Jeremy Harrison

[National Aboriginal Day, June 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, 2005 is the year of the veteran and today is National Aboriginal Day. It seems only appropriate that on this day we honour Canada's aboriginal war veterans.

This morning at the National Aboriginal Veterans War Monument, Canadians from all walks of life paid their respects to the first nations, Innu and Métis who served their country, many of them making the ultimate sacrifice.

Thousands of aboriginal people volunteered to serve their country. From the warriors under the leadership of Joseph Brant who helped repel the American invasion of 1813, through the first and second world wars and the Korean war, to the numerous peacekeeping missions of today, aboriginal people have served Canada despite the fact that many of them were not accorded full rights as citizens.

While laying a wreath or making a speech can only pale in comparison to the sacrifices made by these brave men and women, they symbolize our gratitude. In Cree they say “ Kahgee pohn noten took ” on Remembrance Day. It means “the fighting has ended”. On behalf of all Canadians I say, may we never forget.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. This is a very important speech that the hon. member is giving. I do not believe that we have a quorum. I ask for a quorum call.

And the count having been taken:

[Canada Elections Act, June 8th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak today to Bill C-261 brought forward by the member for Ajax—Pickering which would lower the voting age from 18 to 16.

In the debate today we heard a great deal of talk from the other parties, not the Conservative Party, about getting young people involved in politics. In the Conservative Party we have young people involved in politics. We have young people in Parliament and in every position in riding associations, from boards of directors through to riding presidents and national executive members.

On the last national executive we had three members under the age of 20. I can say that in the other parties that was not the case. The other parties see fit to have affirmative action type programs for youth but we believe that all members of our party are equal and they have succeeded by being equal.

The Conservative Party has the youngest caucus in the history of Canada. We have 20 members under the age of 40; fully 20% of our caucus under the age of 40. We have the member for Nepean—Carleton, the youngest member of Parliament in Canada at 25 years of age, who gave an address earlier in this debate. He has done an outstanding job as a member of Parliament. His career prior to that was as a small business owner. He is an educated young fellow and a guy who has done a heck of a job here.

We also have the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle who was elected at 25 years of age and who also had a career in the private sector. He is educated, ran for a nomination as an equal member with everybody, won his nomination and was elected to Parliament.

I was involved in academia for quite some time. I completed university degrees in political science, Canadian history and in law. I worked as a political staffer. I worked in the forestry industry in northern Saskatchewan and served in the Canadian Forces. I ran for my nomination on the same basis as everybody else, won my nomination and was elected to Parliament.

We keep hearing from the other side about how they would like to get young people involved in politics but I look across the way at the Liberal Party and the NDP and I see no young MPs. They do have a few members over there who are young at heart, I will give them that, but in terms of age they cannot match the Conservative Party for the youth of our caucus.

We have other members. The member from Coquitlam was elected at the age of 24. He is now in his second term and is a senior critic. He has done an excellent job for his constituents. He was the youngest member in the last Parliament. We have a number of members, now in their third terms, who were elected in their mid-20s in the 1997 election. We have the member for Edmonton—Strathcona who was elected at the age of 25, was re-elected twice and who has done an excellent job as an MP.

We have the member for Calgary West who also was elected at 25. He is now in his third term and has done an excellent job as an MP. The member for Calgary Southeast was elected at 27 and is now in his third term. He is a caucus officer in the Conservative Party and a senior critic and, like many of these other young people, has done an excellent job.

Where are the young people opposite? They talk about having young people involved yet where are they? They are not in Parliament.

The other parties see fit to segregate their young people. They put them into a sandbox, into a youth wing, and tell them to go play in the youth wing, play in the sandbox with other young people and then tell them to come back when they are 35. That is not the attitude we have in the Conservative Party.

In the Conservative Party we tell young people to run for a nomination or for the national executive at age 20 or 25. If young people were to tell a senior member of the other parties that they were thinking of running, the answer would be that they should first run for a VP membership of a youth wing and then come back to see them when they are 35.

If anyone wonders why we have young MPs, that is the reason. We have a culture in this party of giving young people real responsibility and real opportunity. It does not exist in that party.

I am not supporting Bill C-261. We have talked about the reasons. I know in the first hour of debate on this my colleague from Lanark—Carleton debated in great detail the reasons that he did not believe the bill was worthy of support and I have to say I agree.

If we look at all the great democracies in the world, Great Britain, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, India, none of these countries have voting ages below 18.

As I said earlier, one only has to look at our caucus. We walk the walk. We have young people involved.

It was interesting to hear the remarks of the member for Newmarket—Aurora, who had previously made a great deal out of lowering the voting age and was one of the seconders of the bill, but who now has obviously crossed the floor and is sitting on the other side. I wonder if her tone will change. I wonder if she will still believe that the voting age should be lowered and will be voting for the bill. We will see. I have a hunch that she will not be. Maybe she just will not show up. I will tell members that I will be shocked if she shows up and supports the position that she took with great fanfare in favour of lowering the voting age.

As I said, I am not supporting the bill. I think the proof is in the pudding. We have the youngest caucus in the history of Canada. Our party is very much a friendly party to young people and it is shown by the people we have in this caucus.

[Rural Post Offices, June 6th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, those of us who represent rural ridings know the importance of postal service to small and remote communities. In 1994 the Liberal government announced a moratorium on the closure of rural post offices. Like so many others, this Liberal promise soon fell by the wayside.

Small and rural post offices have been closing. According to the Canadian Postmasters and Assistants Association, another 750 post offices across the nation are at risk for closure by Canada Post, 15 of them in my riding.

A Canada Post official has stated that supporting small rural post offices is a “heavy burden on the bottom line”. Meanwhile the corporation boasted a $147 million profit last year.

Postal service is essential to my constituents and to the well-being of their small communities. Closure of even a few offices in northern Saskatchewan will mean being forced to travel unreasonable distances to obtain this basic service. My constituents and millions of other Canadians are tired of being treated like second class citizens because of where they live.

The Liberal government's disregard for rural Canadians needs to be packaged up and returned to sender.

[Sponsorship Program, May 6th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday we learned from Liberal organizer Michel Béliveau that he received $300,000 from Jacques Corriveau to fund Liberal campaigns in the 1997 election. These politicos were disgracefully trading taxpayers' cash stuffed in envelopes for Liberal Party gain. At least five of the Prime Minister's government members were elected in ridings that may have received the dirty money, $60,000 per riding.

When will the Prime Minister pay back to the Canadian taxpayers the money his party has stolen?

[Liberal Party of Canada, May 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the shocking testimony we have heard so far at the Gomery inquiry is only the tip of the iceberg of what the Liberals across the way have been up to in recent years. The RCMP has launched investigations into allegations of wrongdoing in many of the government's departments. The sheer number of cases would make a detective's head spin.

Let us take, for example, the Department of Citizenship and Immigration. Last year we heard allegations that a Romanian diplomat pulled strings with a Canadian immigration officer at Pearson airport so his exotic dancer daughter could get a rush work visa. What about the former director of Measurement Canada who is facing 11 charges for the fraudulent use of government credit cards to buy hockey memorabilia? We all miss the NHL but this is ridiculous. There have been investigations of the CCRA into confidential personal information on thousands of Canadians which has disappeared into thin air, and the records were not written in invisible ink.

What can we conclude from the likes of these investigations, one might ask? It is elementary, my dear Speaker. The members of this corrupt Liberal government are the last individuals we should trust to get to the bottom of the sponsorship scandal that they themselves created.

[Civil Marriage Act, May 2nd, 2005]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise today on behalf of my constituents of Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River to speak to Bill C-38, the same sex marriage bill, the very subject upon which I wrote my thesis in law school.

I, like most of my colleagues on this side of the House, the vast majority of my constituents in northern Saskatchewan and many on the other side as well, believe in the traditional definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.

However in the course of this debate those of us who support marriage have been told that to amend the bill to reflect a traditional definition of marriage would be a violation of human rights and an unconstitutional violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I believe this is an attempt by the government to shift the grounds of the debate. The Liberals do not want to debate the question of traditional marriage versus same sex marriage, so they would rather focus on attacking their opponents as opposing human rights and the charter.

However this debate is not about human rights. It is a political social policy decision and should be treated in that light. Let me present several reasons why the issue of same sex marriage is not a human rights issue and why defining the traditional definition of marriage would not violate the charter or require the use of the notwithstanding clause.

First, no internationally recognized human rights document has ever suggested that there is a right to same sex marriage. For example, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the foundational United Nations human rights charter, almost all of the rights listed are worded as purely individual rights, rights which everyone shall have or no one shall be denied, but when it comes to marriage the declaration says:

Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family.

The use of the term “men and women” here rather than “everyone” suggests that only traditional opposite sex marriage is contemplated. The subsequent International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights contains similar language.

Attempts to pursue same sex marriage as an international human rights issue have failed. In 1998 the European Court of Justice held that “Stable relationships between two persons of the same sex are not regarded as equivalent to marriages”.

In 1996 the New Zealand Court of Appeal rejected the recognition of same sex marriages, despite the fact that New Zealand's bill of rights explicitly listed sexual orientation as prohibited grounds of discrimination. When the New Zealand decision was challenged before the United Nations Human Rights Commission as a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the UNHRC ruled in 2002 that there was no case for discrimination simply on the basis of refusing to marry homosexual couples.

In fact, to this date, no international human rights body and no national supreme court has ever found that there is a human right to same sex marriage. The only courts that have found in favour of a right to same sex marriage are provincial or state level courts in Canada and the United States.

If same sex marriage is not a basic human right in the sense of internationally recognized human rights law, is it a violation of Canadian charter rights? While several provincial courts of appeal have said that it is, we still have not heard from the highest court in the land.

In the same sex reference case, the Supreme Court declined to rule on the constitutionality of a traditional definition of marriage, despite a clear request from the government to answer this question.

Furthermore, all of the lower court decisions in favour of same sex marriage were dealing with common law, judge made law from over a century ago, not a recent statute passed by a democratically elected legislature. It is quite possible that those lower courts may have found differently if there was a marriage act passed by Parliament defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

The whole discussion of the notwithstanding clause is an irrelevant distraction to this debate. There is simply no reason to use or discuss the use of the notwithstanding clause in the absence of a Supreme Court decision which indicates that the traditional definition of marriage is unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court has not done so.

The Supreme Court has also said in various cases that statute law requires greater deference than common law. Should legislation upholding the traditional definition of marriage be passed, a good argument can be made that the Supreme Court would give it considerable deference.

There are several examples of Parliament having passed statutes without using the notwithstanding clause that effectively reversed judicial decisions, including Supreme Court decisions, under common law. The courts have accepted these exercises of parliamentary sovereignty.

In 1995 Parliament passed Bill C-72 reversing the Supreme Court's decision in Daviault, which allowed extreme intoxication as a criminal defence.

When this new law was challenged in the subsequent Mills case, the Supreme Court wisely ruled, in a decision by Justices McLachlin and Iacobucci:

It does not follow from the fact that a law passed by Parliament differs from a regime envisaged by the Court in the absence of a statutory scheme, that Parliament's law is unconstitutional. Parliament may build on the Court's decision, and develop a different scheme as long as it remains constitutional. Just as Parliament must respect the Court's rulings, so the Court must respect Parliament's determination that the judicial scheme can be improved. To insist on slavish conformity would belie the mutual respect that underpins the relationship between the courts and legislature that is so essential to our constitutional democracy....

There is good reason to believe that the Supreme Court, if it were eventually asked to rule on a new statutory definition of marriage combined with a full and equal recognition of legal rights and benefits for same sex couples, might well accept it.

The Conservative position that the use of the notwithstanding clause is not required to legislate a traditional definition of marriage is supported by law professor Alan Brudner of the University of Toronto, who recently wrote in the Globe and Mail :

--the judicially declared unconstitutionality of the common law definition of marriage does not entail the unconstitutionality of parliamentary legislation affirming the same definition.

Citing the case of Regina v. Swain, where the Supreme Court ruled that it did not have to subject a charter decision on common law to the same “reasonable limits” test as it would for a statute, Professor Brudner writes:

For all we know, therefore, courts may uphold opposition sex marriage as a reasonable limit on the right against discrimination when the restriction comes from a democratic body.

Professor Brudner argues against those who have argued that a pre-emptive use of the notwithstanding clause is the only way to uphold the traditional definition of marriage. He stated that:

These arguments misconceive the role of a notwithstanding clause in a constitutional democracy. Certainly, that role cannot be to protect laws suspected of being unconstitutional against judicial scrutiny....Rather, the legitimate role of a notwithstanding clause in a constitutional state is to provide a democratic veto over a judicial declaration of invalidity, where the court's reasoning discloses a failure to defer to the parliamentary body on a question of political discretion...the notwithstanding clause should be invoked by Parliament only after the Supreme Court has ruled on the constitutionality of a law.

As yet there has been no such law for the Supreme Court to consider, so there is no need to use the notwithstanding clause.

There is every reason to believe that if the House moved to bring in a reasonable, democratic, compromise solution, one which defined in statute that marriage remains the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others, which extended equal rights and benefits to couples living in other forms of unions and which fully protected freedom of religion to the extent possible under federal law, the Supreme Court of Canada would honour such a decision of Parliament.

[Committees of the House, April 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the parliamentary secretary for that spontaneous response. I, quite frankly, cannot wait until that is played on the radio tomorrow because the residents of northern Saskatchewan will be laughing at that answer and will be laughing at the Liberal government for continuing to believe that registering canoes in some way will increase the safety of residents of northern Saskatchewan. It is preposterous and I cannot wait until that is played.

It will definitely help me be re-elected for one thing, but it will also serve as another example of how the Liberal government does not care about northern Saskatchewan, does not understand northern Saskatchewan and, quite frankly, does not give a damn about northern Saskatchewan. I think that has been made increasingly clear when we hear that answer. I must say that I am flabbergasted that the government believes that registering canoes is a good idea. It is just ridiculous.

[Committees of the House, April 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today and ask about some new proposed Transport Canada regulations, which to people in northern Saskatchewan are known as the Liberal canoe registry.

People at home might wonder what a Liberal canoe registry. I will tell them.

These new regulations would require individuals who operate commercial vessels, taking people onto the water for money, including outfitters, guides, adventure tourism operators, commercial fishermen, to take a course commonly known as a captain's licence type course, which they can only currently receive in Vancouver or in Halifax.

First, travelling to Vancouver or Halifax from northern Saskatchewan is quite expensive. Second, the cost of the course itself is approximately $350. It is a three day course. It is completely useless for my constituents in northern Saskatchewan, many of whom have spent their entire lives on the water. A requirement of the course is to literally learn how to navigate in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. That is quite different from navigating on a creek or a small lake in northern Saskatchewan. This type of one size fits all regulation is completely misguided and unneeded.

What looks like a good idea cooked up in a downtown Ottawa office tower, looks only half baked on the ground in northern Saskatchewan. I would like to challenge the Transport Canada bureaucrats and the Liberal politicians, who are pushing this, to come to northern Saskatchewan and look on the ground. Come and see what is going on in northern Saskatchewan and then try to tell me that this is a good idea.

I do not know how anyone could possibly think it would be a good idea to send northern aboriginal guides to a captain's licence course in Vancouver or Halifax. Why should they learn how to navigate in the middle of the Pacific Ocean so they can have some employment for three months in northern Saskatchewan, taking people out and guiding on traditional hunts? This is utterly ridiculous.

These regulations, if enacted, will have a very real negative effect on employment in my riding in northern Saskatchewan. I come from the poorest riding in the country, with the lowest average income of any riding. Over half of my constituents are aboriginal. Employment opportunities are very limited and a lot of the employment opportunities that do exist for aboriginals and otherwise are in the industries of outfitting, guiding, commercial fishermen and adventure tourism. We have one of the highest unemployment rates in the country.

If these regulations are enacted, people will lose their jobs for no good reason. They will have to go to Vancouver or Halifax and take a captain's licence course. They cannot afford this. It costs $350 to take a three day course. This is completely ridiculous.

We have seen a government that obviously does not care and a government that obviously does not understand northern Saskatchewan. If the government did understand, it would not try to force this down the throats of the residents of my riding, which is what they are trying to do.

We have seen $2 billion sent down the creek with the--

[Committees of the House, April 11th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the kind words from my colleague from Calgary North Centre, who is doing an excellent job as the critic on aboriginal affairs for my party and is somebody who I look forward to being the minister of aboriginal affairs in a short while.

I just want to address very briefly the issue of aboriginal war veterans. It is something that passed in the House last week and which was supported unanimously by all opposition parties. I, quite frankly, do not know what the government has against aboriginal war veterans. I thought it was quite disgraceful for the Liberals to stand en masse and vote against recognizing the historic injustice that was done to aboriginal war veterans, which they did. Not only that, they did not want that to go to committee or to be brought forward onto the floor of the House of Commons. The veterans affairs minister asked me to withdraw that motion. These are not the actions of a government with any compassion for or understanding of aboriginal people in this country.

The fact that the Liberals are trying to send this motion dealing with the ADR back to committee where it will die, is another indication of the total lack of respect and understanding that the government has for aboriginal Canadians.