John Williams

[Points of Order, November 23rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order with regard to two issues within the supplementary estimates (A), 2005-06, which I believe are not properly before the House.

As Madam Speaker Sauvé said on June 12, 1981 at page 10546 of Hansard , “it matters not whether the amount spent is a large sum or simply one dollar.”

Going back as far as 1971, members of this House have objected to the government's use of the estimates as a vehicle to amend legislation and to seek authority to spend money on programs that have not received legislative authority. Your distinguished predecessors have consistently ruled in support of these arguments by striking votes from the estimates on March 10, 1971; March 22, 1977; December 7, 1977; March 25, 1981; June 12, 1981; June 21, 1981; March 21, 1983; and March 21, 1984. You yourself, Mr. Speaker, protected the rights of the House in the matters of supply on November 22, 2001.

I will first deal with the funding for Service Canada which appears to be a new government department, perhaps. Order in council P.C. 2005-1609 issued on September 8, 2005, appointed Ms. Maryantonett Flumian as the “Deputy Minister of Service Canada” with that style and title.

The Financial Administration Act assigns important powers directly to deputy ministers such as Ms. Flumian. The specific responsibilities include: ensuring an adequate system of internal control and audit, subsection 31(3); establishing procedures and maintaining records, subsection 32(2); providing the required certification to authorize any payment to be made, section 34; maintaining adequate records in relation to public property, section 62; and preparing a division of an appropriation or item included in the estimates--and note that one Mr. Speaker--subsection 31(1). Where are her estimates?

Deputy ministers also hold other directly assigned authorities including personnel management in the public service and the Official Languages Act.

So where is the department and her estimates? We know Ms. Flumian has been appointed as Deputy Minister of Service Canada but is being paid by HRSDC. Are you getting a little confused, Mr. Speaker? I am.

Also, according to Service Canada's website, it employs over 20,000 staff, serves 32 million Canadians per year, has 320 offices across the country, handles 14 million website visits per year, and answers over 50 million calls per year. It definitely sounds like a ministry to me, so where is the legislation authorizing this department and where are its own estimates as required by the Financial Administration Act to cover these costs?

I draw your attention to your ruling, Mr. Speaker, on June 12, 2003 at page 7221 of the debates. You said:

--the Chair is troubled by the current case which is an example of a persistent problem that I have had occasion to comment on before, that is, the adequacy of information provided to Parliament regarding estimates. Committees have always been dependent on being provided with complete and accurate information concerning proposed public spending. In light of the size and complexity of modern government, this is all the more true....If that documentation is inadequate, then members seeking clarification have no recourse except, as the hon. member for St. Albert did, to raise a point of order in the House.

Here I am again, Mr. Speaker.

I would also draw your attention to an article by Kathryn May from the September 27, 2005 edition of the Ottawa Citizen where she noted:

--senior officials say Service Canada is intended to be different from other departments. They argue it makes sense to experiment before setting the agency's parameters in stone with legislation. It is expected that legislation will eventually be drafted once ministers and bureaucrats figure out how best to run the agency.

Is this a department that is halfway through its gestation period and already spending money without authorization? Surely this is a new concept for the House. She also writes:

Service Canada is being put together using orders-in-council, memorandums of understanding and other contractual arrangements. Over the coming months, it will have agreements with about 12 departments--

It still sounds like an independent department, Mr. Speaker, does it not?

I find this to be a grave situation. We have unnamed senior government officials stating on the record that the government is using taxpayers' money to run an unofficial department that has no parameters in legislation, but will be formally created “once ministers and bureaucrats figure out how to best run the agency”. This is an affront to Parliament.

I next seek the Chair's indulgence to raise the issue of one-dollar votes to transfer funds from the Department of National Defence to Parc Downsview Park, Inc. There are a number of votes which deal with this in the supplementary estimates (A) 2005-06. Vote 4a of National Defence, in the amount of $1, forgives a debt owed by Parc Downsview Park Inc. amounting to $15,059,000. Vote L11a of the Office of Infrastructure seeks to complete a transfer of land to Parc Downsview Park Inc. in the amount of $2.49 million. Vote L13a of the Office of Infrastructure is another $1 vote, seeking to establish a borrowing authority of $100 million for Parc Downsview Park Inc.

Marleau and Montpetit state at page 733:

The inclusion of one dollar items in the Estimates also gave rise to the issue of using Estimates to “legislate”....

Marleau and Montpetit continue on page 735, stating:

Speaker Jerome stated in a ruling: “...it is my view that the government receives from Parliament the authority to act through the passage of legislation and receives the money to finance such authorized action through the passage by Parliament of an appropriation act. A supply item in my opinion ought not, therefore, to be used to obtain authority which is the proper subject of legislation”.

The government is required to legislate in another way and Parliament grants funds through the estimates process.

Madame Speaker Sauvé also ruled on March 25, 1981, at pages 8600-8601 of the Debates that eight one-dollar items in that case were out of order.

Other references that may be of assistance include the fifth report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts of the 35th Parliament, First Session, which discusses the issue of legislative authority and the estimates.

A succinct case study of the Parc Downsview Park Inc. is contained in the report of the Auditor General tabled in the House yesterday. Chapter 8, at pages 22 and 23, states:

[The government]...informed us that the ministers concerned intend to seek Parliament's approval for the transfer through the supplementary estimates process in the fall of 2005. The intent is to transfer the lands at their current book value, which is the normal practice for transactions between related government entities. The book value of the lands to be transferred is $2.49 million. The request for approval of this appropriation will also indicate that the fair value of the lands being transferred is estimated to be $152 million according to a recent appraisal.

This type of transfer should be accomplished in a manner outside the estimates process, but instead they have sought to subvert the estimates process for this transaction.

It is clear that the government is seeking to transfer land into the crown corporation, Parc Downsview Park Inc., in a manner not consistent with our parliamentary rules and traditions. Estimates are for Parliament granting supply to the government. Transfers of land from one department to another should not form part of the estimates.

I am therefore asking you, Mr. Speaker, to rule these votes out of order because they seek to accomplish a goal which is not consistent with the estimates process.

Finally, it is rumoured that Parliament may be dissolved for an election soon. During election periods, the government may pass special warrants to appropriate the necessary funds until Parliament returns.

In your response to this point of order, Mr. Speaker, if you find that it is legitimate, I would ask that you indicate in your ruling that it applies to special warrants as well as any estimates before this House, and, if you do not have the time to rule prior to Parliament's dissolution, that you find a way to communicate to the government that special warrants should not circumvent the rules of the House.

[Employment Insurance, November 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General confirmed today that Canadian workers have been forced to pay $40 billion more in EI premiums than they have collected in benefits.

We all know that the Liberal government, which has no ethics, never found a dollar it could not spend and now it has changed the rules to say that it will not give the money back to the workers.

My question is for the Minister of Finance. On the eve of an election, why would taxpayers be gullible enough to vote for the Liberal government when it is stealing their money?

[Committees of the House, November 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 22nd report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts concerning Chapter 3, Passport Office — Passport Services, of the April 2005 report of the Auditor General of Canada.

In accordance with Standing Order 109, your committee requests a government response within 120 days.

[Criminal Code, November 21st, 2005]

Madam Speaker, that is not a special interest group. It is the interest group that we are trying to protect by ensuring that it does not end up in court as its members continue their legitimate business.

The issue I was trying to point out in my speech was that the Liberals pander to the special interest groups that would have us eat tofu and vegetarian food for the rest of our lives. I do not think Canadians are into that, but the Liberals want to be able to go off and fight the election saying that they stood up and protected everything that those groups believe in, while at the same time telling the farmers and the fishermen not to worry, that they will look after them. They will be telling the softwood lumber producers not to worry, that they will look after them--perhaps--and so on and so forth. They want to be all things to all people

Let us be clear. The food industry in Canada contains a very substantial portion of animal foods: livestock, chicken, fish, and so on. People who go to a slaughterhouse will find that the animals are all killed brutally although instantaneously. This bill gives them no protection whatsoever. I cannot understand why the government cannot segregate the two.

[Criminal Code, November 21st, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I always wonder why, when we seem to be thinking about an election, this bill comes before us for debate. It dies on the order paper and then in the next Parliament it comes back but is not a priority of the government anymore. Then, when an election is in the offing, suddenly it is an important thing, we debate it and it dies again.

I think this is about the third or fourth Parliament in which we have been debating this particular bill. Here we are, perhaps in an end game, debating it once more. Everybody is saying we should do this. Why do we not just do this and get it over with? Because everybody agrees that being cruel and inhumane to animals cannot be tolerated in this society, so let us do it.

Let us do it. But then, when we take a look at what the government proposes, we say, “Wait a minute, this is not what we had in mind”. Of course, the government is pandering to the special interest groups that want anything and everything and would live in a vegetarian society. The government wants all their votes so it writes the bill in such a way that anybody killing any animal would seem to be committing an offence. Then government goes off to fight the election saying it understands what those groups are saying and is supporting them all the way, but the bill did not quite get passed.

I predict that we will be debating this in the next Parliament. Hopefully we will be over there and the Liberals will be over here, but if, in the most unfortunate result ever, they are over there again, we will go through this again. They will bring it back. It will not be a priority for years and years and then who knows?

First, I would like to read for members a quote to substantiate my argument that the government wants to pander to these groups that believe that nothing should be killed. I will quote the director of the Animal Alliance of Canada, one of Canada's major animal rights organizations, who stated:

The onus is on humane societies and other groups on the front lines to push this legislation to the limit, to test the parameters of this law and have the courage and the conviction to lay charges. That’s what this is all about. Make no mistake about it.

My hon. friend was just talking a few minutes ago about respecting the courts and letting the courts make the judgment, but how can we expect the courts to do what we want when we send these ambiguous messages to them? Then they try to figure it out, they do something we do not like, and we say, “But shucks, this is not the way the democracy is supposed to work”.

The bill hinges around one clause, which I would like to quote in part:

Every one commits an offence who, wilfully...

(b) kills an animal...brutally or viciously, regardless of whether the animal dies immediately;....

I contend that it is very hard to kill an animal so that it dies immediately without being kind of brutal or vicious about the whole affair. We do not tickle them to death. We shoot them, electrocute them and other things. We want them to die instantly. That is a pretty brutal process. Pardon me, and I am sorry for the people listening who have weak stomachs, but we cut chickens' throats and they bleed to death. That is deemed to be humane, but according to this bill that could be construed to be vicious and brutal and therefore we would be committing an offence.

This is what I mean about the ambiguity of this bill, which allows everybody to say “yes, I think it is protected”, but the poor farmers and everybody else would be at the mercy of people who take a different point of view. That is a very serious issue. Farmers are concerned.

The livestock slaughterhouses ought to be concerned because thousands of times a day they are “brutally“ and “wilfully” killing animals. We have always said that is humane, but according to this act it would be open to interpretation and we would end up sending it off to the courts to see what they say. Why do we not do the job right here and do it properly right here? That is what we are supposed to do.

We write the legislation. We are supposed to give clear direction to the courts, such as the following: “This is what we consider to be inhumane. This is what we consider to be vicious and brutal. Therefore, apply the law”. That is we are supposed to do rather than have these kinds of catch-all phrases so that everybody can feel good, with the poor farmer left at their mercy. The farmer is just feeding Canadians.

We also talked about hunters. Hunting is a sport not only in western Canada; thousands of people go out into the wilderness and hunt deer, moose and elk and so on. What happens if a hunter tries to shoot one dead instantly and does not quite make it? The animal goes off, bleeding profusely, is not found for an hour or so and dies in the meantime. Is that hunter guilty of an offence? It would appear so, according to this bill. There is no exemption for that.

What about those people who are out there with a fishing rod, catch a fish with a hook around the mouth and drag it in using a gaff? We have the same thing. There is no protection, no protection at all.

But there is protection for our first nations. There always seems to be a protection for them, unfortunately, because they are allowed to do whatever they want to do if it is given to them according to the treaties and so on that they have under what is now part of our Constitution. If that treaty allows them to be inhumane, then this act allows them to continue to be inhumane. They get the special exemption. We have to ask ourselves why. Why them and not us?

Today's Globe and Mail tells us that thousands of chickens in British Columbia were slaughtered because one had avian flu. We say that was the right thing to do. The rest of those chickens were not sick, but they were all viciously slaughtered in the name of protecting our health. According to this bill, that could be construed as being a vicious and wilful slaughter of animals.

We have all watched the debate about fox hunting in the United Kingdom, where the poor fox is chased through the countryside by people on horses until it is run into the ground and viciously pulled apart by the dogs. That is inhumane. That should not be allowed. I am glad that the United Kingdom has finally got its act together. I am glad we do not do that here in Canada. That should never be allowed.

This bill must be amended to clearly state what is legitimate, what is lawful, what is a part of our society, and what this society abhors. There is no distinction in this bill. Therefore, the bill needs to be amended. I do not see why the bill should go forward.

Of course, the Liberals will go out during the election and say, “We tried once more. Guess what? Other people were holding it up”. I do not see people holding it up. We are only asking for reason for farmers, fishermen and sporting people, who are lawfully doing what many Canadians do every day. We go to the store and we buy the meat. We buy the chicken and we buy the fish and that is part of the way we live. We say it is done humanely, but I say that killing animals is a brutal process. Anyone who has ever been to a slaughterhouse will know that it is not a pretty sight, but that is the way our society lives.

Let us respect these people who make their living that way, the people who feed society, who feed us, who feed Canadians and who feed the rest of the world.

I would hope that this government is serious about protecting animals. I hope the government is serious about outlawing inhumane behaviour, rather than every time just before an election deciding to have a little debate to say it is trying to do something and then blaming Parliament because the government really does not want to do anything. Unfortunately, that is becoming patently clear.

[Petitions, November 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to present petition on behalf of my constituents in and around Edmonton calling upon Parliament to take the necessary steps to change paragraph 118.2(2)(n) of the Income Tax Act to allow receipts for vitamins and supplements to be used as medical expense in personal income tax returns and be GST exempt.

[Committees of the House, November 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I move that the 10th report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, presented to the House on Tuesday, May 10, 2005, be concurred in.

[Petitions, November 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, this petition from my constituents in and around Edmonton calls upon Parliament to pass legislation to recognize the institution of marriage in federal law as being the lifelong union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.

[Petitions, November 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions to present today.

The first petition calls upon Parliament to provide Canadians with greater access to non-drug preventive and medicinal options, as well as information about these options, and to sanction the personal choice of Canadians by clarifying the currently vague definitions of “food” and “drugs” in the outdated legislation.

[Privilege, November 14th, 2005]

For the opposition too, Madam Speaker.