Rahim Jaffer

[Government Contracts, February 11th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, what is truly deplorable is that this Prime Minister still says he knew nothing about it all during the time he was the finance minister and the lead minister in Quebec.

BDC, VIA Rail, Canada Post and the Port of Montreal: all these crown corporations are run by the Prime Minister's Liberal cronies. Crown corporations are not subject to access to information. Will they be subject under this inquiry?

[Government Contracts, February 11th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, it is a sad day when the Prime Minister defends a government currently under investigation by the RCMP, a Liberal government the Auditor General has tarred as one of the most corrupt in the history of our nation.

The sponsorship program was a money laundering scheme, taking money from taxpayers and giving it to Liberal friends, and then having the Liberal Party of Canada reap the rewards.

Canadians deserve an answer. Why did the Prime Minister allow this to happen under his watch as finance minister?

[Canada Steamship Lines, February 5th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, it is tough to take the government's information seriously, especially when it seems to be right only 2% of the time.

As finance minister, this man put in place laws to benefit great shipping magnates of Canada, of which he happened to be the biggest. In the meantime, he raised taxes on Canadians to pay for numerous scandals he oversaw, like the gun registry and advertising contracts.

How is it fair that the Prime Minister thinks he deserves to get away with not paying his fair share in taxes, while the people of Canada struggle to make ends meet?

[Canada Steamship Lines, February 5th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the average Canadian works half the year to pay off their taxes. Between income taxes, payroll taxes and the GST, up to 48% of income is eaten away by the tax man. By contrast, through the generous use of a Barbados tax haven the Prime Minister created while he was finance minister, his former company Canada Steamship Lines pays only 2% of its income toward taxes.

Will the Prime Minister please explain to the Canadian public why they should pay half of their income to taxes and his company can sail away, scot free?

[Ethics, October 28th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, in the past two weeks the House has caught high ranking cabinet ministers with their hands in the Irving cookie jar. It seems that the line-up of Liberals coming out of the closet to admit their wrongdoing by accepting these gifts will only keep growing.

Since this trend seems to be increasingly fashionable among the Liberal ranks, I would invite the Minister of National Revenue to hop on the bandwagon. Canadians want to know. Has this minister ever accepted an undeclared gift in excess of $200?

[Member for LaSalle--Émard, October 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the soon to be leader of the Liberal Party, the member for LaSalle—Émard, has always been a fan of making promises with no intention of backing them up.

In the 1993 red book, which he penned, he made such lofty promises as improving Canada's health care system and scrapping the GST. So what did he do as finance minister over the next 10 years?

First and foremost, he gutted $40 billion from the health care system. He put Canadians on life support while he intentionally took actions to increase waiting periods for critical surgeries and cancer treatment.

The GST? Ten years later, we are still paying 7%. Another broken promise.

So what does that mean today? Will he slay the democratic deficit, as he is now promising? Will he actually be able to find the province of Alberta on a map of Canada? Or will he, like the current Prime Minister, forget that there are Canadians west of Sudbury?

The best judge of a person's character is his past, and this member's past says he has no problem breaking his promises.

[Assisted Human Reproduction Act, October 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-13 at this particular stage. I have had the chance to address it on a couple of previous occasions.

We in the opposition feel that regulation is needed in this field. We have heard that from a number of members debating this topic today. As many of my colleagues have said, there is concern about this because it deals with the creation and death of human life and requires some measure of public oversight on that regulation.

It should be noted that we do support a number of aspects of Bill C-13. We fully support bans on reproductive or therapeutic cloning, chimeras, animal-human hybrids, sex selection, germ line alteration and the buying and selling of embryos. We also support a regulatory body to monitor and regulate fertility clinics, though we want changes to the agency proposed in the bill.

As many of my colleagues have talked about the aspects of the preamble, I will focus specifically on some of the concerns we have with the bill in its current form. We support the recognition that the health and well-being of children born through assisted human reproduction should be given priority. In fact, the health committee came up with a ranking of whose interests should have priority in the decision making around the idea of assisted human reproduction and related research.

The three priorities were the following: first, children born through an AHR system; second, adults participating in AHR procedures; and third, researchers and physicians who conduct assisted human reproductive research.

While the preamble of the bill recognizes the priority of AHR offspring, and this is a good thing, other sections of the bill fail to meet the standard. Children born through donor insemination, from donor eggs, are not given the right to know the identity of their biological parents. I will address the issue of donor identity in a moment.

The bill's preamble does not provide an acknowledgement of human dignity or respect for human life. This is obviously a big issue for many people in Canada. The bill is intimately connected with the creation of human life and yet there is no overarching recognition of the principle of respect for human life. This is a grave deficiency that many people have identified.

The committee's minority report recommended that the final legislation clearly recognize human embryo as human life and that the statutory declaration include the phrase “respect for human life”. We believe the preamble and the mandate of the proposed agency should be amended to include reference to this principle of respect for human life. That would help to calm many people's fears because many people do feel that science and technology, reproductive technologies and the continuing on of research in many of these facets for improving Canadian's lives and the conditions of other people around the world is something that is very important. Clearly there needs to be some recognition of the importance of human life so people's fears that this will not be abused in the future can be calmed.

In the area of the regulatory agency, the bill would create the assisted human reproduction agency of Canada to issue licences for controlled activities, collect health reporting information, advise the minister and designate inspectors for the enforcement of the act. The board of directors would be appointed by a governor in council with a membership that would reflect a range of backgrounds and disciplines relevant to the agency's objectives. The bill in this area was amended at committee placing board members under conflict of interest provisions. That is something that is of importance.

At report stage the health minister succeeded, however, in undoing part of that amendment. Licensees remain ineligible to serve as board members but the minister removed the section requiring that board members have no pecuniary or proprietary interests in any business operating in the reproductive technologies field. That is an important change because we have seen over and over again many conflicts of interest, or alleged conflicts of interest, in this government. We would hate to see that happen in an independent body that is obviously overseeing the regulation pertaining to reproductive technologies.

Clause 25 would allow the minister to give any policy direction she likes to the agency and the agency must follow it without any questions. If the agency were an independent agency, answerable strictly to Parliament, such political direction would be more difficult. The entire clause should be eliminated in our opinion.

The Canadian Alliance proposed amendments specifying that the agency board members be chosen for their wisdom and judgment. This was a health committee recommendation in the report “Building Families”. We want to avoid an agency captured by interests and clearly, that would be a good thing. Members must be able to work together to pursue the greater good, not merely represent certain constituencies.

The Liberals rejected their own recommendation when our amendment came up during the review of Bill C-13 at committee. At report stage the health minister succeeded in deleting one of the clauses requiring board members of the assisted human reproduction agency to come under conflict of interest rules. On this point, I believe the health committee had it right. Board members should not have commercial interests in the field of assisted human reproduction or related research.

We can draw on examples here. Imagine an employee or an investor in a biotech company with a financial interest in embryonic stem cell research making decisions for Canadians on the regulations of such research, including the definition of the word necessary, as specified in clause 40. Imagine the director of a fertility clinic making regulations on limits on sperm and egg donations or number of embryos produced for IVF treatments. Such conflicts of interest need to be prevented in this legislation. This change obviously could rise in some of those unfortunate conflicts.

The health minister said that subclause 26(8) would prevent almost anyone from serving on the board, but this was clearly not the intent of the health committee in its spirit.

To move on to the issue of donor anonymity, I know it is something that many of my colleagues have addressed in the House. Although the agency would hold information on donor identity, children conceived through donor insemination or donor eggs would have no right to know the identify of their parents without their written consent to reveal it. Donor offspring would have access to medical information of their biological parents. Some of the concern with this is that donor offspring and many of their parents want to end the secrecy that shrouds donor anonymity and denies children knowledge of an important chapter of their lives.

The Liberals claim to want to put the interests of children first, but in this case think the desires of some parents should trump the needs and interests of children.

In its review of draft legislation the health committee recommended an end to donor anonymity. Even in the minority report, the CA position was that where the privacy rights of donors of human reproductive materials conflicted with the rights of children to know their genetic and social heritage, the rights of the children should prevail.

However, when the issue came up during the review of Bill C-13, the Liberals defeated an Alliance amendment to end anonymity in a close vote. I believe it was six to five on the committee.

The government attaches a higher weight to the privacy rights of donors than to the access to information rights of donor offspring. This is where the Liberals get it backwards. An identified donor is a responsible donor and if all donors had to be willing to identify, then people would donate for the right reasons. Today, one of the main motivations for anonymity is the money factor, which is unfortunate.

There are just a couple of last concerns I would like to address before concluding. One of the issues is with clause 71, which allows the grandfathering of controlled activities until a date fixed by the regulations. This clause would allow scientists to engage in a controlled activity before the act takes effect thereby avoid licensing requirements and prosecution provisions. This could result in a stampede toward controlled activities before the bill takes effect. An example would be embryonic research.

The other issue I would like to address is the chimera issue. This bill prohibits animal to human chimera. That means human embryos implanted with animal cells. However, it does not prohibit human to animal chimera, animal embryos implanted with human cells. The definition of chimera should have been amended to include both human and animal embryos in which cells of other species have been implanted. I believe Motion No. 5 to this effect was unfortunately defeated, at committee.

A Liberal motion passed at report stage would allow the reimbursement for loss of work related income for surrogates when a doctor certified that continuing to work would pose a health risk to the carrier of the fetus. We oppose the motion because it permits the commodification of human life, rent a womb, payment for children, and the health committee also wanted no such payment for surrogacy. This was another issue of concern for many people.

I conclude by saying that I hope the Prime Minister will allow a free vote on this issue. It is obviously a matter of conscience for many members and we hope that element of bringing in a free vote in this place will be respected.

[Canadian Forces Superannuation Act, October 20th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is missing the point when it comes to resourcing our military. We are not talking about building up an arms race or trying to compete with other countries that are obviously positioned in a superpower status. We are talking about what Canada can do well in its role as a middle power and one that has been respected around the world, especially when it comes to peacekeeping and when it comes to being prepared in combat ready situations to help our allies. That is what we are talking about.

Even in doing what the armed forces have done so well over the years, the government has failed in resourcing our armed forces. The hon. member should take some responsibility for that because that is what we are debating today. Even though the government has taken a small step with Bill C-37, ultimately we still have a host of issues that are affecting our military. Those issues need to be addressed by the government. I do not know whether it will do that leading into the next election. It has failed the military up until now and I do not expect it to turn any new corner to help it out in the future.

[Canadian Forces Superannuation Act, October 20th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Windsor West for his most appropriate question. I would like to congratulate him for his diligence in fighting for customs agents in and around the Windsor area and security at our borders. We have worked together on a couple of other issues as well.

He hit the nail on the head when he talked about priorities. Let us talk about the government's priorities and how it has spent Canadians' money.

We can identify a number of what we on this side of the House call boondoggles when it comes to how the government spent Canadians' money. It could do so much more good if its priorities were set straight. If the Liberals' priorities are vote buying, clearly that is something they are masters of and they have done very well. We can talk about things like the gun registry and things like corporate welfare where the Liberals have given millions of dollars to their friends in various companies depending on who they are. We can talk about sponsorship grants. How much abuse do taxpayers have to take before they wake up and tell the government to be accountable for what it is doing?

The hon. member mentioned the gun registry. If we took those resources and put them into something that Canadians feel strongly about, our military for example, there would be overwhelming support to do that over some of the government's shameful priorities.

[Canadian Forces Superannuation Act, October 20th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Dewdney—Alouette for his most appropriate question. The debate we are having today is about the condition of our armed forces and especially the condition of our soldiers when it comes to their pension requirements and especially when it comes to the problems of funding that we find ourselves in because of the lack of commitment from government members over the last 10 years.

I talked in my speech about the funding cuts that we have seen, unfortunately. The government has been scrambling over the years to try to increase some of the funding in certain areas that have been hit so hard. When it comes to the way the military men and women can do their jobs, in spite of the government, they still do a great job.

Specifically when we look at the record of the soon to be prime minister who was the former finance minister during the time of the majority of the cuts to defence, close to $20 billion which I identified in my speech were taken out of the military budget. That is incredible. How can we expect the military that is so revered around the world to meet the commitments on a daily basis, let alone on an international basis with our commitments with our allies, with the incredible cut to that particular funding?

Now we are seeing a complete flip-flop by the soon to be prime minister saying that he has a strong commitment to the military and he is going to make that a priority. Where was he over the last 10 years when he was in charge of signing those cheques? He was absent as he is usually in some of the debates that we are having.

Clearly, if the government is going to talk about the military and talk about its commitment to defence, my hon. colleague has it right. The government sure has not demonstrated it over the last 10 years. I question the new prime minister's motives when he talks about the idea of committing to the military. How in fact can we trust him to do that? He has talked the talk before but he sure did not walk the walk.