Roger Gallaway

[Broadcasting Act, March 11th, 1998]

moved that Bill C-288, an act to amend the Broadcasting Act (broadcasting policy), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to be the first person to speak in support of this piece of private member's legislation, Bill C-288, an act to amend the Broadcasting Act. In my allotted time I would like to speak to three basic points or principles.

I should point out this is not a new piece of legislation either to this House or to the Senate. In fact, this is the same piece of legislation which in the last Parliament was called Bill C-216 and which passed this House as amended by the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage and passed the Senate as amended there and is now back before us as Bill C-288 in the same words. But there is one slight shift. This has not been deemed votable by the committee charged with making such determinations.

To those members of other parties and to new members I have to point out that this bill has been studied by a House committee, it has been studied by a Senate committee and it passed the House, passed the Senate and came back here as amended.

This bill received more press coverage in the last Parliament than any other private member's bill by far. It received editorial endorsements and it taught the Senate of Canada that it cannot sit idly by and ignore private members' legislation passed by this House.

Some members may recall the call a senator campaign which was launched last winter and should know that the Senate of Canada was forced to hire extra telephone operators to deal with the thousands of calls made into that place telling the senators to get on with their business and to pass this bill.

Clearly if thousands of Canadians would pick up the phone to call the toll free line at the Senate, one must conclude that this bill had and continues to have wide scale public support. It is equally important to note that the bill has also been endorsed by the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, the Consumers Association of Canada, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre and was endorsed by the Minister of Canadian Heritage on April 9, 1997 in this House.

Finally, because there were concerns expressed in the other place about the effect of this bill on French language services, when it cleared the other place it was noted in debates there that even the French language specialty service approved of this bill.

Furthermore, the Toronto Star , the Globe and Mail , the Montreal Gazette , the Financial Post and other papers carried editorials calling for the passage of this bill. The Financial Post in an editorial said that despite the cable industry's promise not to employ negative option billing again, it was time to drive a stake through the heart of it so that marketers within the cable industry did not find a new variation.

This evening is perhaps the last chance the House will have to deal with this issue.

The second point I want to make deals with the substance of this bill. What this legislation does for the first time is give Canadian consumers a modicum of control over what they will pay for services offered by cable, telephone and satellite companies on to television screens. It is not a radical idea. It is a pretty simple concept that Canadian consumers should agree to the provision of services and that in agreeing they should know what they are receiving and what the cost will be.

Of course this is the normal practice in most marketplaces save and except, and I say this sadly, in matters of Canadian telecommunication. In this realm we have said that Canadians should not have the right to select what they receive and how much they will pay for it.

This is a pathetic commentary on how specialty television services are provided in this country and goes a long way to say how we as legislators have allowed the exploitation of the Canadian public by large corporate interests all in the name of culture.

Yet this bill affects only specialty channels. It in no way impairs or impedes the ability of the government to declare certain channels to be mandatory and therefore to be carried on basic cable.

This bill simply deals with specialty channels, those specific interest channels that to some are entertaining and to others are of no interest. These channels are simply diversionary entertainment. They are of no consequence to anyone, cultural or otherwise.

The present chair of the CRTC, Madam Bertrand, stated before a Senate committee last spring that this bill really was not necessary because of competition in the marketplace, and additionally that cable companies would not employ deceptive marketing techniques again.

We all remember the declarations of the Canadian Cable Television Association which assured us of its new found, straight up marketing techniques in dealing with Canadian consumers.

Yet is it not interesting that these born again straight shooters of last spring and January 1998 again used manipulative marketing practices to try to trap subscribers to taking additional channels?

We saw a month and a half ago that the public statements of Mr. Richard Stursberg, the spokesperson for that organization, were made with a number of qualifiers which he failed to mention originally, that is that negative option marketing continues to exist across this country. This was noted by the Toronto Star in an editorial on January 30, 1998: “It is time for consumers to raise their voices again”.

The only way consumers can raise their voices is through us in this place who can legislate to give them the protection they want and deserve.

I have asked members present to think about it, to think back to the consumer revolts of 1995 on this subject, to think back to the sanctimonious statements by the industry that it had learned a lesson and would not use manipulative marketing practice, to think about it, to look to the practices of recent weeks.

It is clear that only one conclusion can be drawn, that no lesson was learned by the industry. Once again the consumer is forced to pay. Again the Canadian consumer is the loser while we in this place refuse to do anything. What a pathetic commentary on our ability to help those we allegedly serve here.

The third point deals with the role of the CRTC in all this. As I noted earlier, the CRTC appeared before the House committee on Canadian heritage when this bill was before this House and five months later before the committee in the other place when it was there.

When it was here before the committee Mr. Keith Spicer, the then chair of that commission, stated to members present they ought to go ahead and pass this bill.

Five months later his successor, the present chairman, Madam Bertrand, said it is not necessary. Eight months later the cable industry is back to its old tricks.

There is one party that is extremely culpable in all of this besides the cable industry, the CRTC. It has turned its back on Canadian consumers and has co-operated every step of the way with the industry to the gross detriment of our constituents, Canadian consumers.

How it could, in a period of five months, flip-flop from endorsing and calling for the passage of legislation to a point where it could conclude that it was not necessary is beyond me.

It is evident the CRTC has no policy on this. It is fine for it to tell people to go back to basic cable, but it fails to realize that 90 per cent of Canadian consumers have something greater than basic cable. Telling people to go back to basic cable is really destroying the specialty channels that it says it is there to encourage in growth. What does the CRTC do in this instance? What does it do for Canadians? The answer is still nothing.

In a letter I forwarded to the chair of that commission on January 22, 1998, I asked what action in the name of consumers will the CRTC take to review unacceptable steps taken by Rogers Cable. I should point out that subsequently virtually all cable companies in this country took the same step.

In a reply I received from the chair one month and five days later I was told: “A competitive broadcasting marketplace offering Canadians a greater array of program and cost options is beginning to appear”.

This is the justification apparently for Madam Bertrand and her commissioners to allow their industry to run over consumers. She went on to further note that she is sending a copy of my letter to Rogers and asking that it respond to me directly about my concerns within three weeks and to send a copy of its response to her.

This is clearly ridiculous. The CRTC has become a post office box for people with complaints, Canadian consumers, the people it allegedly serves. We have set up this body to protect Canadians.

I must say I am very comforted by Madam Bertrand's assurance that the commission is now following this issue and that I along with many other Canadians have brought this to her attention. I have to wonder somewhat facetiously if one must bring this issue to the attention of Madam Bertrand with a ball peen hammer to get some action.

While the CRTC hides behind this wall that all is well and the marketplace will take care of any problems, she writes letters talking about how the CRTC works to establish fair and affordable basic monthly rates and programming options for cable subscribers. Clearly she is out of her realm. Clearly she is out of touch. Even the television reporter for the Toronto Star , the person who works full time covering the television and communications beat for the largest newspaper in Canada, on January 23 of this year, less than two months ago, wrote that he hated the monopoly and hated having no choice.

If a person who works and is imbued in this industry is unaware of the competition then where does the chair of the CRTC get off in believing there is competition in the marketplace? It is no wonder or surprise to us here that we continually hear from constituents who have no use for that body known as the CRTC, that the time has arrived for us to seriously look at its continued existence, that the time is now to take action and put an end to this silly charade where Canadians, our constituents, are always ending up being the people who pay. They are the victims in this case.

The time is now. It is the last chance for members in this place to do something for Canadian consumers in the face of an indifferent regulatory body which has no interest in them.

I would therefore seek the unanimous consent of this House for the following motion. I move:

That Bill C-288, an act to amend the Broadcasting Act, be deemed to have been chosen a votable item.

[Division No. 96, March 9th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, on November 25, 1997 I asked the question what are we doing as a government to prepare for the coming NAFTA superhighway.

We often have a habit in this place of saying “well, if it is highway it is not a federal responsibility, it is a provincial responsibility and don't talk to us about it”. I must say I was very pleased to hear the minister's response that there is an interparliamentary group working to ensure that we do monitor activities in the United States and that we are paying attention to this issue.

For those who are not familiar with this concept, the NAFTA superhighway is an American idea whereby they are going to build a trade corridor. This is not simply a transportation issue, this is an issue of trade between two countries. This is an issue which is of great concern in a number of border crossings in Ontario because highways are not just places where people drive trucks and cars these days, but they are trade routes. They are, by way of analogy, the railroad passage way of another era.

It is very important that we as a country, particularly when in southern Ontario at one crossing there are exports of more than $200 million worth of goods per year, ensure that there is an adequate highway system. It is going to be more than a highway system, it is going to be a communications system. When these goods are exported or when goods are imported, it will be done in a timely fashion and there will not be interference. For Canadians this is a massive project for trade. Jobs and trade go hand in hand.

I am pleased to know that the government is monitoring this and that in the future the Department of Transport will be ready to move in concert with out American neighbours.

[Ontario, December 9th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, excuse me while I take one minute to be provincial.

The premier of Ontario is proving daily that balancing a budget and instituting tax cuts at the same time creates chaos and doublespeak.

Later this week I will be delivering thousands of individual petitions, addressed to His Excellency the Governor General, calling for an election in Ontario now. When something like Bill 160, ominously called the education quality improvement act, takes $1.6 billion out of education and this is called an improvement, something has to give. In this case parents will give: money for pencils, books, school equipment, bussing. The list goes on and on.

If well educated people represent our future, someone should advise Mr. Harris that education does not improve when the system is fiscally dead.

[Toy Labelling, December 4th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, on November 18 I posed a question regarding the actions taken by the Toronto-Dominion Bank. On October 31 at the stroke of midnight, Halloween night, the computers at the Toronto-Dominion Bank whirled and downloaded every piece of personal information it has on each and every customer.

This information went to the Toronto-Dominion mortgage corporation, securities corporation and insurance corporations and it went free of charge. The only way a TD customer could avoid their own information from being sent was if, and only if, first they read the eight-page brochure that was sent by the TD to all of its customers in June of this year.

Second, they would have to understand just what was being proposed in this brochure and the implications of that.

Third, they would have to phone or write to their Toronto-Dominion Bank and tell them, no, they did not want these separate corporations to have this information.

This is what is called negative option marketing; that is, placing the onus on the consumer to read, understand and respond to a demand that favours only the Toronto-Dominion Bank. This is a bold faced attempt by the Toronto-Dominion Bank to take advantage of its customers. It is also a gross invasion of privacy because there is no consent.

Is it any wonder or surprise that Canadians have no faith, in fact despise the banks and bankers of this country when they actively and purposely take advantage of the little people, the average consumer, the average TD Bank customer?

I know that the parliamentary secretary is going to say that the Canadian Banking Association has a privacy code approved by the Canadian Standards Association. However, I would suggest that we are not talking about wrenches or screwdrivers and how good they are. We are talking about the details of a person's personal financial life, what they own and what they owe. This is a privacy code—and we have to remember this—made by the banks for the banks and enforceable only by the banks. The only entity it helps is the Toronto-Dominion Bank.

What does this mean? It means that consumers of the Toronto-Dominion Bank can at least expect more and more annoying junk mail. It means more and more annoying phone calls at lunch and dinner for the telemarketer trying to sell TD insurance or some other TD product over the phone.

However, what it really means—and the parliamentary secretary does not want to mention this—is that when someone goes into the TD Bank for a loan, that bank or loans manager is going to take out a hammer and that hammer is going to be something like this: the Toronto-Dominion Bank will approve the loan if—and this is a big if—you, the customer, will move your registered retirement savings plan or your car insurance or your home mortgage. There are endless possibilities here.

This is what is called tied selling and it is based on an intimate knowledge of the customer across a very broad segment of their personal financial details.

It is obvious that Canadians need more protection from big banks. Big banks do not need more power. The Canadian Standards Association cannot protect Canadians from the banks. Only the government can and the government should be passing legislation to prohibit this gross invasion of privacy.

[Privilege, December 4th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege generally relating to Standing Order 94.

This morning I received at my office a notice with respect to a private members' draw that will be held tomorrow, December 5. A draw was held on November 25 at which time I believe six bills and three motions were drawn.

As members are aware, the normal way of doing this in the House is to allow the private members items on the order of precedence to decrease to 15 at which time a draw is held. A draw was held a week ago and the committee is within the 10-day time period as specified by the standing orders to determine which bills and motions will be votable and which bills and motions will not be votable.

In response to an inquiry I made to the Private Members' Business Office this morning, I was advised that there was an irregularity with respect to motions and for that reason it was having another draw. My point is that if there was an irregularity with respect to motions, then perhaps the correct measure would fall with respect to the draw of motions. I am not certain what that irregularity is.

There are presently four votable bills listed on the Order Paper. The committee is seized with the consideration of six others at the moment. A decision for that must be made by midnight next Monday. By adding three more bills to the order, those people who will be drawn tomorrow with bills, if one of the six is selected from the draw of November 25, it will preclude those who will be drawn tomorrow, December 5, from ever having a votable bill. Alternatively, it will change the odds for those who had a bill drawn on November 25 in terms of going from one to six to one to nine.

Having had a bill drawn on November 25 I would like to know if the odds have changed for me.

[Highway System, November 25th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport.

The minister will know that the American government has proposed legislative framework for a NAFTA superhighway running from the Mexican to the Canadian border.

Can the minister tell us what is being done, if anything, to ensure that our highway system is adequate to deal with this American trade route?

[Broadcasting Act, November 25th, 1997]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-288, an act to amend the Broadcasting Act (broadcasting policy).

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to introduce this bill which will amend the Broadcasting Act, specifically the broadcasting policy section.

The bill as presented today is the same bill that was introduced in the 35th Parliament and as subsequently amended by the Senate. It has received the support of the Minister for Canadian Heritage as stated in the House last spring. The bill will simply give consumers the right to say no to cable company services, something that consumers have wanted as evidenced most recently by the unfair practices of Videotron in the Montreal marketplace.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Privilege, November 18th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the notice I gave yesterday I rise on this question of privilege.

Yesterday morning the legislative counsel office advised me that in response to a request for a status report on a private member's bill being drafted for me that the work of drafting this legislation is in the hands of a classroom of students at Ottawa University. This advice came by phone and subsequently by letter.

I am aware that the recent annual report of the House of Commons alluded to a partnership between this House and the University of Ottawa with respect to training students. That being noted and as a consequence I would submit the following to you as a prima facie case of privilege.

First, giving this drafting assignment to a classroom of students is placing in the public domain certain ideas which I assume would be first tabled in this House at first reading of the bill.

Second, as a member I have the right to assume and I have the right to expect that work carried out on my behalf will remain confidential; that is, out of the public domain until such time that it is in fact tabled in this House or released by me.

I would hardly think that a classroom of students at a public university in any way meets the test of confidentiality of bills being drafted. It is in fact releasing work in progress from a member's office into the public domain.

Third, sending this matter to a university class for drafting goes outside the parameters of the authority of the Board of Internal Economy.

Mr. Speaker, as you pointed out in a ruling on October 23 of this year, section 52(3) of the Parliament of Canada Act vests in the board the administrative rights with respect to members and staff. Clearly by farming out this work to a university class, the board has no control or authority over these drafters. These students are clearly not staff of the House of Commons. In fact, by falling outside the purview of section 52(3) they are clearly and plainly in the public domain.

Fourth, if work in my office is to be released into the public domain either by me or my staff or House staff, my consent is necessary. This work was sent to the legislative counsel's office on the assumption that it would remain confidential. Without my consent it has been released to a classroom of students, which is by any definition not a confidential setting.

Finally, in the letter I received from the House this morning I was advised that my file was being directed by Professor Keyes at the University of Ottawa. Interestingly, this person is one and the same John Mark Keyes who works as a lawyer for the Department of Justice. This was confirmed by placing a phone call to him this morning at his office at the Department of Justice.

One of the fundamentals of privilege is that members be able to do their work free from the interference of the crown. In other words, a member of this House does not resort to employees of the crown for advice, yet that is what occurred when my file and presumably others were sent to him and to his class at the University of Ottawa.

Is it not interesting that a Department of Justice lawyer has advance notice of private members' bills being drafted and has input into their creation? That, I understood, was the reason for the creation of the legislative counsel.

Clearly this is a serious matter of privilege. As the defender of the rights and privileges of members, I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that this releasing or delegation, or whatever you want to call it, of confidential work in progress to a classroom of students is in fact releasing into the public domain, without my consent, work or matters which are confidential. It is a prima facie case of privilege.

With your permission I would move that motion.

Second, giving this file to a Department of Justice official, a crown official, is also a matter of privilege, and with your permission I would move a second motion on that.

Third, I would suggest to you that there is a residuary discretion vested in your office to correct decisions of the Board of Internal Economy when that board inadvertently intrudes into matters of privilege.

In this regard I acknowledge the general principle, as enunciated by you, that the board can regulate generally the office of the legislative counsel. However, at some point the board made a decision that passed through the threshold of reasonableness and in fact became a question of privilege, as evidenced by sending members' drafting requests, requests that are expected to be confidential, to a class of students at a public university and to a Department of Justice lawyer.

Mr. Speaker, I request that you exercise this discretion and acknowledge that the decision made by the Board of Internal Economy to allow students to do our drafting work is evidence that there is inadequate legislative counsel support for members.

If you make the comparison, and I acknowledge that this is only a comparison, that there are two legislative counsel in the other place and there are still only two for members of this House, then I have to say that the members of the other place have on a pro rated basis three times the level of service that we have.

Certainly the cuts by the board, I would suggest, have passed the point of determining the general operations of the legislative counsel's office and have triggered the threshold of privilege.

Once again, with your permission, I would move a third motion on this.

[Privacy, November 18th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the secretary of state responsible for financial institutions.

At the stroke of midnight on Halloween night, the Toronto-Dominion Bank passed all of its customer information to its insurance, mortgage and security subsidiaries unless each customer said no to its negative option marketing demand.

Will the secretary move by legislation to stop this invasion of privacy?

[Customs Act, November 18th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise in support of Bill C-18 which, as we know, will provide customs officers with the power to enforce the Criminal Code.

I should say that my riding is on the Ontario-Michigan border. In fact, it records the third highest volume of border traffic on the Canada-U.S. border on the one side, Port Huron, Michigan and on the Canadian side at the village of Point Edward. We have two bridges with six lanes of traffic coming and going through the country and some 6,000 trucks alone every day crossing both ways.

At the southern end of my riding is the Sombra crossing where there are tens of thousands of trucks and cars crossing each year. We are open to the United States. That is patently clear with the 17% annual increase in truck traffic alone each year which has been going on for a number of years. We find that more and more Americans and others enter Canada through our entry ports, especially at southern Ontario.

This, as we know, represents trade and tourism for Canada. However, as is always the case, with more traffic and people comes more problems. Occasionally individuals who are attempting to enter Canada have committed or are committing a criminal offence, individuals who are wanted for all kinds of criminal offences. The other problem is impaired drivers who attempt to enter. As more and more of these people enter they pose a risk to all Canadians. We do not want these people entering our country. We want to stop them.

However, the reality is that when very impaired drivers try to enter, the only thing customs officers can do is attempt to detain them until the local police arrive to lay charges and take them into custody.

For years the taxpayers in the village of Point Edward where I live have been subsidizing all Canadian taxpayers because it has been the police force in the village that has been called when there was a problem. I have to ask why the taxpayers of one municipality should suffer financially by paying for local police because a border crossing happens to be located in that municipality.

This bill certainly goes a great distance in balancing that inequality.

Statistics from all ports of entry indicate that there were 8,500 suspected impaired drivers who tried to enter Canada in a two and a half year period which is about 3,400 impaired drivers rolling into Canada from the U.S. each year. In the past we had little or no opportunity to stop them or apprehend them.

We are told that each year there have been some 80 suspected child abductors, sad cases of people using children as pawns in illegal activities, rolling up to customs where little or nothing happens to detain or arrest them.

Canadians certainly welcome visitors to this country whether for pleasure or business, but no one wants impaired drivers to roll in or any individual who is being sought on a warrant by the police to just simply sail through our customs and enter the country.

For too long we have talked about customs officers as being our first line of defence at our borders and ports of entry, but for too long we have not given them the tools. In brief, we have said one thing but never given our first line of defence the tools to do the job. It is, I can see, the strange dichotomy which at long last is being corrected by this bill. This bill responds to three factors. The first and the obvious is that those who are the first to have contact with individuals entering the country must have the right to detain and arrest those who may be committing a criminal offence or a person for whom there is an outstanding warrant.

Second, we tend to forget that customs officers live in and are an important part of our communities. They have been frustrated when they have been incapable of preventing persons alleged to have committed serious criminal offences entering our country. This bill gives them the right and the authority to do what we want them to do and in fact what they want to do and that is detain suspected criminals.

Third and finally, this bill takes pressure off local police to respond to border problems because local taxpayers have been subsidizing directly the policing function that ought to have been carried out by the federal government. If anything, I suppose I can suggest that this legislation could go a step further and that is that the legislation as drafted would require that the prosecution of the offence be carried out by so-called provincial authorities.

In some jurisdictions where the RCMP are the provincial authorities the policing cost is divided 70% by provincial payment and 30% by federal payment. This is clearly not the case in Ontario where the RCMP are not provincial authorities. In British Columbia for example where the RCMP by agreement are provincial authorities referred to in the bill, the prosecution of border crossing offences are paid for out of the 30% federal contribution, yet in Ontario it is a different situation.

One could ask, why should the taxpayers of Windsor who pay for local police pay for prosecutions of offences at, for example, the Ambassador Bridge or the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel. I could say the same thing about the people in my riding.

I hope and trust that the standing committee will examine this issue in the bill and perhaps look at it more fully.

On the face of it I would suggest that allowing customs officers to prosecute as peace officers would recognize them totally and absolutely as such and would free up local police to deal with local problems and not problems associated with international trade and travel.

In conclusion, on balance I know that the people in my riding are pleased that the pressure is going to be taken off the local police. I think Canadians should be pleased that customs officers are now going to be able to deal with those people who for various reasons are coming into our country and we do not want them to come in because they are impaired or because they have committed offences for which there are outstanding warrants. As such I think this is a good piece of legislation. It is an important piece legislation. I believe it deserves the support of this House.