Werner Schmidt

[Regional Development Agencies, May 7th, 1998]

moved:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should dissolve the regional development agencies, including ACOA, Ford-Q, WED, and FedNor, and redirect funds targeted for the agencies toward tax relief, debt retirement, and the reduction of the size of the federal government.

Mr. Speaker, I encourage all members to support this motion. It is one of those motions that create responsibility in the minds of all members of parliament. Regional development agencies are big business.

According to the auditor general, $4 billion was spent in the eight years leading up to 1995. Compare that to the public accounts revelation that in the year 1996-97, the bill for ACOA, WED and Ford-Q was $1.1 billion in terms of authorization, of which $999 million was spent. One billion dollars in one year is a major acceleration.

Regional development agencies were set up to do one thing and they are doing another. They were set up to fill gaps in the financial markets that were not being filled by the financial institutions in the private sector. They are now in direct competition with the services provided by the private sector financial institutions. I will show exactly how they are doing that.

In April 1996 the report of the Senate banking committee concluded that while the agencies are meant to fill gaps in the capital markets, there is no consensus on the method determining where those gaps exist and there is no way of analysing whether the gaps are being filled.

The regional development agencies are but one part of crown corporations in dealing with finances. Among those other institutions the following are included: the Business Development Bank of Canada, the Farm Credit Corporation, the Canadian Export Development Corporation, Canada Lands, Canada Post, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, and many others totalling up to 50 such agencies that deal in the financial sector. They were all set up to support ventures that do not have access to financing in the private sector. Today those ventures have the same difficulty getting access to the crown corporations and regional development agencies as they have accessing agencies in the private sector.

Let us recap. Regional development agencies spend over a billion dollars a year of taxpayer money. Their purpose is to fill gaps in capital markets yet there is no way of determining where those gaps are and no way of analysing whether the agencies are filling those gaps. The agencies are part of the crown corporate structure, of which there are 50 bodies. Crown corporations were established to increase access to capital but business today has difficulty getting it.

Why has this happened? What has caused agencies to become ineffective? The Liberal wisdom of balanced budgets is to maintain institutions without determining their effectiveness, to insist they become self-sufficient even though to do so the agencies will be forced to compete with the private sector, and they move away from their original mandate to fill gaps in the capital market and financing needs of the people. This wisdom is costly. It promotes inefficiency and fails to contribute to the growth of the economy.

The Reform wisdom would be to eliminate these costly agencies which have outlived their purpose and which compete with the private sector. In doing so, a Reform government would eliminate a significant amount of unnecessary spending and would empower the private sector by getting out of its way. This would allow the private sector to function more effectively without competition from the public sector and it would stimulate growth.

These agencies have become ineffective because of their inability to do the things they were set up to do. Do we need further evidence? No, we do not. But there are additional issues. For instance, a newer selling point for the regional agencies is that they become one stop doors to government programs.

There are two issues here. First, if there are so many government programs and agencies to help small businesses that we need a guide to steer us through them, then there are too many programs.

A business wants access to capital. It does not distinguish whether it is TPC, SBLA, FCC, WED, CANARIE, NRC, MRC, ACOA, FORD-Q, FedNor, BDC or CMHC. That is just the beginning. Each of these is an acronyms for a government program. The labyrinth carries on. Each dispenses billions of dollars for one purpose, the help small and not so small business.

We are concerned here only with three agencies. The second issue here is that if the government is to be involved in western economic diversification, Atlantic Canada opportunities, the regional development of Quebec, and the economic initiatives in northern Ontario, there are other federal crown agencies that do exactly the same thing. Two of these are the Business Development Bank of Canada and the Farm Credit Corporation.

One could easily enter into debate about whether FCC and the BDC, the Farm Credit Corporation and the Business Development Bank, are doing what they were intended to do. That is a subject for another day.

The government is failing in its responsibility to business, to the marketplace and to the taxpayer. The government continues to build a labyrinth of sources for capital and still is no closer to understanding why the gaps exist in the first place.

The irony is that it is no easier with all these government programs for business to gain access. It is becoming increasingly difficult. The government has not improved the marketplace. Instead it competes with the private sector. More important, the government has failed to analyse why we have these gaps in the marketplace in the first place.

The government is taking the easy way out, more spending, more activity but less and less effectiveness. The people in business who need access to capital are not getting it. The marketplace is not improving and the promised long term jobs are not resulting.

The original regional development agencies are a failure by anyone's standard. It is time to eliminate them.

Much work has been done in the past two years by the standing Senate committee on banking, trade and commerce. That committee published a report in April 1996 which recommended “the phasing out of regional development agencies; they should not exist independent of crown financial institutions when institutions such as the Farm Credit Corporation and the Business Development Bank of Canada target the same market as the regional agencies”.

The committee goes on to say: “If there are regional economic development programs funded at the federal level that do not involve direct business related services, then provincial agencies are best able to deliver such programs”. These are sound recommendations given the committee's findings, but the Liberal government ignored them.

Perhaps this is an indication by the Liberal government as to how effective the Senate could be, but that is another debate which we will not get into now.

It is not just that regional agencies do exactly the same as some of these crown financial institutions. Other crown financial institutions can leverage their paid in capital and as such are in a much stronger position to help business because their financial strength is much greater than that of regional development agencies.

Not only do regional development agencies compete directly with the private sector, they duplicate the work done by other crown financial institutions.

In 1995 the auditor general had some concerns, lack of information on which programs have worked and which have not, the need to be cost effective, the lengthy approval times, the need for continued co-operation and the challenge of implementing changes.

In 1997 the auditor general reviewed those same things and asked what has happened. Here are three of the agencies he examined and gave a conclusion on.

In the auditor general's words it was still too early to determine whether FedNor is adequately monitoring its projects. Let us review the history of FedNor.

It was created in 1987 to address the economic disparities and adjustment problems of the region. In 1992, five years later, all the programs were all consolidated into one program the FedNor business incentives program. In 1996 its strategy was changed again, this time to improving access of small business to capital, to information on markets and promotion of community partnerships. Three changes in mandate in nine years. The obvious question is what evaluation was done that resulted in the changes in mandate. Is the focus right now? Will it again be changed before it can be evaluated? Was it wrong the first time? Was it wrong the second time? Is it wrong now? What assurances do we have that it is right now? If it keeps getting changed we will never know.

That is why these changes are such a useful vehicle for patronage, disposal of money. No one can ever pin the government down because before we can find out what it is really doing the government has changed so we never really know what its mandate was. And yet it is costing money, taxpayer money.

The government must be held accountable. How many businesses went bankrupt because of these grants and subsidies to these development agencies? Who will ever know? For that reason if no other they should be scrapped. How can the success of a program be seriously valued in such a short time if the mandate changes constantly? I will go on to the next thing.

FORD-Q is the biggest spender of them all. The only improvement observed by the auditor general was: “Our review of a small sample of files suggests that the documentation supporting project funding recommendations has improved”.

[Canada Labour Code, May 7th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it is wonderful that we can have such a spirited discussion about democracy. It means that democracy works. It has a chance.

I would like to move to another point. It has to do with another proposal being made. It would amend subclause 16 (4.1) in the proposed legislation and reads:

On application of one or more employers of employees in the bargaining unit, the Board may revoke the appointment of the employer representative and appoint a new representative.

That is a very serious amendment. It says that one person may determine that someone should not represent them any more. It takes away any kind of secondary or objective evaluation of whether the individual representing a group is qualified to continue to be that representative.

It should not simply be one person's whim or fancy that allows someone to be taken out of a negotiation situation. All they might say is that they do not understand or they do not agree with him and as a consequence want him out of there.

There has to be some protection against the kind of arbitrary and fanciful thinking which the motion suggests. I would have to speak against it and suggest that there has to be a somewhat fairer system of doing it, a fairer process.

I will move to the third area I want to comment on concerning the business of changing one of the motions that has to do with the business of who may decide what is unfair labour practice.

The suggestion in the bill would read that the CIRB would be both judge and advocate. On the one hand, this board watches over the process and makes decisions about whether that is fair and whether it is going forward in the manner that it ought to proceed. Then if one of the parties is judged to be, in the opinion of the CIRB, unfair or engaging in unfair labour practices it is not totally impartial.

There was a commitment earlier in the process for them to work directly with these people. If now it states that they are being unfair in the kind of labour practices that they are engaging in they are in fact arguing against themselves.

I suggest that this very example took place in Ontario in the Wal-Mart case where the employees said they did not want to be certified. However, because somebody took the interpretation that management had engaged in unfair labour practices, we are now going to say they can certify. It totally denies the realization that a vast majority of these people did not want the union.

Members might say that was in the heat of the moment, emotions prevailed and there were unfair labour practices. However, members should notice what has happened since then. Recently we have the realization that the Windsor store alone voted 151 to 43 in favour of the union's being decertified. Is this not a clear indication that the earlier ruling by the CIRB was wrong?

There are three reasons why we should oppose these motions in Group No. 2. First, to recognize the business of having only one person to allow another person to be taken out of the negotiation procedure is wrong. We must oppose the proposal within the proposed legislation that the board may deny democracy to operator.

If we in this House want to be honest with each other and want to be a clear debating society, then we must agree that we should take whatever steps we can to assure that democracy takes place not only here but in all the agencies and in all the ways in which we negotiate disagreements or where we have differences of opinion. We must preserve that.

We must also preserve the judicial procedure at least in principle that allows fairness and equity to take place so that judge and advocate cannot exist at the same time and make arguments against that.

There is another point I want to raise which has to do with the democracy in this place. Could it be that the government of the day could actually take it into its consideration and agree that maybe there are times, even after it has gone through second reading and the committee process, that it could entertain, accept and agree to amendments in the legislation that make sense and that will guarantee the very fundamental issue on which this country was built, democracy.

If this government does nothing else, perhaps it could see it in its heart and in its mind to change that particular provision in the bill to say the board shall guarantee that democracy operates with those people who want a union or who do not want a union in a particular area. This has nothing to do with being pro or anti-union. It means people have a right to decide how they want to govern themselves and how they want their relationships with their employers to be obtained.

Surely it is in the heart of all of us to allow workers as well as anyone else to exercise and demonstrate their democratic rights.

[Canada Labour Code, May 7th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise after the member who just spoke. That was a most interesting interpretation. I would like to read for his benefit the specific clause being debated and the amendment actually being proposed. The following is being proposed in government legislation:

29.(1) The Board may, for the purpose of satisfying itself as to whether employees in a unit wish to have a particular trade union represent them as their bargaining agent, order that a representation vote be taken among the employees in the unit where it is satisfied that at least thirty-five per cent of the employees in the unit are members of the trade unit applying for certification.

The Reform Party is proposing to leave all that in place with one change, that is that the word “may” be changed to the word “shall”. That is the whole issue.

What in the world was this gentleman who just spoke talking about? What were those people over there clapping about? What were they all laughing about? They do not understand their own bill. It is unbelievable.

We have the NDP railing about things. What the NDP member was actually saying is in the bill. What is in the bill is what the government wants. All we want to do is to make sure that this democratic principle is observed. That is the issue. When will the NDP learn what the English language actually says? When will those hon. members recognize what they mean when legislation is put before the House?

[Hepatitis C, May 6th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, more Liberal arrogance. The Prime Minister is rewarding his backbenchers for toeing the line on voting against hepatitis C victims last week. He is taking more than a dozen Liberal backbenchers with him on a trip to Italy.

I like Italy too. But a holiday is a holiday. He is paying them for denying their integrity. Tens of thousands of dollars are being spent to take Liberal backbenchers to sunny Italy, while hepatitis C victims and their families are suffering.

Ciao babies. Enjoy your Roman holiday. But arrivederci come the next election.

[Dna Identification Act, May 4th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, this group of motions but particularly Motion No. 4 strikes at the heart of the provisions of Bill C-3.

For the people watching, Bill C-3 is an act which provides for the establishment of a national DNA databank to be maintained by the commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and used to assist law enforcement agencies in solving crimes. That is the overriding concern of Bill C-3.

It seems to me that this group of amendments and particularly Motion No. 4 would suggest the elimination of the DNA index which is the exact purpose behind the whole bill. I respectfully suggest that the purpose behind the motion may have been not to abuse or provide inadvertent access to the index. I can certainly respect, admire and support that intent. However, the way it is written suggests that the index itself should be eliminated. It seems to me that contradicts the very purpose and essence of Bill C-3.

The bill goes on to do some other things. It states exactly what the databank will consist of. It consists of a crime scene index containing the DNA profiles derived from bodily substances found in places associated with the commission of certain types of serious offences and a convicted offenders index containing DNA profiles obtained from persons convicted or discharged of these types of offences. This gives us a very clear indication of what exactly needs to be done here.

The purpose and intent of establishing an index is to protect both society in general and in particular a person who might have been found near the scene of the crime, who may not have perpetrated the crime but may have looked like he did the job and really did not. The evidence that comes out of comparing profiles provides a much more accurate tool for the law enforcement officers to do the job they are charged to do.

The bill goes on to state that the enactment amends the Criminal Code to provide for orders authorizing the collection of bodily substances from which DNA profiles can be derived for inclusion in the DNA databank. It also amends the Criminal Code to authorize the collection of bodily substances from offenders who meet clearly defined criteria and also are currently serving sentences. A compulsory collection is included here.

The purpose of the bill, while admirable and while moving in the right direction, does not go far enough. It suggests the right things and moves in the appropriate direction but it is clear that it does not give to the enforcement officer the freedom to use the best judgment available at the time in order to collect the necessary information and data so that a conviction might later result when comparing the various profiles.

Finally the enactment contains specific provisions for regulating the use of these bodily substances collected and the DNA profiles derived from them and the use and communication of and access to information contained in the databank.

It is precisely in this connection that we have Motion No. 4 which pertains to clause 9(2). Subclause (2) is very clear. It amends the Criminal Code in that “access to the following information in the convicted offenders index shall be permanently removed without delay after” and the conditions are spelled out.

The intent here is clearly to limit the access so that if a person has been charged with an offence and the charge does not result in a conviction, while the evidence and the profile may be in the index, which should be and will be in the index, the access to that information is cut off if there is no conviction.

Is this not exactly the kind of thing the charter of rights and freedoms is about? It wants the privacy of the individual to be safeguarded so that it is not abused by other people and so that it does not become the object of abuse and misuse by other people.

It is really significant that this provision be in the act. However the motion does not suggest access to the information. It would destroy the index itself. That is the error as I see it in this particular motion. I wonder if the member who proposed this motion actually thought about the fact that this would remove the index rather than provide the adequate safeguards for abuse or the access to information by persons who might use it for their own purposes or for misguided purposes of one kind or another.

With all due respect to the member who submitted this motion, I suggest that probably it is not the kind of motion that would serve the interests of the intent of the bill, nor would it provide for the purposes intended of a sound and adequately balanced justice system in Canada.

I want to revert now to the purpose of the DNA profile in the first place. We have had cases in Canada where individuals have been accused of committing a crime and where all the evidence points in the direction that the individual did commit the crime, but there was no conclusive evidence. It was largely circumstantial. In fact, the circumstantial evidence was so powerful that the best lawyers' and the best judges' minds were put to work on this case and the individual was convicted and incarcerated.

Then with the persistence of people moving on and on and saying we need absolute evidence that is incontrovertible so that we can say clearly this person did commit this crime, they discovered that the circumstantial evidence was not supported by more concrete evidence. What was the evidence that was used to take away the doubt in this case? It was the DNA profile.

I think it is absolutely essential if we are to have a fair and just justice system that we have a tool, the best possible tool that has been made available to us through technology and science, to identify clearly and unequivocally who the individual was. That is exactly what the DNA index is designed to do.

That is why it is so essential that the enforcement officers be able to collect those kinds of samples that will result in an accurate and indisputable profile of a person and that the profile is absolutely unique and completely distinguishable from any other person.

When that kind of operation is possible, it should not be restricted to be used in an arbitrary or capricious way. The amendments proposed in this bill in general are the good ones. They should be supported. But the bill should go further.

Motion No. 4 in my opinion does not do that. In fact, it restricts the bill even more. I recommend that we oppose this amendment and consider very carefully how we can improve the enforcement of our legal system and also make sure justice prevails, that our streets are safe and that law-abiding citizens are protected and carefully rewarded.

[Dna Identification Act, May 4th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, it gives me a great deal of pleasure to enter the debate on Motions Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 5 in group one.

I would like to focus my remarks on three areas: first, DNA as a technology; second, the privacy issue which is addressed by these amendments; and, third, getting to the point which the Deputy Prime Minister made such a point of in question period today of doing what is right.

Referring to DNA as a new technology, we now have at the disposal of our law enforcement agencies a technology that allows them to pinpoint more accurately the identity of a perpetrator of a particular crime. Not only is it a very useful tool. It is a reliable tool and it is a valid tool. Those are the two absolutely essential criteria that need to be applied to any scientific test.

If two different scientists looking at the same sample come up with the same conclusion then we have some reason to believe the tests are reliable and are in fact are honestly depicting on a continuing basis, no matter who does the test, what the result will be. It is also valid in the sense that it is an accurate depiction of who gave a particular sample and to whom it belongs. This is a very useful and necessary tool to make sure that mistakes are not made.

Why is this tool so important when it comes to crime detection and to identification of perpetrators of crime? The number one point is obviously to protect society. We want nothing more in our society than to be secure, to have happy families and to be safe on our streets. We want to predict with reliability that we will be able to go down to the corner store to pick up our groceries and our lives will be safe, and that our children will be able to go to their school buses or walk to school without the need bodyguards and things of that sort. That is what it is for. It is also there to protect the suspect.

All kinds of cases in this regard come to mind. Most directly is the Milgaard case. He was incarcerated after being accused of having committed a crime until the DNA samples revealed unequivocally that he was not the person who had committed the crime but that someone else had committed it. For many years he suffered incarceration because he was improperly identified. We have here a very useful tool which should be available to law enforcement agencies.

A couple of the motions deal with privacy. Of course we are concerned about privacy. There is nothing more significant than privacy of the individual. In fact we have appointed in the country a privacy commissioner whose job it is to make sure that there is not an unusual, unnecessary or unconstitutional intrusion into the privacy of individuals.

Last weekend we had in this city a discussion on electronic commerce. The Information Technology Association of Canada came together with major business interests. What did they talk about? They talked about privacy. They talked about the security of information. They talked about the security of transferring funds from one institution to another or from one account to another.

What was the news report on Saturday in the Globe and Mail ? It reported that the CIBC had some chip problems. What was the problem? Several individuals had deposited money and it was not credited to their account via the automatic bank machine. The bank assures us and assures those individuals that they have a record and will be credited with those moneys. However it points out that the need for privacy is absolutely imperative and must be reliable and valid. It is essential that this be provided for in the act and it is provided for in the act.

It goes beyond that. We need to be sure that communication is maintained in a secure manner so that it goes only to those people who need to know, who have to know and for whose protection that information exists. We need to recognize that not only is it protected from eyes that should not see it but also protected from use by people who have no right or need to use that information. Privacy needs to be provided for and it is being provided for. The amendments that are being proposed are redundant in that sense and I commend the government for having done that.

I want to move to the third area of doing what is right. We need to do what is right. In this connection I refer to the kind of statement that has been made with regard to hepatitis C victims. The issue here is doing what is right. In the hep C case it is making sure the people who are suffering are properly looked after. That is one issue.

When it comes to the area of crime with which the bill deals we have three issues to consider. One is the careful identification and punishment of those who committed the crime. The second is to identify in order to protect future victims from further perpetration of the same individual against them. The third is the protection of society at large.

In a sense when somebody commits a murder, a robbery or a violent act of any kind indirectly we are all victims because we do not know where the criminal will hit next. It is important to protect the rest of us against that kind of perpetration.

What is the right thing to do? The right thing to do is to use the absolute best technology and tools available for the identification of those who have committed crimes so that future victims can be protected and that the victim who is currently the object of a crime may say the person who did it has been properly identified and punished accordingly.

It goes beyond that as well. It means to do what is morally right. The moral thing to do is to provide the assurance for all of society that the number one concern of the government is to have a justice system that is fair and that has laws that are right. The laws must come out on the side of what is right and must punish that which is wrong. That generates confidence on the part of the individuals that they can rely on the law. More important and beyond that is the enforcement of the law.

We spent a lot of money hiring good, qualified and trained police officers and other law enforcement officers. We want to be sure that these people not only understand the law but recognize the significance of the law and are provided with all tools necessary to carry out the requirements of enforcing the law.

If we deny them the proper tools we cannot expect them to ensure our justice system meets the objectives for which it has been set out. We as the official opposition submit that the DNA test is one of those. The government will argue that is exactly what the bill is about. It provides exactly that but it is just the beginning. The government could have done so much better. It could have done a complete recognition of the DNA act and have given it to the law enforcement officers in such a manner that they could use it unequivocally, unassumably and without restriction.

Yet the bill restricts. It does not help. It starts and goes so far and suddenly the persons trying to enforce the law say they cannot go any further and the very thing needed to bring about a conviction is denied.

That is not the way a good legal system, a good justice system should work. It is not the way a solid, good enforcement agency should operate. It goes beyond this as well. It goes to the point of recognizing that in order to do this job right we need to ensure that evidence is intact, remains intact and is accessible only to those who need to know, and those individuals are the enforcement officers, the judges and the courts.

I submit that these three motions in Group No. 1 should be dealt with as being proposed. We would oppose the first motion. The second one we would support. The third and fifth ones we would oppose.

[Supply, April 23rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend my hon. colleague from Winnipeg—Transcona and I would like to ask him a question.

I wonder if the hon. member would venture to speculate about which way the people of Canada would have more confidence in the government: if the government insisted that it not pay, or if the government said it did make a mistake, there was some negligence and that it had the moral responsibility to expand the package. Would that perhaps engender more confidence in the government than insisting that it was right even when it was wrong?

I think the hon. member knows full well the moral dilemma of doing what is right. Everyone makes a mistake once in a while. I wonder if the member would comment on that particular issue. What does generate confidence? Is it insisting on a political answer or is it insisting on doing what is right?

[Petitions, April 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36 it is my privilege to present a petition.

The petitioners request that parliament impose a moratorium on the ratification of the MAI until full public hearings on the proposed treaty are held across the country so that all Canadians can have an opportunity to express their opinion on same.

[Judges Act, April 1st, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I was actually thrilled by the kinds of comments my colleague made. There is one area I would like him to address.

The member talked about the judges' responsibility to interpret the law, the judges' responsibility to apply the law fairly and with equity and that the punishment somehow be related to the crime, all of these kinds of things. They are very significant and important matters.

I wonder whether my hon. colleague could say not only is that the case but judges, in rendering honest, righteous, fair and equitable decisions, inherently have a leadership role that will tell the community and young people there is a way to prevent further involvement. There is the role of leadership to society. Does our society not look toward the judges who interpret the law and who are upholders of righteousness, that they will in fact provide some leadership to our community? Would he comment on that?

[Financial Institutions, March 30th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, this question is for the minister or parliamentary secretary who is in charge of financial institutions.

Canadians are being denied the right to choose freely. Large financial institutions, like banks, are bullying, intimidating and forcing certain individuals, consumers, to move their RRSPs for example from their independent investment dealers to the bank as a condition to get a loan. This is called tied selling.

When will the Liberal government stop this bullying and intimidating tactic by financial institutions?