Jim Gouk

[Transport, September 18th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, when you are flying in a plane at 30,000 feet and the engine fails, passengers on board a Canadian airline will find little comfort in the fact that the minister's department examined the paperwork, not the actual aircraft, when issuing a certificate of air worthiness.

How can the Minister of Transport guarantee the safety of the Canadian public when his department inspects paperwork instead of inspecting aeroplanes?

[Criminal Code, September 17th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I had a few notes on what I wanted to say about this government amendment, and perhaps I will get to some of those things. Listening to the hon. member for Mississauga South gave me some new points that I thought were more worthy of discussion.

One point goes to the heart of the problem. The government does not listen to people. Something the member said really drew my attention to that. When he referred to capital punishment he said "the government of the day decided". The government of the day is not supposed to decide. I do not know about the government over there. I do not know about the Liberal Party. I was not elected to rule over anybody. I was not elected to think for other people. I was elected to listen, to react to what I hear and to carry that message here to Ottawa.

The government of the day decided. That was said in all innocence and I do not wish it to be a reflection specifically on the hon. member who said that, but I think the concept of that is absolutely disgusting. It has brought us to the mess we are in in many things and most particularly the criminal justice system, the concept of somebody having a faint hope clause after 15 years. The member said there may be no useful purpose in having that criminal fulfil the final portion of the sentence.

The criminals in this case were sentenced to life but they are not necessarily held for life. That concept is there but maybe there is no useful purpose in taking someone who is 20-years old and keeping them in there for 60 years until they are 80 or 85 or whatever. It specifically says 25 years and then after that a decision is made. That is where the so-called faint hope is. If you behave, if you show remorse, if you show you have understood the wrong you have done and you are going to try to live a better life, they have already said when you are going to be considered from the actual sentence which is not 25 years, it is life.

Now we are saying that maybe you will get out after 15 or 20 years. If we go along with that maybe we should look at 10 years. The jails are crowded, he did not kill anybody important, so we will let you out. Or, we are going to keep this guy for 15 or 20 years because he killed 10 people, but you only killed 2 or 3 so you are not so bad so we have to let you out early in order to keep things proportionate. Does that not sound ridiculous? I am trying to sound ridiculous because that is exactly the whole concept of this idea.

In some cases like the Clifford Olsons and the Bernardos of this world, 25 years is a very light sentence. The very thought that they should even be remotely considered for parole after 15 years is absolutely nauseating.

I agree with the hon. member for Mississauga South that the Clifford Olsons of this world are not going to get out after 15 years but they are going to get a podium to spout all kinds of garbage that only comes out of sick mind like his in the first place. That is going to retorture the families that have already had the ultimate torture visited upon them. Why give him a chance to revictimize the victims he has created? I do not see that it serves any useful purpose whatsoever.

The hon. member also spoke about the honourable judiciary who was going to prevent this from happening. I had a case in British Columbia where the parents of a girl who was murdered lived in my constituency. The murder did not take place there but her parents lived there. Although this was a provincial matter, they were getting absolutely no help or comfort from the provincial government whatsoever and so they came to me. Their daughter was stabbed 43 times by her husband. It was a vicious, violent death. He dumped her in the back of a pickup truck, drove to the

family home where their daughter was inside and waited until the lights went out because she was up watching TV.

He parked the car with her mother's dead body in the back in the family garage. He went in and packed his cloths, took off into town, closed out the bank accounts, collected some debts from other people, sold his car and took off to Mexico until, in his own words, he could get his story straight.

He was discovered and faced extradition. He returned and consulted with his lawyer and turned himself in. He said: "Yes, I stabbed her but it was not my fault". I do not recall the legal term for it but he had a momentary blankout. He went on the stand and said: "I am a wonderful guy and I just thought my wife was great until I snapped because she was nagging at me. I have always treated her right".

The prosecution tried to bring in his former wife, whom he had beaten on many occasions. It was not allowed. The judge in this case, this wonderful judiciary who was going to take care of undeserving people like Clifford Olson, decided that because it happened more than six months before it was irrelevant.

Then the prosecution said: "Okay, we will bring in something more relevant. We will bring in independent witnesses who saw the accused on at least two occasions beating the victim in public so severely that she had to be rescued by bystanders". The honourable member of the judiciary decided that was not appropriate either because it was only hearsay and the victim was not there to be cross-examined.

That is the judiciary which the hon. member says will prevent the Clifford Olsons of this country from getting an opportunity to ask for a chance to get away.

There is a term. It was not designed specifically to be used against the government. The term is bleeding heart Liberals. It is a generality. It does not refer specifically, or at least necessarily, to the Liberal Party, but it sure fits. It fits incredibly in this case. Bleeding heart Liberals.

That is not so bad. There is nothing wrong with having a bleeding heart, provided they bleed for the right people. When we have the victims of Clifford Olson, all those young children, the parents, the families, the relatives, and we come in with some clause which will give an opportunity to the murderer of all those children, the person who brought all that misery to the families of those victims, when we start bleeding for them, we have a major problem. Right now we have a major problem. It is called the Liberal Party.

For years I was a building contractor. If something goes wrong with a foundation, if it is a small area, sometimes it can be fixed. However, when the whole foundation is rotten the whole thing has to be taken out. It cannot be patched and repaired. We cannot patch and repair something which is so absolutely disgusting as section 745. It has to be removed in its entirety.

I recently bought a car. I paid $25,000 for it. However, I did not go in when the car was ready and say: "I am only going to give you $15,000 because I want to have some faint hope that I will save money".

If there is a sentence out there, if it is what the people of the country decide on, 25 years is the minimum. It is not the maximum. They may stay in much longer. We have already gone to the judiciary, which the hon. member for Mississauga South said is so honourable and will protect us. If he accepts that, why do we not listen to the judiciary which said that 25 years is the minimum? Why does the government want to interfere and say: "It might be the minimum, but we are going to consider making it considerably less". That makes absolutely no sense.

Section 745 needs to be eliminated. Something that is totally rotten cannot be fixed. We have to get rid of it. That applies to every other segment of our society and it applies here as well.

[Pearson International Airport, June 20th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, Canadian taxpayers are not on the hook for $600 million because of Bill C-28. They are on the hook because of the bungling of the minister.

The minister talks about the Tories and the Senate. It was a Liberal who cast the final ballot which shut down this bill.

Those same government documents provided all the figures backed up by independent experts to show that the crown construction option would have cost the taxpayers more than letting the Pearson contract proceed, even without the cost of the lawsuit added in.

My question is again directed to the Minister of Transport. If he was interested in saving the taxpayers money, why did his government not try to renegotiate or restructure the contract instead of ignoring the advice of his own experts and subsequently setting the taxpayers and this government up for a $600 million suit?

[Pearson International Airport, June 20th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Transport seems confused. He keeps referring to the Tories. There are more Liberals involved in this than Tories.

In two secret government documents, senior bureaucrats warned the government at the start of the Pearson process in 1993 that the contract was a better deal than trying to do it themselves and that cancelling the contract could leave the government and subsequently the taxpayers of Canada on the hook for up to $2 billion.

My question is simple and it is directed to the Minister of Transport. Why did the government not listen to its own advisors?

[Civil Air Navigation Services Commercialization Act, June 20th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I do not consider myself entering into debate because I agree with the government's position and the parliamentary secretary.

While I do not always agree with him, certainly this time it was both accurate and succinct. I hope he keeps those qualities in future debate as well, particularly on issues where we tend to differ.

As seems to be the norm with this bill and several others, I find the few comments I want to make relating to the previous speaker from the Bloc Quebecois. He talks about the lack of safety in the air navigation system now with Nav Canada taking over.

I have been a commercial pilot and also an air traffic controller for 22 years. The same people will be running the system after as before. We have in our system among the best in the world and it is safe.

I find it an interesting contradiction that the hon. member who just spoke talks about how the Senate hinders the process of this House. Then in the same breath he turns around and says the Senate should have listened and made amendments according to what the Bloc was looking for. It is starting to sound like the government with regard to the Pearson deal where it said it had to cancel it because it is too rich and it does not want to pay any compensation because they would not have made any money anyway. I am still trying to figure that one out. I bet the liberals are too when they stop and actually listen to themselves.

I found it very interesting that the Bloc is to vote against this legislation. This legislation is not being voted on today. The only thing that is being voted on is the amendment to the legislation which the Bloc said it would support. It is a bit confusing, the Liberals are a bit confusing. Thank God it is summer and we are all going home soon.

[Petitions, June 20th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions on the same subject from constituents of Kootenay West-Revelstoke.

The petitioners point out to the government that 52 per cent of the price of gasoline is comprised of taxes, and that the federal excise tax on gasoline has risen by 566 per cent over the past decade.

The petitioners also point out that the federal government invests less than 5 per cent of its fuel tax revenues, and call on Parliament not to increase the federal excise tax on gasoline and to strongly consider reallocating its current revenues to rehabilitating Canada's crumbling highway infrastructure.

[Railway Safety Act, June 18th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I realize there is very little time before we vote. However I think it will be quite sufficient for what I have to say today.

I listened to my colleague who just spoke. I am not in disagreement with the basic concepts he has raised. I look forward to the matter going to committee so that we can study it in depth.

I find it very interesting that major rail bills like the privatization of CN Rail, a very big and very controversial bill, was not debated in the House at second reading. Instead it was forced by the Liberal government into committee before the debate took place.

I objected to that at the time. I objected to it after the fact. All the rationales used by the government regarding why it should be rushed into committee fell by the wayside.

Today we have something that does not have the impact of something like the privatization of half of Canada's national rail system. We find ourselves debating it in the House of Commons in the last week of Parliament, in the dying hours. We are even using extended hours to debate the bill.

Why is the government trying to tie up the House of Commons and members of Parliament? House employees and staff are working overtime, costing something in the range of $50,000 an hour. That amount is charged to the taxpayers so that we can debate sending legislation to a committee before Parliament rises for the summer, and the committee the bill will go to is not meeting until next fall.

It is a horrendous waste of the taxpayers' money. Why is the government wasting the time of the House debating bills like this one instead of getting on with important bills, if it has any to bring forward? Is the government simply stalling until its absolutely

unconstitutional Bill C-28 comes once again back from the Senate? Is it just trying to find excuses to hang on until then?

There are problems with the bill that we can deal with in committee. I will recommend to our party that we give tentative support to the bill going to committee, at which time we will see what concerns are brought forward by the public, the users, the rail companies and those involved with them; what amendments are offered both by the government and by opposition; and what is done with them. Then we will make our final decision to support or not support the bill when it comes back to the House and will have a purpose for being before the House.

I hope the government will move on if it has something substantial. If it is worth paying $50,000 an hour in taxpayers' money to keep the House running in overtime, the government should bring it forward. If it does not have anything it should have the decency to say so and to adjourn the House.

[Pearson International Airport, June 17th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, if rhetoric were dollars, the Liberals would not have a deficit.

For two years the government has said that it cancelled the Pearson contract because, in the words of the former Liberal Minister of Transport, it was the biggest rip-off in Canadian history. Now the justice department is trying to defend the government in one of its several lawsuits by claiming the contract was so bad for developers that they would have lost millions.

Will the minister please tell this House which of these two claims he wishes to retract: the one used to cancel the contract, or the one now being used to defend the government? It is impossible for both positions to be true.

[Pearson International Airport, June 17th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, it seems these days the Liberals are out to cut deals to try to get themselves out of messes that a more competent government would not have gotten itself into. The Mulroney Airbus fiasco is only one example.

With this in mind, can the Minister of Justice tell the House whether he plans to try to reach an out of court settlement with the Pearson Development Corporation, or does he intend to try to pass legislation that overturns the rule of law and interferes with a court case in progress?

[Petitions, June 14th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I have three petitions, each on the same subject, from residents of my riding and more particularly the towns of Trail, Nelson and Fruitvale.

The petitioners call on Parliament to recognize that as the legislature of Newfoundland has passed a resolution calling for a constitutional amendment to remove the rights of denominational classes of persons to operate their own schools and further, that if Parliament accedes to these proposals to amend the Constitution at the request of one provincial government, it would set a precedent for permitting any provincial government to suppress the rights of minorities.

The petitioners therefore call on Parliament not to amend the Constitution as requested by the Government of Newfoundland and to refer the problem of education reform in that province back to the Government of Newfoundland for resolution by non-constitutional means.