Lost his last election, in 2004, with 36% of the vote.
Petitions February 13th, 1997
Mr. Speaker, I have three petitions to present this morning. The first is from Mr. Bob Pollock of North Vancouver and 35 others. The petitioners mention that 52 per cent of the price of gasoline is composed of taxes and the Canadian Automobile Association reports that the federal excise tax on gasoline has already increased by 566 per cent over the last decade.
Therefore the petitioners request Parliament not to increase the federal excise tax on gasoline.
Standing Orders Of The House February 11th, 1997
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak in favour of Motion No. 267. I would first like to agree with the member from the Bloc who indicated she was quite disturbed by the speech given by the first member on the government side, the member for Fundy-Royal. It seemed like a very aggressive attack on the intent of this motion.
The member for Mission-Coquitlam spoke at length about the changes that have happened in other parliamentary democracies to free up the process. They have abandoned the restrictive practices that we still see practised here in Canada. Even the mother of our own Parliament in the U.K. has abandoned a lot of these restrictive practices we still see in this place.
What the member for Fundy-Royal called hundreds of years of parliamentary tradition is more like hundreds of years of parliamentary repression. We really need to break through that cloak of protection that the government has and get some of the people's business on the table.
Motion No. 267 addresses a very serious problem and I am sure it is one that has touched almost every member of this House in one way or another. All too often a votable private member's bill gets shuffled off to a committee never to be seen again, making a mockery of the entire parliamentary process.
In addition, because deliberations at the subcommittee, which determines which bills are made votable, are held in secret, no one ever knows why the bill was or was not made votable in the first place. Frankly, the frequency with which these tactics of repressing private members' bills are used is alarming, particularly when one considers that it was this government that promised during the last election campaign that it would overhaul the processes of the House and make Parliament more transparent and democratic.
It is all very well for the government side to allow its MPs a free vote on a private member's bill in this House, but now it is using the committee to stall the bill instead of stalling it here on the floor of the House of the Commons. What did we really achieve? If anything, all it has done is put it behind closed doors so that the public cannot see the government side rejecting it or manipulating the rejection.
In fact, this entire problem that we are discussing here today is only a symptom of a larger malaise which has plagued this House for decades, namely that almost all the power is wielded by the Prime Minister and a small group of people around him, leaving the rest of us, and unfortunately our constituents along with us, having almost no say in the way the country is governed.
I am frequently reminded of the sorry state of democracy in Canada when constituents ask me whether MPs are actually able to serve any useful purpose if they are not allowed to act independently of the leader or the party when they need to represent the views of their constituents. When I am asked that question, it is pretty difficult to identify any situation in this House where a voting machine could not produce exactly the same result. It seems to me that maybe the entire government side could be automated and connected to the Prime Minister's chair and not even bother turning up. There could just be one button for the Prime Minister to press.
This is precisely the kind of arrogant, patronizing, top down control that the people of Canada are starting to reject. We really have to see the system opened up a bit.
Not only are ordinary Canadians pretty well unable to participate in the legislative process, they are not even informed of the reasons behind the decisions that are made. Bills put forward on their behalf by us, their elected representatives, often simply disappear into committee, as most of the members have said here today, whether or not they are made votable.
It is time to bring a measure of true democracy to our parliamentary system and open the entire private members' business to public scrutiny. That means the subcommittee that decides whether or not a bill should be votable should also be open and we should
see its decisions so that our constituents can find out the reasons why our bills are not made votable.
I have an example of my own, Bill C-333, a bill which would deport criminal refugees in lieu of sentence when they are found guilty of breaking Canada's laws. That bill was put together with the assistance of the lawyers of this House and by a crown counsel in my riding, a Liberal supporter, a person who has put himself forward for nomination as the Liberal candidate in my riding, an experienced person who knows how the system works. What happens? The bill is made non-votable. I do not know the reason why. I have no idea. I write to the minister to ask for support for the bill and I get a non-committal letter back saying how interesting it will be to hear the debate.
There should not be a situation where skilled people put together a bill that is warranted, that needs discussion in this House and we cannot even get it votable.
This sort of action allows the government to put a stop to private members' bills without going through the embarrassing process of actually voting on them. If the government wants to defeat a bill, it should do it right here in the public view where everyone can see what is happening, instead of it being restricted as it was in the case of the member for Mission-Coquitlam to a few grandparents who were able to travel all the way to Ottawa to sit in on a committee meeting and see what happened in that place.
All I can hope for is that they have gone back to their ridings, to their groups and organizations and are telling people the travesty of democracy that can occur in these committees.
Too many pieces of good legislation that have passed through this House are mired in committee proceedings and never come back.
The single most powerful argument in favour of this motion is that when a bill receives approval at second reading, the elected representatives in this place are approving it. We have given a message to the people of Canada openly in public in this place that we approve of this legislation. It should not be up to the committee to find personal reasons, as we heard with due respect from the member opposite, why committee members do not like the bill. It should be their job to make it work.
In the instance of the bill of the member for Mission-Coquitlam there were witnesses before that committee, lawyers, who said this bill is needed, which contradicts the personal opinion of the member opposite. There were plenty of examples from the United States where similar legislation works.
It is not up to a committee to thwart the will of the House. The committee should have reported this bill back with amendments, if necessary, ways in which the legislation could be made to work, not a rejection of a decision of this House.
While Motion No. 267 will not solve all the problems associated with our parliamentary system, obviously there are many areas to fix, it does take an important step toward making the committee process and the private members' business process much more democratic.
The motion, if passed, will be of benefit to all MPs, indeed all Canadians and as such I urge all members of the House to support it. My only fear is that the motion, if passed, will end up in a committee somewhere and have the same fate that so many bills before it have had, which is to disappear forever and to make no difference at all to the way this place operates.
Standing Orders Of The House February 11th, 1997
Mr. Speaker, a point of order. Did I miss something in the speaking order? Would I not be next as the member for the Reform Party?
Administrative Tribunals (Remedial And Disciplinary Measures) Act February 3rd, 1997
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Senator Anne Cools is reported in a newspaper article in the Vancouver Sun as departing frequently from the Liberal Party line. I am sure that some of those who were involved in perhaps a patronage appointment in that regard maybe are regretting their past decision.
The article goes on to explain how she has great doubts about the Liberal Party's gun control legislation. According to the report she took part in a shooting exhibition in Edmonton and has the target with suitable bullet holes in it pinned on the wall of her office. Right now she is apparently in opposition to the child support legislation presently before that House. "Life is not so simple as women are angels and men are devils," says Cools, who, somewhat to her surprise, has become a darling of the right for her assaults on the feminist agenda.
Virtue is hers and vice is his. Who could have believed we would have reached that stage in society where public policy making would be made on this basis. She took aim at the Divorce Act which is a bill we have already dealt with and is looking at perhaps derailing that. That is a patronage appointment perhaps that went wrong, depending on which side of the House one is on, so to speak. However, the Senate is a good example of a place of patronage.
Another problem with Bill C-49 is that one does not even need to be a Canadian citizen in order to take advantage of this new bill. It is going to open things up for appointments or arrangements to be made for non-citizens. All one has to be is a landed immigrant. One wonders what sort of situation we are going to end up in with that sort of vague and open policy.
Another area of patronage that is well recognized is the patronage that tends to follow from Liberal nomination tactics during the run up to elections. There is another article which coincidentally happens to be on the opposite side of the page of the Vancouver Sun . It is headed: ``Liberal nomination tactics under scrutiny''. It is almost a full page.
It is about the natural patronage that tends to flow from nomination meetings run by the Liberals. For example, it deals with Mobina Jaffer, who ran run against me in the previous election in North Vancouver. I know that the Liberals felt they had a pretty good shot at it the last time, their best shot perhaps in 20 years, but they did not make it I am afraid. Now Mobina has been rewarded with an automatic appointment to the riding of Burnaby-Douglas which she agreed to take with no competition in return for allowing another party president, Celso Boscariol to go into the riding she had chosen. The rumour in the newspaper is that Mobina will get her reward even if she loses the seat.
The entire article concentrates on the aspect of patronage. I really do not see how Bill C-49 is going to fix that problem because all it does is eliminate positions that did not exist. It is a bunch of window dressing, typical of all of the legislation we are seeing here. We are just not seeing any serious legislation at the moment.
Canadians would prefer us to deal with the Young Offenders Act. They would rather see their taxes lowered. When I go out on to the streets and ask them: "Are your taxes any lower than they were in 1993? Are your streets any safer than they were in 1993? Is the country more unified than it was in 1993?" We can go on and on with a list like that. "Have members of Parliament fixed their gold plated pension plan? Is the GST gone? Is the jobless rate down?". Canadians would much rather see us address those problems than
some sort of half measure on patronage that really does not even address the problem.
I plead with members to vote against this legislation. It is bad legislation. It is inadequate legislation. Let us go back, do the job properly and clean up the whole thing. That was promised in the red book. The Minister of Finance does not believe we should take any notice of the red book. He said he had a hand in writing it but we should not take any notice of it because he knows what c-r-a-p it is. I am sorry to use that word, but it was a quote from him.
Just as a final reminder in closing, if members have not already read the book Double Vision , the truth about the Liberals in power, please read it.
Administrative Tribunals (Remedial And Disciplinary Measures) Act February 3rd, 1997
Mr. Speaker, it was worth a try. We could have gone on to some very interesting stuff coming out of that motion but we will save it for another day.
The hon. member who spoke before me from the Reform Party mentioned the Senate as being one of the great places of patronage. I was actually going to bring up the Senate as a good example of a place where we could begin addressing this problem of patronage. Bill C-49 actually claims to eliminate 271 positions from the patronage appointment list. However, none of those positions are filled. They are all vacant. Therefore, we are eliminating nothing.
A lot of Canadians would feel a lot happier if we could eliminate 271 seats in the Senate, if they existed. I know that perhaps, Mr. Speaker, in a previous time, prior to being a deputy speaker, you may have even hoped that there would be a total elimination of the parole boards. I know that personally you were quite against getting too tough on crime, but that is a story for another day.
As for the Senate, even that is getting to the point where perhaps it cannot be trusted as a place of patronage because I know that Senator Anne Cools-Mr. Speaker, can we use a senator's name in the House?
Administrative Tribunals (Remedial And Disciplinary Measures) Act February 3rd, 1997
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-49, a bill which purports to do something about patronage appointments to various tribunals and boards.
My colleague who spoke before me said this bill is typical of the sort of tinkering around the edges that we have seen in most of the Liberal legislation that has come before this House. It just tinkers around the edges of a problem without really getting to the grips of it, without really solving the problem that is there and that is inherent in the whole system. It is typical of the Liberals in government in that regard. Even behind the scenes they cannot make up their minds what to do next.
I mentioned earlier in the day the book Double Vision: The Inside Story of the Liberals in Power . Mr. Speaker, I do not know whether you have had the chance to read the book but it is extremely interesting and revealing. It tells what has happened behind the scenes over the last three years. It points to the exact problem we see in Bill C-49 today, the tinkering around the edges and the inability to come to grips with the problems.
An example in Double Vision was when the previous minister of immigration had to make some decisions about cutting costs in the immigration department. He could not bring himself to cut anything but the fact was he had to for fiscal restraint. Eventually he bought the idea of the landing fee for the immigrants even though he was under attack from some of his colleagues and advisers as being racist for introducing such a fee.
The fee started off for good fiscal purposes to be around $1,500 or $1,800. It ended up that the previous minister insisted it had to be under $1,000 in order for him to accept it. Here is this tinkering around the edges again and not truly coming to grips with the cost saving and accepting something less than ideal.
I could go on all day about examples from Double Vision: The Inside Story of the Liberals in Power because it really does relate to this bill and how it is just tinkering around the edges. I personally think an excellent motion sometime for this House to debate would be that this House recognize the valuable service to Canadian voters performed by the writers Edward Greenspon and Anthony Wilson-Smith in their writing of the book
Double Vision: The
Inside Story of the Liberals in Power, and furthermore, that this House should encourage all Canadians to read the book prior to the next federal election.
I wonder if I could ask the unanimous consent of the House to begin debating this motion immediately.
Double Vision February 3rd, 1997
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, the book certainly blows the whistle on this government and in case you missed the title, it is Double Vision .
Double Vision February 3rd, 1997
Mr. Speaker, I wonder if you have had the chance yet to read a very interesting new book called Double Vision: The Inside Story of the Liberals in Power . I wish there were time to read the whole book into the record, but I will give an example from page 133 which tells the story of the department negotiations with the finance minister leading up to the budget of 1994.
More than once when officials reminded the minister of promises in the red book he yelled: "Don't tell me what's in the red book. I wrote the goddarn thing and I know that it's a lot of crap. Don't be a slave to it".
Well, this book certainly blows the whistle on the government-
Judges Act November 28th, 1996
Madam Speaker, I can best handle my total agreement by reading a short quote from the speech given by the Liberal member for York South-Weston to the Rotary Club of Toronto on August 9: "The whip's role is to tell people when and how to vote." It is a sad reflection on our system of government when people, presumably intelligent people, have to be whipped into voting a certain way. It is also contrary to the public interest and it feeds the cynicism and almost contempt that Canadians have for their elected representatives. "The notion of disciplining reasonably intelligent adults who were given the trust of their constituents is a practice that Canadians reject. If the leader cannot count on the majority of members of his own team to support a particular policy based on its merits, obviously there is something wrong with it.
"Allowing free votes on every issue would show true leadership in this country, whether it is the leader of the government or of any of the opposition parties".
That answers perfectly the comments that were made by the member's sons when they recognized, without even having to be here, that it is basically a five-year dictatorship.
Judges Act November 28th, 1996
Madam Speaker, that was a great comment about the committee process that was raised by the
member and also questions on what we would do in bills like this one. I would like to treat that in a general sense because I have experienced similar sorts of problems. He talks about the justice committee and how bad that chairperson was.
I was on a subcommittee dealing with Bill C-25. We had a whole day of hearings supposedly set aside and what happens? The Liberal majority passed a whole bunch of clauses in that bill. I think it was clauses 26 to 109 or 119 in one batch. Just one lump sum. The whole thing.
How can you deal with a very complicated technical bill or very complex justice bills by passing 70, 80, 90 clauses in one batch? The only reason it happens is because in that committee we were told absolutely, distinctly they would not tolerate any substantive amendments.
That is the sort of abusive process that goes on behind the scenes in this place. It is this kind of abusive process that raises the sort of comment that was just mentioned by my colleague for New Westminster-Burnaby, the whole issue of chairmanship of committees, what happens there and our inability to introduce meaningful amendments.
For example, we had a number of amendments to Bill C-42. The hon. member for Crowfoot, seconded by the hon. member for St. Albert, put forward an amendment:
That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word "that" and substituting the following: "a Message be sent to the Senate to acquaint their Honours that this House disagrees with the amendment 1 made by the Senate to Bill C-42, an act to amend the Judges Act and to make consequential amendments to another act, and that this House agrees with the principle set out in amendment 2, but would propose the following amendments:
(a) insert the words "for a period not to exceed three years" after the words "judicial duties" in section 56.1(1);
(b) strike out all the lines in section 56.1(2) and substitute the following:
"If Madam Justice Arbour elects to take leave pursuant to section 56.1(1) she may receive moving or transportation expenses and reasonable travel and other expenses, in connection with her services as Prosecutor, from the United Nations".
(c) add the following words to section 56.1(3):
"notwithstanding any prohibition against accepting any salary fee, remuneration or other emolument described in section 57";
(d) add the following words to section 56.1(5):
"and that benefits payable under these sections will be paid or will commence to be paid at the expiration of the leave of absence without pay"."
Even if people were not able to follow that closely because they did not have the bill before them, I think that everyone would be able to tell that a lot of thought went into the wording of that amendment. It is substantive. There is a lot of meat to discuss and we really should have extensive discussion of that in the House. Instead of that we get these things rammed through. We get
closure, we get committees shutting us down and it really is unacceptable.