Jim Gouk

[Division No. 134, May 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, last week there was a supply day vote on this subject which—

[Bosnia, April 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I was trying to examine, as I was sitting here listening to the last speaker, why exactly I am here tonight. I was at home. I was ready for bed. I have had several late nights. I am one of those MPs who has to travel from the west so it does get very tiring when one goes back and forth on a continued basis.

I think I am here to speak in part out of guilt and the guilt has nothing to do with the military. The guilt links to something else that occurred tonight. Yet it all ties together into why we are having this debate right now.

My guilt is because tonight we had a vote on a different matter. We had a vote on compensation for people who have had a tragedy enter their lives. We lost that vote and they lost. I left from here and I went to a reception. I had a drink. I had some good food. Then I went home. As I was sitting there getting ready to go to bed I started thinking how unfair life was. Here I am. I had my reception. I had my good dinner. Life goes on, but for those people their lives do not go on. They have suffered a tragedy and they got no help from parliament tonight.

I was about to turn off the TV but I changed a couple of channels and happened to fall on CPAC to see a bit of this debate. I thought how ironic it was for us to debate such an issue tonight after the vote that took place. I started thinking why we were talking about Bosnia.

Is that what we are really doing? The decision is already made. It is not like the government is coming in here and saying this is what it is thinking of doing and asking whether it should. The government made that decision, so why are we here?

The decision to have the debate on Bosnia, this take note speech or whatever it is called, is a simple diversion because of Liberal embarrassment about the vote we had in this place tonight. This is an opportunity for them to stand after having done that and say “Aren't we good? Can't we be proud? Can't we reflect the pride of our military, of our peacekeepers back on us by the great thing we have done of simply authorizing them to be there?” The answer is no, they cannot do that. I could not go to bed and allow them to do that.

We heard the justice minister talk in the House about why there was no compensation for people who contracted hepatitis C prior to 1986. He said there was no way that government should be compensating people, that it had no obligation to pay for people who had a problem that was not the result of government negligence.

Bosnia is not the result of the government's negligence. Hate is not the result of the government's negligence. Cyprus was not the result of the government's negligence or any of the other places we went. Desert storm 1 and the almost desert storm 2 were not the result of government negligence, but when people were in need the Canadian government responded.

Tonight people were in need and the Canadian government did not respond. It responded to the flood in the Saguenay. Was that the fault of the Canadian government? It responded to the flood in Manitoba. Was that the fault of the Canadian government? How about the ice storm?

It is despicable that the Liberals have the temerity to raise this subject in the House tonight as a deflection of the vote that took place. It demeans the good name of our Canadian military. It is absolutely disgusting.

I have a reserve unit in my riding, the 44 field squad, an engineer squadron. It has served in Bosnia. It has helped when there have been natural disasters. It has done an infinite number of good and meaningful deeds in my riding and around the world.

I received a letter recently from someone in my riding who is a conscientious objector. She objects to the military and to her tax dollars going to the military. She wanted to know whether there was some way she could have her taxes go to some special fund instead.

I wrote to her and suggested that I understood her position, her abhorrence of war, and would hope we would all abhor it but sometimes have to stand up for people who through no fault of their own were being victimized. I suggested to her that our military had a strong tradition of things other than violence such as peacekeeping and helping when disasters hit the people of this country. That is what we should be focusing on. We should not be using that to deflect what happened in the House tonight.

Perhaps we should truly help the military and do something good for it instead of pontificating about its role over there and how proud we are that we sent the military there. Somehow it is suggested that it makes us greater than them because after all they are just the grunts who went there; we are the wonderful people who sent them. Instead, maybe what we should be doing in the House is looking at their lack of equipment, at their lack of training and at the bases that have been shut down.

Some of the best bases in Canada have been closed. An almost new base in Chilliwack was rebuilt, almost completely overhauled. It was closed and the people were transferred to a base in Alberta that does not have enough room for them and they have to start adding additional facilities there.

What the government does to the military makes no sense. Yet it somehow feels it is right that its members should come to the House and suggest that they are good because they have sent troops over to Bosnia.

I do not know if it does any good to speak tonight. Maybe I would have done myself more good had I gone to bed and caught up on my sleep, but I just could not do that. It seemed somehow important to me to get this off my chest.

I did not expect any more of the justice minister. I did not expect any more of the Prime Minister or of the government whip. However I expected more of some of those backbenchers. I know they were opposed to the government's bill. I know some of them are people of integrity.

I have often said to people in my town hall meetings that Ottawa is not what they think: “As I stand tonight as a Reform member of parliament I will say something that will seem strange coming from me. There are a lot of good Liberal MPs in Ottawa. It is not the people. It is the system”. I am not going to say that again because it is not true. Tonight, wipe that out. Tonight, completely wipe that out.

I saw people on those backbenches who were opposed, who felt that the victims of hepatitis C, of tainted blood were entitled to compensation, and yet they knuckled under. They ignored the victims. They ignored their constituents. They ignored their duty to the country.

They had the temerity to come here and suggest that they were good and wonderful because they sent our troops to Bosnia. Is that timing not just a little curious? It was right on the heels of the vote they knew was coming on which they were going to take a lot of heat. What unbelievable timing. What an uncanny coincidence that it should happen tonight.

I do not believe it. I do not think the Canadian people believe it. I hope it took a lot of soul searching by the Liberals in terms of this incident. If they truly feel what they have spoken tonight about the military, I hope they will do something meaningful in terms of equipment, in terms of bases and in terms of training.

If they want to send them into harm's way, they should give them the proper tools to do it. If they want to take pride in something, they should make sure that notwithstanding the vote tonight they do something for those victims, the people who relied on them and whom they let down.

[Via Rail Commercialization Act, April 27th, 1998]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-394, an act respecting the commercialization of VIA Rail Canada Inc.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to say this is a very timely bill but I would be incorrect if I said that. In actual fact it should have been introduced a long time ago.

VIA Rail loses hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The target it introduced in its latest annual statement indicated that it would be able to bring it down to about $200 million a year. That is about as far down as VIA can get it. That is over half a million dollars a day. It is time we put an end to this.

It is timely in one sense. It seems ironic that I am introducing a bill that will seek to stop the erosion of taxpayers' money by over half a million dollars a day on the eve of the day that we are to vote on compensation for hepatitis C victims. The government is saying it does not have sufficient money. This might be a good way to take it toward that goal.

It has another effect, that is to prevent something that is very serious, a predator move by VIA Rail in the past against the private sector at a time when we are looking at public-private partnerships as a way out of things.

There is not tremendous detail in the bill other than to provide a directive toward its disposal. I leave it to the House and to the committee when it reaches the committee stage to add the details necessary for the betterment of all taxpayers.

[Supply, April 23rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the member who just spoke talked about how this would force many hepatitis C victims to go to court and how the government would use money defending itself.

Would he comment on the fact that the government is using taxpayers' money to defend itself against taxpayers and the position that puts taxpayers in when going to court to defend themselves against the government and supplying the money to their opponents so they can fight them?

I also have another question if it is appropriate. I know there are certain rules in the House and I do not want to go against those rules. Approaching it from the other side, could the hon. member comment on what impact he thinks the speech he just made had the single Liberal listening to it?

[Petitions, April 23rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the residents of West Kootenay—Okanagan, I present the first in a series of petitions in which the petitioners draw to the attention of the House that violent crimes committed by youth are of great concern to Canadians, that the incidents of violent crime by youth would decrease if the Young Offenders Act were amended to hold young persons fully accountable for their criminal behaviour and that increased periods of incarceration could deter young people from committing criminal acts.

Therefore, the petitioners call upon parliament to significantly amend the Young Offenders Act, including but not limited to making protection of society the number one priority, reducing the minimum age from 12 to 10, allowing for the publication of violent young offenders' names, increasing the maximum three year sentence for all offences except murder to seven, increasing the penalty for first degree murder from a maximum of 10 years to 15 years, and ensuring parental responsibility.

[Polling, April 20th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, access to information documents show that Liberals have increased spending on public opinion polling by 68% in three years, spending $28 million from 1994 to 1997. Almost half of that was without competition.

Given the Liberal criticism of the Tory governments and its spending on the polls, how does the Liberal government justify this whopping 68% increase?

[Supply, March 17th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member that just spoke talked about disrespect and what a terrible thing this is. Let us examine what terrible thing it is we are doing. We are asking for the right to display a small stationary flag on our desk.

This matter arose out of deliberately instigating an event which we joined in along with everyone else. Their party instigated the disruptive part of this matter. The members of his party were the ones that instigated this and the hon. member should keep that in mind.

We are not asking for the right to use these as props, but simply to have them available and have them on our desks. One member did something that was totally inappropriate and he is very sorry for it. If someone right now at tax time is doing their tax returns and in frustration at the taxes they are going to pay, throw their coffee mug at the wall, they do not do it to punish the cup. They do not do it to punish the wall. They do it out of frustration. This does not make it right. Let us get things in perspective.

I would ask this one question. After all the rhetoric by that member, would he be ashamed to display a small Canadian flag on his desk as he probably does on his desk in his office in Ottawa and perhaps even in his riding?

[Supply, March 17th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member says that we are letting the Bloc Quebecois off the hook by bringing forward this motion.

I would suggest that the member is letting it off the hook by opposing this motion. The member is saying that we are to be patriotic yet he is castigating that party because it said there are too many flags at the Canadian Olympics. The member is saying that is wrong. There should be flags at the Canadian Olympics. But what the hon. member is also saying is that there should not be in the House of Commons, the federal government of this country.

I still suggest that if there is a problem in this House it is not the matter of the Reform Party's bringing this motion forward, but rather the hon. member rejecting the idea that Canadians should be able to see their federal members with their federal flag on their desks. What is wrong with that?

I asked a question earlier but time did not allow it so I was cut off. I put it to him. The minister of heritage spent over $20 million of taxpayer money giving away flags and trying to get Canadians to be more patriotic. Why, after spending all that taxpayer money, is he opposed to a small display of the Canadian flag here in this House of Commons?

[Justice, March 17th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the Young Offenders Act is a high priority concern for the Canadian public and for the Reform Party of Canada. In response to the demands of Canadians for changes to the act, Reform has developed a list of amendments and will be presenting it to the public in a series of town hall meetings throughout the country.

The first of these town hall meetings will be held in Castlegar in my riding this Saturday evening. These meetings will explain how the amendments were arrived at, how they will work and their impact on young offenders.

The justice minister recently made headlines by stating that she is thinking of revising the Young Offenders Act. I hope she is more in touch with Canadians' demands than she and her predecessor have been in the past. If she really wants to learn what ordinary Canadians want, she should attend one of our town hall meetings. I invite her to attend the one in Castlegar this Saturday evening.

Canadians are always willing to speak. The problem is getting Liberals to listen.

[Supply, March 17th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot believe, in light of arguments that have already been presented, that the Liberal member who just spoke still wants to send such a simple yes or no issue to committee to languish there, as has been already stated, never to see the light of day again.

I would just like to bring forth two other points. I have in my office on my desk in my riding a Canadian flag. I have in my office in Ottawa near my desk a Canadian flag. I have three desks. The third desk is this one that I occupy in the House of Commons on behalf of my constituents and all Canadians, where I try to make valued judgments on legislation brought forward for people in my riding and for all Canadians. Why, on this third desk of mine, should I not be allowed the symbol of what I represent?

I would ask, if I may, why, when his own former deputy prime minister and heritage minister spent millions, nay tens of millions of dollars, promoting the Canadian flag and telling Canadians to be more—