John Reynolds

[First Nations Land Management Act, February 1st, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise this evening to speak in this debate.

It was interesting to listen to the member for Churchill talking about amendments that we wanted to make to this bill and how we hoped that it would happen anyway. Other members have made comments about the Reform Party and what its role is in this debate.

Sure there are a lot of good things in this bill, but our party asked for two amendments. Our members said that if those amendments were accepted we would let this bill pass through the House. However, the Liberal government refused those amendments.

Let me read into the record a letter which I just received a few minutes ago. The letter is from the Lower Mainland Treaty Advisory Committee. For those members who do not know where the lower mainland is, it encompasses the majority of the population of British Columbia, all of the municipalities in the lower mainland. It is represented by mayors who represent the New Democratic Party, the Liberal Party, the Reform Party and others. This is what they wrote today to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development:

The Framework Agreement on First Nation Land Management is an Act that will apply to 14 First Nations across Canada. Under the Framework Agreement, those signatory First Nations will develop their own land codes to apply to their reserve lands. The land code will set out the principles, rules and structures that will apply to the land. Once a land code has been adopted, the Band Council may, in accordance with the land code, make laws concerning the management, development, use, possession and occupancy of the reserve land. The new Act will replace the land management provisions (sections 53-60) of the Indian Act.

The Bill stipulates a number of requirements that a First Nation must meet in establishing a land code. One requirement is a community consultation process (Band members only) concerning the development of general land code rules for the reserve lands. Secondly, before a land code can be enacted, it must be approved by a majority of eligible Band voters. Thirdly, a Minister and the First Nation shall jointly appoint a verifier who will determine if the land code is in accordance with the Framework Agreement (the Act) and will monitor the community approval process of the land code.

The concerns of the Lower Mainland Treaty Advisory Committee are:

Local municipal leaders and the UBCM have raised two specific concerns with Bill C-49:

1. The legislation provides no requirement for consultation with neighbouring municipal governments on land use and other issues of mutual interest, nor with non-aboriginal people living on reserve lands;

2. Given that the Province of British Columbia is already engaged in the British Columbia Treaty Commission treaty process to address issues including land use and self-government, the application of Bill C-49 appears to be creating a second parallel process.

Within the B.C. treaty process, municipal governments are full members of the Provincial negotiating team. As such, their representative sits at the treaty table as part of that team and has the opportunity to provide comment and input to the Provincial negotiator on the treaty. In the Greater Vancouver area, municipal governments co-ordinate themselves under the Lower Mainland Treaty Advisory Committee. By contrast, with respect to Bill C-49, municipal governments have had very limited opportunity to consider and provide comments on its implications.

Regarding Consultation:

The Bill contains no provisions for any form of consultation with neighbouring municipal governing jurisdictions concerning the development of the land code. With respect to third parties who have an interest in the reserve land that is to be subject to the proposed land code, the Bill states only that the Band Council shall, within a reasonable time before the vote, take appropriate measures to inform those third parties of the proposed land code.

The Squamish Band is one of the 14 First Nations across Canada who are signatory to the Framework Agreement. The three North Shore Mayors recently met with Squamish Chief Bill Williams to discuss the Bill. The issue of lack of requirement for consultation with municipal governments was raised at the meeting and the Chief acknowledged that the Bill contains no such provisions. He stated that it was his intent that consultation with adjacent municipal governments will be a part of the Squamish land code.

The member from North Vancouver and I met with the same mayors and the chief and proposed the amendments to try to solve this problem now and not wait for something to come along later that will cause problems.

The letter continues:

While this statement appears reasonable, it actually leaves two major concerns for municipalities:

1. Municipalities would greatly prefer that any such requirement for consultation be included directly and specifically in Bill C-49. This would provide the requirement for meaningful consultation (not a veto) as part of the formal document, and not be left up to whether or not any particular First Nation is willing to do so.

To address the suggestion that this issue is primarily a concern in British Columbia and therefore need not be included in an Act which covers all of Canada and many other First Nations and municipalities, we would suggest the wording in the Act requiring a consultation would apply to:

“Those signatory First Nations in British Columbia to this Bill and in other parts of Canada that do not presently have a formal agreement requiring reciprocal consultation”. This would then enshrine the principle of consultation in the Act, whether or not such agreements already exist in other parts of Canadas.

The Municipal Act in British Columbia requires municipalities to refer a plan to the council of an adjoining municipality if the plan affects an area of that municipality. This does not provide the adjoining municipality with a veto, only with the opportunity to become informed and make comment.

1. Assuming that a First Nation does consult about a proposed land use with its municipal government neighbours, with or without a requirement to do so, what mechanism is there to resolve disagreements? The only reference to dispute resolution in the Bill centres on disputes between a First Nation and the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, not with neighbouring municipalities.

The drafters of the Bill may not have contemplated the concerns, raised above, particularly if their focus was on the many rural reserves across Canada. However, not unlike the treaty process, arrangements and approaches that may work in a rural setting may be totally inappropriate in an urban setting. Given the complexity of many different jurisdictions operating in our urban area and the need for co-ordination on issues of land use and transportation planning, it is essential that the Bill not be enacted by Parliament without first providing an opportunity for municipal governments to assess the Bill and provide comment to the federal government.

Regarding Parallel Process Concerns:

There needs to be an opportunity for municipalities currently engaged with the Provincial team in treaty negotiations to feel assured that Bill C-49 provisions will not eliminate the opportunity for negotiations to occur on important issues including land use and self government.

Draft resolution from LMTAC meeting of January 27, 1999:

It was moved and seconded

That the Lower Mainland Municipal Association (LMMA) be advised that the Lower Mainland Treaty Advisory Committee has not had the opportunity to assess the ramifications and impact of proposed Bill C-49 at the local government level and that the LMMA request that the federal government delay further consideration of the Bill pending consultation with local (municipal) governments.

Thank you for your careful consideration of our concerns.

Sincerely yours,

Mayor Don H. Bell

Copies of this letter were sent to the Minister of National Revenue; the Minister for International Cooperation and the Minister responsible for Francophonie; the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, who is from British Columbia; the chair of the northern and western Liberal caucus, the member for Vancouver Kingsway; the chairman of the B.C. Liberal caucus, who is the member for Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam; as well as the member for North Vancouver and myself.

The chairman of the B.C. Liberal caucus, the member for Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, also chairs the task force that the Prime Minister has set up to tell him why western Canadians do not vote Liberal. This is a prime example. The opposition has asked very fairly that two amendments be made to this bill which were recommended by all the lower mainland municipalities of British Columbia, and many of the mayors are Liberal.

We are doing our job as the opposition to try to get this bill through the House. As we said, if those two amendments were adopted we would vote tonight to get this bill out of here.

The government will not adopt those two amendments. The majority of the people of British Columbia want those amendments to be made to this bill. Every other municipality in British Columbia has to do what we are asking be put in this bill. If they want to build something in my constituency in West Vancouver, they negotiate with my colleague for North Vancouver and tell him what they are doing and how they are going to do it.

The Squamish band is one of the wealthiest in the nation. It owns the majority of the foreshore in North Vancouver and West Vancouver. It leases that land at very high rates, including one lease that the Liberals signed 20 years ago for land to build an environmental building on. That piece of land is still empty, with the lease at $4 million a year. The lease rate will increase to $7 million this year for an empty piece of land. The band is not doing poorly.

All we want is the right to know when they build on their land. We have negotiated shopping centres and buildings with them. We work very well together. All we want to know is that in the future they will sit down to talk with us when they want to build on their land.

Those two amendments could get the bill through the House very quickly. That is all we are asking of this Liberal government. Listen to the people of British Columbia. Do what they are looking for the government to do. The government should not go blindly into what its lawyers are telling it to do. That is the problem here. Lawyers dealing with the ministry are saying “This is what we want. Do not back down. Do not look like you are giving something away”.

The people of British Columbia want these two amendments. We are going to stand here and fight for this bill as long as it takes to have this government admit that those amendments should be in the bill.

[Justice, February 1st, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, this decision has given pedophiles the right to abuse children.

Over 70 members on that side have asked for action on this issue. This minister and all members of this House in June took 15 minutes to give themselves a pay raise. Will this minister speak to her House leader and in 15 minutes today let us solve this problem of pedophiles?

[Justice, February 1st, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, a British Columbia supreme court decision has made the possession of pornography legal.

Over 70 Liberals have joined with Reformers in urging the minister to use the special Constitution clause to override the court in this instance.

Will the minister today take action and solve this problem for Canadians?

[Fishers' Bill Of Rights, February 1st, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, it really is a pleasure to rise and speak to Bill C-302. I commend the member for New Brunswick Southwest for bringing forth this bill. He is absolutely right in the fact that fishermen need more rights in this country. We only have to look at what government has done in the last 10 years on fisheries.

We have spent $4 billion on fishers. What has that got us? It has got us an east coast fishery that does not work, loads of unemployment and nothing positive in the future that we can see right now. What has it done on the west coast? It closed down coho salmon fishing last year.

Money does not solve the problem but consultation in the fishing industry would solve the problem. With this minister and ministers before him we have not had consultation with the fishermen, whether that has had to do with commercial fisheries or sports fisheries.

Members of the committee travelled all across Canada. If members of this House would read the report, east coast and west coast, they would see that the government has not consulted the fishermen in any part of the country. That is why a bill like this one is a very good bill. I would implore the backbenchers on the other side who have been speaking against this bill to read the reports written by members of the House, including the Liberal side, to see what the recommendations are. Those recommendations are in this bill. More consultation. Not just more money thrown at a problem. That will not solve the problem.

There are two examples of lack of consultation. The first is on the west coast in my own constituency. The minister wiped out coho fishing this year in British Columbia. This put a lot of people out of work. There was a great deal of sadness because we had a great run of coho but nobody was allowed to fish it.

A hatchery in my constituency a couple of years ago put some coho in Porpoise Bay. The minister had to lift the embargo of fishing coho and allow people to fish in Porpoise Bay because there were so many coho. The coho were going to spawn and if there are too many of them they lay eggs one on top of the other and a disease starts which could cause a real problem. There was fishing in Porpoise Bay for coho. That was not good planning by the government. The fishermen told the government the year before that it could not put a ban in that area.

Fishermen were also told that they could not seed the open ocean because, and these are the words of DFO, there are already too many coho out there. DFO said not to put any out there. Then what did DFO do? It banned the fishing because it said that there were not enough. That is the department of fisheries without consultation with the fishermen. This bill gives fishermen rights to consultation.

Another story concerns herring roe on kelp. This was not a native fishery. This was a fishery started by a man and his family who live in Lund, British Columbia. They built it into a fishery where they were getting $40 a pound for herring roe on kelp in Japan. Over the years some of his employees left and started up their own herring roe on kelp business because they had learned the business and wanted their own business. Over the years it dropped down to about $30 a pound, but it was still a very lucrative business. Four companies were doing it and making good money at it.

This government came along and gave one of those four people $2 million to buy the licence back. What did the government do with that $2 million licence? It gave it to an aboriginal group in British Columbia. The government said, “It is not a natural fishery for an aboriginal group but it is a good business so let's get you into it”. Since then the government has given away in excess of a dozen more licences in this area of herring roe on kelp to aboriginal fishermen around the province.

What has happened to the market in Japan? It went from $30 down to $20 down to $10 as the government kept on giving licences away for free.

The other three licence holders wanted to be bought out too. They said, “If you can buy out this other guy for $2 million, why won't you buy us out. There is not going to be any industry if you keep on passing out these licences for free to the different native bands around the province”. But the government said it did not have any money to buy them out.

The sad thing is this lack of planning, lack of consultation. The herring roe fishery is zero because the native bands are shipping it to Japan on consignment and the other people are going out of business. That is the lack of planning in this industry.

If we wonder why people get angry when DFO does not consult, how would any member of this House like to be one of those fishermen with the herring roe on kelp who are now having to compete against people who got their licence for free and can ship it to Japan on consignment? It is not right. It is not proper. We all should be voting for a bill like this one to allow the freedom and the consultation.

As I said, I commend the member for New Brunswick Southwest. His bill says that it endeavours to establish the rights of fishermen so that they are involved in the process of fishery stock assessment, fish conservation, the setting of fishing quotas, fishing licensing and the public right to fish. As well the bill would establish the rights of fishermen to be informed of the decisions affecting fishing as a livelihood in advance.

The example I just gave on the herring roe on kelp is a great example of why people should be advised in advance. These are people who put good money into their industry. They are not being advised.

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that fishermen have a problem in this country. What does the government do? It just throws money, $4 billion over the last 10 years. This has not solved one problem.

We need to move DFO out of Ottawa. Put a head office on the east coast for the east coast, and on the west coast for the west coast. We need to get these 1,200 bureaucrats out of the business. There is no fishing in the Rideau Canal. The fishing is on the east and west coasts. There are too many bureaucrats making too much money who have made wrong decisions. This is out of a report written unanimously by all sides of this House. It is being ignored by the minister of fisheries and it is being ignored at the peril of this country's fishermen. It is time for a change. We ask all members of the House to vote for this bill tomorrow.

[Extradition Act, November 30th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to this bill. We have spent a fair bit of time on it in committee and also had the pleasure of moving a number of amendments. The one my colleague just talked about was moved by the Reform Party to make this a better bill.

Extradition is vital to the justice system. Canadians must not be allowed to escape trial by fleeing to other countries. Canada must not be a haven for persons wanted for criminal action in other countries. The process must be fair and expeditious.

Changes in the legislation that advance these goals are welcome. They include the broadening of grounds for extradition by simply requiring that the conduct be a serious crime in both countries, permitting the use of video and audio technology for hearings, linking the refugee and extradition processes to determine faster whether the refugee claim is legitimate or bogus.

With regard to war crimes, the changes are long overdue. The United Nations established a Rwanda genocide tribunal in 1994 and the Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal in 1993. The international criminal court is the new body to be created with an unclear mandate.

Canada, along with 119 other countries signed a treaty that will bring into force an international criminal court with the power to investigate, prosecute and indict and try persons for the most serious crimes of international concern, including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression.

It is clearly an international criminal court or tribunal with a definition of state or entity. Therefore extradition will be allowed. The treaty may be sound, although the United States has refused to sign. It should have been the subject of public hearings and a better debate in this parliament.

Much of the problem with the existing law is the layers of appeals: courts, to minister, to refugee board, back to the minister, and back to the courts. Delay is an advantage to the accused. They know witnesses will die or their memories will become less clear. This bill has done very little to speed up this process of delay by going back and forth.

That is why the supreme court insists under Askov that trials be held expeditiously. It suggested that six months was a reasonable standard, yet extradition proceedings routinely take many years. This bill does nothing to address the two main problems, charter appeals and ministerial discretion.

Charter appeals on the grounds of cruel and unusual punishment allow for multiple appeals. In the second reading debate, I read a number of them. There is a file six inches thick of the appeals that have taken too long. The charter appeals in the supreme court have taken too long. They do not do justice to those of us in Canada and those of us who were seeking to extradite.

There is the Rafay and Burns case in British Columbia. A murder was committed in 1994. The case will be heard by the supreme court in November in Ottawa. The B.C. Court of Appeal found the minister had to refuse extradition because they faced execution for bludgeoning Rafay's parents to death. It should not be a question in this country whether we send them back or not.

Pierino and Michael Divito, Mafia figures, are wanted in the U.S.A. for conspiracy to import 300 kilos of cocaine. It goes to court because of much harsher drug sentences handed out in the U.S. The lawyer vows it will go all the way to the Supreme Court. They do not want to be sentenced in the United States. They want to be sentenced here because for their drug crimes they might get five years in Canada and they would probably get life in the United States because they are organized crime figures. They are part of the Mafia. Here in Canada we will treat them nicely and tell them they can get out after one-sixth of their sentence is served, one-third under a new bill which has passed.

Salvatore Cazzetta, leader of the Rock Machine biker gang is wanted in the U.S. on drug trafficking charges. His extradition has been delayed for four years with arguments taken all the way to the supreme court.

Michael Gwynne, a fugitive serving a 120 year sentence, was apprehended in 1993. He argued his case for five years all the way to the supreme court.

This bill does nothing to stop those kinds of appeals I have just mentioned.

The bill preserves the discretion of the minister which is part of the delay problem and injects the minister into the judicial process. The minister should have no discretion to seek assurances on sentence. She is trying to impose standards which necessarily vary from one minister to the next and in another country. We would not accept such interference in our judicial system. Jeffrey Simpson wrote a very good column in the Globe called “Charter Madness” on this issue.

The role of the court should be simple. Determine whether the conduct complained of is a crime in Canada. Protect us against dictators like Suharto trying to extradite democracy supporters. Determine that the person sought is in fact the person accused. Is he Ivan the Terrible? Make sure there is a valid treaty. The severity of the punishment in another country should be irrelevant to this bill, but the government is not prepared to change that.

We had a rigorous examination of this bill before committee. Witnesses expressed concerns with many sections of the bill. One of the more direct assertions of the concerns with this bill came from the Criminal Trial Lawyers Association. During second reading debate the Reform Party and I pointed out our concern with ministerial involvement in the extradition process.

On the one hand Canada enters into a noble and long overdue process to deal with extraditable individuals, like members of genocidal regimes, and we enter into an agreement with 119 signatories to set up international criminal courts, like those for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, which suggests a judicial process. On the other hand we allow the Minister of Justice to intercede and intervene in the process.

The Reform Party tried by way of amendments in committee to have clauses 3, 12, 15 and 16 changed to ensure an extraditable individual was actually extradited from Canada. We wanted “may be extradited” changed to “shall be extradited” to ensure the minister could not intercede. We were not successful. That remains our major overriding concern. We cannot support a bill that allows the minister discretion.

All the minister should be doing is receiving the extradition order and allowing the process to kick in. The minister should have no discretion. It would have been gratifying to have clause 38 of the bill simply read that the minister was to receive a copy of the order, period.

The Reform Party is not pleased with clauses 40, 41, 42 and 43 of Bill C-40. We would have preferred, as we said in committee and moved amendments in that regard, to have the minister removed from the process.

In principle, the bill remains the same and we cannot support this intent. It insinuates a political nuance on a bill when we should be trying to make a strictly judicial matter. Clauses 44, 45, 46, 47 and 48 are important safeguards in the bill, but they should not be exercised by the minister.

We were unsuccessful in committee in getting the changes we felt were required. However, we inserted some additional wording in clause 44 to ensure all safeguards possible were evident. We moved that the clause be amended to include “nationality, ethnic origin, language, colour, political opinion, sex, sexual orientation, age, mental or physical disability or status”.

We put that amendment to the bill. It affects people's rights under the charter. We were amazed that in drafting the bill the government missed that. We got it with help from our research division and the criminal lawyers who helped us put some amendments to the bill.

Seven Reform amendments were accepted by the committee. It is wonderful we were on guard to do this. If we had not, this bill would probably be challenged in a number of areas in the Supreme Court of Canada, which would cost the Canadian taxpayer a lot of extra money. Most of the amendments we put were to deal with the charter and with where this bill would go. The bill was not drafted properly. By accepting the Reform amendments to this bill, that was admitted by the government people who drafted it.

We cannot support Bill C-40 as long as such clauses as clause 44(2) remain. What the punishment is in another country should be of no concern to us in Canada. It is the right of each country to say whether a crime is punishable by death. We should not be precluding extradition based on that. The Reform Party has grave concerns with clause 46 which has been called the Mandela clause.

We have had a good debate and a good committee on this bill. We won on seven of the amendments. The opposition is doing a good job for the people of Canada.

We will vote against this bill because we did not get all the things we wanted and to show protest in the area of separating the minister from the judicial section. We do not want to unduly delay voting on this bill so we can get a new extradition act in Canada. It is probably one of the longest bills on the record. It is one of two bills that we have been working with with for over 100 years. It is certainly time they were updated. We are very pleased to have made some amendments to this bill that will be good for all Canadians.

[Public Works And Government Services, November 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, other countries have spies to get their secret information. Today we learned that Canada gift-wraps its secret NATO documents and other information and sends it to foreign countries.

It has been confirmed by the RCMP and the minister's staff that secret NATO documents went to British Columbia from Ottawa. Secret PMO documents went from Ottawa to British Columbia to be shredded by a company that had been in bankruptcy at one time.

Can the minister assure the House today that none of those secret PMO documents that went to British Columbia to be destroyed have anything to do with the APEC situation?

[Public Works And Government Services, November 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, there is evidence of a breach of government security with regard to confidential secret government documents that were supposed to be shredded by a company in British Columbia.

Today we have confirmed that classified secret documents had been shipped unshredded to China, Korea and the United States. Last Wednesday in the House the minister of public works said that “no important documents were in the hands of anyone important”. His assistant deputy minister, Mr. Williams, is quoted as saying there were. Can the minister confirm that what he said on Wednesday was not accurate?

[Apec Inquiry, November 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the government has all the power in the world to start a judicial inquiry tomorrow to get to the bottom of this issue.

In the House the Prime Minister and the acting prime minister say let the commission work. They cannot have it both ways. Ivan Whitehall, the Prime Minister's lawyer, made no representations at all to the judge about the delay and the problems that will cause.

We know delays do not help the situation. Even the Prime Minister said let us get this behind us. Let us get on to the issue of health care. Let us get on to the issue of taxes. Let us have a judicial inquiry right now and get this issue solved once and for all.

[Apec Inquiry, November 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the acting prime minister.

The Prime Minister in the House over the last few weeks has said with regard to the public complaints commission “I want the Canadian public to have the whole answer as soon as possible”.

Today a federal court judge ruled that the panel chair cannot continue in his job until another judge makes a decision as to whether or not he is biased. That could take six months. It could take a year. That is not getting anything going. The APEC inquiry is off until that is heard.

Will the acting prime minister now commit to Canada to have a judicial inquiry so we can get on to this issue very quickly and get it over with?

[Apec Inquiry, November 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, as the APEC affair begins to unravel for the Prime Minister and his disgraced former solicitor general, we hear today of an increase in the suspension of Terry Milewski, the maligned CBC journalist who first brought this APEC fiasco to light.

It is bad enough to have the Prime Minister's office unleash its attack dogs on Terry Milewski in an attempt to discredit and muzzle his investigative research, but it is quite another to have the CBC president become the lap dog of the Prime Minister's office.

The Prime Minister's staff undoubtedly put pressure on CBC board members and CBC president Perrin Beatty to have Milewski back off. In a fashion befitting a person pandering to have his contract renewed, Perrin Beatty handed Milewski an additional 15 day suspension, and this in the face of the solicitor general's resignation. I think it is time that Perrin Beatty resigned as president of the CBC.