Ted White

[Employment Equity Act, October 4th, 1996]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-332, an act to amend the Employment Equity Act (elimination of designated group and numerical goals) and the Canadian Human Rights Act.

Mr Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to present a private member's bill which would deliver on the wishes expressed by my constituents.

The bill amends the Employment Equity Act to remove the concept of designated groups and numerical goals and to repeal the employer's reporting requirements. It will come into force when the Employment Equity Act comes into force.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)

[Canadian Heritage, October 4th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I take it then that the corporations have donated nothing. It is interesting that out of three million calls, two and a half million have gone unanswered because of the busy signal.

It has taken the taxes of 1,600 Canadian families to pay for this program. In addition, owners and employees of flag shops across the country are being put out of work by a government program which competes directly with them. Now a Léger and Léger poll shows a dramatic increase in support for separatism since the program was introduced.

Is the minister so blinded with ideology that she cannot see that her flags program is playing into the separatists' hands and contributing to the break-up of Canada?

[Canadian Heritage, October 4th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, despite the claims of the Deputy Prime Minister, Canadians from coast to coast are complaining about the cost of the flags program. They typically state that the certificates alone must have cost more than $1 million and surely that money could have been put to better use.

Since the Minister of Canadian Heritage originally stated that this program would be funded by corporations, could she please tell the House how much money the corporations have given toward the purchase of flags for this program? And while she is at it, could she please tell the House how much of her personal money she has put into the program?

[Criminal Code, October 2nd, 1996]

A great province says my colleague from Ontario. They are all great provinces. The attorneys general knew what the people wanted. They knew they needed to get rid of this section in order to return some stability to the sentencing and serving of punishment.

Members on the other side constantly get excited if we talk about punishment. For some reason we are not allowed to punish people for committing crimes. Please do not punish them. These things can be carried to extremes.

The justice minister suddenly thinks it is okay to let people out after 15 years where there is evidence that they will not commit the crime again. Let us let them out. Why keep them locked up? We can carry that argument to the extreme and say we recognize they committed murder, but why lock them up? They will never do it again. Why does it have to be 15 years? Why not 15 hours? They are so repentant and they promise to take counselling and they will learn French and do whatever is necessary. And they are let free. It has to stop

When the attorneys general of the provinces start pushing for the repeal of these sections, it is time the justice minister started listening. The attorneys general are telling him his gun control bill is misdirected. They told him Bill C-33 was misdirected. They have told him that section 745 is misdirected and they have told him the Young Offenders Act revisions were misdirected. When is he going to start listening?

It is a travesty of justice that closure was moved on this bill today. I urge members, please, in a last minute appeal, vote against it.

[Criminal Code, October 2nd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, a short time ago the member for Kingston and the Islands was waxing eloquent with quotations from Hansard . You could ask, Mr. Speaker, why he quoted so eloquently from Hansard things that were said by Reformers in this House supporting the views of Canadians across the country but he never bothered to quote from the victims' families, the people who have suffered from the crimes of these people the member for Kingston and the Islands is trying to protect. He did not bother to quote from the people who suffer because of his liberal minded rules about law and order.

Since the member for Kingston and the Islands is so fond of quoting from the printed word, I would like to quote a few things that he said. I have here an article from the British Columbia Report of July 15 of this year in which the member for Kingston

and the Islands, when talking about the protection of VIA Rail tickets that members in the House had, said: "I think we were hoodwinked by the people who introduced the bill". The people behind the alleged plot are members of his own Liberal government, reports the reporter in the article.

The member for Kingston and the Islands said: "I think we were hoodwinked by the people who introduced the bill". On this bill before us I would venture to say the member is being hoodwinked again: "The MP for Kingston and the Islands suspects faceless bureaucrats were negligent in their duties although he is not quite sure who is to blame for introducing the bill but he says `I don't know anyone who reads every bill. I don't"'.

No wonder he is so easily hoodwinked. He does not even read the bills. Since he does not read the bills I can tell that he also does not bother listening to his constituents or he would know that repeal of section 745 is supported by an overwhelming majority of Canadians coast to coast. We do not have to be a rocket scientist to find that out.

Just as they support the repeal of section 745, they also support a complete and effective overhaul of the Young Offenders Act. They want a referendum on the return of capital punishment. They are totally dissatisfied with the Liberal's performance on justice issues.

These Liberal trained seals on the other side of the House support a closure motion to shut down meaningful debate on an issue of great importance to the people of Canada. They stand there and call us extremists for speaking the minds of Canadians coast to coast. That is too bad. The real extremists in this place are the people who sit on the government side. They are the ones responsible for a debt that will hit $600 billion on November 22; 600 billion of debt on the shoulders of our children and our grandchildren. They are the extremists who let murderers and sexual offenders out of prison early so they can commit more crimes.

There is ample evidence that letting these people out before they have served their sentences causes a great many more crimes. I am going to quote some bureau of justice statistics of 1989 from a study that was done in the United States between the years 1973 and 1989. In 1989 the bureau of justice statistics issued some estimates of how many crimes are prevented while criminals are locked up rather than walking the streets.

Analyst Patrick Langan concluded that higher incarceration rates between 1973 and 1989 cut the number of rapes by 66,000, robberies by 323,000, assaults by 380,000, burglaries by 3.3 million, and that imprisonment clearly contributes to major cuts in the number and cost of violent crime.

Those Liberals can stand there and call us extremists, but they are the extremists. Because of their policies, Canada has probably

suffered tens of thousands more rapes, tens of thousands more violent crimes, hundreds more murders and God knows how many million more burglaries; simply because of their wishy-washy justice approach.

Over the past 20 years or so our justice system has tended to concentrate on this wonderful theory of rehabilitation and treating the root cause of the crime. Everybody has had this terrible childhood. "Oh, my God, the reason I am such a bad guy is that I had this terrible childhood. Nothing ever went right for me. I did not win the Lotto 649. It is just dreadful". Some of these people have to start taking responsibility for that they do.

Everybody in Canada, except the people who sit on the other side of the House, are sick to death of this "oh, dear the poor things". It is time for some justice.

I would like to mention another experiment that took place in the United States. The police commissioner for New York, Mr. William Bratton, was quoted shortly after he was appointed security director for the subway system in 1990: "Eureka, we have discovered the root cause of crime. It is criminals".

He adopted a hard line approach in addressing the problems of graffiti, fare evasion, panhandling and assaults that were taking place in the subway system in New York. He said: "The way to get this thing under control is to take a hard line approach of zero tolerance on graffiti, spitting on the sidewalk, all of that sort of stuff". He took this hard line approach where he insisted and the security people clamp down on any incidents of panhandling, graffiti, spitting on the sidewalk.

Within one year there was an impressive improvement. Robberies were down 75 per cent; serious felonies on the subway, a drop of 64 per cent.

Mr. Bratton subsequently became the police commissioner for New York where his methods have resulted in a 31 per cent drop in murders, a 25 per cent drop in car theft and a 22 per cent drop in robberies. How much evidence do we need?

The people who were flagrantly disobeying the rules of law, when they discovered there was zero tolerance for minor crimes, realized that there would be zero, zero tolerance for the major crimes and they stopped committing them.

As long as they were getting free counselling and free rehabilitation and were told how terrible their childhood was, they just kept disobeying the law. For God's sake, we are such patsies. When are we going to get real? It is time to get tough. Not a day goes by, and I believe this applies to members on the other side as well, that I do not get phone calls and letters to my office telling me people are sick and tired of this pandering to criminals. They are sick and tired of it and it is really time we started to do something.

On May 11 this year the Ottawa Sun reported that during a meeting of the attorneys general, Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario pushed for the total repeal of section 745; Ontario, Manitoba and Alberta.

[Immigration, October 2nd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, most Canadians thought that the previous minister of immigration was hopeless, but the new one is even worse. She has failed to get rid of more than 1,300 bogus and criminal refugee claimants in the Vancouver area alone.

In March I wrote the minister about one of many in my riding, a man who has been forging passports so that other criminals could get into Canada and join him. It was a profitable home based business. He paid no income tax on the proceeds. He had no business licence and he remitted no GST.

For passport forgery he got three paltry month's probation at home. He even qualified for Canadian citizenship after entering Canada for a second time after lying to immigration officials about his past. Now he is accused of sending someone else in his place to the citizenship ceremony.

When will this failure of a minister start earning her salary by ridding us of these criminal refugees and taking some meaningful action to put a stop to them getting into the country in the first place?

[Supply, September 30th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I have a short question for the member.

I listened to her saying what a wonderful job Revenue Canada had done but she did not mention the high taxes of Revenue Canada. I would like to ask her a question.

It is estimated that about 40,000 jobs have moved across the border from Vancouver to Bellingham, which is in the United States for those who do not know anything about B.C. Forty thousand jobs have been forced across the border. Canadians own companies in Bellingham because of the high taxes in B.C.

Is the member quite happy to take the credit for that as well?

[Supply, September 30th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. It seems to me that perhaps the member's time is up, since we are on the shorter time for the government side now.

[Supply, September 30th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I am not going to deal with Mr. Flanagan in this reply because Mr. Flanagan is from Alberta. I will be pleased to deal with that on a day when we talk about Alberta.

I would like to concentrate on the issues in B.C. I have never heard such a load of rubbish in my life as what has come from the minister. I have two Indian reserves in my riding, and the member who is in the riding next to mine, the riding of Capilano-Howe Sound, also has a reserve.

I can see on a daily basis what happens to them. I am the one who gets the calls from the Indians on reserve saying that because there is no democracy down there they are suppressed by their leadership.

A lady called me from the reserve. For 30 years she has been trying to get a house, but because she is not related to somebody in high places she is ignored and she is living in a trailer home. I wrote twice to the chief. I phoned the chief three times. I never got a letter back, I never got a phone call. Nothing was resolved.

In another instance a lady called me. She had received a special grant from the province to open a corner store on reserve land on a main road in north Vancouver. The chief nixed it because it would compete with his sales of cigarettes from his back door.

I could go on with a list of infringements on democracy that occur.

[Supply, September 30th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, with regard to this motion I am going to concentrate on accountability from the government with respect to B.C.

Madam Speaker, if you were in business and your partner took 50 per cent of your income, you would surely want to be able to question any actions the partner took which affected that income, especially if the partner never did any of the work.

Today in Canada the average family is paying close to 50 per cent of its income in taxes to various levels of government, so it is really not a surprise that the average Canadian wants more input into the running of its government. They are not happy with the lack of accountability that we see from the partner that takes 50 per cent of their income.

Mismanagement of the country's affairs by this Liberal government affects all of Canada but we are certainly perceived by the public and particularly in B.C. to spend a disproportionate time focused on the affairs of Quebec, that it really affects everything we are doing here because of the political situation. This feeling of alienation from the governing processes is especially strongly felt in B.C. because of the natural barriers of the Rockies and the time zone differences, and because there is hardly any representation on the government side from that province.

Even the government knows that there is a serious communication problem between the federal government and British Columbians. That is a quote from a report written about by a local commentator in B.C., Barbara Yaffe when she wrote in Saturday's newspaper about a report prepared for the intergovernmental affairs minister by the MP for Simcoe North, the parliamentary secretary to the minister. He had travelled the province, asked questions, had meetings with British Columbians. According to his report there is a perception in B.C. that the national agenda is controlled by separatists and that there is a real sense of alienation, that all of the decisions are being made elsewhere. British Columbians feel that Ontario and Quebec are dominating the agenda. This is a very strong feeling. It is right there in a report to the minister by a member of the government side.

We saw the reaction of the transport minister in the House this morning when I asked him why he would not appear on a local radio talk show to answer questions from the public of B.C. about his conduct. He insulted the people of B.C. with his answer. He espoused the old line party system of: "Basically they are too stupid to understand, so I am not wasting my time going on the show". These ministers are obviously part of the problem. They just do not want to hear what we Reform members have been telling them in the House for three years.

There is another minister who is a big source of irritation in B.C., the Minister of Canadian Heritage. My office, as I know are the offices of my colleagues, has been receiving a steady flow of calls and letters complaining about the minister's free flag program. There is nothing in government that is free. The minister's giveaway is consuming the entire amount of taxes remitted to Ottawa by 1,600 families this year. One thousand, six hundred families are paying taxes for that program.

I would also like to mention another minister who is a source of significant irritation in B.C., the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, who like the Prime Minister and the Minister of Transport, refuses to make himself accessible to the people of B.C. on the most listened to radio station in the province. There is no accountability.

Let me quote from an editorial by Rafe Mair on the morning of January 16 of this year.

"Well, Mr. Minister of Indian Affairs, you are not the first to come up with this evil "pied piper" theory which has me appealing to the baser instincts of my stupid, insensitive audience. I heard this during the 1992 referendum from John Crosbie and, indeed, Prime Minister Mulroney and I have heard it from your colleague, the oh, so humble Minister of Transport.

"You have betrayed the same rock-headed notions held by all Ottawa politicians, Mr. Minister. The public are stupid, ill read, unable to think for themselves and easy prey to anyone who can talk a good game.

"What is wrong with the public, Mr. Minister, or dare I say it, is governments which are utterly unable to lay any facts supported by any evidence before the public on the excuse that it is all too complicated to understand".

He goes on to say: "The fact is, Mr. Minister, that the courts, that is to say the Supreme Court of Canada and the B.C. Court of Appeal have said with astonishing clarity that there is no aboriginal title in land. There is no aboriginal title to a commercial fishery and there is no aboriginal claim to the inherent right to self-government. Whatever you may say, sir, that is indeed what the cases say.

"I have consistently stated that there are aboriginal rights in land, rights as opposed to title, Mr. Minister, an important distinction. These rights must be honoured and where possible restored where they have been impaired or taken away.

"Why then do the senior governments constantly say that there is an unextinguished aboriginal title to land, that there is an aboriginal right to a commercial fishery and an inherent right to self-government? If we are going to ignore the law of the land, why bother going to court, Mr. Minister? And you can hardly say that you are using these court decisions as a guide to your decision making, when you are telling the public that they say just exactly the opposite to what they actually do say".

The problems that I have illustrated talking about three different ministers are really examples that I have chosen to illustrate how different the vision of this government is to what the people of B.C. feel and want done in their province.

We have 98 Indian bands in our province. Land claims are tremendously complex negotiations. There have been specific court rulings which set guidelines for us to start negotiating. For some reason our senior level of government chooses to go on its own way ignoring all of the guidelines, ignoring the wishes of the people and wanting to give away our province without due consideration and discussion with the people of the province.

One of the things Mr. Mair said in his commentary on January 16 I think is worth mentioning here: "Mr. Minister, I have consistently agreed that land presently held by your government should be turned over immediately to the tribes and bands occupying those lands as reserves. Put your money where your loose lips are, Mr. Minister, and transfer your land before you snipe at me for not being too quick to give up mine".

There is another minister who creates some irritation in B.C. and that is the minister of immigration. There appeared in the North Shore News on September 6 the results of a survey taken in the ridings of North Vancouver and Capilano-Howe Sound. The survey indicates that 85.2 per cent of those surveyed want criminal refugees and bogus refugees deported immediately. What does the minister do about it? Nothing. We heard the answer which she gave in the House today to the question from the member for Surrey-White Rock-South Langley. It was a joke. It was no answer at all.

There are 1,300 people in the Vancouver area under deportation order today. It is a disgrace. I have people in my riding who have been convicted of passport forgery, bogus refugee claimant; bogus refugee claimant with drug trafficking; bogus refugee claimant with breaking and entering and sexual assault. I have five criminal

cases in my riding under deportation order and I cannot get rid of them because the minister will not act.

The minister does not listen to the message from B.C. She is quite happy. The province of Quebec gets more money per immigrant than anywhere else in the country. Here we are in B.C. with the biggest problem and getting no attention at all.

In winding up, I do need to make one correction to an earlier statement I made. I did say that B.C. has 98 Indian bands. It is actually 198, so the House can see that the problem is twice as big as I portrayed.