Jim Gouk

[Apec Inquiry, November 20th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, what we have in this House is a double standard. We now find out that last year the solicitor general gave specific orders to the RCMP not to discuss the APEC inquiry.

Does the Prime Minister now support cabinet ministers breaking their own rules?

[Canada Small Business Financing Act, November 17th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I have a couple of points I would like to raise under Group No. 2. One deals with some of the comments made by the hon. member from the Bloc who just spoke. The other deals with comments made by the government side.

Starting with the comments on the government side, members said they held their committee hearings, listened to people across the country and got a particular input from those people. But then later they said there were supplemental letters to the committee. I am not aware of these. I have seen what was presented at committee and I have not gone beyond that. In that committee many groups, including the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, specifically said they thought the ceiling on this was too high.

I go back to a time when I was on the transport committee. There was one particular blatant piece of legislation that I recall, the Canadian Transportation Act. On that we had a tremendous number of interveners from across this country, from one end to the other. A huge majority of them, in the 90% range, were opposed to clause 27. They were clearly against it and they went on at great length to explain why they were opposed to it. I made an amendment at committee to delete that clause which was so objectionable to so many people.

I found it incredibly interesting that not one of the government members supported that amendment to delete that clause of the bill.

When the hon. member from the government said that the Canadian Federation of Independent Business amended its position after consultation with its membership, I do not know if he misspoke but he gave a figure that less than a majority was in favour of a higher ceiling.

It is most curious that he used a figure of less than 50% because it automatically implies that more than 50% still wanted that lower ceiling.

The member from the Bloc made reference to how the Reform Party says the answer to this is lower taxes and lower salaries. She is half right, which is probably not bad on an average day. We certainly think there should be less tax. No one has suggested that people should get paid less as the answer to businesses making more profit. We would like to see people making more profit and able to buy more things which means they should have more disposable income.

We have for a long time been very clear about disposable income and the ability of a Canadian business to compete and to sell its products cheaper by all means, but not by cutting profits. Most cannot cut their profit as most of it has already been taken away.

I refer to the speech I made earlier today. I hope the hon. members listening were privy to that. I used an example of my being in small business just prior to being elected. I was in the construction business and the results of the increase of the CPP tax alone accounted for two of the eight houses I built each year; 25% of my gross profits, not for all payroll taxes, not even for all the cost of the CPP. This was just for the amount that this government was increasing it by, 25% of my gross profit, $12,000 a year.

I carry a dandy little device, a financial analyst calculator. While I was listening to the hon. member speak I pulled my calculator out of my briefcase and quickly calculated the $1,000 a month, which is what the government would have taken out of my pocket were I still operating my small business just for the increase in the CPP alone. I calculated the amount at 9% interest which is pretty nominal for a small business trying to get a loan these days. I amortized it over a 10 year period, compounded semi-annually, which is the normal banking practice. It would have required a loan of $80,000.

What we are saying is that the problem with this whole bill with its $250,000 limits, government guarantees and high ratios which we will get into in part three of this debate, is that it suggests we have to give more money and back up more. What we have to do is stop taking money away. I do not care if we are talking in terms of intent, in terms of how high a ceiling we should put on this or what ratio we should guarantee. The best way to help businesses is to stop taking their money. We should not be creating legislation that makes it easier for them to borrow money to give to the government.

As a small business operator, if I had to maintain my gross revenue income flow to pre-CPP tax increase levels I would have to go to the bank and borrow $12,000 a year. Over the course of 10 years I could take and amortize with interest a loan of $80,000. That is $120,000 with interest payments added up that my business would have to put out in order to come up with the money the government would take out of my pocket for the CPP increase alone.

The problem in this bill is not whether the whole ceiling should be lowered. It is the government's approach to the idea of what small business needs. It somehow thinks that it is all right to fix the whole problem in our economy by making it easier for business to borrow money.

We will repeat in each section of this bill that the true way to solve the problem for small business is to leave the money in that business.

I remember back in the late 1970s the banking industry decided this was a pretty vibrant economy and it could make tons of money by just getting businesses and individuals to borrow more. Contrary to what we have now where we have to go on bended knee and beg the banks to loan us money, in the late 1970s they were begging people to take it. Because it was so easy and they made it sound so great, people borrowed more and more.

They wanted to borrow $50,000 to buy a used machine they saw. They felt they should be able to borrow $125,000 and buy a new one. This was no problem. They would write a cheque right then.

That is what this government is leading people toward. The government has increased the cost to operate business then makes it easier for these businesses to borrow money. We get into a vicious cycle.

This government and Liberal governments in the past, all governments past, the old style politics of Canada operated by the two principal parties that have occupied this House, have often in many parts of Canada created a dependency on government. They have created that for businesses and individuals and they have created it for entire regions of this country. They created dependency for a race of people, a culture of people, through the Indian and northern affairs legislation and acts of that branch as well.

Now this government is trying to do it once again. This government is trying to get businesses on hook to the generosity, in its view, of the Liberal government through a loans program.

There is something wrong when the government thinks that the first thing it has to do is tax away everyone's money then turn around and loan some back. It will arrange to have some of it loaned back. The government will guarantee it. That is mighty generous of the government considering what it is really guaranteeing is individuals' own money. The government took the money from them in the first place. The amount the government stands to lose can be paid out of the CPP increase alone.

I think we should be lowering those limits. The majority of people who borrow money, the majority of businesses that borrow money, traditionally borrow on average far less than what we would like to see that ceiling reduced to, partly in response to many of the groups that spoke in committee. We think that is good.

The real way to solve the problem, which the government will hear a lot and I hope it sinks in, is that it will have to recognize that borrowing money to overcome oppressive taxes is not the answer to getting the economy going in this country again.

The government should deal with all businesses by ensuring that they get to keep some of that money in their pocket. Businesses earned it. It belongs to them. The government has not earned it. Unlike the thinking of the finance minister the money does not belong to the government.

[Canada Small Business Financing Act, November 17th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the member's comments are indeed appreciated. It is very gratifying to see that no matter which side of the House we are on we recognize the attributes of others.

Concerning the opening statement made by the Leader of the Opposition when we first came to Ottawa, I too said “I am not here to oppose for the sake of opposition. If they come with good legislation I will support it. If it is not as good as it could be I will try to offer constructive alternatives”. That is what we are here to do.

I would also like to address the comments made by the hon. member for Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys, comments which must seem at first to anyone viewing this debate as a paradox. Here we have on the one side members of the Reform Party, people who are clearly on the side, amongst others, of small business, the engines of the economy of our great country, and on the other side we have a representative of the socialist workers' paradise party speaking out on behalf of business.

We would be hard-pressed to understand where he was coming from if we did not realize that he holds the only socialist seat in the interior of British Columbia. Every other seat in the interior of British Columbia, a vast province, is held by the Reform Party. He is the last holdout so, naturally, he has to align himself with those who would support Reform in his own riding because his strongest and best competition is going to come from the Reform Party.

I certainly want to address the comments made by the hon. member for Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys, as well as the comments made by the hon. member for Broadview—Greenwood as to why we think, although we strongly support small business in particular, there is a problem with this bill and the whole approach that was taken to it.

Do we support small businesses having better access to money? Of course we do. We just question whether they should have access to their own money that is being taxed away from them in a variety of different ways or whether they should have to go to the bank to borrow money to pay the taxes that the Liberal government has imposed upon them.

I would like to give one specific example. I have done it before in a different context, but I would like to do it today for the edification of these members and others who might be listening to this debate.

Before I was elected to parliament I was a small business operator. When the CPP tax adjustment, the most incredible tax grab this country has ever seen, was brought in, I tried to make a comparison. How would that have impacted on me had I still been in business? I was, I think, a fairly typical small business operator.

I operated a small residential construction company. I had some people who worked for me full time. I had some people who worked for me part time, on an as need basis, as the various components of the house construction came due. I sat down and analyzed it and I decided that, realistically, I had approximately 10 full time equivalents between my full time people and the number of hours that were put in by the various part time people. Ten full time jobs. The Canadian pension plan tax increase works out to about $600 a year per worker. As the employer I have to pay my side of that, which is $600 for me. That is $6,000.

I used to build about 10 houses a year. My profit for house building was about $6,000 a house. If I built 10 houses, my profit was $60,000. Of course, I had expenses. This tax adjustment increased my costs by $6,000. It represented my profit on one of those houses. Actually, it was not even 10 houses. I built eight houses a year. It has been so long since I have told this story about the CPP tax adjustment that my business has grown, although I have not been there. It was eight houses a year. One of my eight houses I would have to build for the Liberal government. It was profit out of my pocket.

Then came the workers' side. I know my workers very well and I know that under these circumstances, had they still been working for me, they would have come to me and said “Listen, we know that the economy is not right, that you cannot give us a big raise, that you are not raising your prices to customers because, if you do, we simply will not be selling houses and we will not be working. But we cannot afford another cut in pay. So we need enough of a pay raise to cover the $600 increase in this payroll tax”.

If I did that, which I certainly would try to do for those workers, it would mean $600 per worker, multiplied by 10, which would equal $6,000. That is my second house. That is 25% of my gross profit just to pay the increase in one payroll tax. It is not even to pay the whole payroll tax, the entire CPP, it is just to pay the increase. It would cost me 25% of my gross income.

Why do we oppose this bill? Because this bill, instead of addressing those very serious problems, says to small business “Yes, we have overtaxed you on your employment insurance premiums. We are hiking Canada pension plan premiums. We are doing all kinds of other things, but we are going to save the day. We are going to come up with legislation that will make it easier for you to borrow money to pay us”. That is why we oppose this provision of the bill and in fact the whole approach the government has taken to the bill.

Should it be easier for small businesses to get access to funds they need? Yes, it should be. Any bill that does that in a realistic manner should be seriously looked at and considered. But we have to approach it with the concept of why they are borrowing the money in the first place.

If I have lost, as one small businessman, 25% of my gross income because of the increase in a single payroll tax hike, then we have a different problem. The solution to that problem is not to make it easier for me to borrow money to pay my taxes.

I hope the hon. member will consider it from that point of view. It is said to him and to all other people in the House and beyond in the most sincere manner. We have a problem in this country. Small business has a problem. Helping them to get further into debt to deal with this problem is not the way to solve it.

I hope that he will work with us in a very non-partisan way to deal seriously with the real problems that small business has and to find a realistic way out of it.

As he knows by the debt crisis the country faced and is starting to find ways out of, the way to solve our problem as a nation and as a government in whole is not to foist it on someone else, it is so that we can all do better together.

I know the hon. member is grateful for the information he has just received. I know the member has other points of view that will counter. We can go off on tangents all over the place and say this does not agree with that. We need a starting point. Today we are debating government's helping access for small business to borrow money. That is the point of view we have to start from. That is the point of view we have to stay on today. I hope all Liberals will reconsider their position in light of the facts that have just come out.

[Canada Small Business Financing Act, November 17th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to stand this morning to debate report stage of Bill C-53. I certainly had some things to say about this bill, but I now have much more since hearing the last couple of speakers.

I would like to start by addressing a comment made by the hon. member for Broadview—Greenwood that Reform supports bank mergers. The reason we have trouble having meaningful debate in this House is because hon. members across the way and sometimes down the way like to take the smallest grain of truth and twist it, distort it and re-organize it until it says something completely different than what it was clearly intended to say.

I will give them the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps instead of deliberately misrepresenting it they are just sort of buried under by the bull that comes from their own side and consequently they make an honest mistake.

The hon. member put out a blanket statement that Reform supports bank mergers. What he forgets is that there was a long, long caveat involved. We said that if the banks opened themselves to more competition and showed that there would be benefits for small business and other people, then we were prepared to look at it.

How he got from that position to the blanket statement that we support bank mergers defies imagination.

[First Nations Land Management Act, November 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member is well aware, we have the Nisga'a treaty going on in my province of British Columbia right now. The provincial government is sending out its version of the facts and has been going into a lot of the schools. I have been doing the same thing, except my version of the facts seems to be different for some strange reason.

When I go into the schools I like to draw analogies so that students have something specific to relate to. Students study history and one of the things they study is the old feudal system where the lord and a group of lords own the land, the resources and the revenue that comes in. They allow the serfs to build on the lands, to occupy the lands and to harvest the lands, but they control the revenue produced as a result of this.

Our concern is that each aboriginal individual should have the right to determine their own destiny. Instead, they are being locked into an old-fashioned feudal system we grew out of centuries ago. They are being locked into it by the style of negotiations taking place. There is no other explanation for what is happening. That is the situation in these settlements as they take place. Individuals do not have property rights. They do not get their share of the financial resources transferred to them when these agreements are made.

Does the hon. member think this is a good system or does she think that it would be more appropriate for individual aboriginal people to be allowed their land and their financial settlements so they can determine their own destinies?

[Criminal Code, November 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for raising these points. Certainly there is a great deal that should be said about many of these things and I welcome the opportunity to expand a bit on what I previously said.

The overtime situation, or lack thereof, for the RCMP is very important and very critical for two reasons. First, it is what the RCMP relies on to get coverage. As he pointed out, they receive one hour of overtime pay, but they in essence are on call for an eight hour period. Even now that this has been taken away from them many members of the RCMP, out of a sense of duty and obligation to the people in their area whose safety they are responsible for, still put in a tremendous amount of extra time for which they are not paid.

I think it is absolutely shameful. The government wastes phenomenal amounts of money. Members of the RCMP are not very highly paid, in part because of freezes not only in their pay, but even in the increments they get in terms of rewarding them for their growing experience, expertise and commitment to the job, and they have demonstrated that commitment. The government has said “No, you cannot be compensated for that”. Now it is saying “In order to do your job, if you have a sense of obligation, you are still going to have to go out on your own time”. But the government will not pay them to stand by.

Further to that, this country right now according to Statistics Canada, has the lowest per capita law enforcement officer population that it has had in 26 years. Never since 1972 have we had such a low number of law enforcement officers per capita.

How does this Liberal government respond to this shortage, a shortage which necessitates these officers covering an eight hour availability shift for one hour's pay? And now that one hour's pay is being taken away from them and they are covering for nothing. How does the government respond to that? It closes down the training centre in Regina.

We have the lowest per capita coverage of law enforcement officers in 26 years, and this Liberal government responds to it by closing down the training centre and getting rid of the trainees. No new people are coming on. The government says it is a temporary measure. It is not a temporary measure and anybody who says it is a temporary measure is either a hypocrite or they think that everybody else in Canada are fools. The time has come to put the training expertise back together, to redevelop and update the course curriculum, to recruit, to qualify these people and to schedule.

I went through this in the air traffic control system. The government was running it at the time. In its wisdom the government decided to cut back on air traffic controllers because it thought there were too many. The government arbitrarily, without doing proper studies, shut down the training system. It got rid of the instructors and shelved the training so that there would be no more updates. What happened? The government said “Gosh, we made a mistake. We need more controllers, not fewer”. There was an incredible lag, a 10-year lag, in trying to get back up the steam to bring people in, to train them, to give them the qualifications.

And now this government is making the same asinine mistake that was made by the government of the day when it cut back on the air traffic control system.

We have a problem in this country. When the government says it is temporary, if we were to use semantics, there is a measure of truth to it. The trouble that we have today is temporary. It is not going to stay like it is. It is going to get worse because this government has no plan for real crime prevention. It has no plan for making our homes and streets safer.

This government is bringing in a bill forcing law-abiding citizens to meet new expensive regulations at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. It is cutting back on the RCMP in my province by an amount of $8.5 million, a pittance against the amount it is wasting on the useless firearm's registration.

We have to wonder. I do not think for a moment that the government has any dark and sinister reasons for doing this. I cannot help but wonder why it brings in legislation that allows the criminals to walk through loopholes while it cuts back on the police, the people who catch those same criminals. The government should be ashamed.

[Criminal Code, November 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-51 that has some merit.

It is interesting that there are sections in the bill which the government has addressed that should have been addressed many years ago. I do not raise this point simply to bring out the fact that the changes the government finally got around to doing are overdue. There is another point.

A number of amendments were raised at committee. Some of them were presented by the Reform Party of Canada. They were clearly thought out. We had discussed them not only among our own colleagues and law enforcement people but among other members of parliament from other parties. These amendments were not controversial and should have found very wide support.

Let me discuss a couple of the amendments we wanted to bring forth. The legislation dealt with such things as people who live off the avails of prostitution, specifically of minors or children. It includes maximum penalties. It is an approach that says we need to get a little tougher on certain types of offenders in society.

We in the Reform Party support that kind of approach. We thought perhaps the government had overlooked that it was all well and good to have a maximum sentence and say that under circumstances the judge can sentence the person up to a certain amount of time, but what about a minimum sentence?

We see far too often in our courts and in society people walking away scot-free from offences that offend the sensibilities of Canadian citizens. It is a shame that this happens.

This was our opportunity to do something about it. The government in its wisdom saw fit to include maximum sentences. We go along with that. We support them. There should be some capping based on the severity of this crime.

We should also put in more parameters for judges. Many people in my riding, and I suspect in the ridings of Liberals, Conservatives, NDP, Bloc and my colleagues, complain that judges seem to have far too much leeway in what they do.

The range of sentencing is astronomical. In many cases this causes defence lawyers to go shopping for judges. They know that certain judges are soft on certain types of crime and if they could get their client before a certain judge, even if the client is found guilty, the penalty would not be very severe and in many cases they would walk away. We have heard some horrendous cases of people walking away completely scot-free from very serious crime.

We wanted to bring in a minimum sentence for people who live off prostitution of a minor. We have sentences for dealing with those living off the avails of prostitution but this is a special section. It is much more serious. For adults who chose to enter a life of prostitution we can pass all kinds of judgments or we can ignore those judgments. However, it is pretty serious when someone lives off the avails of prostitution of a child.

It is all well and good to have a maximum sentence but we have no minimum. We wanted to bring in an amendment that would provide the minimum of a one year sentence for someone living off the avails of child prostitution.

We have talked to many people including Liberals across the way and people involved in the legislation. They agreed that it made a great deal of sense. However, what happened when we brought the amendment before the committee and said we thought it was something that would make the bill better?

We would like to support government legislation. We are not here to oppose for the sake of opposing. We are here to point out any shortcomings, where perhaps the government has erred and not done as complete a job as it should have done.

The general response from the Liberal members of the committee just before they defeated the amendment was that it was under study. There are provisions in the bill that have been outdated decades ago. The Liberals have had more than ample opportunity to fix these things and have not done so. Why are they taking something as straightforward and basic and saying they have to study it more and cannot possibly pass it at this time, even though they have already spent all this time on it?

The message the Liberal government is sending out to people in society who live off the income from prostitution of a child is that they still have no minimum sentence. They can walk away scot-free if they find a lenient judge, and we know they are out there.

We had another amendment to bring in. Another clause of the bill deals with drugs, various crimes and sentencing provisions for people living off income from selling illicit drugs on the streets. We know the kind of problems that creates.

The conditional release program allows prisoners to get out after serving only a small part of their sentence, one-sixth. A tremendous number of Canadians watch parliament, look at the laws we create and bring into the House. They wonder what on earth we have in mind when we say that a certain criminal act results in so many years in jail but if the prisoner is good he will be let out after serving only one-sixth of the sentence.

When someone is sentenced to six years, the victims of the particular crime might say that is okay or that he or she should have had a longer sentence. We have to be careful now that we include women. They like equality, so we want to make sure that when we talk of crime that we include everyone.

It is fine for six years, but now we are saying that they could be out in 12 months. There is a caveat that says that certain people will not be eligible. People who commit violent offences will not be eligible and will have to serve a whopping third of their sentence before they are considered for release.

We think that in itself needs to be addressed. Personally I do not think that anyone who commits a violent offence against someone else should be allowed out early at all. They are sentenced for a number of years and they should serve those years. That debate will go on at another time when we talk of serious offences like murder because Liberal legislation or the lack thereof allows convicted murderers and rapists, the Clifford Olsons and the Paul Bernardos of the country, after being sentenced to life in prison to put their victims through the trauma of a hearing after 15 years. We went through that before and because the government failed to act we will have to go through it again.

There is another type of crime that by definition does not come under the violent offender category which we believe should be considered in this legislation. I am referring to the people involved in the trafficking of drugs and the importation of illicit drugs into the country and the pain, suffering and expense to our justice system and our health care system. People involved in importation and/or trafficking of illicit drugs should be included in the exclusion from the early release program after serving one-sixth of their sentence.

This is strongly supported by people who work in the criminal justice system and by the police officers who are the ones on the frontline dealing with these people and all the problems they create. It is absolutely shocking that anyone would consider someone who is trafficking in narcotics and is causing problems in society should be released after serving only one-sixth of their sentence.

What was the response of government members in this regard? They said there was some merit in what we were saying but that they had to study it. That is how we got into the mess in terms of half the things that are already in the bill. They said they had to study, to wait, to consider every ramification and to consider whether they would get any political brownie points. If they bring it in at all, if they bring it in now or if they bring it in later, will it cause them any problems with voters or some special interest group?

I would like to know what special interest group government members are afraid of in bringing in a sentence that cracks down on the traffickers and importers of illicit drugs, or even for that matter those who live off the avails of child prostitution. I would like to know what they are afraid, what they feel is the downside of bringing in something like that.

In many areas the government claims it is doing the right thing, but when they are held up to the cold light of day they just do not make a lot of sense.

In various parts of the country, and in particular in my province of British Columbia, there is a criminal justice crisis right now. The government states that it wants to make homes and streets safer. I would like to know, especially arising out of the problems with the bill, why the government has cut back on funding for the RCMP.

My province has a huge coastline. The RCMP has tied up all its coastal patrol boats at the dock. The bill talks about drugs, trafficking and the importing of drugs, yet the RCMP has had to tie up all its patrol boats.

British Columbia is a big province as is the province of Ontario. British Columbia is a very big, rugged province. It is necessary for the RCMP to spend a lot of time patrolling, travelling and conducting surveillance from the air, but it has grounded its airplanes, except of course for the commissioner who can fly out for a party. That is the exception that is allowed. Of course he is not really, in my opinion, part of the RCMP. He is part of the government. He is no longer the top cop of this country, he is the top bureaucrat associated with the RCMP.

In my riding the government has made major cutbacks in funding for patrols for these various small communities. In one small community there was a break-in at one of their public buildings, which was then vandalized. It occurred and they reported it on Monday. The RCMP got to it on Thursday. That is not acceptable.

We have another small town which has a breathalyser so they can apprehend people who would put other people in danger by drinking and driving. The breathalyser is not functioning properly and there is no funding in the budget to fix it.

This is the result of $8.5 million worth of cutbacks to the RCMP in my province of British Columbia. This same government has brought in, is enforcing and is now trying to implement Bill C-68, which is the legislation to force law-abiding citizens to register their hunting rifles and their sporting shotguns used for trapping and skeeting and maybe some bird hunting. The government said when it brought the legislation in that it was going to cost $89 million to implement. It is up now to approximately $200 million by the time it will be fully implemented and that is assuming it does not have to do what the Canadian Police Association says it will have to do, which is to upgrade the national computer system at a cost of anything up to another $200 million.

The justice department has said it is going to cost $50 million or $60 million a year to maintain it once they get it running, if in fact they do. It will cost $60 million a year so that I and other people who are shooting enthusiasts can trap and skeet. Does that make a lot of sense, particularly in the light of the problem we have in British Columbia where $8.5 million would truly bring justice and prevent crimes in our province, as well as in other parts of the country?

The government says that it needs time to study whether or not there should be a minimum sentence for someone who lives off a child prostitute. When I hear this and look at all the other things this government has done, I have a hard time believing that the government is serious with respect to getting tough on crime.

What is getting tough on crime? Is it forcing the law-abiding citizens of this country to registry a shotgun or a hunting rifle? Or is it taking a small portion of that money and funding the RCMP so it can properly patrol the communities of this country and catch the traffickers and the importers of drugs that are referred to in this bill? These are the same importers and traffickers for which this government, for some reason, is reluctant to take away the right of early release after serving only one-sixth of their sentence.

I am not suggesting or implying anything, but I think there are going to be people in the country who are wondering why a Liberal government would be so reluctant to bring in a condition that says traffickers and importers of drugs cannot be a part of this early release program after serving only one-sixth of their sentence. They are looking at this and saying that this is the same government which, in spite of the fact it is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a useless firearms registration program, is cutting back $8.5 million in the RCMP in British Columbia. The impact will be that they will be stopped from patrolling their coastline where a lot of the drugs come in. They will be stopped from flying their aircraft over our province to find people hiding out in different areas, and to do certain types of surveillance including border surveillance. We have a long common border with the United States. Drugs certainly come in from that area as well. They are also smuggled into our country through other ways and then channelled into the United States.

When this government says that it is tough on crime, I would like to know what kind of crime it is. It is not prostitution. It certainly is not people who would live off the avails of child prostitution. The government had an opportunity to make a small change that would have sent that message a lot better in this legislation, but it did not do it.

It is not drug traffickers and importers of drugs because not only has the government refused to add them into that section of people exempted from this early release after serving one-sixth of their sentence, it has cut back on the RCMP where one of the biggest impacts will be on the fight against organized crime and, in particular, people who smuggle things into our country, the number one concern being illicit drugs.

I am a member of this parliament. It is very awkward sometimes when people ask me who I am, what I do and where I am from. What can I say? I am a member of parliament. What is a member of parliament? Do I belong to the government? No, I am not a member of the government. They are the government. I do not want to be tied that way. I am a member of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, which is sometimes a little difficult to explain. Am I a government representative? No, I am not. I am not even a Reform Party representative. I am a representative of the constituents of my riding. The Reform Party is the vehicle I use.

Those constituents need representation in this House is because this government does things that are purely against their interests. It does it in terms of its cutbacks to the RCMP. This asinine firearms registration that the government says is getting tough on crime has nothing to do with crime.

My constituents need representation because there are changes that should have been made in Bill C-51 which have not been made.

I would like to mention a witness who was brought before the committee immediately preceding the clause by clause examination of the bill to bring it back to this House. The witness was a representative of the Canadian Police Association, the organization that represents the frontline police officers of this country who certainly have a strong interest in this bill.

This association brought in a couple of recommendations for changes to this bill which were ignored out of hand. They were ignored for what seems on the surface a plausible reason, because there was not sufficient time to study and consider the recommendations. I thought they were very appropriate recommendations.

What is interesting is the scheduling. If that is how the government is going to react to recommendations from the Canadian Police Association, then why did that committee, controlled by the government, choose to have those people appear in the 30 minutes immediately preceding the time it was moving to consideration of this bill and amendments thereto?

I do not think I can take this Liberal government seriously when it says it is getting tough on crime. I do not think Canadians can take this government seriously.

I hope that all Canadians will take note of what could have been in this bill versus what is in it and make sure that when they talk to their member of parliament, be it Liberal or otherwise, they make it clear that they want this government to get tough on crime in a serious way, not in a phony or a two-faced sort of way.

[Nunavut Act, October 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, there is something that gives me great concern. Perhaps the hon. member, being from the territory, might have the answer because there are more horrors coming out of this bill every time I take a quick look at it.

Right now in any province if a person commits a relatively minor offence they are convicted and if they appeal the decision it will go to the provincial appeals court. In the Northwest Territories right now it is appealed to the provincial appeals court of Alberta. However, under this proposed legislation persons will be convicted by a federal court judge.

I would like to know what the appeal process is for that. Because a person has been convicted by a federal court judge, will that person be required to appeal it to the Supreme Court of Canada? If that is so, the cost would be horrendous and I would suggest that the Supreme Court of Canada would refuse to hear appeals on dog-napping and relatively minor offences, as well it should. But that means that the people of Nunavut will lose their right of appeal. They are not going to have the same access to justice as someone from the Northwest Territories, from Yukon or from the provinces of Canada.

[Special Import Measures Act, September 25th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, each of us deals with the problems that affect our own ridings. Of course we all work in concert with one another in a co-operative method not only within our own caucus but with those from other parties as well. If there are problems for Canadians, I do not really care if they are represented by Reform, by Liberals or by whomever. I do think we need to talk and work that out.

In terms of tough action, yes, we do need to take tough action but not knee-jerk tough action. The tough action we need to take needs to be planned out. It needs to be done in such a way that it leads to the kind of outcome we are looking for.

Tough action is necessary for that but not just fast reaction to an individual instant. If we look at the overall problems we have with trade in and out of our country, if we sit down and plan where we are going and then determine how we will get there, we will have better trade relations across the border. I think things will certainly be much fairer for Canadian manufacturers and also for Canadian consumers.

[Special Import Measures Act, September 25th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, indeed as my colleague implied in asking his question, there are serious implications in the lack of long term planning and long term vision in this particular bill. As has been addressed on a number of occasions today during the debate, there is not proper consideration for the impact. We look at the short term closely in impact on this but we do not look at the long term in terms of how it is going to affect other manufacturers, employers and producers in this country, how it is going to affect and impact on the consumer in this country.

Again, I cannot help but draw the comparison between this and the softwood lumber quota system. When we talk in terms of a long term plan, I have spent a lot of time on this and in my opinion there was not even a short term plan in terms of the softwood lumber quota. When it came in it was as if the Americans said “Here is your overall quota. Here is your total quota that we will allow to come into the United States under no fee, then under the low fee base and then under the upper fee base”. They did not have the slightest idea as to how they were going to implement that, how they were going to monitor and track it, how they were going to assign it out. It was something that they made up as they went along.

This particular bill is not quite that bad. I think we can fix some of the things in it but the problem is we have to fix them before we pass the bill. We cannot keep making things up as we go along, trying to determine whether or not we have done enough, or gee, we have problem, so let us put another little fix in here.

Once the legislation is passed it becomes much more difficult and onerous to try to impact further changes down the road. The government should go nice and slow, make sure that it makes the amendments that make sense according to what it has been hearing, make sure that it has considered the things that we have said. Also I would ask that the government take a very serious look at the balance I mentioned, the need to make sure that not only do we have our import house in order but also to make sure that exports are dealt with so that we have balance between what we take in and what we export out and the rules which both sides are going to play by.