Mr. Speaker, I listened to the statement by the secretary of state with interest. Now I rise on behalf of the Canadian Alliance as the official opposition chief critic for foreign affairs to deliver our final answer to the government's proposed Bill C-19 that will fulfil Canada's obligations in the establishment of the international criminal court. In my 40 minute speech in early April I highlighted our position. This bill and the code will deal with cases of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Canadians support this effort. We want the perpetrators of these heinous crimes to be brought to justice. We support the codification of the crimes that this legislation formally creates. We understand that no nation stands alone in the global arena. We must work with other countries in assisting and ensuring that criminals, those monsters who have blood on their hands, are held responsible and accountable for their crimes and that justice is served. This is a very important justice issue. Criminals must be brought to account.
On behalf of the official opposition I extend an hearty thanks and acknowledgement for the hard work done by everyone, including members of the foreign affairs committee and particularly the witnesses appearing before it. I acknowledge the work of the clerk of the committee, the legislative counsel assisting us with the amendments to the bill, and the government's lawyers who are to be congratulated for working very diligently under short time constraints and succeeding in terms of helping the government with the bill.
I also extend my thanks to my legislative assistant, Dan Wallace; the staff of the Canadian Alliance; and the member of parliament for Saanich—Gulf Islands who during my absence on a trip to China helped the committee to proceed with the bill's amendments.
The Canadian Alliance and many of the witnesses appearing before the committee hearings on Bill C-19 went to great lengths to hold the flashlight for the Liberals in order to help them do a good job. It is unfortunate that the government's treatment of the bill cannot be helped. The Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs have proceeded with this legislation in a perfunctory manner. By that I mean there are many outstanding issues in the international community concerning the international criminal code. The Liberals know this but still they have gone ahead with this legislation.
The bill was substantially amended by the foreign affairs committee. Even so, many unanswered questions remain concerning the effects of Canada fulfilling our obligations under the ICC.
The international community is currently negotiating many of these concerns as we speak. In their haste the Liberals have placed the cart before the horse by having parliament pass legislation before definitions, procedures and other details have been decided. All Canadians want the interests of the victims of these crimes to be addressed and justice to be done with respect to heinous crimes that too often go unpunished. This is a step in the right direction, the creating of an international judicial system which declares that no one including the heads of state is above the law.
An amendment of the Canadian Alliance was put forward at committee to make sure that the Liberals would include prosecuting heads of state. That was not clear in the original bill, Bill C-19, that was introduced before the committee hearings.
The ICC rules of procedure and evidence, including the definition of terms such as aggression, conditions of imprisonment, judicial protocol and many others need to be clearly defined. In addition we are concerned about the proliferation of the United Nations bureaucracy when temporary ad hoc human rights tribunals such as the international tribunals for Bosnia and Rwanda will suffice to deal with these crimes on a case by case basis.
The advantage of an ad hoc tribunal is that it can be dismantled when its work is done and no permanent bureaucracy is created. Until the international community reaches agreement on these kinds of ICC related details we believe this is a superior option.
The Canadian Alliance supports the principles and the idea behind the Rome statute providing the means for prosecution of war crimes. The Rome statute is a document that initiates the ICC. Canada's ratification of the Rome statute is the genesis of Bill C-19. Our ratification of the Rome statute is not due until December 2000.
There are certain questions which still remain unanswered. Why has the government insisted on passing the bill this week when the House is recessing? Why not wait until the important meetings concerning the ICC have been held by the international community when we will have more information available to decide on? Why not wait until the definitions and rules of the ICC have been decided by the international community? When we know the rules of the game it will be easier to play the game, but when the rules of the game have not been decided how can we think of going into the field and playing?
Yesterday the United Nations began three weeks of meetings concerning the ICC, but today the House will have finished debate on this matter. The matter will be closed after today. This is a travesty of democracy. Bill C-19 requires Canadians to support something that is still under negotiation by the international community. It is premature.
The Liberal government is extremely negligent in failing to seek approval for Canada's position from parliament. Instead parliament is being treated as a rubber stamp for negotiations carried out with input from unelected lobby groups but with no input from elected representatives of Canadians. Canadians are forced to watch from the sidelines as the Liberals sign and implement yet another international agreement. We have seen this pattern too often. It was quite evident when we went to the Kyoto, Rio, Cairo and Beijing conventions.
The Liberals are used to going to conventions without doing their homework and in the back seat of the bus writing the policy, the terms and the conditions of their position. Then they present us with a fait accompli. This is a disgrace to Canada's democratic institutions and the spirit of openness and accountability which Canadians deserve.
The legislation remains unfinished business. Whether or not the government passes it, it will remain unfinished business. I wonder sometimes if the Prime Minister is forcing his own political agenda on Canadians and our international allies. Is he causing the premature passage of this bill so that he is free to call an election in the fall without worrying whether Canada has ratified the creation of the ICC by December 1? That would be irresponsible and negligent. It is a very important bill, a very important treaty and we need to scrutinize it carefully.
Witness after witness who appeared before the foreign affairs committee on this bill warned the Liberals that they should not be passing such an important bill with such serious ramifications for the free world unless it was foolproof and ironclad. This bill is full of holes and it is largely undefined. Everyone knows that this is not a secret.
The committee heard witness after witness testify to a litany of problems with the bill, yet the Prime Minister is forcing the country to take the risks of passing legislation that may see our own Canadian forces personnel prosecuted and punished because the government passed legislation before it knew what the law was about.
However, I do not believe that. I feel that we will be here next September until probably December, and that is when this work should have been done. This bill needed to wait until at least September in order for elected representatives in the House to take into consideration the most recent possible developments in the international negotiations concerning the ICC.
If necessary, the new Canadian Alliance government would have passed this bill before the December deadline. In fact, I would recommend that an alliance government would repeal Bill C-19 so that the work that needs to be done actually gets done.
The ramifications of the bill are not going to disappear for some time. There is work to be done once the decisions concerning procedures, evidence and the definitions are finalized by the international community. That is when this bill should come before the House.
The Canadian Alliance delivered 20 amendments to the bill at committee stage. I would like to highlight a few of those amendments so that members of the House, as well as viewers, can see it from our perspective.
We proposed an amendment calling for the Rome statute to be appended to the bill. That is the practice parliament followed with the Geneva Convention on the Laws of War and Protocols I and II to the conventions. That is also the practice parliament followed with the North American Free Trade Agreement. Why does it not want to do that in this case?
We also proposed to amend the interpretation clause of the bill by adding a clause declaring “notwithstanding anything this act, Canada's national sovereignty is to be protected”.
In another amendment, we proposed adding two lines ensuring “international law is not to be permitted to supersede Canadian law”.
These amendments were needed because it was not even clear in the bill that Canada's sovereignty would be protected and that Canadian law would remain supreme.
The Canadian Alliance also received numerous representations from Canadians who maintained that it violated the rule of law to create retroactivity. This would have the effect of convicting an individual in an uncontested manner. We proposed an amendment that said “nothing in this act should cause Canadian courts to treat crimes allegedly committed outside of Canada retroactively”.
We tried to help the government with its bill. We proposed adding the contents of subsection 21(2) of the criminal code to the bill. This useful section of the criminal code should be Bill C-19.
Subsection 21(2) reads:
Where two or more persons form an intention in common to carry out an unlawful purpose and to assist each other therein and any one of them, in carrying out the common purpose, commits an offence, each of them who knew or ought to have known that the commission of the offence would be a probable consequence of carrying out the common purpose is a party to that offence.
In the committee's discussions with the lawyers we were assured that the Criminal Code of Canada would be applied if need be.
The bill had two definitions of war crimes and crimes against humanity: one definition, if the crimes are committed in Canada; and the other, if the crimes are committed abroad. We proposed one definition: no matter where the crimes are committed. How can we have two definitions of crime whether it is committed in Canada or abroad? It is a matter of common sense. The government had its own amendment which took care of that.
Another amendment ensured that the accused had to intend inhumanity and know that the act was inhumane without using the word inhumane. The bill needs to state what the mental element is for the crimes. There is such a statement in the Rome statute, article 30. The problem Cory J. posed in Finta said that an accused had to intend inhumanity, that the trial judge was right in saying that the accused must know that his act was inhumane, is not addressed.
Mr. Justice Cory in the case of R v Finta said:
It seems that the (war crimes) section was passed to bring to trial those who inflicted death and cruel suffering in a knowing, pre-meditated, calculated way. The essential quality of a war crime or a crime against humanity is that the accused must be aware of or wilfully blind to the fact that he or she is inflicting untold misery on his victims. The requisite mental element of a war crime or a crime against humanity should be based on a subjective test.
The Canadian Alliance proposed another amendment making it clear that non-state actors and heads of state can be prosecuted for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. This is not clear in the bill. We proposed an amendment to add the contents of section 21(2) of the criminal code to the bill.
The current criminal code provision 7(3.77) was not to be found in the bill. We called for it to be included, but I will not go into the details.
We proposed many other amendments. The Canadian Alliance forced these issues to be dealt with by the government. We proposed an amendment preventing pardon without trial. We proposed an amendment that would exclude the defence of superior orders. This could not be done as it was already provided for under Canadian law.
We also proposed an amendment that would have the effect of establishing that the judge should decide whether the order was manifestly unlawful.
Finally, we proposed another amendment obliging the government to table documents concerning the negotiations taking place to decide rules of evidence and certain definitions for the ICC.
Surprisingly, Liberal backbenchers also offered amendments to Bill C-19. Everyone tried to fix this bill but it is still broken. It could have been divided into two: One bill for the ICC and the other for the codification of the crimes. This would have helped. It at least was going in the right direction.
This bill is full of holes and may threaten our national security. The United States of America is adopting strong legislation to deal with suspected war criminals and perpetrators of these crimes. This may cause suspected criminals to use Canada as their hideout.
We are concerned that these suspects will try to join with organized crime and people smuggler brethren already in Canada. Those undesirables are already here because of the Liberal government's lax money laundering and illicit drug laws, and its flawed and broken immigration and refugee system.
By the time the international community has completed work on the ICC, the Liberals will have long forgotten about it. The Liberals will think they have washed their hands of it.
At the report stage last Friday, the House was forced to consider nine amendments from the Bloc Quebecois, which was a waste of the government's time. The Liberals were surprised to see those amendments. The submission of the amendments was a denial of the work by the foreign affairs committee. By the time the report stage arrived, everyone knew that as many changes as possible were completed. There was no more work to be done on Bill C-19 and its state of incompletion could not be corrected.
Until more developments take place in terms of the international community's work on the bill, where negotiations are taking place, everyone knows that the government has moved as far it is going to move. That was about three hours of wasted time at report stage.
In conclusion, on behalf of right thinking Canadians who believe in getting the job done, doing a good job and doing things right, I will work to save taxpayers' money. I will not waste any more of the House's time on this bill because the taxpayers are paying for this.
The Canadian public expected the government to do a good job in satisfying Canadian obligations under an international criminal court. They trusted this government to properly enact the crimes against humanity, genocide and other war crimes, but it has not done that. It has again disappointed Canadians, like so many other badly managed federal government responsibilities, such as tax relief, criminal justice, youth criminal justice system, health care, HRDC, gas prices, brain drain, and the list goes on. This is work that has not been done or done badly.
The Canadian Alliance supports Canada withholding our full acceptance until parliament has ratified the rules of procedure and evidence for the ICC. These rules will not be ready for some months. The government should have waited before proceeding with Bill C-19.
Canadian negotiators met with the foreign affairs committee approximately one week before their departure to Rome. Upon cross-examination at committee, the officials said that they did not know what the details of the agreement might be. They did not know what it might cost. They did not think that any major offending countries would sign it. They did not think the Americans would sign it. They could not answer questions about the make-up of the court at that time. Above all, they would sign the agreement without knowing all these things. This is what has happened. It is not new. They have done it again and again, and that is wrong.
The Canadian Alliance will hold the Liberals responsible by voting against Bill C-19. It is too bad. I hope there will be an election soon.
