on a number of occasions about a simple solution to the entire airport problem.