John Reynolds

[Business of the House, February 20th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, would the government House leader advise the House as to what the business will be for the remainder of today, tomorrow and next week?

Also, in view of all the legislation the opposition parties have passed so well today, has he sent e-mails off to Mexico to advise the senators that it is time to get back to work?

[Member for LaSalle--Émard, February 20th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the supervisory agreement is a loophole big enough for the ancient mariner to sail his whole fleet through.

The loophole is “as the ethics counsellor otherwise determines”. The code says that a minister must dispose of his assets or put them in a blind trust or in blind management. There is absolutely no mention of a supervisory agreement in the code.

Is the Prime Minister admitting that only one cabinet minister in history has been allowed this exemption? Why did he allow the former finance minister this exemption when the Minister for Natural Resources and all others could not have it?

[Member for LaSalle--Émard, February 20th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the former finance minister continues to amaze the crowds with his dance of the veils, with the ethics counsellor standing just off stage catching whatever is shed. The first layer was the blind trust that no one could see through. Next came blind management. Now we are down to the last and flimsiest layer, the supervisory agreement.

Could the Prime Minister explain why the former finance minister was allowed the opportunity for hands on management by the ethics counsellor while all other ministers adhered to the stricter blind trust or blind management agreements?

[Points of Order, February 19th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order to ask the government House leader if he could indicate to the House whether the stalemate regarding private members' business being votable has finally come to a conclusion?

[Canada Elections Act, February 18th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, one of the advantages of being a Liberal is there is no need to throw away dollars on lottery tickets. As a Liberal, all one does is raise taxes when there are dreams that must be realized.

This legislation is a lottery win for the Liberal Party and its huge debt. We know that debt was a major concern because one of the Prime Minister's aides was reported to have said this legislation would wipe out the party debt within months.

Canadians who have taken time to look at this legislation do not like it. They see it for what it is. It would force all Canadians to participate, no matter what party they support and no matter how deeply or not they want to be involved in politics. It would force every living Canadian to spend money on something that might or might not be a personal priority. We must remember it would eliminate the debt of the Liberal Party of Canada.

The legislation claims that it would open up the nomination process to more candidates. How can that be when the Liberal Party believes that candidates for election should be appointed by the Prime Minister? There cannot be an open nomination process when a dictatorial decision is made by the Prime Minister about filling certain quotas. If we look closely at this bill, it would do just the opposite to what the Liberals are saying about nominations. It would make it more difficult for a new person to walk along and join the process. The Liberals can hire an official agent or someone else, but a lot of people just cannot afford to do that.

It is obvious to anyone watching this place that the governing party looks kindly on the benign dictatorship style of governing. It is certainly obvious to those backbench members who have recently learned that they are no longer able to speak to certain issues that arise in this place. As we understand it, unless members opposite are prepared to stand and cheer for their leader, they will not be allowed to stand in the chamber to address any issue of their own.

We go beyond any benign dictatorship when a government forces citizens to give their hard earned tax dollars to parties they do not support. It should be noted that Canadians are learning with each passing day that any support they gave the Liberals in the past was probably a mistake.

The party to which I belong has long been a proponent of real democratic reform. We have been proposing and promoting democratic reform in Canada since 1987. Because of that, plus many other reasons, we have enjoyed tremendous financial and moral support from thinking Canadians. The Liberals, if they ever were a party of reform, lost the right to claim that decades ago.

Ours is a party where candidates for the leadership would not restrict membership sales in their own party so as to strengthen their grip on the party. Candidates would strangle their own party if that is what it takes to lead it.

I hope Canadians will take note of this legislation and remember it at the next election. If they do not remember, we will be only too happy to remind them. We will tell Canadians that the Liberals, their kissing cousins the Conservatives, their closest kin the New Democrats and yes, those great patriots the Bloc Québécois, all supported this legislation.

The Liberals like it because it fits their philosophy, “make taxpayers cough up for every hare-brained scheme that comes along”. The Progressive Conservative kissing cousins like it because they think it would buy them a little respectability and a few days more of life. The New Democratic Party closest kin like it because they too have debts and believe that hard work and earning one's way is for someone else. The super patriotic Bloc Québécois likes it because it loves the idea of joining hands to pockets with Canadians from coast to coast.

If the Prime Minister thinks this legacy legislation would whitewash the record of his tenure, he has another thing coming. No one will ever forget his cavalier attitude and dismissal of the millions that were stolen in the advertising scandal. No one will ever forget the scandalous firearms registration fiasco or the HRDC billion dollar boondoggle. Nor will anyone ever forget the billion dollar GST fraud scandals as it becomes an increasing part of the public consciousness. As our leader said so succinctly, “The true nature this bill is simply the replacement by the government of its addiction to large business and union donations with an addiction to taxpayer funding”.

Another point should be made. If a governing party falls from favour with the electorate, that party will have no worry about its future. It would not have to worry about individual or corporate contributions shrinking because the party would no longer enjoy the confidence of the country. This legislation would guarantee the survival of the party because by law the taxpayers would be forced to give it life support. It means that no matter how incompetent, despotic, arrogant or undeserving of support, that party would continue to exist because taxpayers would be forced to support it.

Let me put it another way. In 1993 the Progressive Conservatives went into a campaign with a loaded war chest. It did not matter. The people were fed up and threw them out. The war chest was empty at the end of that campaign and it is still empty because Canadians have never forgiven them and probably never will.

The Liberals, knowing their days are numbered and how ragged and down at the heels the Conservative Party is, took precautionary measures. They concocted this scheme to guarantee their survival. No matter how disgusted the voters are, it means that when the ancient mariner takes over he will have all those lovely crisp Canadian taxpayers' dollars to toss around like rose petals.

It could happen that the Prime Minister, who knows a bad idea when he sees one, might withdraw the legislation. If he thinks it would in any way help his successor, he might decide to take a pass on the legislation. Canadians would like to take more than a pass on the legislation. I will leave it to them to make that point to the Liberals when they meet in their constituencies.

Taxpayers should take notice of some facts and figures. They are already subsidizing slightly less than 40% of the funding of the parties in Canada. The legislation would push that direct subsidization to beyond 70%. It would not matter which party they support, where they live or what they believe. They would be paying into a huge pot of money that the Liberals are forcing them to fill. Of course the Liberals would be only too happy to be the first at that pot so they can get rid of their embarrassing debt.

Is this really an advancement for democracy? No, it is not. Our leader nailed it when he called it an autocratic solution to a democratic problem. The Liberals, the governing party which replaced the Conservatives, created the democratic problem. Canadians began to lose faith in politics when the Conservatives governed. It grew into a landslide after they had a few years of Liberal arrogance to watch.

If people thought they saw an angry electorate in 1993, wait till Canadians get wind of the legislation. Right now it has not hit the public consciousness, but when it does, the reaction will hit like a freight train.

It is not democracy when individuals are forced to support parties they do not favour. It takes even more control out of the hands of individual citizens and puts it in the hands of political operatives. Supporters of the Canadian Alliance will be outraged when they learn they are subsidizing the New Democrats or the Bloc Québécois; forget about the Liberals.

The two or three dozen Canadians who support New Democrats will be outraged when they learn that they are being forced to support the Canadian Alliance. A similar number of people who still think Conservatives have credibility will be shocked and appalled, and write letters to the editor expressing their outrage at being forced to subsidize the Liberals.

We must admit that the Canadian Alliance would benefit from the legislation, but we can and will argue that we had no idea that this legislation was coming and no hand whatsoever in its drafting. We can argue that even if corporate donations were banned outright, the Canadian Alliance would survive because our supporters give generously as individuals.

The figures do not lie. In 2001 the Liberals received donations from fewer than 5,000 individuals which accounted for 19% of their total fundraising. That same year nearly 50,000 individuals contributed to the Canadian Alliance and that provided over 61% of our funding. Why is the Prime Minister doing this?

In 2004 the Liberals would haul $8 million out of this forced fund that would nicely dispose of their $6.5 million debt, so the unable and the incompetent would have their debts and mistakes covered by the unwilling. It is the Liberal way. When the Liberals lose $1 billion to boondoggles they call in the taxpayers. When they lose $1 billion to GST fraud they call in the taxpayers. They lost a few million to fees and advertising and gave the minister an ambassadorship knowing that taxpayers would cover the cost.

This is bad and arrogant legislation. It is undemocratic and self-serving. It is disrespectful legislation that, as Canadians become more aware of it, will harden the resolve of Canadians to throw the Liberals out at the next election.

The Alliance will vote against it. If there is some reasoned thought on the other side to withdraw the legislation, we would be happy to offer a suggestion on how it could be improved. The only problem is that the suggestions we would make would not yield a windfall for the debt-ridden Liberals, Conservatives and New Democrats, so I am not optimistic that we will be asked for very much advice.

This is bad legislation. Canadians will see it for what it is and they will tell their members when they go home on the spring break. I am sure some common sense will take place and we can look at some proper way to fund election time.

[Food Services Industry, February 14th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I want to praise Canada's largest employer. The food service industry employs more than one million Canadians. The people working in the industry range from teens to seniors, from full time career employees to students slaving away at school and at work getting ready to lead productive lives and productive and satisfying careers.

Those one million plus Canadians should know the Canadian Alliance is the only federal party on their side. They are being gouged by the Liberal government. Their association states clearly that they pay a disproportionate share of payroll taxes compared to high income earners and capital intensive industries.

The Canadian Alliance believes the employment insurance premiums are too high. The Conservatives raised them and the Liberals have squandered them since 1993 so there is no real unemployment insurance fund. It is gone, having been blown away by the high-spending Liberals.

Here is to the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association and the 1,020,700 people who are proud to work in it. Let us hope the finance minister finally listens to them and does something to help them in this great and wonderful industry in our country.

[Supply, February 13th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think there is a question in the mind of anybody in the House, including those of a lot of my Liberal colleagues, that if the gun control is any guide at all for the small amount there is, at $1 billion and still running, to do this for every individual Canadian would probably be in the range of $6 billion to $12 billion.

I am sure that if we did a poll every Canadian would say that the number one issue is health care and then that the military needs more money. Everybody in the House knows the military needs more money except the Minister of Finance, the Prime Minister and the defence minister. The defence committee of the House made a recommendation to give the defence department more money. The former solicitor general is sitting here, and I am sure he would agree with me that the RCMP could use more money, as could, certainly, the police forces across Canada. Then there is the $1 billion we have wasted on this gun registry.

The government always talks about gun control. Guns, handguns, were controlled in this country for years, at a very minimal cost. It was not a problem. Duck hunters and deer hunters are not the problem in this country and we are spending $1 billion. That money could be put into the police working on the streets and visiting schools. I know that in my own riding some of the police visits are not taking place anymore. That is a problem, because respect can be built for the police departments when they visit schools and do things like that. When money is cut from those agencies and put into a phony gun registry, that is not what the taxpayers of Canada want.

I would agree with my colleague that this would be a total waste of money and that it is not the way that taxpayers would like us to spend their money.

[Supply, February 13th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank that particular member of the NDP for his comments. I know that he and I would probably agree on a lot of things and he could probably be a very comfortable member of our party. He would be on the left side of the fringe of it, but he could be very comfortable in our party because he is from a very democratic party that even votes on issues in caucus. I want to thank him for his question and I respect his views.

What we have right now is quite satisfactory to the Americans. When we are travelling across as individuals they accept passports. There is no problem whatsoever. There is also the Canpass and the Nexus system set-up. We can voluntarily go to the Americans, get our fingerprints done and get our pictures done. They give us a card and we get easy access to the United States.

We have the same thing coming the other way. If people live in Vancouver and travel down to Bellingham or Blaine quite a bit, they can go in on the Canadian side, fill out the forms and pre-register themselves. Then they can go into the fast lane so they do not have to line up with all the other cars to get through the border.

Those processes are there. They are very good and I am sure that they will be improved over the years. I think that is all we need between our countries. It works very well now.

[Supply, February 13th, 2003]

Whatever, it is a mess. It is just all over the place.

We can just imagine what would happen if tomorrow the government said everyone in the country was going to get a national identity card. The cost is enough to scare the heck out of everybody. Let us not listen to any soothing things the minister of immigration says about this issue.

Another thing to remember is that the Liberals hate the idea of a DNA database for criminals, yet they want a card for everybody. They hate the idea of a database for sex offenders, but they want a card for everybody. They hate the idea of identifying predators who prey on children. They hate the idea of putting biometrics on permanent residents' cards. Why then would they want a card for everybody?

Here is what the Liberals do love. They love making honest citizens carry identity cards if they own firearms. It is rather strange. Now they love the idea of making every living Canadian citizen carry a personal identity card. Strange. There is something very sinister about a party, the Liberal Party, that wants to track every single honest Canadian but makes no effort to control the criminal element.

We know there are people all across the country who oppose this. We have heard from the privacy commissioner. I will not go into detail, because I have heard it stated by other members in the House.

Our immigration critic, the member for Calgary--Nose Hill, is in the Maritimes today on an immigration tour. Hopefully she will come back with some great ideas for new legislation for immigration for the country. Heaven knows we need it. She has some comments from the information and privacy commissioner from Prince Edward Island. Her name is Karen Rose. She is opposed to the development of a national identification card, especially with biometrics.

Some of the concerns of the commissioner are as follows. A national identification card would be an unprecedented invasion of the privacy of Canadians, due to the establishment of a national database of personal information, and because it would require Canadians to identify ourselves on demand. Another concern is that there is no evidence that a national identification card would achieve the purposes it sets out to achieve, namely national security, immigration and identity theft controls. Her third point is that the very existence of such a card could open the floodgates to drastically increase police powers as well as the collection of personal information of every Canadian, and would change the nature of our free society.

That is what we really have to be concerned about: the free society. I have no objection to cards with my name and identification on them. I have a passport that I carry when I travel because it could be requested and I think that is a legitimate thing to be asked for at a border when one is going to a different country. I carry a driver's licence. It has a picture on it, so I have another piece of ID. I carry a House of Commons ID card, which is another picture ID. I have loads of other things such as credit cards, but I made the choice to get all of them, even my House of Commons identity card. Nobody twisted my arm and forced me to go into the room. I do not need that. I could get the little key for my office and go back and forth. Nobody insists I do that. If I do not want to drive a car I do not have to, so I do not need a driver's licence. They are my choices.

There are people in this country who want to have those freedoms. That is why some of them live in very small towns in the north, or in the forest. They only go to town once in a while and they hunt for a living. They like their freedom and they like our country because they can be free. However, if we are going to need a card, everyone in the world will know who we are and what we are. Some people just do not want that.

Also, there could be mistakes. How many times have we seen stories in the paper about someone who is arrested because they have the same name as someone else? I remember years ago when I went to the border and got asked questions about somebody. It turned out that there was a fellow with the same name who was a lawyer. They were wanting to talk to him for a reason and I got pulled into a room. They found out I was not that person, but just that name was enough. We can imagine the problems we might have with these ID cards.

Then there are the people in the counterfeiting business. I do not know how many phony passports there are across the world, but I know there are thousands of them. Hundreds of them are missing here. People steal the blanks, and they have done that, from the Canadian government because they are a very valuable tool. These cards would be forged and photographed, and fingerprints would be done and changed. Somebody knows how to do that. It is a very dangerous thing and it certainly would affect our freedoms.

I am happy if things are made available to people and they can go get them themselves, but for the government to say everybody is going to register is wrong in a free and democratic country. Those of us who want to travel the world will get the documentation we need to do that. Those of us who do not want to should not have to do it.

We would be opposed. The minister has told members to go across the country and talk to their constituents. I have talked to my constituents. They are opposed. The minister should get the message from this debate today, from all sides of the House, that this is an issue that he should put to bed. He should forget about it and allow us to sleep better as we go to bed at night.

[Supply, February 13th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it certainly is a pleasure to speak on this very interesting topic and the proposal brought forward by the New Democrats today.

Let me state right from the start that the minister's proposal for a national identity card is extremely ill-thought out. On procedural grounds alone it does not merit much discussion. The initial arguments appear particularly weak in terms of travel documents. The Canadian passport and the Nexus card provide very suitable identification.

If there are questions about the integrity of Canadian passports, then he should fix the passports rather than come up with yet another identity instrument. For example, the government may wish to consider a biometric identifier in the Canadian passport. The government has already committed to having such an identifier on the maple leaf card for landed immigrants.

Also, I must add that a government that cannot register five million guns has no business trying to register 30 million citizens. If the experience of the gun registry is anything to go by, the national identity card program would cost $6 billion and still would not work.

My colleagues in their presentations have raised or will raise all these practical objections to a national identity card. During my time I want to discuss the broader security implications of the minister's proposal.

I submit that the proposal for a national identity card is in truth an admission by this government that it is too politically correct to take the necessary steps to pursue an aggressive defence against terrorism in Canada.

The events of September 11 have challenged Canadians and Americans to rethink their choices in the alleged trade-off between freedom and security; that is, to fight terrorism we should cede some privacy and legal the protection to government security agencies to strengthen their effectiveness.

I ask, and my party asks, does the balance between security and freedom have to be a zero sum game? A zero sum game is one where an increase for one side must mean a corresponding decrease on the other, and vice versa. Does greater national security necessarily mean lesser individual freedom or do choices exist to enhance both? If we do have choices, what are they?

Seeking an answer takes us to the very definition of security and freedom and the relationship between them. Security does not mean that threats do not exist.

That some people will seek to harm others is universal and a constant facet of human nature. Security does exist to provide means to defend against attack. Those means may be physical such as a backyard fence or a wall between countries. They may be informational such as a burglar alarm or intelligence gathering.

In a broader sense, security is something bought whether by nations or individuals. I may hire a security guard; a nation raises an army. I may buy a mace can; a nation builds sophisticated weaponry. Security is always relative in scope and degree and varies according to the nature of the threat.

In any given country, some people will be more at risk than others. In the case of the recent terrorist threat, if one lives in a city, one is more likely to be harmed than if one lives in a forest. The nature of the adversary also modulates the degree of danger. Canada would face greater danger from a conflict with Iran than say Iceland.

I am restating the obvious because it is being submerged by the claim that terrorism has now made insecurity an absolute condition given the random nature of the attacks.

However how random is the threat of terrorism really? In the case of the September 11 attacks, while the acts themselves were random in the sense of the unexpected, the identity of the perpetrators surprised no one. They were angry men from three repressive, unstable countries.

While many means of terrorist attacks exist, in an airplane wielding a $1.50 box cutter can lead to the same devastation as a truckload of dynamite. The actual pool of potential terrorists is relatively small and largely self-identified.

The public policy implication is as follows. Given the relative nature of insecurity, defending all people against all threats is not only impossible but also subject to very diminishing returns.

The last $10 billion of anti-terrorist spending will likely not improve security as much as the first $10 billion. The last $10 billion may not only add little security, but may divert funds from areas that contribute as much to physical safety, like roads and public health. That would suggest we need some kind of cost benefit test for the expansion of the powers of security intelligence agencies as we should have for any regulatory regime. However, the inherent difficulties in drawing up the costs and benefits of regulating the environment of terror would exceed that of regulating water pollution or even crime generally.

While such an analysis is conceptually possible, it offends the notion that the government owes an equal standard of protection for all citizens. Still, the basic idea of setting priorities on anti-terrorism spending and activities to achieve greater cost effectiveness deserves our attention. One way to do that is to focus more on the who than on the how.

I cite the remarks of an Israeli expert when asked why Israeli security was more effective than America's. He stated, “The Americans are looking for a gun, Israelis are looking for a terrorist”.

Focusing on potential terrorists rather than possible weapons raises the question of singling some people out for closer scrutiny than others. The argument is made that to do so represents discriminatory behaviour by the government and, therefore, an infringement on everyone's freedom.

The reason why that argument is false stems from the nature of the freedom and the state itself. As usual, Milton Friedman provides us with a succinct definition of freedom, “Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men”. The state, whether absolutely necessary or not, has the role of correcting coercion and preventing harm.

A democratic government under the rule of law should uphold freedom by restraining those who coerce and harm others by following a public test of necessity and applying force sufficient only to that goal.

By this definition, the government cannot treat everyone equally in all respects. Exceptions must be made to deal with known and potential agents of harm. The requirement, nonetheless, is that the exceptions should be justified, transparent and effective rather than punitive.

The principled and consistent exercise of state power to deal with the exception, individuals who threaten harm does not diminish the overall quality of freedom. A government does potentially impair freedom when it expands its surveillance and authority over all citizens simply to avoid being seen to single out any single identifiable group.

Again I cite Milton Friedman, “A society that puts equality...ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom”. He was speaking about economic equality, but the idea applies as well to how a government treats those who threaten life, limb and property.

Exceptions to the equal treatment of all citizens can be justified when dealing with potential terrorists. Ultimately extraordinary measures taken in defence of the country will and should be defended in a court of law. Mistakes and inconvenience may occur. The justification lies not only in the purpose of preventing terrorism, but also in the law's ability to make necessary corrections.

At a practical level, freedom and security can both advance if governments concentrated on the likeliest suspects using its existing powers rather than expanding its blanket powers. Canada already has many resources and the legislative authority to fight terrorism effectively. I wonder if it is using them efficiently. The degree to which the government needs more resources and legislation should be concentrated on fighting terrorism, not on expanding state scrutiny over all citizens for all reasons.

For this reason I and my party find no merit in pursuing further the government's proposal for a national identity card. I know from listening to colleagues on the other side and government ministers who do not agree with this that it probably will not go very far.

The reason I am speaking today is because our immigration critic is travelling with the immigration committee. She sent me some comments that I also want to put on the record because they are very good.

It occurred to my hon. colleague, the member for Calgary—Nose Hill, that a national identity card would do nothing to stop terrorists at our borders. It would only be another card that could be stolen and would prove to be more dangerous. It would be used as conclusive proof of identity.

Do not let the Liberals offer soothing reassurances about security of the card because we have seen how its security against GST fraud works and we saw how its security against HRDC boondoogles worked.

What greater example is there than that of the government telling us to bring in security cards, that they will be good for Canada, when it cannot even do a firearms registry correctly? Most of the people are not registered and those who are registered are registered improperly.

With a number of colleagues from both sides, I was at a dinner of the Canadian Restaurant Association last night. It was a very good dinner and a happy evening, as the association had just announced it had employed its millionth person in Canada working in the hospitality industry. It is one of the biggest industries in Canada, bigger than most others put together.

One of the executives of the association came up to me and told me his story. He said that as a law abiding citizen he registered his gun as soon as the registry came out. Then he was sent back a form telling him he had done something wrong, so he sent back another form. Then he said he received all the forms and his money. He was sent a cheque for the same amount he had sent in. He said he thinks that his gun is registered and he has enough documentation so that if they ever want to arrest him he will show them the receipt. He said he never did find out why they sent back the cheque but he cashed it and has his money back.