Charlie Penson

[Petitions, September 18th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I have before me two petitions, one signed by 26 people from my riding and the other one signed by 27 people, calling on Parliament to enact Bill C-205.

Currently Canadian law does not stop convicted criminals from profiting financially from their crimes. Presently a convicted criminal can make money by writing a book and these petitioners ask that this be stopped.

[Criminal Code, September 17th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy for the opportunity to participate in the debate today at report stage of Bill C-45.

My constituents expect me to speak on this very important matter. It is a matter which concerns them greatly; the fact that we have a bill that would tinker with section 745 of the Criminal Code, known to some as the faint hope clause.

Before I begin, I would like to note that it is very strange that there are no speakers from the government side debating this very important issue. I think it shows a contempt for this House and for the Canadian people that they would place a bill before Parliament and then would not use the opportunity to explain why they want the changes they do. The Canadian public should look very carefully at those reasons. They do not want to debate this bill and I think there are reasons why they do not.

The faint hope clause, section 745, which the government wants to amend, concerns me greatly. As has been mentioned several times in this House, it would apply to those who commit multiple murders but not those who commit a single murder. This has been explained very carefully by my colleague so I will not go into it. It is not retroactive. It does not apply to killers such as Clifford Olson, the very person we would want to control and not have come up for early parole. He is responsible for one of the most serious crimes that has ever been committed in this country and it would not apply to him.

The section needs to be thrown out completely. I agree with my colleague from York South-Weston who introduced a private member's bill to that extent, that it should be withdrawn.

In the very way we approach this there is a common theme that runs through this whole issue of criminal justice reform. It comes from the Liberal Party. George Orwell would recognize it very clearly. It is doublespeak. What does a life sentence mean in Canada? It was a Liberal government that threw out the death penalty in 1976 and gave us the current life sentence. Life sentence means murderers cannot apply for parole before 25 years. It does not mean life, it means the possibility of parole after 25 years.

Furthermore, the doublespeak continues. Section 745 is the faint hope clause which states that in certain circumstances murderers can apply for parole in 15 years. What does life mean? It does not mean life at all. Let us be clear about it. I think we are going back to George Orwell's old scenario in 1984 which the Liberals seem to have adopted.

The other thing has been running right through the theme of the Liberal Party and the Liberal government for the last 30 years which is that they are soft on crime. It is a well known fact that they are soft on criminals. After all, it was a Liberal government which scrapped the death penalty. We know that the Canadian public from the polls I have seen, and Liberals often like to quote polls, for the last 15 years have consistently suggested that the Canadian public would like to return to capital punishment for those who commit first degree murder. However, that bill was not introduced by this government. What we have instead is that in 1976 it scrapped that and gave us the current system.

It was at about that time as well that it was decided that the Juvenile Delinquents Act should be scrapped and we were given the Young Offenders Act. They have tinkered with that a little bit, but it just seems to be another example of how soft they are in the whole area of criminal justice. Soft on crime, soft on criminals.

Early parole, parole abuses, abuses by the parole board by not putting competent people in place are other examples.

I would like to relate a little story about my chance to go through the Edmonton maximum security prison about a year and a half ago. It was an eye opener. Anybody who has not toured one of these types of prisons certainly should.

The warden at the prison told me that about 80 per cent of the inmates had a substance abuse problem. Of course, I asked what they were doing to try to rehabilitate these people. These inmates

do have the right to earn their way out of prison after a period of time. We have medium and minimum security prisons. If they do try to upgrade their skills they have a chance to be rehabilitated.

The warden told me that they had psychiatrists, psychologists and various others working with these people to try and help them overcome their drug abuse problem. However, at the same time drugs are getting into our maximum security prisons. Drug use is a common practice among prisoners in our maximum security prisons and at the same time we are trying to rehabilitate them. What does that tell us? What is Corrections Canada's answer to this? It is not to stop the family visitations which are identified by the wardens as being the main source of drugs getting into the prisons, although I doubt that would be the only source. I think in some cases some staff are probably involved. That would seem to me to be a pipeline for drugs getting into the prisons.

What does Corrections Canada and the Department of Justice answer to this? Of course, not to stop the family visitations or get tough on screening of guards. No. It is to give prisoners new needles, give them bleach kits so that they do not contact AIDS in prison. What does that say about our criminal justice system? What does it say about the Liberal government? It says a lot. It says that the Liberals are soft on crime and continue to be.

Where are we currently? The Canadian public is very concerned and rightly so. Canadians are buying security systems at an alarming rate. They are trying to guard themselves against break and enter. They are trying to arm themselves. Canadians have rallied on Parliament Hill asking for reform of the criminal justice system.

My home in Alberta is in a very quiet farming community with a very stable population and basically no crime problems in terms of break and enter but this past year we caught up with the rest of the Canadian public. We now have joined the big leagues. We had a series of break and enters in broad daylight throughout our little farming community. Now people are saying: "Well, I guess we have to get a guard dog or a security system". That is the concern people have. They feel that they are under attack as never before. I know that MPs opposite must be getting the same kind of mail I am getting, especially members who represent rural ridings where people are asking what has happened to their communities.

I operate a grain farm. We used to be able to leave the keys in our equipment in the fields. I had a truck stolen off my farm two years ago. That is what is happening in our society. I have received mail stating that people want this situation cleaned up. They want the government to get tough on criminal justice. They want to scrap the current Young Offenders Act and start over. Even the term young offenders has become very offensive now. It has been identified as an act that simply cannot be reformed, that it should be scrapped and we should start over. Polls have indicated that Canadians want a return to the death penalty.

What Canadians get from the government and from the current justice minister is tinkering. Tinkering with section 745 and gun control which will not be the answer to solving our crime problem in Canada.

In fact, gun control and registration for long guns was modelled on our current handgun registration which has been in place since 1935. Our handgun registration has not worked. There are as many or more crimes being committed with handguns than ever before, yet we have a registration system which is supposed to control that. Now we have a long gun registration that is supposed to give us peace, it is supposed to return us to the times when we had low crime rates. It simply is not going to happen. The government is going after the wrong people. There is also tinkering with the Young Offenders Act.

This might play in downtown Toronto but I doubt it very much. It certainly does not play in my riding. People want this government to get tough on the crime problem in Canada. We know there is a crime problem.

I see some members shaking their heads opposite, some of the same members that probably have prisons in their riding, like the parliamentary secretary who is yakking over there. He has a prison in his Prince Albert-Churchill riding. Perhaps he should go through that prison and see what kind of problems there are at the Edmonton maximum security prison.

Canadians want us to get tough on this whole section of criminal justice. They want us to provide some assurances that their families can go out on the streets at eleven o'clock at night and feel safe. That simply is not the situation now. They want us to toughen up the criminal justice system so that they are not subject to break and enters in their homes which provide criminals an income for substance abuse. Canadians are not going to get it from this government obviously, but at some point they are going to get the kind of reform that is necessary to clean up Canada's crime problem.

[Supply, June 19th, 1996]

Then there is the story of Dexter Schmidt, a constituent of my riding of Peace River. This government has been telling farmers they should diversify. He has taken their advice. He has diversified into organic grain, but the wheat board does not sell organic grain because as soon as it is pooled with all the other wheat it loses its distinctiveness. He wanted the ability to sell it himself.

Of course the board cannot get these niche markets. They sell in boat loads and there is not enough production at this time in the organic grain market to make 20,000 tonnes. What has to happen to Mr. Schmidt? It is too much hassle for the board to administer the container loads. Is Mr. Schmidt allowed to do his own marketing? Only if he goes to the Canadian Wheat Board.

Here are the steps he must go through. First, he has to go to the elevator to sell his grain on contract. The elevator writes out the sales ticket. Mr. Schmidt writes out a buy back cheque for $36.94 a tonne. He also pays the elevator $5 a tonne administration fee. Now he owns his own grain. That is a major step. Now he can sell it as he pleases but he still has to wait a year to get back his original $36.94 a tonne and he may not see any of it at all, depending on how the board does on its marketing.

If he tries to bypass the board he commits a criminal offence and has to pay a penalty of $12,000 plus spend two years in jail. Does this make any sense?

Canada and Russia passed in the night about three years ago. Russia is going to a market system and where are we going? We are continuing with a very regressive system. This is an example of the type of thing we would hear from communist Russia 20 years ago.

These are just two examples of why I think the Canadian Wheat Board needs to be overhauled. I would start by ensuring that the commissioners are democratically elected by producers. After that, I think the board would change in the ways it needs to meet the 21st century.

Today's generation of commercial farmers want to substitute their management skills for the collective approaches that have dominated the past few decades. They see new opportunities in hot new markets like organic grains. Using their own skills and their own comparative advantages, they want to be free to grow crops and market them as they please, just the same as any other industry.

I want to take a moment to talk about the reports that were done for the Canadian Wheat Board and for the grain marketing panel. The Kraft report was referred to earlier. The Kraft report was done with selective information from the Canadian Wheat Board. It fed the panel certain information. That is a strange thing. Nobody else can get any information out of the Canadian Wheat Board.

This group was paid a certain amount of money to do a very selective report for the Canadian Wheat Board and was spoon fed the information. What did the report say? It was very complimentary to the board. It said that the board gets about $13 a tonne more for the grain when it sells all around the world than any other country or any other market would get. Does that make sense? If a company in Brazil was buying grain from us, why would it pay $13 a tonne more to the board than it would pay to anybody else? Maybe there is a quality issue here. That could be. But that same quality would exist whether the board marketed the grain or not. I think this Kraft report has to be discounted completely.

There was another report done by Colin Carter and Al Loyns. Their report states that they found just exactly the opposite. They said that the grain marketed by the board is costing farmers about $20 a tonne. The report was compiled without any benefit of Canadian Wheat Board information. In fact, they were stymied every step of the way trying to get information from the board.

This Canadian Wheat Board is acting very much like the department of defence these days. It has a bunker mentality and is hunkered down behind the barricades.

Then we have the famous Deloitte & Touche report. These are the people who are the Canadian Wheat Board's auditors. This firm was asked in 1992 to look at the board's management operations. What did it find? First, I have to say that the report was kept secret from 1992 until it was finally leaked and saw the light of day this winter. The report said that the Canadian Wheat Board has no corporate strategic plan, no formal marketing strategic plan, no clear plan for budgeting and managing information. Furthermore, the report reveals that the board is currently not conducting any value for money type reviews.

The minister of agriculture has told us all those things are being corrected. Who would know? The board does not report to anybody but the minister of agriculture and sometimes I wonder if it even reports to him.

My colleague has moved a motion that the auditor general should be able to review the Canadian Wheat Board books. This is a crown corporation. However, the Liberal Party voted against the motion on accountability to government. The Canadian Wheat Board is a crown corporation of government that cannot be audited by the auditor general. Shame.

This leaked information is especially disturbing because Deloitte & Touche is the Canadian Wheat Boards' own auditor. If it found that kind of incompetence, it would have to be fairly guarded in what it said. Imagine what it must have really looked like.

I do not have much time but I want to talk for a moment about the grain marketing panel that has been referred to here today. This is a whitewash. Mr. Molloy is heading up the grain marketing panel. He is a buddy of the minister of agriculture. What did this grain marketing panel do? The panel came to my riding. It had a facilitator go around and say: "Give us the information and we will tabulate it". Then there was a consensus at the end.

When a group of farmers in my area said they wanted to make a direct presentation to the panel, the facilitator said: "Okay, you can do that, but you have to come to Winnipeg". Imagine, they would have to travel all the way to Winnipeg from Grande Prairie, Alberta.

Then we called for the panel to hold hearings in the capitals of the three provinces, to at least make it easier for those people to present information. We had a major fight to get that to happen. This is supposed to be an open process. It was a major fight.

What did we find when we got to the grain marketing panel? A bunch of political hacks, in most cases. One member is a former member of the Manitoba pool. His sole contribution to the debate was: "Things cannot be too bad under the Canadian Wheat Board. I was out in the country the other day and I saw some farmers driving new pick-ups".

The Liberal government in this very House, less than a month ago, talked about a monopoly. It talked about a monopoly in the gas and oil industry. It said that gas prices are being controlled by a monopoly. It pales by comparison with the monopoly that the Canadian Wheat Board holds over farmers. It is a monopoly on the buy side only. There is only one buyer for wheat and barley that goes to export and that is the Canadian Wheat Board. Any other industry could not be controlled this way. Nobody would want it to be so.

I ask the question again: If the Canadian Wheat Board is so good why do we not have it in Ontario, Quebec and the maritimes so that the potato farmers can experience the joys of having the Canadian Wheat Board?

To whom does the Canadian Wheat Board answer? I had a discussion with a Canadian Wheat Board field representative in my riding recently. I held a series of meetings in my riding and people were concerned that they were not getting very good shipping of wheat out of the Peace River area. I phoned the Canadian Wheat Board and asked what the shipping schedule was for the next two or three weeks.

The next time I met this man he was quite offended that I had not talked to him. He asked me what was my interest in this. I answered that as the member of Parliament, the government representative, I represented these constituents who are concerned that they are not able to move their product. He then asked me what it had to do with me as it was not a government matter. When I mentioned that the Canadian Wheat Board is a crown corporation, he said: "Technically that might be so, but we do not answer to the politicians". I said: "Who do you answer to? Do you answer to the farmers?" He said: "No, we do not answer to them either". There is the answer. They are completely unaccountable.

Let us try this system and let the farmers choose what they want. If they want the Canadian Wheat Board working alongside with a dual marketing agency, that is fine. If they choose the Canadian Wheat Board alone for their product, that is fine. If they choose the private sector completely, that is fine too. The choice should be made by the farmers, not by the Liberal lawyers on the other side who have no experience whatsoever in this area.

[Supply, June 19th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I see I am going to have to cut this a little short because of the time limitation. I am glad for the opportunity to speak on the Reform motion dealing with the Canadian Wheat Board.

My family, my son and I, actively farm 1,400 acres in the Peace River country. There are 12 or 13 members in the Reform caucus who have farms or who are operating farms in some capacity. I think we have a little bit more credibility in this matter than these do-gooder Liberals across the way who have to have the minister of agriculture prompting them with bits of information here and there.

As a matter of fact, the only Liberal member that has spoken today who has any credibility on this issue is the member for Dauphin-Swan River who has a farm herself. She raised the question as to why should we get rid of the Canadian Wheat Board, that she wanted to use the Canadian Wheat Board. She entirely missed the whole essence of the motion.

We are not getting rid of the Canadian Wheat Board. We are calling for a trial period to see which agency farmers will choose: a free marketing system or the state controlled monopoly of the Canadian Wheat Board. If they choose to vote state controlled for their produce that is what we will continue with. If they choose to vote for a free market, that is what they should have.

Who was the member for Saskatoon-Humboldt asking to make expert testimony on this issue? A member from the Bloc Quebecois. What possible relevance could that member have to this debate? If the Canadian Wheat Board is so good, why do we not extend it to Ontario and Quebec?

Maybe the member for Saskatoon-Humboldt knows something about appointments of commissioners to the Canadian Wheat Board because it is my understanding that she did not have to face any election for her nomination, it was an appointment. I guess she is probably an expert on that.

I have spoken to a number of farmers in my riding. Without a doubt the majority want freedom of choice to market their grain. While some think the Canadian Wheat Board makes sense, different farmers have different needs and that is not being recognized here today.

Some are happy to take the initial price offered them by the board. They can afford to wait for a year for the final payment but others are paying high interest rates and they need the immediate cashflow. They have big payments to make in the fall and they cannot afford to wait. Then there are still others who grow specialty crops while the board is simply not able to handle those specialty crops.

A plebiscite was promised by both the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and the Prime Minister very conveniently in the 1993 election. Where is that plebiscite? It is not to be had. It is another broken promise by this Liberal government.

Alberta went ahead with that plebiscite and what happened? An overwhelming number of farmers voted for that choice. Freedom of choice is what farmers want. I have farmed for 28 years. We want freedom of choice, as any other industry enjoys. The real issue here is freedom of choice.

We can have a dual system if we want. The Canadian Wheat Board can offer that side by side. In fact that took place from 1935 to 1943. It has happened before. It worked effectively. The war came along and there were special circumstances. Canada put in a

system whereby supply could be guaranteed to Europe. I can understand that. This is a different time entirely.

Democracy, what is this about? The government is willing to allow for an elected advisory committee to the Canadian Wheat Board. That makes some sense. If it makes sense, would it not also follow that the commissioner should be elected? Is that not democracy? Or does the government want political control of commissioners so that it can dominate their decisions?

Is it common sense to have grain running through the Canadian seaway at a time when it is costing a lot more money than through the west coast or across the border into the United States? I do not think it is. With control of commissioners that is the type of thing that can happen.

I would like to go back to the farmers that find the Canadian Wheat Board a hindrance to their operations. These are examples of farmers who are trying to diversify but have been frustrated by the rigid structure of the Canadian Wheat Board.

First there is the story of Bob Numweiller. Mr. Numweiller is a Saskatchewan miller who lives close to the U.S. border. He farms there. He wants to mill his own wheat into flour and sell it on his farm. Of course he cannot do that under this rigid structure. The board says he cannot do it. First he has to sell his wheat to the Canadian Wheat Board, and although it does not do any of the marketing, then he can buy it back. This is really good stuff. He also must pay the board's price and administration fee, although it does not do anything for him. Then he waits for a year and maybe he will find out he might get a final payment and maybe not.

There is an absurd twist to the story. Now that the Canadian Wheat Board, as a result of the World Trade Organization, can no longer control imports, Mr. Numweiller has discovered that he can cross the U.S. border, buy the wheat, bring the wheat back and mill it on his farm. However, he cannot mill his own wheat. Does that make any sense?

[Lumber Export Quota, June 19th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians know that you need a strong foundation to build a sturdy home.

The Minister for International Trade however is building his house on the shaky foundations of the federal export quota. The minister mistakenly believes that his recent lumber deal with the United States is helping the lumber industry. He hopes the Canadian lumber industry will provide him with the materials necessary for this construction. But even quality Canadian lumber will not be able to hold up this ill-conceived design.

As a result of the minister's faulty construction, the lumber industry is suffering as lumber shipments have slowed to a crawl. Now, instead of dealing with the Americans who have been hacking away at our lumber exports, 2,600 Canadian companies are watching as their own government is taking an axe to the whole works.

If the minister is serious about building a sturdy home fit for our Canadian climate, he had better design a new blueprint.

[Trade, June 17th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, Canada fought long and hard to get the World Trade Organization established, but by caving in on the lumber issue, we have allowed the United States to get away with another bilateral bullying tactic. By doing so, we have hurt not only our lumber industry but the very organization we should be turning to to settle disputes of this nature.

Now that the minister has seen the results of his badly thought out softwood lumber agreement, will he not admit that he should have taken this dispute to the World Trade Organization for settlement once and for all?

[Softwood Lumber, June 14th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the softwood lumber issue simply will not go away. The minister's quota system is causing nothing but havoc and chaos in the industry.

Whose interest is this quota system serving anyway? Is it the lumber industry and the mills that are forced to shut down for three weeks or is it the minister, who hoped this problem would simply die?

[Petitions, June 11th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is signed by 199 constituents and requests that Parliament oppose any amendments to the Canadian Human Rights Act or any other federal legislation which would provide for the inclusion of the phrase sexual orientation.

The petitioners remind me that it has come a little late to this House, but it is in the other place and hopefully this will be considered.

The third petition is signed by 50 Canadians from my riding of Peace River and it has the same request, that the human rights act not be amended.

[Petitions, June 11th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I have before me three petitions.

The first has been signed by 66 people from my riding. It calls on Parliament to refrain from implementing a tax on health and dental benefits and to put on hold any future considerations of such a tax.

[Trade, May 16th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I would point out that these working groups have been working for eight years and have failed to come up with a subsidy definition.

In fact, the red book says nothing about working groups at all. It says that the Liberals were going to renegotiate NAFTA and the free trade agreement before they signed it. They promised to demand an open market for steel and an anti-dumping code.

This Liberal broken promise has really hurt the people in the steel industry in particular. When will the government honour its promise to produce a level playing field for Canada and the United States in this industry?