Reg Alcock

[Attack on the United States, September 17th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, let me begin by adding my words to those of so many others and expressing condolences to the families and friends of those who lost their lives in the atrocities last week and to those who are continuing to struggle but may well die.

Last Tuesday was one of those days that will rest in our memories like few others. When we first heard about it and first saw the image of those buildings being attacked in that way will always be imprinted in our memory. There is an incredible numbness that comes out of the horror of an act like this is that is so huge and incomprehensible. Along with that there is fear and a desire to protect ourselves, a desire to not let people do this to us. There is also anger and a desire to strike out and get them, to get hold of them and punish them for what they did.

We are at war, but if we are at war it is not like any war we here have known before. It is not a war that we will watch on television like we did with the gulf war. It is not a war that is fought thousands of miles away, like the ones my parents experienced. It is a war where we are on the front lines. It is a war that will be fought in our airports, our schools, our communities and our shopping centres. We will experience something that others in other parts of the world have experienced already.

If it is a war, we have to win it. We cannot allow terrorists to win, who win by being free to do what they have done, but who also win if we sacrifice our lifestyle, if we give up our values and if we change who we are in order to protect ourselves from them. We must extract the price from them.

We also lose this war if we become like them. If we start to do what they do, not following the rule of law, not acting in accordance with our values and not looking for a way to solve whatever it is that is driving this, then we are in danger of becoming little better. We cannot adopt their techniques or tactics to solve this problem.

I have thought hard about this, as we all have. I have a huge faith in our public service and the government and the ability to do everything we can to bring solutions to each of the many little problems such as how our transportation system works or our border crossings, all of those kinds of things I have heard debated and discussed in the House today. I am sure that this debate will go on for a very long time.

I have also thought hard about an area that I spend a lot of time thinking about, which is information and communication technologies, the kind of framework or nervous system that globalization rides on. It is the connectedness that has allowed us to build a worldwide trading system and to connect with each other in ways that we never have before. It has also created the freedom of movement and some of the porousness that have put us at risk in this most recent circumstance.

Within that there are some areas we need to look at too. There are ways in which these tools and these networks can be used to better identify people and to track and follow people we are concerned about. However, there is a tradeoff here. It is a tradeoff between our individual privacy and our community's need to know.

This is a debate that the House needs to get engaged in. I do not know what the solution is. I do not know where the boundaries are, but I have a sense that in our desire to protect ourselves we have some tools here that will allow us to better understand what is happening and to better harden up our defences. However, we will be giving up something also.

I am a little disheartened at the rush by some. I saw Newt Gingrich on the TV last night talking about this being the time to get civil libertarians. However, I was also pleased that I did not see Colin Powell or Rumsfeld or the others buying into that argument. I think Newt Gingrich remains on the fringe. I know we will hear his theme, but I hope it does not become a central one.

There is something else here. I was trying to remember back to the spring when a round of suicide bombings started to take place in Israel. A young Palestinian man took a bomb into a crowd, but I forget the details, which is frightening in itself. We become so used to it that these things just sort of go away.

The young Palestinian exploded a bomb. He killed himself and some innocent people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the aftermath of the bombing his father was interviewed in Palestine. The father talked about how proud he was of his son. I thought about how twisted up a person has to be inside to be proud of one's child killing himself and killing innocent people. We need to understand that too. We need to understand that and what is behind and underneath it.

I am sure we will get a hold of Osama bin Laden and others, but that is not the solution. It is part of the solution, but it will not end this. Everybody who has been talking about this in the last few days has remained fixed on this problem and has made that point over and over again. We have to understand and address what is underneath this if we are to have the peaceful society that we want.

I was pleased today when listening to the debate and the speeches by members from all sides of the House. I was pleased to hear that we were talking not just about hardening up but also about understanding and trying to deal with this in a responsible fashion.

I was pleased with the Prime Minister's speech. I will end by quoting something he said which I think is just so important. He said that our actions will be ruled by resolve, but not fear.

He said that if laws need to be changed they will be. If security has to be increased to protect Canadians it will be. We will remain vigilant, but we will not give in to the temptation, in a rush to increase security, to undermine the values that we cherish and which have made Canada a beacon of hope, freedom and tolerance to the world. We will not be stampeded in the hope, vain and ultimately self-defeating, that we can make Canada a fortress against the world.

We have created something here that is beautiful and that shows how people can get along. Hopefully we can be part of the solution to this problem.

[The Act Of Incorporation Of The Conference Of Mennonites In Canada, June 4th, 2001]

moved, seconded by the hon. member for Provencher, that Bill S-25, an act to amend the act of incorporation of the Conference of Mennonites in Canada, be read the second time and, by unanimous consent, referred to committee of the whole.

Mr. Speaker, this is very straightforward business for the House. The act is being brought forward at the request of the Mennonite Conference of Canada. The church has undertaken some work over the last few years on its articles of incorporation which were originally passed by this House in 1947. It wishes to change the name from the Mennonite Conference of Canada to the Mennonite Church of Canada. As well, there are some other organizational and operational changes contained within the bill.

The bill was introduced in the Senate at the request of the church, and I am now introducing it on the floor.

I appreciate the support and assistance that has been offered by all parties. As everyone here knows, the Mennonites have contributed enormously to the quality of life in Canada. They do tremendous work not just in Canada but around the world. It is a great honour for me to be part of the process of assisting them in this renewal.

[The Act Of Incorporation Of The Conference Of Mennonites In Canada, June 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I think you would find unanimous consent for the following motion. I move, seconded by the member for Provencher:

That notwithstanding any standing order and the usual practices of the House, Bill S-25, an act to amend the Act of incorporation of the Conference of Mennonites in Canada, be now called for second reading; and

That the House do proceed to dispose of the bill at all stages including committee of the whole.

[E-Government, May 2nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the incorporation of information and communications technologies into the operation of government is believed by many to be the greatest challenge facing democratic institutions during the next decade.

Every industrialized democracy around the world has set aggressive deadlines for the completion of their transition to e-government. All are struggling, in large part due to the unanticipated consequences of embracing a technology that changes everything.

There are huge benefits to be realized by those countries that are able to overcome these challenges. I am pleased to point out that in a recent international study of progress to date, Canada has been recognized as first in the world.

Our successes are built upon the efforts of literally thousands of public servants at all three levels of government throughout Canada, public servants who get it and who are not afraid to accept the challenge and search for the value that exists in the proper use of these new tools.

At the same time change needs a champion. In that regard, I wish to congratulate the President of the Treasury Board and her staff for their leadership in this important initiative.

[Modernization Of The Standing Orders Of The House Of Commons, May 1st, 2001]

Mr. Chairman, I have thought hard about this. The problem is that it is really easy to look at something like that and say that that is the problem, but the reality is it is what we do. It is easy to look at it and say it is inconsequential, stupid and noisy. Do I think the debate that took place here for the past couple of months served any great public purpose? Absolutely not. There is a saying I think about all the time: “For every complex problem there is a simple answer and it is wrong”. Let us do it with a partisan debate. Would it not be wonderful if we all just focused on solving problems?

The reality is the partisan debate is in part how we establish differences which is how we provide people with choice. The trouble is the hot medium of television has made it possible to focus attention around such minutia and forced it to get hotter so we no longer talk about problems, we use the big words like liar. We have to get a word like that out there in order to break through the fog.

However that is also the environment we live in. It is a real part of the environment. It is really easy to blame the press. The press is part of the process, it is not the problem. The problem is the human appetite for that kind of debate. People watch it, they are interested and make their decisions based on it. How did they make a decision in the last election? Was it on a bunch of images about where one party stood versus another one?

I agree with the sentiment that there needs to be more massive reform here but I am not certain we are ready to go down that road just yet. We need to think about that one a little more. Quite seriously, I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how this place can move faster and become more relevant in the lives of people. It is not by tinkering with these rules. I can think of little changes that might help in the short term but I think we all need to get focused on the bigger changes.

[Modernization Of The Standing Orders Of The House Of Commons, May 1st, 2001]

Mr. Chairman, when I last spoke I tried to differentiate between the debate changes that need to take place that would be rightly fitted under some topic of parliamentary reform.

Some of the issues and the challenges that the Chamber faces are of much greater magnitude than we would deal with in the debate. We have to deal with finding ways of changing this place to make it fit better with the ever changing community that we live in.

Some of the problems that we face are as a result of the Chamber being unable to find ways to move the pace of the external community. I will not spend a lot of time on that tonight. We are here to talk consequentially, to offer some advice to the committee about specific changes to the operations of the House that may produce the kind of effect that would allow members of the community to see this place as more relevant.

I do not mean to dismiss some of the talk about private members' bills and other instruments. They are not unimportant and their process is not unimportant. I do however wish to make one point. We are dealing with an odd kind of loss of authority. It is an odd kind of loss of authority because the House has enormous authority. Committees have enormous authority.

There is an incredible power in this place. We make and change laws. We tax, spend and do all sorts of things. We, the members of this place, can do it. Yet for a couple of reasons that are hard to reconcile, it is difficult for us to function in a manner that expresses that authority in a useful or consequential way.

What I mean by that is that we have two things going on here. When the hon. member opposite talks about private members' bills and the importance of individual members being able to put forward a bill, one could argue that all bills emanating from the House should be the bills of all members.

One of the things that we have allowed to happen, and it is interesting to read some of the observations of people who have studied the British parliamentary system and studied this parliament, is very hot partisan debate that has very little to do with governing to intrude upon the process where law is made. When one talks to members of the House, particularly members who have been here for a long time or former members, and asks them what experiences they talk most about or feel proud of, they say committee work. They say that the real work is done in committees. That is where they have the debates.

At least two hon. members opposite are members who I have worked with on committee. We have had very real debates that have produced very real compromises which produced a permanence to legislation. We can all feel good about that if that is what we were doing here.

On the other hand we have the kind of debate that takes place in this Chamber. The problem with it is that it is easy to make fun of. I could say that we have spent the last however many months arguing about Shawinigate and I could deride the opposition about that. The fact is that we would have done the same thing if we were on the other side of the House. I was in opposition for a period of time. The fact is that in the public arena, through the eyes of the television camera, we get rewarded for outrageous behaviour and strategic outrageous attacks.

Attacking the credibility and the personality of the Prime Minister is, I would argue, not a very pleasant thing to do, not a very nice thing to do. Unfortunately I cannot argue that it is not a strategically smart thing to do. However it has nothing to do with running the country. It has to do with fighting the battles of politics, which are about getting oneself in the position where one has the power to govern.

The circle I cannot square is that we cannot control that debate because there is a reward for that debate. There is a reward for members opposite to make members on this side look like they are corrupt or stupid. There is a reward for members on this side to make members on the other side look like they are incompetent or whatever pejorative kind of phrases one wants to use. If there was not a public reward for it we would not be doing it, however distasteful it might be.

I do not blame anybody in the House because we all do the same. That is the way the community has trained us to behave in the same way that we have concerns about public servants because that is the way we have trained them to be. How do we step aside from that debate into that environment that we all want to be a part of, which is an environment that produces law?

If there were a consequential change right now in the context of this modernization of the rules, and modernization is a tough word to apply because we are not making it very modern, we could talk about a whole bunch of other things such as the House getting the tools to function in the world. Unfortunately that is a topic for another time given the focus of this debate.

If I had to recommend to you, Mr. Chairman, and to the other members of this committee one change that would have a significant impact on the operation of this place, it would be to create a process whereby members would be elected to a committee for the duration of a parliament.

The exact mechanism for that might be a combination of seniority in election, much as we do with parliamentary associations. When a member comes here he or she would know where they would be. They would make that choice and they would have to fight for it. Older members who had more experience would have a chance to get there. Members would have to convince their colleagues that they are the person to be elected to that committee in the same way you and Mr. Speaker had to convince your colleagues about the election of the Speaker. However once there we have a couple of things. We have stability. The election of the chairman becomes a consequence of that because members now own that committee. If we think about that for a second, there is a whole bunch of powers of authority that those committees have that we never exercise. Why we do not exercise them is really the question? We do not exercise them right now because there is a fear that sits out there that somehow we will not be on the committee any more or that each year we will have to face reconsideration for the committee.

However there is always talk about estimates. The estimates process in this place is a joke. It is a farce. We do not deal with estimates. We do not provide an accountability function to anything around here, in part because it is not consequential. We cannot do anything, so harrumphing about what has gone on in a department for a period of time is not worthwhile. The amount of work it takes to get a piece of information in order to have the harrumph is not worth the effort.

We made a bunch of changes when we came to government. If members focused on the system that is there, those committees would have enormous authority. The problem is we have allowed that partisan debate to intrude upon the committee debate, so in committee it is hard to have the kind of partnering that we would like to talk about. We have done it on occasion. I look across to one of the members who worked with me on a particular committee where we did a lot of that.

There is an aspect to committee travel that is very interesting. Not only do we get a chance to understand the country a little better, we get a chance to understand each other a little better. We get a sense of the shared values that we all have. Part of the real value of this place in a Canadian context is the way it acts as a massive kind of values clarification exercise. We all understand our country and what makes the country work a little better

The process is really simple. The departments come forward and say what they are planning to do. Has any committee ever held hearings on that and then written a report that has differed with the department's opinion of what they wanted to do? The committees have the authority to do it. If the department did not respond to that comment by putting in their estimates, the committee could delete the funding.

Everybody gets a little twitchy about that but not only would that cause a complete reconsideration on the part of the department or its relationship with the House, it would also cause members to take their actions seriously. Right now we can be as irresponsible as we want on committee because we do not affect anything. However if we actually committed an act that changed a policy, we would have to live with that and I think that would force us to be more serious.

We should think of the value we place on minority governments. Why is that? It is because we have to negotiate. We have to negotiate, we have to clarify our values, we have to debate and then we have to decide. Those functions could occur within committee.

Making members stable on committee, would that produce the kind of change we want? I am honestly not sure because I think the real problem in here is us and our unwillingness to exercise the authority that we have. However stabilizing members on committee, and committees already have the right to elect their own chair, would take away an excuse for why the place does not function in the way we would like it to function.

Very simply, I will help design the system for election but that one change, break the prerogative, the members control of it, and then trust us to mess up but as long as we do the right thing.

[Division No. 36, March 26th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, if I might add to the comment made by the parliamentary secretary, I think he is quite right in what he said about stigmatization.

We must remember that youth are, by definition, in a protected category. We do not assign to youth the same rights and responsibilities that we assign to other members of society. Children exist within families. Releasing the name of one member of a family who is having difficulties stigmatizes the entire family. The entire body of youth justice is built on the basis of rehabilitation.

As the parliamentary secretary has indicated, it is true that there are circumstances in which youth who are determined to be a danger in the community may need to be identified. However, that is an exception rather than the rule.

[Modernization Of House Of Commons Procedure, March 21st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, if I could have leave to have the rest of the week we could really get into this.

The problem with the very important question the member has asked, and one which I thank him for, is that we get caught up in the tools: the electronics, the fancy colours and the fancy websites. However, the tools are not the issue. The tools are important to get information.

One of the things this does really well is it acts as a huge values clarification exercise for the nation where I, as a westerner dealing with the economy and interests of Winnipeg, have to confront the issue of bilingualism, which is not something that is driven as hard in my community as it is here, or the cod fishery. Together we come and forge through the exercises that go on in this incredibly wonderful country called Canada. We are really skilful at that.

How do we maintain that but get this beast moving at the same pace as the community it has to serve? The community goes around it because it cannot respond fast enough. That is why we have lost authority and our debates have become trivial. They have become liar-liar kind of debates. What does that do for anybody?

The debates need to be substantive and real debates about the conditions that are affecting the people in our communities. We are not there because they pass us by all the time. I will try to give a more detailed answer in a presentation to the committee, which I will be allowed to do.

[Modernization Of House Of Commons Procedure, March 21st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, trying to fit my thoughts into 10 minutes will be a bit of a trick, so I hope members in the ensuing five minutes will help me clarify my thinking with some of their questions.

The House is everything that members in the debate today have said it is. It is an enormously important place in the life of the country and in the lives of Canadians. It is the place where citizens have a voice. It is the place where rights are decided and arbitrated. It is the place where power is balanced and mitigated. It is the place where authority is exercised on behalf of all Canadians.

I am quite excited about the debate and quite pleased we are headed down this road. Frankly, I like the device that has been chosen. I want to thank all House leaders for the vehicle they have created because I have a lot of respect for them. They have a lot of knowledge about this place and they are applying themselves to the task. I hope we will have opportunities for members to meet with the committee and to present ideas that are hard to fit into a 10 minute speech.

I will step back a bit from the specifics of some of the rule changes that have been discussed today. I will try to position the debate in a somewhat different context.

A friend recommended I spend time preparing for the debate by reading the annotated rules of the House. They are a fascinating read. Rules are normally not terribly interesting to read.

When the rules that govern this Chamber were first created in 1867 and they were trying to figure out how they worked, they brought in a clause that existed for a long time which said that if they did not have a rule to cover something then the rules of the mother of parliaments would apply.

As we read this we also see the evolution of our society. The Chamber is a reflection of what we are as Canadians. The rules were written before my province, Manitoba, existed as a province and had representation in the House, and before Alberta and Saskatchewan were formally provinces. The rules existed before the advent of the automobile, the airplane or the telephone, and certainly before the fax machine and the Internet.

Each time changes in the external community put pressure on this place and made changes to the environment that the citizens we represent live in, the House had to adapt. It has adapted, and tracing that adaptation is an interesting read.

The question I raise today, though, is whether we are at a point in time on which we will look back in 20 or 30 years and say it was a far more revolutionary period than perhaps we ever realized.

Canadians have some advantages. Some of the foundational research on communications, communication theory and communication policy has come out of the work of Canadians. One of my favourites was an economist by the name of Harold A. Innis who, during the last century, started writing about the economy of the country and was drawn into the question of the power of communication.

Innis wrote a book called The Bias of Communication . He delivered a lecture in 1947 to the Royal Society of Canada regarding his research. He started the lecture by saying:

I have attempted to suggest that western civilization has been profoundly influenced by communication and that marked changes in communications have had important implications.

What Harold Innis was saying, if I can translate it to the year 2001, is that the Internet changes everything. His research dated to the early days of clay and cuneiform and traced how, as successive civilizations acquired the ability to assemble information and extract knowledge from it, the ruling classes were able to monopolize the information. Then a new technology would come along and disturb the system and a new power structure or a new elite would emerge.

Historically these things have happened in dramatic fashion through wars and revolutions, but also in other ways. The rise of the modern democracy was built largely around the printing press and the availability of information, which has enabled people to develop the intellectual tools and knowledge necessary to participate in the management of their country.

When we were concerned in the 1970s about dictatorships in Central and South America, there was a fellow who said to send them books instead of guns because an educated populace demands a democratic solution.

Why are we here today feeling that this instrument of democracy no longer functions, when Canada has an educated populace? Canadians are literate, well read and engaged with their government. Why are we concerned about a loss of credibility of this place?

I will give another reference, an American reference. It is from a fellow by the name of Jerry Mechling who said the same concern is being raised in democracies around the world. It is not just a Canadian problem. The issue arises throughout the industrialized world where democracies exist. By the way, Jerry Mechling will be speaking in Ottawa next Wednesday night. Here is how he begins one of his pieces on the changes brought about by communications:

We are entering a period of historical change comparable to the one that inspired Hamilton, Madison and Jay to pen The Federalist Papers in the late 1780s. Their task was to define a constitutional vision for a new kind of political community: a federal democratic republic. The challenge for leaders today is to define an economic, social and political vision for a new kind of society, a knowledge based society, and leadership will be crucial.

I have thought about that a lot. I certainly support a lot of the suggestions people have made here about the changes that could be made to the rules to shift the power balance between the executive and the House. I agree with the leader of the Conservative Party when he says that when parliament works well government works well. Accountability is an important part of the functioning of any good organization.

I also agree with the analysis that says authority has over time moved to the executive. However I will put that in context. There is a tendency here to personalize that, to say it was something the current Prime Minister or the past Prime Minister did, or that it was part of some invidious plan on the part of somebody. I do not believe that is true at all.

I offer this analysis. The pace of change in society has been accelerating throughout the lifetime of mankind but never as rapidly as in the last few decades. Bill Gates, in his recent book, talks about this decade as the decade of velocity. The most important challenge in our society is trying to manage the rate of change and deal with the incredible decisions placed upon us not just as a government but as a society.

If we look at what has happened with large organizations, many large companies that were in existence a decade or two ago no longer exist today. A number of the largest companies in the world today did not exist in 1980. The rate of change is enormous. One response to the incredible velocity in the external community has been for governments to remove decision-making from the floor of the House. They have done so not for malicious reasons but to facilitate decisions and serve citizens because this place moves too slowly.

When I was director of child welfare in Manitoba, we wrote clauses enabling regulation because it was the most efficient way to get changes to reflect the changing needs of our citizens. I am not saying it was the best solution, but it was the only solution available. The shift in power from the House to the executive has been, in most cases, an attempt to meet the challenge imposed by those whom we serve.

The challenge is not to simply revert to an earlier stage. It is to figure out how this place can reform so that it moves in pace with the rest of society. In achieving this reform, therefore, the critical issues are those of electronic services, of getting information out earlier and of more efficiently and effectively interacting with the community we serve.

The rule changes being debated here are also important and they are like the rule changes we find in the annotated history. They need to be done. The process is a competent one and I am delighted that it runs by consensus. However the bigger change, the one we must all get our minds around, is how to make this place work at the same speed at which our citizens move. How do we make this place respond to the pace of life in the communities we represent?

[Gildas Molgat, February 28th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, Gildas Molgat was first elected to the legislature of Manitoba in 1953 when I was five years old. I became aware of him early on in my life as his work as the Liberal leader and leader of the opposition in the Manitoba legislature was often the focus of some very heated discussion between my very Conservative parents.

Later when I, having joined the Liberal Party, finally met this often demonized man, I was delighted to find a proud Manitoban, a proud francophone and a committed Canadian.

Elevated to the Senate by Prime Minister Trudeau, Gil Molgat was a formidable ally in the dark days when there was only one elected Liberal, federally or provincially, west of the Ontario-Manitoba border.

He was tireless. When the troops were frustrated and dispirited, Gil and his lifelong partner Allison were there, working with us, leading us, teaching us, chairing campaigns, recruiting candidates, and always advocating for his province and his people.

Since my arrival here in 1993 it has been an honour and a rare privilege to serve in the same caucus with him. He served for six years in one of the highest offices in this country and yet he never forgot what it was to be the MLA for Ste. Rose du Lac. We will miss him.