Lorne Nystrom

[Canada Elections Act, February 17th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the bill before the House is certainly one which I support, the more public financing of political parties. The main thing we have to do is get the big money out of politics. Most of that big money is corporate money. If we are going to get big money out of politics, there has to be more public financing of campaigns.

A very fundamental part of democracy is that we create a level playing field so that anyone can run regardless of his or her financial background and who may be supporting him or her in the campaign. The only way of doing that is by having a greater public side to the financing of election campaigns.

I certainly support the principle of the bill. The bill will limit a contribution by a corporation, trade union or an association to $1,000 per year. It will limit what an individual can give to $10,000 per year.

A couple of provinces already have legislation of this sort on their books. In the province of Quebec it has been on the books for a number of years. A more recent example is the province of Manitoba. This is legislation that is long overdue. It will create a more level playing field for all people of Canada.

I have some concerns about the legislation and I hope the government will be open to amendments. The major one is that the $10,000 an individual can provide per year can be provided not just to one party but to many parties. An individual would be limited not at $10,000 but at $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 or $60,000 if that person wanted to contribute to more than one political party. I think that is a violation of the spirit and the principle of the bill presented by the Prime Minister.

I hope there will be an agreement at the committee stage among members of all parties that we make the limitation $10,000 a year, regardless of whether an individual contributes that money to a candidate seeking a nomination, a leadership campaign, a riding association, a member of any political party, or a combination of all the scenarios I have already mentioned. If we do not do that, it will allow a wealthier individual to throw in $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 or more per year and have a great deal more influence than the ordinary citizen of Canada.

Another thing is the bill does not give an age limit; a person only needs to have a SIN number. A wealthier family could divvy up the $10,000 per family member in many different ways. That would be another way of contributing more than $10,000 per year.

In Quebec, the limitation is not $10,000 a year, but $3,000 per year for an individual.

It is exactly the same thing in Manitoba, a limit of $3,000 per person per year.

I think the $10,000 limit is high. We should be looking at an amendment to roll back the $10,000 to something more reasonable, maybe $5,000 per person. Let us have a $5,000 limit and let us make sure that a person can only contribute to one association, one candidate, one party, or one leadership campaign or a combination of all the above, but the total at the very end of the day does not go to any more than $5,000 or indeed $10,000 if the government does not want to roll back the limit. That is very important.

There is a provision in the bill that there will be no indexing for the contributions that are made in the legislation as before. We have to look at the principle of indexation so that it keeps up with the cost of living.

There is also the whole controversial topic of third party advertising. We have to find a way to design a law where there can be a limit on the advertising done by third parties in Canada. A political party or a candidate that is limited to a certain amount of money in a campaign can have a third party advertise without a limit, be it the National Citizens' Coalition or anybody else. That is very similar to what candidates can spend and in the spirit of it, it is a violation of the level playing field and equality for all candidates. We have to make sure there is some limitation.

The members of the Alliance will say it is a denial of free speech. There have been court cases fought to this effect. There is also clause 1 of the charter which says that something has to be demonstrably reasonable.

It does not seem to me that it is free speech if the size of the pocketbook dictates the kind of advertising one can buy. When there is some wealthy Canadian who can spend $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 on an advertising campaign vis-à-vis somebody else who cannot afford to do it, to me that is not free speech. There should not be a financial factor in defining what is free speech. There should be a level playing field for third party advertising and what a political party or a political campaign can spend.

Those are a couple of concerns I have about the bill. I do want to say that the time has come to take the big money out of politics. When we look at all the returns over the years we will find that many large corporations have funded political parties in this country to a massive degree. Members of the crown have said recently that when corporations provide an awful lot of money to a political party, they indeed do buy influence. The old saying that he who pays the piper calls the tune has a certain amount of credibility. If someone puts a lot of cash into a campaign, there is a far greater likelihood that his or her point of view will be heard by the government or by a minister across the way regardless of political party.

The only way to avoid that is to have campaigns funded by individuals and by the public purse. Campaigns funded by the public purse would create a level playing field. I am very much in favour of the increase in public funding of campaigns. I am very much in favour of a more strict limit on what candidates and political parties can spend and what they can also spend on leadership campaigns.

I support the bill in principle. It is the right way to go. It creates a more democratic society. It creates a more accessible society in terms running for public office with a measure of greater success regardless of the size of one's pocketbook. At the same time let us look at some reasonable amendments to make sure this law is a good one for all Canadians.

[Referendum Act, February 17th, 2003]

moved that Bill C-216, an act to amend the Referendum Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, I have before the House of Commons today an amendment to the Referendum Act.

Hon. members may recall that a number of years ago, in the early 1990s, the House of Commons passed the Referendum Act to have a national referendum on the question of the Charlottetown accord and the Constitution. In our country we have had three national referenda. We have had a referendum on prohibition, a referendum on the whole question of conscription, and then in 1992 a referendum on the issue of constitutional reform. The question put to people at that time was defeated overwhelmingly across the country.

Today I am introducing an amendment to the Referendum Act, because the act we now have in the House of Commons covers only referenda on constitutional matters. My amendment is to amend the Referendum Act so that we can actually have a referendum on the whole question of electoral change or electoral reform. The reason for this is that I am a very strong advocate of changing our electoral system to bring in a system of proportional representation. I believe that before we would bring in a system of proportional representation, we should actually consult the people of the country to see if they want it.

Under the federal laws and statutes, the House of Commons by itself can change the electoral system any time it wants, because it only affects the federal law. If we look around the world we will see that most countries in the world do not have our electoral system; they do not have a first past the post system. In fact, of democracies with more than 10 million people, it is only Canada and the United States that have a pure first past the post system. In the last election in the United States in the year 2000, Al Gore actually received 550,000 more votes than George Bush, but George Bush is President of the United States.

India still has the first past the post system. This country has a first past the post system. Even Britain, the mother of our parliamentary system, now has a measure of PR in the Welsh parliament and the Scottish parliament and they elect all of their members of parliament to the European Community, to the parliament in Strasbourg, through a system of proportional representation.

I believe we have to change our electoral system. The last time the House of Commons had a vote on PR was in 1922. Changing our system to the PR system is not likely to happen on a top down basis from parliamentarians; it will happen on a bottom up basis, from the people up.

We now have for the first time ever a national organization promoting proportional representation or electoral reform. That organization is Fair Vote Canada. Fair Vote Canada now has supporters from all political parties in the House. There are members of the Alliance who are in favour of changing the electoral system to bring in a measure of PR. There are members of the Liberal Party sitting in Parliament, only a few at this stage, who are in favour of changing the electoral system and bringing in PR. There are members of the Conservative Party who believe in changing the political system and bringing in proportional representation.

There are many Bloc Quebecois members who favour changing our electoral system to one based on proportional representation. I remember well that former Quebec premier and leader of the Parti Québecois René Lévesque was in favour of a new electoral system in Quebec.

Back in 1999 at a national convention our party passed a resolution to bring in a measure of PR.

We have the beginning of a national movement, a national movement that is very diverse and includes members of the trade union movement and members of the political left in Canada as well as members of the political right, including the Canadian Taxpayers Federation led by Walter Robinson, and others who favour changing the electoral system.

Why do I suggest that we have a system of PR in Canada? I believe that every vote should count, that no vote should be wasted. If we look at the parliaments we elect, we will see that the Parliament of Canada does not reflect how people actually vote. In the last campaign, the Liberal Party received around 50% of the votes in this country and yet it has almost 60% of the seats in the House of Commons.

In Ontario, out of 103 seats about 100 Liberals were elected in November 2000. One would think that about 95% of Ontarians voted Liberal, and yet the Liberal Party is almost a minority party in Ontario. It received 50% of the votes. Half of Ontarians get very few representatives here in the House of Commons.

The same thing is true of western Canada, where 75% to 80% of westerners in the House of Commons are members of the Alliance Party. Yet the Canadian Alliance in the last campaign received fewer than half of the votes in western Canada, representing a minority of western Canadians.

I can go through every Parliament like this.

I remember well the Parliament that began in 1997, after the June election. A comparison could be made between the Bloc Quebecois and the NDP. In that election, the Bloc Quebecois got 11% of the vote, as did the NDP, but in the Parliament of Canada there were 21 NDP members and 44 Bloc members. The same thing happened with the Conservative and Reform parties, which had about the same number of votes nationally, but in the House there were 20 Conservative MPs and between 50 and 60 Reform MPs under the leadership of Preston Manning.

There are all these distortions in the electoral system, so that when people get up the morning after an election the Parliament they have elected does not reflect how they voted. In fact, there are many examples in Canada where the governing party actually received fewer votes than the leading opposition party. Today we have two governments that received fewer votes than the leading opposition party. In my own province, Saskatchewan, the NDP government led by Roy Romanow, which I of course supported, received 38% of the vote last time while the opposition party, the Saskatchewan Party, received 39% of the vote.

In the Province of Quebec exactly the same situation exists. The Parti Québecois now forms a majority government in the Province of Quebec, yet in the last provincial election, the Liberals under Jean Charest received more votes than the Parti Québecois. The Parti Québecois now forms the Government of Quebec, however.

We have these distortions all the way across the system. That happens regardless of the party. I think we should change the electoral system. I have said before that there are hardly any other countries in the world that now have a pure first past the post system. That is why a change has to happen here.

Under proportional representation, every vote counts and no vote is wasted. Today the majority of Canadians vote for losing candidates. People vote for people who do not win. If there were a PR system, a person could vote for the Canadian Alliance in Newfoundland and the vote would count. If a person were to vote for the NDP in Alberta, the vote would count. If a person were to vote for the Liberal Party on the prairies in western Canada, the vote would count. Right across the piece, people's voices and people's points of view would be heard here in the Parliament of Canada in a truly democratic system.

Why has this never happened? Because the first past the post system is a very self-serving system for the government, regardless of the political party, regardless of what level of government we have in Canada. The change can be made only by the grassroots, by the people of this country.

I would hope that there would be a number of MPs who would rise in the House and talk about the need for electoral reform. I challenge any member of Parliament to go out on the street in any part of this country. He or she will find that the Canadian people are losing faith in our political system. In fact, in many ways we are sleepwalking toward a crisis in democracy.

I can remember when voter turnout was 75% or 80%. In 1997 the voter turnout went down to 67% and then down to 60% in the last election campaign. People are losing faith in Parliament and their politicians. People believe that politicians do not listen and do not hear. They believe that they elect politicians to do one thing and then something else happens. Part of the responsibility for that is the failure of our electoral system to provide the Canadian people with the kind of government they want and deserve.

The other thing is that under PR people can vote for their first choice and have their first choice count. There are a lot of Canadians in our present system who cast what I call a strategic vote. They are upset with the government and they vote for the leading opposition party. Or they live in a part of the country where the party they prefer does not have a chance of winning, so they vote for their second choice. Under proportional representation, people vote for their first choice and their first choice wins.

Another thing about PR is that it would also force all political parties to have a national vision. We have in Canada now five different regional parties, really, that are strong in different parts of the country. That includes the government, which is very strong in the Province of Ontario and to a lesser degree in the Province of Quebec, but not very strong when it comes to western Canada.

Under PR every vote is equal. For the NDP under PR a vote in Chicoutimi is worth as much as a vote in Regina. For the Liberal Party under PR a vote in Kamsack, Saskatchewan, is worth as much as a vote in downtown Toronto. It would force all parties to have a national vision and appeal to Canadians right across the board, regardless of their previous voting patterns and their previous voting history. This is another argument for proportional representation.

The main thing is that we would elect a Parliament where everybody is equal, where everybody's vote counts, and where nobody's vote is wasted.

Why do I today bring in a bill to amend the Referendum Act? I believe that for a major change of this sort the people should speak. In fact, we have a precedent for this. In New Zealand a number of years ago when that country moved from the first past the post system to the system of proportional representation, not just one but two referenda were held. The first referendum was on the principle of PR. The question put to New Zealanders was whether they wanted to bring in a system based on proportional representation or to stick with the status quo, which was first past the post. New Zealanders then voted to bring in a system based on proportional representation.

The second referendum in New Zealand allowed the people of the country, through a direct vote in a referendum, to choose the kind of proportional representation they wanted in their electoral system. They chose what was called the mixed member proportional, a system that is based on the German model, which is the reality in some 13 countries in the world.

I think what we should do is allow the Canadian people, through a referendum, to decide whether or not they want to keep the status quo or bring in a system of proportional representation.

For the last four or five years I have had a private member's bill before the House of Commons which would strike an all party committee to hold public hearings across the country and to come up with some recommendations as to the most appropriate system of PR for the country. Parliament would decide on the most appropriate model for Canada and then a national referendum would be held so the Canadian people could decide whether they wanted this new model of PR or the status quo of the first past the post system. Therefore we need to change the Referendum Act to allow the people to have a national vote on the subject.

The time has come when we should be striking a national committee to look at electoral reform. My vision of PR is one that is based on the German model. Residents of Germany get two votes in a campaign. Half the members are elected riding by riding. People still have their local member of parliament to look after their unemployment insurance needs, wheat board needs, immigration needs and so on. The other half of the members of parliament are elected on a list that each party presents.

It is from that list in Germany and in the other 12 countries that use the mixed member proportional where they draw names to make sure the parliament is representative.

If one party, for example in Ontario, with almost all the seats, gets only half the votes then the other parties would get almost all the members in the west so that the representation from Ontario would be proportional in accordance with the votes that are cast. Therefore they would have the best of both worlds. They would have a local member of Parliament and they would have proportionality. I think that is a truly democratic system.

I am looking forward to hearing the debate this morning. I hope members on all sides of the House will give this a great deal of support. It would give Canadians a chance, in a true democratic way, to pass judgment on the kind of electoral system we want to represent us in the future.

[User Fees Act, February 14th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I want to express my support for the private member's initiative before the House today in terms of greater accountability when it comes to user fees put on by the federal government.

There are many user fees that bring in a lot of cash for the federal government each and every year. The important thing is to bring in more accountability and transparency in terms of user fees in all forms of taxes and legislation in general.

In fact, I would like to see a whole raft of parliamentary reform to make this place more relevant to ordinary people. Over the years that I have been here, I have a seen a lessening of importance of the House of Commons itself and the growing importance of the executive.

I came here in the Trudeau years, in 1968, and I remember a great battle in the summer of 1969 when I was just 23 years old. There was a great battle for the change of rules in the House of Commons. There was a tremendous fight which went on all through the month of July. With the change of rules, more power was taken away from the House of Commons and given to the Prime Minister's Office and the executive.

What has happened over the last 25 or 30 years is that the trend has continued through the Mulroney years into the present years, where the Prime Minister's Office and the executive have far too much power. What we need is some serious parliamentary reform where parliamentary committees would be more independent and have the right to timetable themselves, introduce legislation, and freely elect their own chairs. The member across the way knows exactly what I mean by that from the experience we had together at a House of Commons committee roughly one year ago.

That is the direction I believe we should be going as a House of Commons. The Prime Minister's Office and indeed the premiers' offices in our country have far too much power to make many appointments unilaterally. I have seen many appointments made by all levels of government over the years. If we were to recommend appointments to the relevant parliamentary committee, in other words, nominate an individual for a relevant position and have the relevant committee either ratify or accept the position, then certain recommendations by the federal government would not be made.

I remember the case of a former cabinet minister back in the Trudeau years who was appointed to head a crown corporation. In this particular case I did not find a single government member who agreed with the appointment, but they were all like political eunuchs because of our parliamentary system, they could not do anything to stop the appointment which was made by the Prime Minister of the day. That is not a commentary on one political party or the other. It is the kind of political system we have that puts far too much power into the hands of the executive branch of government and in the hands of the Prime Minister.

In fact, if we look at our system, I do not think we will find any system in the world that is a democracy and I am not talking about Baghdad or North Korea. However, I am talking about elected parliaments that put so much power in the hands of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister's executives choose the federal judges; Supreme Court judges; cabinet ministers; and senators, except for the hockey team, the Ottawa Senators, which they are now bailing out by millions and millions of dollars a year. They appoint all the senior officials of government, the head of the RCMP, the head of the military, and the list goes on and on.

The Prime Minister also has the power to fix an election date whenever the Prime Minister wants to call an election and to bring in a budget whenever the Prime Minister wants to do so. We should have fixed dates for elections, budgets, and throne speeches. We should take that power away from the government. In doing so we would have timetabling that would be more fair and just for everybody concerned.

The fixed budget date, for example, would allow the provinces, municipalities and school boards to plan because they would know if there would be a budget every second or third week of February or March or whatever that date would be. We should have fixed election dates as well so that there would be a level playing field for all the parties.

Those are some of the things we need in terms of serious parliamentary reform. Part of that is greater accountability in terms of the finances and the taxes of the country.

A user fee is a tax with another name. It is not a hidden tax. It is very vivid and visible as a tax with another name. I oppose many user fees, however we do need some user fees. I am not saying we cannot have user fees. If we use a park often or some other public facility often, there are arguments to be made in favour of user fees.

However the problem with some fees is that they can be very regressive. A user fee usually applies across the board. Whether people are wealthy or poor they pay the same user fee. In that regard it becomes a very regressive tax. This is another reason to make sure we pass the motion before the House today, Parliament would have greater say and there would be greater accountability, greater transparency and less likelihood of a user fee that is really regressive.

This is a very important motion. I want to mention a recent example of spending gone wild without parliamentary accountability, the gun registry program. Whether we are in favour or against the gun registry program, it initially was supposed to cost $2 million a year, then $100 million and now it is over $1 billion.

The Auditor General has made it very clear that the program has become a major financial boondoggle. The Auditor General also said that Parliament was not allowed to see the books over the years, which we should have been able to do, and that things were hidden from the elected representatives of the people.

If there is one purpose more than any other purpose as to why we are here, it is to be the guardian or the watchdog over the tax money of the ordinary Canadian people, to make sure that their tax money is spent in a wise way and in a way that is good for the country and good for the common good.

However we have a gun registry program where over $1 billion dollars has been spent and where consultants have been hired. One billing I noticed, which was reported in one of the national newspapers, showed that the Department of Justice was billed for $1,000 a day for 365 days a year. What bureaucrat would sign off on that invoice, working Christmas Day, Easter Sunday, no matter what?

As the Auditor General said, a lot of this information was withheld from the Parliament.

I would like to see a system where a parliamentary committee, the public accounts committee or whatever, would have the power and the authority to subpoena any government department it wanted, to force a department to open its books, and allow the committee to have a thorough look at the books to make sure that the spending being done is being done in accordance with the intent and the laws that come out from the Parliament of Canada.

In that regard we may need, as it has in the United States, a better staffed parliamentary committee system, where we would have more funding to hire the expertise needed for the parliamentary committees, and where we would have the background to actually do a better cross-examination of some of the witnesses.

I remember back to the parliamentary constitutional debates a few years ago when we were looking at the issues surrounding the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords. At that time Parliament decided in its wisdom to provide all the parties with extra research help for that parliamentary committee on the government side and the opposition side.

I was on that committee and it was probably the best committee on which I have ever served in terms of having the expertise, where parliamentarians had the ammunition, because of the thorough research being done by committee staff, to put the proper questions.

I know we have a good staff in the Library of Parliament but sometimes we have to supplement that staff with staff that is a bit more political in terms of the kind of research that they are doing.

I think we should look at some of these ideas as precedents in other parts of the world that have worked very well.

This comes right back to the main thrust which is that we need more accountability and more transparency, particularly when it comes to the public finances of the nation.

I would like to see the day when we have the political parties in this country coming together as one to say that the executive, the Prime Minister's Office, has far too much power, that Parliament has far less power, and that we have to increase the power and the independence of parliamentary committees. We need the right to initiate legislation, the right to timetable legislation and the right to have fewer confidence votes in the House of Commons. We have far too many confidence votes here.

In Britain, when Margaret Thatcher was at the height of her popularity, the government lost many votes on government bills but it did not fall. Instead, it went back to the drawing board and came up with bills that were more acceptable to the parliament of the country.We should be doing that in Canada. We are in the stone age in terms of the need for parliamentary reform.

[Foreign Affairs, February 14th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister.

In the Prime Minister's speech in Chicago last night, he said that going through the United Nations adds legitimacy to the use of force in Iraq. Does it also mean that not going through the United Nations, to use force in Iraq would make the endeavour illegitimate?

[Iraq, February 14th, 2003]

Then, Mr. Speaker, I will ask the Deputy Prime Minister about the Prime Minister's speech in Chicago yesterday, where he said going through the United Nations would add “legitimacy to the use of force” in Iraq. Yet the Prime Minister voted against the vote in the House for this House itself voting about going to war.

If the United Nations authorization equals legitimacy, I presume that in the Prime Minister's logic George Bush going alone would equal illegitimacy.

So I ask the Deputy Prime Minister, could he state in the House today that he would not participate in George Bush's war if it does not happen through the United Nations?

[Iraq, February 14th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Deputy Prime Minister.

News reports in the last few minutes are saying that Hans Blix has been saying that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq and the inspectors are now having more freedom to move around the country, but that more time is needed and new spy planes are available to help in that inspection.

In light of that, could the Deputy Prime Minister say whether or not he will be speaking out and calling upon the United Nations and Security Council members to provide more time for inspections to be completed in Iraq, rather than going to war?

[Dennis McDermott, February 14th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honour the memory of Dennis McDermott, a fearless and articulate leader of the Canadian labour movement, who served as the Canadian director of the UAW, as president of the Canadian Labour Congress, and as Canada's ambassador to Ireland. He was a lifelong activist on human rights, and a member of the NDP and the CCF for over five decades.

Dennis played a key role in bringing about Ontario's first piece of human rights legislation in 1948. At the helm of Canada's UAW, he laid the foundation for one of the most successful trade unions in Canadian history, the CAW.

As president of the Canadian Labour Congress, he believed that trade unions should engage in the broader struggles from economic and social equality to peace and justice around the world.

May the road rise to meet you, Dennis, and may God hold you in the hollow of his hand.

[Bank Act, February 13th, 2003]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-394, an act to amend the Bank Act (bank mergers).

Mr. Speaker, the purpose of the bill before the House todayis to prevent the merger of banks with each other or federally incorporated bodies to create one bank unless the Superintendent of Financial Institutions advises the Minister of Finance that the merger is necessary to prevent an insolvency or informs the minister that none of the applicants wishing to merge are about to be insolvent. In such a case, the merger would have to be approved by a resolution of the Senate and the House of Commons. Today mergers are approved by the Minister of Finance.

This is a bill to democratize the process where if it happens, it happens by a vote of the House of Commons.

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

[Terrorism, February 12th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I too want to say a few words in this debate before the House and respond to the minister. I do not consider myself to be an expert on any of these organizations, however I had a chance to do a bit of research on them. I know I cannot ask a question at this time but I will say it in sort of an interrogation kind of way.

The minister has announced today that he is putting the Abu Nidal Organization, which split away from the PLO in 1974, on the designated list. The first thing I noticed on the government website was the government already did that on November 7. If it was put on the list on November 7, why is it being announced today? There is a slightly different spelling on the website compared to what is in the minister's statement but it is the same organization. I do not know what that means.

If we check the government website, the Abu Sayyaf Group, which is the group in the Philippines, was listed on October 2. October 2 is quite a few months ago. Again, the spelling may be quite different, but the group is the same. Why is this announcement being made today when these organizations are on the government website as being listed in October and November?

I know sometimes the government across the way is not a very competent and efficient government in terms of organizing its work. These inefficiencies are noted in a number of agencies and departments. We saw that a few minutes ago when the member for Sarnia—Lambton talked about the overspending on the gun registry.

Although I know I cannot ask a question at this time, I do wonder about these things in terms of the minister across the way, who has been a long time friend.

I do not see any argument as to why these organizations should not be put on a designated list. As I said, I am not familiar in detail with all of them. They all appear to be organizations that are involved in violence and terror. I would like to know more details as to whether there is evidence of them operating in our country. What is that evidence? What have they done? What are they trying to do in terms of soliciting funds or other activities in Canada?

It becomes a very difficult thing to designate. We have seen that with the statement from the Bloc Québécois. Often one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. We have seen that throughout history.

I remember going to the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. I remember my history when the British considered Menachem Begin to be a terrorist. He was a freedom fighter to many of the Israeli people.

Nelson Mandela, one of my heroes and a tremendous freedom fighter in my opinion, was considered by some people, including a member of the House of Commons very recently, to be a terrorist.

I see that the member from Calgary is here. I know how he is a self-styled tax fighter. The Boston Tea Party for some was an act of terrorism. However, if the member from Calgary looked back on those days, and his ideology is still back in those days, he would not consider it an act of terrorism. He would consider it an act of patriotism in terms of what happened at that time.

The American revolution was an act of terrorism for some; an act of freedom and liberation for others.

I want to throw in those precautionary notes to the Solicitor General. I know he is well aware of them. I hope when these organizations are put on a list, that they are very carefully looked at by the agencies of government to ensure that a mistake is not made and to ensure that the protection of our national security against genuine terrorism is the sole motivating factor as to why they should be put on a list.

I know that differs a bit from the Alliance position and the Bloc position. I believe those points have to be made. I would also appreciate an explanation sometime as to why these are announced today, when the government website listed them as being listed in October 2 and November 7.

[Terrorism, February 11th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to express my outrage at the failure of our criminal justice system to adequately punish a man responsible for one of the greatest acts of terrorism before September 11.

Eighteen years ago, Inderjit Singh Reyat provided the materials necessary to blow an Air India flight out of the air, killing all 329 passengers. One hour prior to the explosion, he was responsible for killing two airport staff. For killing two people, he received ten years. For killing 329 passengers, he received five years. That works out to five and a half days in jail for every life that was lost.

To suggest that less than five years is a just sentence for the murder of 329 people makes a mockery of our legal system. To release an ideological murderer on parole after three years is not justice but a farce.

I urge the government to establish a board of inquiry to determine how our legal system has failed our reasonable standard of justice and public safety.