Werner Schmidt

[Canada Post Corporation Act, February 23rd, 2000]

Madam Speaker, it is a privilege to participate in the debate on Bill C-229 moved by the hon. member for Kitchener Centre. The intent of the bill is noteworthy. She should be commended for presenting the legislation to the House.

However, I believe there is a better venue for moving the bill along a bit faster than would be the case if it went through the route of a private member's bill. Therefore, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar:

That the motion be amended by deleting all of the words after the word “That” and substituting the following therefor:

Bill C-229, an act to amend the Canada Post Corporation Act (letter that cannot be transmitted by post), be not now read a second time but that the order be discharged, the bill withdrawn and the subject matter thereof referred to the Standing Committee on Industry, and the committee address the issue no later than May 1, 2000.

[Division No. 692, February 22nd, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, to speak to Bill C-2 is both an honour and a privilege. At the same time there is a certain sadness associated with it because one would have thought that a democratically motivated government would bring to bear legislation that reflects a commitment to democratic principles.

I wish to address three points in my presentation this afternoon. The first has to do with patronage appointments to prime positions in the electoral system. The second is the requirements in the proposed act for registering a party to have full political status. The third is voter identification.

In my presentation I wish to recognize in a special way the contribution of the Reform Party critic on the committee in the preparation of this attack on the bill. He did a good job analysing the provisions of the act and also gave us a clear indication of what ought to be happening.

The government is able to get away with as much as it does partly because there is a certain element of disinterest or apathy among the people of Canada who are not taking the time to recognize what is really at stake. Patronage appointment of key election officials is part of the problem. I would like to get into this in considerable detail.

At the present time returning officers are political appointees of the governor in council. The governor in council is run by the Prime Minister. This is outrageous in what is supposed to be a non-partisan electoral organization. The voters of Canada should not have to put up with the Prime Minister appointing Liberal Party hacks to prime positions.

The Chief Electoral Officer said during the committee hearings that it is critical, and he underlined the word critical, that he or she be given the power to hire returning officers based on merit. He also said that he would ideally like to adopt the provisions contained in a private member's bill put forward by the Reform Party critic which would eliminate patronage at Elections Canada at all levels, but that was ignored.

The province of Quebec to its credit already has a system of merit selection for its returning officers. There is no reason that Canada should persist with a system of patronage appointments.

Under questioning during question period the minister said that there was nothing wrong with the present system of patronage because appointments in six provinces use the same system and therefore it is right. Just because six provinces make the same mistake does not make the system right. Canadians would rather have a 100% non-partisan electoral system in the provinces and in Canada than a patronage system. When Elections Canada helps third world emerging nations to set up their electoral systems it always recommends against a patronage ridden system like we find in Canada.

I found it most interesting that in committee under questioning the Chief Electoral Officer made it clear that he would not recommend this elections act to a third world country or an emerging democracy. His exact words were:

Obviously when I go out on the international scene I do not recommend that that the Canadian system be emulated where it comes to the appointment of returning officers. I clearly indicate, as I do in Canada, that the appointment of returning officers under the present system is an anachronism.

That came out of the mouth of the Chief Electoral Officer. If that is not an indictment of our system, what could be?

Elections Canada has repeatedly asked the government to release it from the system of patronage, but that has not happened. The Chief Electoral Officer also indicated that it was extremely difficult for him to get rid of incompetent returning officers because he had to convince the Prime Minister to dismiss the employee. The Prime Minister does not want to dump one of his party faithful so things have to be almost in a state of emergency before action is taken.

There are 301 constituencies and the Prime Minister is purported to know the qualifications and competencies of each one of those people. It is an insult to suggest to the people of Canada that they cannot choose or that the Chief Electoral Officer cannot choose people based on merit who could do the job of returning officer in the particular constituencies where they are needed.

The system of patronage allows the parties to appoint people into positions. Often the understanding is that these people donate their earnings to the party that appointed them. That is filled with all kinds of difficulties that deny the democratic process to operate.

Formal competitions for returning officer positions should definitely be open to all Canadians, not just to a chosen few. The assistant returning officers and poll clerks should also be selected on the basis of ability, experience and impartiality. Those positions should be publicly advertised. The current system of political appointments is contrary to the notion of a non-partisan electoral system.

Opposition MPs on the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs supported the Reform position, but the Liberals opposed it, proving that the government's position is politically motivated and not democratically motivated.

We have a democracy based on a philosophy of fairness, a philosophy that says the people shall speak and this shall be government of the people by the people for the people. It is not by the Liberals for the Liberals and in their best interest. It is time we had a change in the electoral act to take care of that.

My second point has to do with the requirements for registered party status. In March an Ontario court struck down the sections of the Canada Elections Act which require a party to run 50 candidates in an election to remain on the register and to have its candidates listed with party affiliation on the ballot. The court indicated that two candidates should be sufficient to be recognized as a party.

In a fine compromise, the Reform Party critic suggested that we make it 12. The number 12 is consistent with the House rules for party status and therefore has some logic in its application. The number 50 is arbitrary and has no basis in logic. If the government had bothered to consult with the affected parties an acceptable compromise could have been reached, but that was not the case.

The people of Canada were not consulted with regard to the provisions of the act. They were not asked if this was what they wanted. The government just decided what it was going to do, whether or not it made sense and was consistent with democratic philosophy and democratic principles. Those things were ignored. It is simply there to give advantage to the ruling party in Canada.

The minister has said that changing the 50 candidate rule while the appeal was in process would probably be questionable both as an idea and perhaps even ethically. He was referring to the court decision and saying that while it was in process we should not deal with this matter.

The minister is saying it would be wrong to go along with the court ruling. Yet, when the court decided that possession of child pornography should be legal in B.C. the government said the opposite. The government said it would be wrong not to go along with the ruling until the appeal process was complete. This is gross inconsistency. What kind of government do we have?

At one point we have to move ahead because the court has ruled in a particular way and we have to go along with it. The next time we say we had better not do that while the court is still dealing with the matter. What is going on here? Is it any wonder people are saying that we do not have a justice system in Canada, that we have a legal system. These are very serious problems. The minister also said in committee:

Obviously, given that I'm the minister who suggested to have such an appeal, I'm of the opinion that it works just swell the way it is.

If he thinks it is working well, no wonder he does not want any changes. He will not propose any changes.

I have only touched on two points and already the Chair has indicated that my time has run out. These are only two points in a major electoral act which will affect the way elections are run, the way parties are registered and the way voters will be identified as being eligible to vote.

Every Canadian should be reading this act and asking themselves if they are getting a legal position, a piece of legislation that guarantees democracy, or if they are getting legislation that continues to promote a dictatorship between elections.

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, February 21st, 2000]

Madam Speaker, I commend the hon. member who just spoke. He is one of those members on the opposite side of the House who actually makes sense every once in a while. I think that is very complimentary.

On the other hand, the hon. member seems to be very happy with the progress that has been made. He then goes on to say “I'm going to support this bill simply because there is a little bit of progress here”. The government has made a little bit of progress, but with that progress it may be creating all kinds of other problems that it has not anticipated.

The member does a compromise but has not studied the full problem, so now what is he creating? Does he know what he has? It seems to me that the hon. member should very carefully re-examine his position because it made such eminently good sense and then all of a sudden he said “I'm going to support this because we got something”. It is not enough.

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, February 21st, 2000]

Madam Speaker, I wish to thank the hon. member for his very articulate analysis of the problem. I really appreciate it. I think that when it comes to supreme court judges, he would want them to be elected. One of the problems, however, is that at the present time supreme court judges are not elected. They are not accountable to anyone except the Prime Minister. He appoints them. That is a flaw in itself.

I will come back to the essence of the member's question, which comes to grips with the very basic issue of the family and marriage in Canada. I think we have to recognize that in law and enshrine it in legislation.

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, February 21st, 2000]

Madam Speaker, I am quite saddened by the hon. member's comments. It seems to me that he has completely missed the very point I was trying to make.

This House is supreme, not the courts. A judge will interpret whatever he wants. He can say whatever he wishes in terms of definition. However, the judge needs to know what the House believes. How does the House define marriage? That is what it is about. That is why it should be in law. It should not be left to the courts to determine what is or what is not marriage. The House of Commons determines that. The hon. member has it backward. I am saddened that he would come up with that kind of question.

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, February 21st, 2000]

Madam Speaker, thank you for allowing me to enter the debate on Bill C-23. It is a very significant bill, notwithstanding some of the comments that the parliamentary secretary made that somehow he felt this was not as important as certain other bills that the hon. member from the Conservative Party raised earlier.

I want to raise two essential issues this afternoon. First it is my intention to show that the bill is fundamentally and fatally flawed. It was put together in a trivial manner. It trivializes many of the very important things we believe in.

Second, I wish to show that the bill demonstrates that the Minister of Justice is actually acting contrary to the wishes of the House as expressed on June 8, 1999 when the House accepted in an overwhelming majority vote that the definition of marriage ought to be the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.

I wish to look at the fundamental flaw that underlies this bill. Not only has it been put together on very short notice and not only does it have tremendously far ranging implications, I am not sure the government has analysed what all those implications are. I suspect it has not. I suspect as well that all of the speeches we will make will probably not analyse all of them either because this cuts right into some of our deepest held beliefs.

Lest we think it is only the opinion of the opposition that this is the case, let me read into the record an editorial which appeared on February 15 on the editorial page of the National Post . It is very significant and I wish to read it in detail.

Proponents of gay rights often argue their cause by analogy with anti-racism. Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, they say, makes as little sense as discrimination on the basis of skin colour. But this comparison does not hold water. While there is no justification for denying privileges to a citizen on the basis of race, the issue of sexual orientation is less clear-cut.

Society has a manifest interest in promoting heterosexual marriage, through which it perpetuates itself. Unlike heterosexuals, however, homosexual couples cannot conceive children through conjugal union. Nor can they provide children, however conceived, with adult role models of both sexes. Where all-male marriages are concerned, moreover, gay households would be far more likely than straight households to be destabilized by promiscuity.

Thus, the best way to recognize the intertwined economic interests of cohabitating homosexuals is not to expand the definition of marriage, but to treat gay unions the same way we treat common law partnerships. This is the idea behind the modernization of benefits and obligations act introduced by justice minister Anne McLellan on Friday. The legislation, if enacted, would ensure that same sex couples will have—where federal law is concerned—the same legal rights and obligations as opposite sex common law couples.

My hon. colleague opposite has created a beautiful mathematical, logistical formula.

But if gay couples are to enjoy the same benefits as common law heterosexual couples, what is the justification for denying these benefits to non-intimates, namely people in relationships who pool economic resources but do not involve sexual intercourse?—But this does not mean sexual intimacy should be taken, by itself, as a proxy for economic interdependence. Our society has a special interest in preserving heterosexual marriage as an institution. If we decide to confer economic and legal rights to couples whose relationships lie outside that special interest, then it makes just as much sense to accord rights to cohabitating family members and friends—spinster sisters or old army buddies, for instance—as to homosexual lovers.

In this respect the modernization of benefits and obligations act is poorly conceived. It expands the definition of common law couples only insofar as gay couples are concerned. Non-intimates are excluded. There are, of course, good policy reasons for not expanding the common law definition at all. But, once the justice department expands it to include gay couples, there is no reason why it should not include all cohabitating people.

And while the act does not go far enough in this area, it goes too far in another, elevating common law relationships to the same status as married couples with regard to all but a small handful of federal laws. In this respect, the government is actually going further than the Supreme Court of Canada has required. In the 1999 case of M. v H., the court struck down a provision in the Ontario Family Law Act defining “spouse” as (1) a married person; or (2) a partner in a heterosexual couple that has lived together for more than three years. The court ruled that it was unconstitutional to exclude same sex couples from the second category; but it left the issue of marriage untouched.

In the backgrounder that accompanies her new legislation, the hon. Minister of Justice is eager to reassure Canadians that “the definition of marriage has not changed”.

And on Friday she announced that “the definition of marriage relates to an institution that is of fundamental and longstanding religious and historical significance”.

But if this is true, then why has she introduced legislation that trivializes marriage by reducing it to a status more or less equal to that of cohabitation plus sex? Her new legislation, if passed in its present form, may soon become known as the End of Marriage Act.

Those are very serious statements made by one of the editorial writers of the National Post .

I do not think any of us in the House should ignore the gravity of the issue that is before us in this bill. Not only is it being foisted upon us quickly, without adequate study and debate, it is also ill-conceived in the sense that not nearly all of the implications that arise from this piece of legislation have been analyzed and the conclusions drawn.

What we have before us is an attempt by the government to foist a bill upon us under the auspices of what is deemed to have been a directive from the Supreme Court of Ontario, and it has gone beyond what that particular court decided. Why would this House go beyond what that court said it should do?

Why would the House even dare to suggest that the supreme court has a say in what should happen in this House? It could give all kinds of advice, it could give all kinds of indication as to what could happen here. It is perfectly legitimate for the court to do that. However, nothing could be further from the truth than for the House to take it as a directive. “We must act. This is the legislation we have to enact”. That is an insult, not only to this House, but to every Canadian.

All Canadians who are taxpayers and who elected people to this government should be saying that they are not representing them honestly and fairly and this is not what they want. This House is supreme, not the supreme court.

The hon. minister, with all due respect, has contravened the wishes of the House. She had a golden opportunity to introduce into this legislation a definition of marriage, to enshrine and affirm that we, this House, define marriage as one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. Once again she missed a golden opportunity to lay the foundation upon which our society rests.

The family is the basic unit, the most efficient unit to transfer values and beliefs from one generation to another. She missed a golden opportunity, but she could still reconsider, and I hope she does. I hope that she will withdraw this legislation, or introduce an amendment which recognizes the family and the definition of marriage, to enshrine it so there will not be a contradiction and the denial of what has been clearly expressed by the House as being the desired definition of marriage.

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, February 21st, 2000]

Madam Speaker, I challenge the parliamentary secretary. He makes a big point about saying how complex is this interdependency business and I could not agree more. Why the rush to get this bill through? Sixty-eight pieces of legislation are affected by this one bill. Is it not rational to expect very deep study?

Now we have time allocation on top of it all. A certain illogic, a certain irrationality seems to be prevailing. Could the hon. member persuade his colleagues to do the necessary study so that when it comes forward we can actually look at it seriously and say it covers the waterfront instead of having some kind of a patchwork quilt operation?

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, February 21st, 2000]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member made a big point about the June 1999 definition of marriage that was accepted by the House as being one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. He also indicated that the bill that is currently before the House, Bill C-23, is a bill that is fair, creates equity and all those kinds of things.

Does the hon. member believe that fairness and equity have to do with creating privileges and benefits on the basis of conjugal relationships other than marriage but that where there are other economic dependency relationships those would be excluded from the bill? Could the hon. member define for us what equality actually means?

[Human Resources Development, February 21st, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the 1997 audit pointed out that there was political interference in the granting of transitional jobs funds. Bureaucrats said they had no choice but to approve the projects from the Prime Minister's riding.

How could the Minister of Human Resources Development expect to maintain the confidence of Canadian taxpayers when dollars are skewed and numbers are skewed as to the job creation figures? Is it simply to support, fill and augment the Prime Minister's political patronage trough?

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, February 21st, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I appeal to the professional knowledge and legal background of the hon. member opposite who just spoke. I am sure it is extensive because I have watched him in other arenas. The hon. gentleman deserves to be commended for some of the things he has done. I also commend him for his independence from time to time. He does say things a little differently than some of his colleagues.

I appeal to the member's interpretation of the 1999 supreme court decision in Ontario in the M and H case. The court struck down a provision in the Ontario family law act defining spouses as married persons or partners in a heterosexual relationship who have lived together for more than three years. The court ruled that it was unconstitutional to exclude same sex couples from the second category but it left the issue of marriage untouched.

I would like to ask the hon. member three questions. First, does he agree that the supreme court left the issue of marriage untouched? Second, would he agree that the bill on a legal basis changes the status of marriage vis-à-vis where it stands at the present time? Should Bill C-23 be cognizant of and take into account what was passed in June 1999 when the definition of marriage was endorsed whole heartedly by the House as being a union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others? Could the member address those questions?