Ted White

[Revocation Of Mandate Of Inquiry Commission, December 9th, 1997]

Well, no surprises there, Mr. Speaker. As usual, members from the government side demonstrated their commitment to democracy in this place by rejecting a votable motion.

Just as shutting down an inquiry can be used as a way of protecting the government agenda, designating a bill or a motion non-votable is an effective way for the government to stop the advance of a measure that may be popular with the public but may not fit into the agenda of the government, the Liberal party line.

In this way the government is able to stop a popular bill from becoming law without having to go through the embarrassing process of voting against it. It is a shame that we do not have the opportunity to have public votes where our constituents can watch us cast our judgment on such issues.

An especially interesting aspect of this motion is that it would require a two-thirds majority rather than a simple 50% plus 1. While I am in favour of the general purpose of the motion, the two-thirds figure seems to have been chosen somewhat arbitrarily. It was possibly selected in order to make the motion effective against the present government, although I find it strange that a Bloc MP would have chosen this threshold.

Consider for a moment what would happen in this Parliament if the Bloc wanted to help the government shut down a commission of inquiry. With the present balance of power in this House, the Bloc and the government combined would not be able to shut down that inquiry without the support of at least one other member, which reduces the influence of the Bloc in that regard.

The second interesting aspect of the percentage chosen is the present insistence by the Bloc that the result of a 50% plus 1 vote in Quebec is decisive in terms of a sovereignty vote.

Yet it adopts a two-thirds requirement to disband a commission of inquiry; two-thirds to disband a commission of inquiry, 50% plus one to disband the country.

That having been said, as I indicated at the beginning of this speech, I am in favour of the general thrust of the motion. The appropriate percentage vote is certainly up for discussion.

[Revocation Of Mandate Of Inquiry Commission, December 9th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak in favour of the motion put forth by the member for Berthier—Montcalm. I am supportive of the general aim of this motion because it allows the important decision of whether to revoke the mandate of an inquiry commission to be made by the elected members of this House rather than in secret by the government.

The need for such a motion arises from the fact that commissions of inquiry are often investigating situations or events that took place as a result of a government action. Leaving the power to shut down the inquiry in the government's hands clearly puts it in a conflict of interest.

In addition, members of an inquiry commission are undoubtedly aware that their mandate could be terminated if they uncover information that is embarrassing to the government. We have actually seen that happen already. They have no incentive really to investigate in such areas. If anything, there is an incentive to not investigate in areas that might uncover things embarrassing to the government. How can an inquiry be expected to carry out its job properly under such conditions, even when the most conscientious and honest people are conducting that inquiry?

The government member mentioned that there have been over 300 commissions of inquiry. He gave a few examples of some which produced reports consistent, I would say, with government policy of the day and so they were acted upon. The vast majority simply end up gathering dust like the petitions to this place on shelves or in vaults somewhere without ever seeing the light of day.

Our constituents send petitions to this place thinking that we are going to act upon the requests that are in those petitions. As all members of this House know, they simply end up in the vaults of this place along with petitions that have been gathering since the turn of the century with no action ever being taken and the government taking the position that because it cannot verify the signatures, the petitions are hardly worth taking any notice of.

When Reform first came to this place we suggested there be one day a month set aside just to discuss the largest petitions submitted to this place. That would at least show constituents that we care. That has never happened. Similar things happen to these inquiries. They just disappear.

One of the most recent and glaring examples of the need for reform, which was mentioned by the member for Berthier—Montcalm, was the shutting down of the Somalia inquiry by the former defence minister, Doug Young. It became very apparent from questions asked by Reform members during question period in the last Parliament that there really was no legitimate reason for revoking the mandate of the inquiry and that his only motivation was to prevent any proof of a government cover-up being made public.

Surely the power to halt an inquiry like that should not rest with the minister of the department that is under investigation, as was the case in that instance. The voters of the minister's riding administered the ultimate punishment to him in the 1997 election by replacing him. We will never know whether it was because he shut down the Somalia inquiry, but there was some reason they removed him from his position.

Unfortunately, the decision to revoke the mandate of an inquiry commission is only one of many important decisions that are made behind closed doors by the government, often by order in council. Take, for example, the decisions made by the subcommittee on private members' bills which decides whether a bill will be votable or not. It is bad enough that bills can even be declared non-votable, let alone the fact that the government can make the decisions about those bills in secret with no minutes and no explanation.

Before I rose to speak in the House I called the deputy speaker in New Zealand, who is a personal friend of mine, to ask him some questions about a private member's motion I took to the subcommittee yesterday. In passing, I mentioned that I was struggling to get the motion made votable. He was aghast that we still have non-votable bills and motions in this place for private members' business because in New Zealand they are all votable.

This motion has been deemed non-votable by the committee. This creates the suspicion that the government really does not want to address the issue by seeing the reaction of members to the motion. It could be quite embarrassing. With this in mind and in the interests of democracy, this may be an appropriate moment to ask for the unanimous consent of the House to make the motion votable. I would like to ask for the unanimous consent of the House to make the motion votable.

[Amendment To The Constitution Of Canada (Newfoundland), December 8th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, those are good questions. The member and I have had plenty of discussions in private on this matter. He knows that I consider these to have been entitlements, not rights. That is a point of debate and difference which I know is shared by other members of the House.

Referendums around the world, particularly those initiated by citizens, rarely have any type of legal text associated with them. Proposition 13 in California is an example. We can look at the Swiss models. There is rarely anything other than a framework of the legal text that is finally put into practice.

I still maintain it is nice to have those tools available. I would encourage that. It is my understanding that the Newfoundland government set about doing that as fast as it could and immediately employed two lawyers to do it. It was released as quickly as possible. It was not a requirement. I would still say the average person on the street probably did not place as much importance on that as they did on the question itself.

[Amendment To The Constitution Of Canada (Newfoundland), December 8th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, the member has asked a question which is difficult to answer because he has not used specific examples other than the Newfoundland referendum issue.

I will refer to a paragraph that I used in my speech. I believe in the right of people to make a mistake. I truly believe that in the long run it is a much better experience for politicians and for people themselves. If they make a decision through the tool of a referendum we should be obliged to carry out that requirement. They are the ones paying the bills, and we had better get used to that. If we are to carry out their will we must do what we can to provide them with sufficient information to properly balance opposing points of view.

In the end it is their decision. I defend their right to make that decision, even to instruct me to do something I do not want to do, as I did when I voted for the gun control bill in the last parliament. In the end they will come to see whether or not it was a mistake, and if it was they will direct me to fix the mistake.

[Amendment To The Constitution Of Canada (Newfoundland), December 8th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Kelowna.

The term 17 amendment we are debating today offers an opportunity for some MPs to take the position that voting their conscience is appropriate. That was mentioned by the hon. minister who spoke before me. They do that even if it is opposite to the position taken by their constituents. They say they will vote against the amendment for the most part because of the need to protect minority rights and/or entitlements from the tyranny of the majority.

Without those MPs being here, there really would not have been much of a debate so far, so I thank them for that. But as a result of the position they have taken, they are obliged to criticize the term 17 referendums and some unfortunately have been doing so using factually unsupportable material or opinions that they are representing as fact taken from letters from people who were disappointed with the result.

If members had taken the time to call the office of Elections Newfoundland to discuss the mechanics of holding those referendums, they would have found as I did that a lot of the criticisms were completely baseless or were totally inaccurate.

Before sharing some of that information with members, I would first like to remind the House that prior to the first term 17 referendum, seven specific religious groups controlled pretty much all the public schools in the province. Meanwhile Jews, Muslims, Baptists and a whole host of other smaller religions, the true minorities, were deprived of any similar right or access to the public purse.

The voters of Newfoundland appear to have recognized that this situation was unfair and have voted to level the playing field for all religious groups in Newfoundland. They rejected in two referendums an entrenched entitlement of seven major religions to reach their hands into the pockets of taxpayers while the other religions, in fact the minority, had no such right. The changes contained in the term 17 amendment if anything improved the situation for minorities.

Furthermore, in terms of those minority rights, the two referendums on term 17 offered more than enough opportunities for both sides of the argument to make people aware of their interpretation of the effects of the proposed changes. The issue was thoroughly discussed at home, in restaurants, at work, on television, on radio talk shows. It is insulting to the intelligence of voters to suggest that they did not understand what they were voting for or how the rights and entitlements of majorities and minorities would be affected by their vote.

As for the complaints by critics that a mere 32 days was allowed for the actual campaign, 32 days is not an unusually short time for a referendum campaign. The last federal election was only 37 days of campaign and that was to change the entire government of the country with a multitude of issues and complex judgments that went along with it. Besides, the term 17 issue had been floating around under deep public discussion for many years, as has already been mentioned by other members.

The associated complaint that the government failed to inform the public of the text of the amendment until August 25, just two days before the advance poll, also has little relevance in terms of either the mechanics or outcome. The fact is that the vote was on the question and not on the legal wording of the amendment which would enact the question. There was no obligation whatsoever on the government to produce or release the wording of the actual amendment at any time and it is questionable how many voters would have wanted to read it anyway.

To keep this in context, compare the situation to that of placing a clear question to Quebeckers in any new referendum on separation. It would be impossible to have a clear question if you had to put the entire bill on the ballot paper. As I mentioned, in most cases the average voter is not interested in reading those legal mechanics anyway.

In the case of the recent term 17 referendum, the text of the question was released on the very same day the referendum was announced. The minister who spoke before me read the question into the record so I will not do that again, but the referendum related to that question and not to the actual legal wording of the amendment which was subsequently voted on in the House.

Some members will have received letters complaining that the Government of Newfoundland used its resources and finances to support the yes position during the referendum campaign but that opponents had no such resources and should have been given public money to fund their opposition. Opponents were completely free to use their own resources to counter the government position and they did so. There was no limit to how much they could spend on their side of the argument and they did advertise and promote their position very widely just as the government did.

The Newfoundland government said that it spent around $300,000 to promote its position, but the other side to my knowledge has released no figures. In my opinion there is no convincing argument to support the contention that opponents to a government position should be given public funds to counter that position. If we were to approve of such a measure in general, Canada would soon be bankrupt and governments would be paralysed by special interest group activities totally funded from the public purse. Besides, there is absolutely no evidence in any jurisdiction that employs public referendums that the amount of money spent on the issue by one side over the other affects the outcome in any significant way.

For example, in Canada the Charlottetown accord yes side spent 10 times as much as the winning no side and it still lost. In the 1993 election the PC Party spent something like $40 million and had access to huge amounts of free media time but just elected two members. The Reform Party spent a fraction of that amount, had hardly any free media time and elected 52 members.

In Newfoundland, members will be interested to learn, the single most common complaint received by the chief electoral officer during both referendums had nothing to do with spending. It was that too many polling stations were on church property and that religious symbols, statues and materials were being used in attempts to influence the vote.

Some of those upset by the outcome of the two referendums have claimed that the government would not permit scrutineers at the polling stations, but in fact the government had no power to make that decision. The determination that scrutineers were not appropriate was made by the chief electoral officer as authorized by the Newfoundland elections act.

In the absence of clearly identified yes and no organizations, the chief electoral officer determined that scrutineers would not be authorized in the polling stations for either side. He did, however, provide a returning officer, a deputy returning officer and an official witness at each polling station. The job of the official witness was to ensure the security of the vote at each station, and to date there is no evidence whatsoever of any tampering.

Some people have criticized the referendum process on the basis that only 52% of the people voted, that 73% of that 52% voted yes, and that the equivalent of 39% of eligible voters approved the question and therefore the results were not valid.

The voter turnout was within normal ranges for this type of electoral event in Canada. To argue that the result is not valid leads us down a very slippery slope indeed. Many MPs in the House were elected with percentages well below 50 and percentages in the high 30s are not unusual.

The Liberal government won a governing mandate in 1997 with less than 40% of the vote, a situation that many would argue has a significantly greater negative impact than an amendment to term 17. Yet it stands. I have yet to observe any government member arguing that the results of the 1997 election are invalid, even though the majority of voters actually voted against the Liberals.

As a dedicated believer in referendums, even those in the form of an election, I defend the right of taxpayers and voters to make a mistake; to learn that they made a mistake; and to correct that mistake, if indeed it was a mistake, via a subsequent referendum. Such an exercise is in the end far more productive than having arrogant, self-righteous, genuinely well intentioned, biased or badly informed politicians forcing their will upon the people.

As the leader of the Reform Party said earlier today, Newfoundlanders were well aware the issue involved not only educational reform but the difficult subject of extinguishing, granting and balancing majority and minority rights.

Parliament should therefore be very careful in presuming that its judgment on any of these matters is somehow superior to that of the people of Newfoundland. Let us respect their intelligence, their consideration of majority and minority rights, and their right to make decisions about the way their province operates its system of education. Let us make sure they receive from the House an appropriate endorsement of the term 17 amendment.

[Amendment To The Constitution Of Canada (Newfoundland), December 8th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the hon. member could enlighten us as to whether he knows anything about the members of the legislature of Newfoundland and their voting patterns. He mentioned that the vote was unanimous. There must have been among those members some deeply religious people, perhaps many who had similar concerns to what we have heard expressed today from some members of this House.

Does the member opposite have any intimate knowledge or does he know any of the members of the Newfoundland legislature? Can he explain why they would have voted for the amendment even though they have very deeply held religious beliefs?

[Immigration, December 8th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I have in front of me a Vancouver police report which is a wake-up call for the Minister of Immigration.

The report lists 32 foreign nationals who were referred by police to immigration authorities after all 32 had engaged in criminal activity in the city of Vancouver in just one 24-hour period on November 20, 1997.

The failure of the Immigration and Refugee Board to promptly deport criminals is directly responsible for as many as 9,000 assaults, drug charges and weapons offences by foreign nationals each year in Vancouver alone.

The minister recently appointed the president of the North Vancouver Liberal Riding Association to an $85,000 a year patronage position on the IRB. It is about time she cut out the patronage and started fixing the problems instead.

How many more crimes, how much more cost to taxpayers, how much more violation of our borders do we have to put up with before the minister will act?

[Committees Of The House, December 5th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Elk Island has done an excellent job of articulating the frustration that is felt by many and perhaps the majority of the members in this place with respect to the handling of private members' business.

I know that is not unique just to this Parliament. It affects parliaments throughout the world. That frustration is fully justified. It is fully justified not just from the perspective of fairness within our own Canadian system, but also by comparison with the rules of those other parliaments. Many of them have made changes which do improve the private members' business function and the power of private members.

I read recently an article from the Political Science Department at Queen's University which was in the November 1997 edition of the publication “Policy Options”. That article was written by Professor C.E.S. Franks. He wrote that private members are weaker in Canada than in most other parliamentary systems, that private members are not normally influential in Parliament, but that their position can be and should be strengthened.

One way to strengthen that position and the influence of individual members would be to genuinely overhaul the way that private members' business is dealt with in this place.

In that regard, as the member for Elk Island has explained, the 13th report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs contains little more than a few crumbs of hope for meaningful change.

A brief scan of all the private members' bills and motions presently before the House seems to support the position that at least half of all the bills and motions have been drafted by individual members in what appears to be a way of recognizing lobbying or efforts put in by their constituents to have something done about a particular law or situation. They appear to address issues which generally the government refuses to acknowledge as a problem or else just simply does not want to put on its agenda but which the average Canadian views as quite important.

Bills and motions introduced to this place in both the previous and this Parliament on consecutive sentencing, elimination of section 745 of the Criminal Code, grandparent access to children of broken marriages, accountability of organizations which receive taxpayer funding such as charities, victims rights, are all issues and initiatives capable of attracting wide support of members and they certainly have the support of the general public, the voters and the taxpayers who pay the bill for what we do here.

Unfortunately, as the member for Elk Island has already mentioned, as we all know as private members here, even if an individual member is lucky enough to have his or her bill or motion drawn in the lottery we still have to overcome tremendous hurdles along the way to finally getting royal assent. It is virtually impossible.

After the lottery occurs and we make a selection among the available bills or motions, there is no guarantee that bill or motion will even be made votable.

Many members are suspicious that the government imposes its agenda through the workings of that committee. One of the government's own members during the last Parliament called the committee a cockroach committee because she said it meets behind closed doors and then it runs away from its decisions.

It is certainly true that the committee keeps no minutes and gives no reasons for its decisions. This fact alone is enough to encourage suspicion and an atmosphere of discontent and irritation among individual members.

However, it need not be so. Other jurisdictions have either made a much greater percentage of private members' bills votable or, as in the case of New Zealand, made all private members' bills votable.

The undeniable fact is that having a votable bill or motion dramatically increases the satisfaction level for individual members even if that vote is subsequently lost. Almost anyone can accept the democratic outcome of a meaningful debate followed by a vote. If the vote goes against the bill, the member can accept it, but to have never had the opportunity to have the vote in the first place is a devastating situation to occur.

There are many different ways in which the present unfairness could be addressed, for example making all private members' bills and motions fully votable. Admittedly, this would result in less private members' business getting to the floor of the House, but most members, perhaps the majority or perhaps all members, would be willing to take this trade-off in return for at least having the chance to have a votable bill if they do get to the floor of the House.

Another way of increasing member satisfaction with respect to votability might be to have more than one level of votability. For example, simple one line motions could perhaps be allocated one full hour of debate followed by a vote and referral to some sort of committee if the House so wished. That is one way of dealing with simple motions, or perhaps deferring the vote to another day when the government has votes planned any way, or if the hours of the House could be rearranged so that Private Members' Business took place, for example, all day Friday. Perhaps more business could be handled that way with most or all of the bills made votable.

A further suggestion would be to implement a system which puts responsibility on individual members to go out there and get a minimum number of signatures in order to be eligible for votability. At least then the competence of the bill or motion would be put at question and there would be a chance of getting really good quality material to the floor of the House.

Any combination of these suggestions or even some others would probably work out very well. In other words, it would only take a very little amount of creativity to find a much better way to accommodate private members' business within the system. In the end, the government can still prevent a bill or motion from receiving royal assent. So giving us a little satisfaction at the time of debate and vote certainly is not losing control as far as the government is concerned.

With all this in mind, I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: “the thirteenth report be not now concurred in but that it be recommitted to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs with instruction that they amend the same so as to recommend that all Private Members' Business be votable and appropriate measures be taken to ensure an increased amount of time is available in the House for such business”.

[Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Act, December 4th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, in what you just read, you said the member for Vancouver North and I wonder if that was Vancouver Island North.

[Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Act, December 4th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, some members of Parliament, almost exclusively Reform members, gave up any entitlement to a member of Parliament pension during the last Parliament. Most other members, mostly Liberals, NDP and the leader of the fifth party, retained their pensions. They will get out as much as six dollars for every dollar they contribute.

I would like to know how the member who just spoke can justify and support this Liberal boondoggle of a CPP where members contributing today, new members, young people, will get out less than they put in. How can she continue to support a member of Parliament pension plan in which she could get out as much as six dollars for every dollar put in, paid for by those same taxpayers who are going to get out less than they contributed because of the failure of the Liberal CPP?