Jim Gouk

[Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, May 3rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it sounds like a case of tweedledum and tweedledumber. The government wants to give the police more power so it can do the job that has been unloaded on it because the government did not give customs the job.

Before we pass legislation with non-accountable powers for Liberal ministers, and most certainly before the government spends over $100 million in unneeded new jets for the Prime Minister, will the government at least provide the tools Canada customs agents need to do the job of protecting our borders? Will the government stop treating them like bank tellers and tax collectors?

[Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, May 3rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the solicitor general recently said that Bill C-55 would help make authorities aware of individuals “like murderers or whatever that could be entering the country and we would be able to arrest them”.

Perhaps he should have talked to the revenue minister who recently compared Canada customs agents to bank tellers, and supports the position that armed and dangerous individuals should not be detained at the border.

Why is the government tabling bills that give it powers that even the federal privacy commissioner says should alarm law-abiding citizens when we are not even providing the tools to Canada Customs to do the job of protecting our border?

[Public Safety Act, 2002, May 3rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I understand that everybody will be so spellbound with what I have to say that the Chair actually wants me to stop partway through, so they can digest it, and then start again after question period.

We are in fact debating the Canadian Alliance amendment to split the bill. As the government is wont to do, it has made this such an omnibus bill covering so many different areas and even different jurisdictions that this is actually a bill that is about one-third transport and two-thirds justice. Yesterday in the justice committee we raised the fact that we are faced with dealing with a bill that actually has more justice items in it than transport items. That is why we suggested that it should be split into two bills, one for the transport portion of it and one for the justice portion of it.

What is even more alarming is the fact that the government wants to fast track the bill. In fact, the Prime Minister has publicly vowed that he will fast track Bill C-55. To hell with debate and to hell with democracy, which is something we have already seen in the House, he wants to fast track the bill and ram it through parliament. Those are his own words.

Instead, we say that if the government thinks there is merit in this and if we think there are a lot of problems, problems that have just been disclosed in part by the last speaker from the NDP, let us look at it, but let us put it into its proper sections and let us take the time that is necessary, not only to debate it in the House but to have good public input.

The very thought that the government would want to fast track a bill that the privacy commissioner himself has stated should alarm law-abiding citizens is a reason for not fast tracking it. However, at times the Prime Minister likes to fast track things. For example, the Prime Minister fast tracked buying over $100 million worth of new jets for himself and his cabinet colleagues to fly around in, despite the fact that the people responsible for the present jets say they are perfectly serviceable. He fast tracked it to the point that he even skipped by his own cabinet and rammed this thing through just before the Easter break.

Let us look at some of the things the Prime Minister perhaps could fast track and has not. He could fast track buying new helicopters for the military. After all, the military is flying 40 year old machines. That is the equivalent of the cabinet driving around Parliament Hill in flathead Fords. We see the government trading their cars in quite regularly. They are not driving flathead Fords. They are not even driving very old models, yet the government expects the military to be flying around in 40 year old helicopters. One of these days one of those helicopters is going to end up at Rockcliffe. When a former serviceman takes his grandchildren out to see one of these things and tells them that he actually flew it, they will not believe him. In fact, one of the ironies is that in some cases we currently have members of the armed forces flying these machines whose own grandfathers may have flown those machines in the Canadian military as well.

As well, the Prime Minster has not fast tracked obtaining proper uniforms for our fighting forces in Afghanistan. The government loves to throw it at us that we are not supporting our troops, that we are not recognizing the incredible job they do. We do. We recognize that our troops are over there in jungle uniforms buying beige paint to splash on their uniforms. With the full approval of their senior officers, our troops are putting beige paint on their uniforms and on some of their weapons in order to camouflage themselves, and it is paint, not even clothes dye, because paint is what they can get. When we see the Canadian forces go into action in Afghanistan we can always tell who they are, even in a multi-country force, because they are the ones in the dark uniforms in the desert.

Also, the government has not fast tracked legislation dealing with child pornography. We still have people such as John Sharpe in British Columbia, who says that he has artistic merit in the pornography that he writes and who is still able to publish books glorifying this type of pornography.

The Prime Minister is also not fast tracking any action on the softwood lumber issue. In fact, the minister responsible for this has gone so far as to say there is no real need for alarm because nobody has really lost a job. It is just an industry readjustment. The government is so far behind in its thinking that it is quite unbelievable.

[Committees of the House, April 17th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Our leader has gone to a tremendous amount of trouble to put together some very pertinent facts and I think it would be nice if there was a minimum quorum of Liberals in the House.

And the count having been taken:

[Species at Risk Act, April 16th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I thank you for recognizing the hon. member for Haliburton--Victoria--Brock because I thought what he had to say was very interesting. Perhaps before I get to what I had intended to say, I could comment on a couple of points, one in particular, that he brought up.

According to him, the government has examined and re-examined the bill, it has made changes, modified and reviewed, and this has been nine years in the making. Let us think of that: nine years. It seems like forever that the Liberals have been sitting across the way and it has not even been nine years. Nine years is a very long time, yet strangely enough, in spite of what the hon. member said about the bill being reviewed, changed and modified over the course of nine long years, it still has so many fundamental errors. I am not talking about little things, little changes that need to be made or semantical changes or possible uncertainties.

There are fundamental things. The first is that the government would take someone's land without compensation. It is absolutely astounding. The hon. member says that it has spent nine years to fix the bill and yet we still have a clause that allows the government to take the land without compensation. Oh, yes, the government says it will probably give some compensation but we do not know what it is. The Pearse report suggests that it might be 50% of the actual value of the loss. I find it a little hard to take when the member says the government has spent nine years getting it right. It has spent nine years and still has it wrong.

Likewise, the government says it does not want to make any changes for dealing with somebody in court who may inadvertently harm an endangered species or its habitat. It says it does not want to change that because that would make it harder to prosecute anybody. The government would rather just go ahead and prosecute but have the judge take that into consideration in sentencing. What an absurdity. An innocent person, a person even the government acknowledges would be innocent, would be subjected to the legal system and would have to hire a lawyer because the government wants to make some special conditions for the person in sentencing. Of course the government has a lot of lawyers in its benches and a lot of lawyer friends, so perhaps that has always been part of its strategy. The person would be a convicted criminal and then the government would say it is okay because the person will get a very light slap on the wrist because the government recognizes that it really was not the individual's fault. It would not be that individual's fault. It would be the government's fault for not getting the bill right.

I would like to talk specifically about Group No. 4 with regard to consultation, which is what I had intended to do before the hon. member on the government side got up. I want to talk specifically about consultation and also about something that ties in with that for the Liberals, which is consistency. Although there are many places where we have to give the Liberals very low marks, we can give them excellent marks for consistency. We are talking about consultation on Bill C-5 or rather the lack of it. There is a consistency in what the Liberals do with regard to this lack of consultation. Probably the most recent example is the very rushed purchase of the Challenger jets. This is an area where there was no consultation with parliament or with the public sector. In fact, they used a sneaky little tactic to make sure they got this without even consulting with cabinet. They found a way to bypass the cabinet. Like I said, it is consistency.

Kyoto is another example of where the government has failed to consult. Mind you, I can understand why it failed to consult in the case of Kyoto. It has nothing to consult about. It has never explained how we are to achieve the objectives laid out in the Kyoto protocol. The government has never explained to anyone how much it will cost to achieve these objectives. It has never explained what the impact will be. Why would it consult? It has nothing to tell the people when it attempts to consult.

Another example is the current Minister of Transport. When he first took his position he actually said, and you could have knocked me over, I can assure members, that he would look at the privatization or commercialization of Via Rail.

Given that minister's penchant for big government, crown corporations and power to the government, it was very out of keeping. We kind of scratched our heads and wondered what was getting at. Sure enough, without any consultation whatsoever, a month or two later he said that they were going to scrap that idea because the private sector was not interested. How did he know that? There was no consultation whatsoever. Again, it is just like in the case of Bill C-5 with the endangered species.

The government has not consulted with these landowners. It has not talked to them to try to deal with the concerns they have raised. They are very consistent in my home province. The bill has quite an impact in my home province.

It was not that long ago this same government said it was going to put through the Nisga'a agreement, which B.C. has now soundly rejected provincially, without any consultation with the people of British Columbia. It was only because it made a huge procedural error in the House, that we ended up forcing at least a limited number of hearings in British Columbia.

It was interesting when we held a hearing in Terrace, British Columbia, in the riding of Skeena. One hon. member from the Liberal side gave an angry response to someone in the audience who was not allowed to speak because it was a very closed meeting. The person in the audience said “If you won't allow me to speak, why did you bother even coming here?”. The hon. member from the Liberal side of the committee in response said that they did not want to be there and that the only reason they were was because the Reform Party had forced them. That is great consistency on the part of the Liberal government.

In this bill the government says it will consult after the bill is passed. It will consult with scientists on what they think should be put on the endangered species list. Of course the Liberals will not let scientists tell them what should be on the list. They will just let them talk about it. If they like what they say, they will do it. If they do not like it they will ignore the scientists. They are not placing anything in the hands of the scientists other than the pretence that there will be a bit of consultation. I guess even the Liberal government is getting a little concerned about the fact that it fails to consult very much with all the different bills it puts forward.

In my province of British Columbia we have a severe problem now. It is hitting other parts of the country as well. However particularly in the rural areas of British Columbia, which is where the impact of Bill C-5 will be, we are experiencing the softwood lumber dispute. Softwood lumber is wreaking absolute havoc on the forest industry in British Columbia. My riding is particularly forestry dependent.

Bill C-5 raises a lot of concerns with those same people in the forest industry. They say that the government may take a lot of their land or that it may restrict the use of these lands and that they may be very restricted on where they can log or the manner in which they can log. There is nothing in the bill about whether or not they will get any compensation for this or even whether they will have any input, say or the ability to challenge the government in the event that it starts restricting their ability to carry out logging activities in B.C.

That is again an example of a lack of consultation by the government. It has not gone to the province, talked with these people, dealt with those issues and explained to them reasonably how it would deal with those situations should they arise.

In the odd place where there has been a little toying with the concept of consultation, I can assure the House that the consultation has not been meaningful. It is interesting that the government does not even appear to consult with its own members on the committee. Those very same committee members have made recommendations which the government has either ignored or put in changes which the government is now proceeding to take out.

I notice that I am running out of time. That is very unfortunate because I can assure the House that I have a lot more to say about this issue.

It is interesting now that the government is saying that it does not even want to review this legislation later. Not only is it failing to consult with people before the bill is passed into law, it is also saying that it will put provisions in to ensure that it will never have to consult with them after the bill is passed.

I can understand why the government might want to get rid of reviews. Where there have been mandatory reviews on other legislation, the government is years behind. Maybe it is because the government feels it cannot get good enough control of its committees and may have to override them.

I appreciate the time I have had. I look forward to continuing this debate. I would hope that at some point the government suddenly wakes up and decides it will fix the bill. Nine years is long enough. The government should be able to get it right.

[An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (Cruelty to Animals and Firearms) and the Firearms Act, April 10th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Could I inquire of the House if it is permissible under parliamentary procedures for a speaker to provide inaccurate and misleading information in the course of making a speech?

[An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, April 8th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on Bill C-15B and also to mention the title of the bill in starting. I want to talk today about judicial activism. Before I go any further, for the edification of the few Liberals who are in the House to listen to this, I point out that this does relate specifically to the bill. They do not have to call me on it because I intend to relate this clearly to the bill before the House.

In the case of judicial activism, there is a lot of talk of this in the public today. A lot of people are very upset with a lot of the decisions that are coming down these days by judges in our courts. As a result, they are calling for an overhaul of the judicial system itself, how we select our judges, the terms, the conditions under which they serve and so on.

An example of the kinds of things that are bothering members of the public under judicial activism is conditional release, a provision provided by the Liberal government in the House. Under conditional release judges may sentence people to serve their sentence entirely in the public without ever having to go to jail. The idea behind this apparently is that if the judges feel there is no risk to society with the person not being incarcerated, then they do not have to sentence them to actual prison time.

The Canadian public was alarmed and shocked when they found that people who were committing very serious violent offences, such as violent rapes, were being sentenced under this provision for conditional sentencing and were ending up not serving any time in jail. The public was outraged, and rightly so. People brought that to us and we in turn brought that to the House. We raised the issue in parliament. The response by the minister of justice at that time, who is now the Minister of Industry, was that it was never his intention that this should apply to violent offenders. Yet to this day that provision has never been changed.

Some time ago I did a study, along with other members of the House, of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. In the process of doing the study, we talked to all kinds of people involved in the corrections and justice system in the country. Some of the people we talked to were judges.

In talking to one particular judge, as an aside he brought up the subject of judicial activism. He said that he was not one to stand before us and say that none of the decisions made by his colleagues, the other judges, were made poorly. However he said that before we started to worry about changing the judges and judicial activism, we first should fix our legislation. He said that we could not keep writing legislation that caused them to be forced to consider anything brought forward by the attorneys for those who they were dealing with if the legislation provided the possibility of that. In the example of conditional sentencing, legislation did not preclude conditional sentencing being given to violent offenders and therefore they had to consider it.

That brings me to Bill C-15B, particularly the provision dealing with the penalties for cruelty to animals.

This places us in an awkward position, as many bills crafted by the Liberal government do, in that we support the motherhood issue of preventing cruelty to animals, and surely everyone in the House does. The question is not on the motherhood statement but rather on the application.

The previous minister of justice so often said that it was not their intention, then she carried on with whatever related to the particular bill of the day that she was involved in.

In this case she informed us that it was not her intention or the intention of the government that this would be applied arbitrarily to those who dealt with animals through farming, ranching and other forms of legitimate practices with animals. Yet the way the bill is crafted, there will certainly be those who will interpret it that way.

Just like in the case of conditional sentencing, where a judge says he or she has no choice but to consider that type of sentence because it does not preclude using that on a violent offender, there will be those who will raise charges against innocent people, who, through natural acts of animal husbandry, have not willfully harmed or been cruel to an animal. There are those who will nonetheless raise these types of prospects and the courts will have to look at them and in some cases convict people whom, according to the minister herself, harm was never intended to through the bill.

Her comment that anything that is legal today will be legal after the bill passes makes little sense given that she attempted to change so many things that are currently in place. If her only intention was to deal with genuine cruelty to animals, which should be dealt with, then all she had to do was raise the fines, the sentences and the penalties for those who are willfully cruel to animals. To do otherwise is to open up yet another Pandora's box. We have seen it with a variety of different judicial acts. We are seeing it even in the endangered species bill, wherein the government acknowledges the onus on the government to show that somebody willfully harmed an endangered species or its habitat but even if people do it accidentally they can still be charged.

The government's own response to that was that the government would rather leave it that way because it would make it easier to prosecute people in general and then consider special circumstances in the sentencing of people who are convicted of doing something without even knowing or being able to know that they were damaging habitat or the species itself. That kind of absurdity suggests that we will be allowing innocent people to be convicted and then say that it is okay because they will only get a tap on the wrist as their penalty. Nonetheless, it will still leave them with a criminal record. In light of September 11 and people with criminal records appearing at the borders, I can see the kinds of arguments they will have with American customs agents when they try to explain that their crimes were not really serious crimes because the government recognizes that they were really innocent and just convicted them because it was more convenient to do so.

That kind of absurdity in the crafting of bills is the same thing we are seeing in this provision in Bill C-15B. It is one of the reasons that the opposition often gets placed in the very awkward position of having to vote against bills that perhaps have good intent but are so poorly written and could so easily be corrected. It is a very frustrating thing in the House.

In the future, when you will still be elected, Madam Speaker, but the government will no longer be the government and you will have to sit in opposition, I am sure you will be thankful that the new government will not write bills in the same reckless and incoherent manner that the government does today.

[Airport Security, March 15th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it has been said that the Liberal government has never met a tax that it did not like. It must be delighted now that it is on the eve of the biggest tax grab of the decade. I am speaking of the $24 airport security tax due to commence in 15 days.

Is it a good tax? No, there is no such thing. Is it a necessary tax? Again the answer is no. It is far in excess of what aviation experts say is necessary. It is far larger than what is being charged by the U.S. who the transport minister said was well behind us in airport security prior to September 11.

There are many initiatives the government can and must take before embarking on another Liberal spending spree. It has no spending plan, no budget, no impact study on small and start up airlines and it has no plan on the implementation of the collection of the tax grab.

The government should delay the new tax grab until studies are done, budgets are prepared and alternatives are developed and implemented. This is the responsible thing to do. To do otherwise is, well, Liberal.

[Petitions, February 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, petitioners from my riding express concern about the exclusion that was made in the case of John Robin Sharpe, dealing with child pornography, particularly the number one self-created expressive materials.

The petitioners feel that this fails to uphold the rights of children to autonomy and dignity as guaranteed in the charter of rights and they therefore request that parliament reinstate section 163.1(4) of the criminal code.

[Species at Risk Act, February 21st, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased that you are here today to hear the remarks being made. I am also pleased to see that 3 or 4 of the 178 Liberals elected to the House are here as well.

I listened with interest to the comments of the hon. member from the NDP. I recognize and congratulate them. They are well known for their environmental concerns. However I would hope that any group backing the bill does not become so blinded by the need to put something through to protect endangered species that they ignore some of the harm that can be done from the bill at the same time.

One of the real challenges an MP faces in general terms with legislation is voting and how to really with good conscience decide exactly how he or she will vote on a particular issue.

I wrote an article that went out in my householder recently which talked about the concept of voting on omnibus bills and what to do when facing a bill that maybe had some good things and bad things. Does one vote for the good things and ignore the bad things? Does one vote against the bill because of the bad things and ignore the good things? It is a very perplexing and challenging thing for a member of parliament. Perhaps in itself it is one of the hardest things with which MPs have to deal.

It is particularly frustrating when we have a bill like this, which was good at the outset and which the Canadian Alliance very strongly supported. Who in their right mind would not support the concept of wanting to protect species that are endangered in the country and in the world?

The problem is we have a bill that suggests it will deal with these very things but at the same time it has harmful things in it which are not necessary for the protection of endangered species.

For example, yesterday we talked in terms of compensation. Whether we compensate or do not compensate people has nothing to do with the protection of endangered species. Whether an individual is compensated or not will not alter the aspects that we look at in terms of protecting an endangered species. It becomes a question of right. We are putting through a bill that addresses endangered species, but we are not doing the right thing by addressing the right of a person to compensation for loss of their personal property or the use of that property.

Today, we are looking today at a question of responsibility. It becomes slightly greyer I suppose in one sense. It is not quite as black and white as yesterday in terms of compensation. The bill has a provision which can be interpreted and utilized to penalize people for damaging the habitat or even directly the species themselves at danger without even having known they did it until after the fact.

The hon. member from the NDP said we had to have that because it made it too hard to prosecute people if we had to prove they meant to do it and that there could be consideration in sentencing. Consideration in sentencing means that they would be found guilty of a criminal act. Even instead of the $250,000 fine, they were given a token fine of $1,000, $500 or even a dollar, they would still be criminals and have a criminal record. That is just not acceptable when people do something in all innocence and have no way of knowing they have broken the law, rule or regulation.

How can a farmer ploughing his fields search behind every corn stalk, sheaf of wheat, down every drill hole or every possible place? Plus, they would have to know ever single organism that is in the endangered species act, how to identify them perchance they find some evidence of it on their property so they could take some action to protect that endangered species, whatever it might be. That is absolutely impossible.

The government said it is clearly not its intention to attack people who innocently do something and that that would be taken into consideration.

I remember back some years ago when the now industry minister was the justice minister. He came in with a bill called conditional sentencing. Conditional sentencing was supposed to give judges the discretion that if someone was convicted of any crime and the court felt that there was no need for public safety to put that individual in jail that person could be released on a conditional sentence and serve no time in jail.

Much to the horror and shock to the public and certainly to us in the House on the opposition side, we found that violent offenders and rapists were being given conditional sentences by the courts. When we brought that concern to the House and faced the minister, the minister's direct response was that it was never their intention that it be applied that way.

Whenever the possibility exists, intention means absolutely nothing. The government must write it in a way that cannot be misinterpreted. Its intention must be absolutely crystal clear when it writes the bill. There cannot be any false interpretation that either harms innocent people or turns guilty people free as happened in the case of conditional sentencing.

In terms of intention, this provision of the bill questions the integrity of farmers and ranchers. It shows a suspicious nature on the part of government. It suggests in some cases that the government does not trust their good judgment and integrity. How would the government have come to that type of attitude, that it would feel that cynical about the integrity on the part of farmers and ranchers in relation to the bill?

I guess the best way to illustrate this is a story I heard some time ago about an individual on the west coast of Canada who went sailing one day. It was not a particularly good day for sailing but he went anyway and found himself in some serious trouble. This individual probably would have died at sea were it not for the sharp eye and the swift action of a lighthouse keeper on the rugged west coast. As a result of that action the individual was saved.

Naturally this person was very grateful for what happened and actually went to the trouble of hiking into many of the light stations on the west coast, bringing with him a little gift, a bottle of wine and some other things, as a token of thanks to the people who manned these lighthouses and who had saved this person's life.

Sometime later this individual ran for parliament, managed to get elected and found himself on the government benches. He went through some different positions and was elevated to be a cabinet minister. He found himself as the minister of transport ironically at the very time the government decided to start shutting these lighthouses down. This individual had said to the lighthouse keepers “I am in your debt and if ever there is anything that I can do for you, you can count on me”. Here was the minister of transport in charge of shutting these lighthouses down.

The west coast of Canada is very rugged and a lot of pilots, float operations and so on in a fog infested coast rely on these lighthouse keepers as do people at sea, as obviously this minister had relied on as well.

Is it not ironic that the government appears to have this suspicion of farmers and ranchers that it has to question their integrity to the extent that it has put in the bill the ability to prosecute them for damaging habitat that no one even knows existed and has found out after the fact? Perhaps now at least we have some explanation. Integrity I guess is in the eye of the beholder.

Anyone who can profess that kind of gratitude, make that kind of commitment only to be the very person in a position of power who chooses to shut those lighthouse keepers down, I think suggests what the farmers and ranchers who may innocently destroy habitat or endangered species can expect from the government, intentions notwithstanding.