Bill Blaikie

[Winnipeg General Strike, May 11th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, this week marks the 75th anniversary of the Winnipeg general strike, an event which saw the working people of Winnipeg unite against the corporate agenda of that time. This event shaped the political life of Winnipeg and to some degree of Canada for all time.

The strike produced members of Parliament like J. S. Woodsworth who went on to be the first leader of the CCF. He had been charged with seditious libel for quoting the prophet Isaiah.

Today the prophetic judgment of Isaiah is no less relevant to the corporate agenda and the indifference of the rich and the powerful to the plight of the powerless.

[International Labour Code, May 4th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, as we celebrate with South Africans the birth of a new democratic South Africa, Canadians are proud of the role we played in maintaining economic sanctions against the old South Africa.

That pride is called into question by some of the things that have been said recently by the Prime Minister and the Minister for International Trade in which the linking of trade to human and political rights has been seriously downplayed.

At the Marrakesh meeting to sign the new GATT agreement, which brought the World Trade Organization into existence, the minister was quoted in the Financial Post of April 9 as saying that he was reluctant to follow the American proposal for an international labour code.

Without such a code, the world's multinationals will be allowed to prey even on the child labourers of the developing world and the process of globalization will certainly continue on its present race to the bottom.

I call on the Minister for International Trade to overcome his conservative inhibitions, to see labour as a trade issue and to take the lead in designing an effective social and labour code under the World Trade Organization.

Globalization without global community and global standards is nothing other than moral anarchy.

[Via Rail, April 26th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport and has to do with the revelation of a proposal made by Railex, an American transport company, for the purchase of VIA Rail infrastructure west of Winnipeg on the condition that all current VIA Rail employees be laid off.

Would the minister like to take this opportunity to completely rule out at this time, on the floor of the House of Commons, in a very public way, any possibility of privatizing VIA Rail in western Canada and for that matter anywhere, but particularly given this proposal, in western Canada?

Could he also tell us when he will make public the recommendations of the task force that went around Manitoba in particular, that was conducted by the member for St. Boniface and the member for Churchill? What is the attitude of the government toward Railex's proposal?

[International Association Of Firefighters, April 20th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, over the last few days many MPs have met with representatives of the International Association of Firefighters.

The firefighters are asking for a number of things, all of which I support, but today I would urge the government to act as soon as possible on a number of them.

There is no good reason for delay on setting up the system for tracking hazardous materials and right to know legislation. Likewise there is no good reason to delay on setting up a notification protocol for infectious diseases.

I call on the government to act swiftly on these two requests of the firefighters. They serve our communities well in an already dangerous job. It does not need to be made unnecessarily more dangerous by government failure on these two particularly responsible requests.

[Budget Implementation Act, 1994, April 11th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, while we are on the topic of grain cars I would like to suggest to the government member and also to my Reform Party colleague from Manitoba that one of the problems is the fact that we have grain cars sitting all across the country. Many of them are in Manitoba, the old boxcar type grain cars, and they are not being used.

The reason they are not being used is not because of railroaders, the government or anybody else. As I understand it, it is because the pools do not want to hire people to man the elevators in order to use the old boxcars. They have cut staff at the elevators.

We have the grain cars to move the grain but the people who are responsible for employment at the elevators will not make it possible to use these cars. That is only one dimension of the problem but I think it is something that should be put on the record.

[Commemorative Medal, April 11th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would like to indicate my support for the amendment. Like many amendments it is not always exactly what we asked for, but I appreciate the willingness on the other side to make some progress here, to have the motion go forward and hopefully to create the kind of momentum I was talking about before.

I would ask, Mr. Speaker, that you seek unanimous consent to have the amendment adopted and then to have the main motion made votable so that we could proceed to pass the motion as amended.

[Commemorative Medal, April 11th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I do not want to get involved in a procedural wrangle. On the other hand, I do not want to be hoodwinked either. I do not want to be trying to get up on a point of order at the end when somebody is talking and not be able to get up.

If it would facilitate the debate and the possibility of unanimity I would say fine. Either I or presumably somebody else could do the same thing, ask on a point of order toward the end of the hour that the motion be made votable.

I do not see anything wrong with asking that it be made votable now. It would not prevent other arguments from being heard. It would not prevent other points of view from being heard. It would just mean that would be done.

I am not interested in picking a fight with the member at this point and I hope that he would be true to his word and ensure that I get the opportunity to do that at the end of the hour.

[Commemorative Medal, April 11th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I can get up on a point of order at the end but I might not be able to and there is no reason why, if the House is willing at his point, we do not pass the motion now by asking that the motion be made votable. Debate continues.

I would like to ask now that the motion, by unanimous consent, be made votable.

[Commemorative Medal, April 11th, 1994]

Yes, Mr. Speaker, if this is the appropriate time to do so. I would like to ask that this motion with the unanimous consent of the House be made votable and that a vote be taken if need be. We might agree to pass it at the end of the hour.

[Commemorative Medal, April 11th, 1994]

moved:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should honour the contribution made by those who served Canada's armed forces during World War II at the Dieppe raid by striking a distinctive medal for Canadian veterans of this battle.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin this morning by thanking all the hon. members who formally seconded my motion. As you may be aware, Mr. Speaker, there is a procedure by which members can formally second a motion and up to 20 members may second any motion. I had more than I needed. I had 20 and others who wanted to get on the list. I would also like to particularly thank my colleagues this morning, the member for Kamloops and the member for Saskatoon-Clark's Crossing who are here to second my motion as it got on the floor.

The motion today is to right a wrong which has been felt by veterans of the Dieppe raid for a long, long time. It is the absence of any distinctive recognition of their participation in that particular raid.

I begin by reminding the House that in the summer of 1942, when the Axis powers were at their peak and threatening world domination, 5,000 Canadian soldiers willingly participated in a raid on the occupied French coastal town of Dieppe, France. Operation Jubilee, as it was known, proved to be an allied plan that had catastrophic and at the same time critical results for future allied plans.

The catastrophe was 959 Canadian soldiers killed, 1,200 wounded and 1,900 more taken as prisoners. No other battle in the history of the second world war had similar consequences all in a single day: August 19, 1942.

Despite the horrific losses there were significant lessons learned from the raid. This painfully gained knowledge proved crucial to the success of the D-Day planning in 1944. Without the sacrifices of August 1942 many believe that the success of the Normandy landings would have been in serious jeopardy.

This year we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. In 1992 we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Dieppe raid. At that time I had the privilege of participating in the pilgrimage to Dieppe, which took place alongside the pilgrimage to Vimy when we were celebrating the 75th anniversary of the battle of Vimy Ridge.

I also had the honour, thanks to the then Minister of Veterans Affairs, of playing the lament at the Dieppe cemetery. The privilege was afforded to me by the minister as a result of my own service in the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada stationed in Winnipeg at Minto Armouries.

I say this by way of a little personal history. I first became aware and conscious of the Dieppe raid when I was very young as a member of The Cameron Cadets in Winnipeg and later as a member of the militia unit, the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada where I served in a pipe band for many years.

One of the people who instructed me at that time, Pipe Major Alec Graham, was a piper at Dieppe and one of the people who played the pipes on the landing craft as they came into the beach at Pourville where The Camerons along with the South Saskatchewan Regiment landed.

I have had the opportunity of being at Pourville and of seeing the beach and the conditions under which The Camerons and the South Saskatchewan landed. I also saw the main beach where the Essex Scottish and the Fusiliers de Mont-Royal landed and the beach at Puys where the Royal Regiment of Canada landed and took the heaviest casualties of any regiment ever in one day in Canadian history.

Dieppe was a particularly tragic event, as many more Canadians are aware of today than they might have been just a while ago thanks to the television series on Dieppe. Regardless of what one might think of the events and the interpretation of events, certainly there is no question that many young Canadians were tragically killed, wounded or captured in that battle.

It is only fitting at this time that the government should move to do what many have been asking it to do for years, to strike a distinctive medal for those who have participated in the Dieppe raid.

I might say in anticipation of what the arguments might be that Canada now has the power to award its own medals even though at the time during the second world war and subsequently we were part of the Commonwealth system of honours and medals. Since 1968 we have had the ability to award our own medals as we did only recently with respect to the gulf war. I hope I am not going to hear from people on the other side that this is something beyond the capability of a sovereign country like Canada to do if it so chooses.

I want to indicate at some point that I will try to seek unanimous consent for this motion to be voted on and agreed upon even though it has not been chosen as a votable motion. We know that the House can do this with private members' motions if the members so choose. I have not had anybody say to me that this is a bad idea. I have had nothing but letters from various members of Parliament from all sides of the House saying that the motion should pass. I have had people eager to second it.

I hope we will not see a government member get up with notes prepared by the Department of Veterans Affairs or whatever to give the contrary argument and say no at the end when we ask for unanimous consent to have the motion passed.

I remind members, particularly those on the government side who may have been asked to do this, this is not a binding motion. It is not a bill. It is a motion and if it passes it would simply give the government ammunition, if you like, in trying to go ahead. It would help to create momentum. It would give a government that wanted to do this the ability to say: "We do this with the expressed and unanimous backing of the House of Commons". I do not see any good reason, other than a sort of small mindedness with respect to the fact that I am not a government member, or whatever the case may be, for not allowing the motion to go ahead.

Another argument might be advanced. I hope the argument will not be offered, but I have heard it in private conversation, that Canadian medals have tended to be awarded on the basis of campaigns rather than battles.

One will find if the records and the situations are examined that this still leaves room and can be used to argue for a distinctive Dieppe medal because participants in the Dieppe raid did not receive, as I understand it, the campaign medal that many other veterans received, the France-Germany medal. This medal was not awarded to them because they did not participate in the events in France and Germany following the D-Day invasion.

At one point they did receive a campaign medal which would have satisfied their desire to be recognized. They were awarded a 1939-43 star but that later was revoked for reasons that no one seems to be able to come up with. It was extended and made the 1939-45 star which offers no particular recognition to those who participated in events like Dieppe before the Normandy invasion.

All the Dieppe veterans are asking for is something which recognizes they were part of that campaign and in this case a particular event that was central to the pre-Normandy campaign. They do not have that. They have been asking for it and I simply ask how long do they have to wait? Time marches on, as the old hymn that is used at Remembrance Day services, "Abide with Me" says: Time like an ever rolling stream bears all its sons away. Time is bearing all the veterans of Dieppe away as it will bear all of us away some day.

Therefore, in this year of remembering when there are so many brochures and pamphlets from Veterans Affairs and elsewhere, all of which are appropriate, why today can we not do something concrete, not expensive and something which will bring Canadians together.

One thing that struck me when I was at Dieppe and had struck me before at Canadian war cemeteries is that row on row, no distinction is made between veterans of the Fusiliers de Mont-Royal or the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders of Winnipeg. Canadians of French, British and other origins lie side by side in Canadian war cemeteries. It ought to be mandatory for every member of Parliament to visit these cemeteries and to get a tragic sense but nevertheless some pride of the unity with which Canadians have fought in World War II and before that in World War I.

I know there are others eager to speak on this. I hope we can do this. Certainly there is precedent for motions like this passing which have had no expressed opposition. I have a letter from the minister saying the government is intent on some form of recognition for Dieppe veterans. I say that the form of recognition the Dieppe veterans want and that the Dieppe veterans deserve is this medal. They do not want a picnic. They do not want some kind of special event. They want what they are asking for.

I hope the government will use this opportunity, which is Private Members' Business after all. We do not have on the other side an emissary for the government to talk this bill out or to deny unanimous consent. It would be a tragedy and a travesty as far as Private Members' Business is concerned. I have not yet heard a private member say he or she is opposed to this motion. I have had private members indicating to me that they are in favour of it. I would encourage the House to give unanimous consent when the time comes to have the motion voted on and passed.