Dennis Mills

[Allotted Day--Anti-Terrorism Legislation, September 18th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to acknowledge the opposition's subject choice for the debate today. I personally support the motion that we review all the things we have done in the House in the area of anti-terrorism legislation, et cetera. With so many members wanting to speak today I will need to make my three points in a short period.

First, I support the Prime Minister. Whatever we do must be in keeping with the value system of the country and especially to be ultra sensitive to the multicultural reality. When we make our recommendations for CSIS and the RCMP, we must make sure that in their future staffing they will reflect the multicultural reality of our country because that could be a good resource for exchanging information with other countries involved in terrorist activities as well as our own.

I also want to acknowledge the right hon. leader of the Conservative Party who yesterday said that the debate was an exercise for all parliamentarians. I totally support that.

I believe we as members of parliament should not just listen to our trusted officials, whether they be with immigration, CSIS, the RCMP or even experts with our embassies abroad. I know nothing about this issue but we know that countries have been experiencing this problem over the last many years. We have been sheltered.

I believe elected MPs have a unique opportunity to develop good anti-terrorist legislation. My view is that we should visit our elected counterparts in the countries that have been experiencing terrorism for many years. We should learn from their experience and get their ideas so that whatever legislation we develop has the benefit of world expertise. Those are my comments to the opposition.

[Water Exports, June 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of the Environment. Could the minister clarify why an official of his department put out a tender asking for bulk water export valuation?

The valuation of water studies that includes bulk water studies contradicts House of Commons Bill C-6. Does this not create confusion as to what the government's real intention is on bulk water sales?

[Parliament Of Canada Act, June 6th, 2001]

Mr. Chairman, I fail to understand the member's logic. I feel that the member is speaking from an advantaged position. There are many of us in the House, and I would include myself as one, who are speaking from an advantaged position. I respect the member's position as the leader of the party.

The leader has a remuneration package, and I respect that package, that is in a different category than those of most other MPs and backbenchers in the House of Commons. I say respectfully, Mr. Chairman, through you to the member, that he should have that package.

I have been saying in the Hill Times for three or four years, as the right hon. member knows, that I think members of parliament are not properly remunerated. My constituents know it. I have said it publicly. I come from the private sector and quite frankly I am advantaged too. I say to the hon. member that there are many in the House who have families and who do not have the advantage the right hon. member has. The amount is irrelevant, whatever the advantage. I am not pointing to the amount.

The point I am making is that I do not think people in the House who are advantaged have any right to lead the way for those in the House who have economic challenges to meet in order to feed their children and put them through university and to pay their mortgages. I cannot identify a member in the House who would not, if he or she could, through the joy of working in the House, work for nothing. For the right hon. leader to single out that by having a proper remuneration we are not doing any other public policy initiatives I find a bit unfair.

[Patent Act, June 5th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am trying hard to communicate to the member that many of us on this side of the House are not comfortable with the direction in which we are heading in this area.

However we have world trade agreements that we have to work with. Unlike members of the Conservative Party, if they do not get their way immediately they change, they alter and they bolt. We believe that through a steady process and persistence eventually the executive of our government will come to see our position.

[Patent Act, June 5th, 2001]

No, we are not hypocrites. We realize that we never get everything we want within our own government, within our own executive, but at least we support our team. At the same time as we provide constructive and rigorous debate we can still hold our team together, which is something, I say humbly, my friends in the Conservative Party have yet to figure out.

[Patent Act, June 5th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, this is something that the members of the Canadian Alliance and the Conservative Party have yet to understand. In the Liberal Party there are many of us—

[Patent Act, June 5th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Pickering—Ajax—Uxbridge.

When I first came to the House of Commons in 1988, some four campaigns ago, I used to believe that the biggest challenge we had in the House of Commons was pushing the main financial institutions of the country to do more for small business. I stand here today to say a bigger issue is the challenge that we have as parliamentarians to deal with the most profitable companies in the world, the pharmaceutical drug manufacturers.

We on this side of the House have made several commitments over several campaigns to deal with the issue in the interests of consumers, of research and of having a generic drug system. I stand here today saddened that we have not been able to meet all our objectives.

We on this side of the House are blessed with having a member of parliament who has essentially devoted a great portion of his parliamentary career to dealing with the technicalities, the specifics and the development of a proper policy in the particular area of pharmaceuticals.

I support everything that my colleague from Pickering—Ajax—Uxbridge has said and I defer the balance of our 10 minutes to him.

[Immigration And Refugee Protection Act, June 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I want to be on the record on this piece of legislation. I come from a downtown urban riding in Toronto where immigration matters represent a large amount of my constituency work. I like the member's amendment. I too believe that someone who has spent 25 or 30 years of his or her life in Canada is virtually Canadian and should be treated as such.

In my riding I have a lot of people from different communities. When these people initially came to Canada their facility with the language was such that they were almost apprehensive in approaching the department of immigration to put their personal files in order. For the last number of years they have been hard working, constructive Canadians in every way, shape or form except for that piece of paper.

We must remember that 40 years ago, when Toronto had a large influx of people from every part of the world, it was not an uncommon experience. In those days there was such fear of dealing with the Government of Canada that we had mobile citizenship vans. We would send public servants and judges out into the community to try to lower the apprehension of Canadians so they would come forward and put their personal files in order. I am hoping our colleagues on this side of the House can rethink that section of the legislation.

We are in the final days of this session of parliament before we go back to work in our constituencies for the summer. I would bring to the attention of not only members of the House but officials in the department of immigration, not just in Ottawa but in every region of the country and every embassy around the world, the important world youth days event which the department of immigration will be dealing with next summer.

The department will begin preparing for world youth days as we take our break this summer. As of the middle of July the world youth days website will be receiving information from registrants from every country on the planet.

One of the very special initiatives under the leadership of the current minister of immigration was that for the first time ever we have had a visa waiver fee for an event like this one. It was a decision of the whole House of Commons to support this important initiative. It will bring a million plus young people between the ages of 16 and 30 to Canada, to Toronto, where all will celebrate the values of sharing and caring for each other. The House of Commons supported the notion that a visa waiver fee be put in place.

I know that when a bill like this one is on the floor of the House officials monitor and read the proceedings. I would say not only to all members but to everyone in the Department of Citizenship and Immigration that it is a very special moment for Canada when we can reach out to young people from every part of the world and welcome them to our country.

Quite often the experience people have when they go into an embassy or are interviewed by an immigration officer can set the tone for how they feel toward Canada, their place of destiny. Many of these young people will be coming abroad for their first time to a strange country and it will be very important that our officials abroad make them feel they are welcome in Canada.

I would say to all members of the House that over the last two months the support and execution of this project have been very special.

We will be celebrating the principles stated in the summary of the bill in Toronto next July. I want not only to participate in debate on the bill but also to say that we need to review the section that deals with retroactivity. I ask for the indulgence of the House to support all immigration officials that will be asking for counsel on this special event.

As far as Citizenship and Immigration Canada goes, it will be the largest processing event in the history of the country. It will be five times the size of the Olympics, should we be blessed with the Olympics in the middle of July. They at least have seven years to plan it. We in the House, along with all the various departments, have a year. I appreciate being given the opportunity to put these thoughts on the record.

[Supply, May 31st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to take part in this debate with my Bloc Quebecois colleagues.

Each time there is a debate with the Bloc Quebecois, I find myself in a difficult position. I certainly like the spirit and the passion of Bloc Quebecois members, but I have great difficulty accepting their ideas. I am a partisan of centralization and government intervention.

On this issue today I could not be further away from where the Bloc Quebecois stands. I come from a city, downtown Toronto, that every year sends $38 billion to the treasury of Canada. There is not a day that passes when I do not have municipal councillors and provincial members of parliament phoning me, sending letters or calling my office to say they are not getting their fair share in Toronto. They say Ontario is not getting its fair share from the national government. Just the greater Toronto area alone last year received $38 billion. This is a tremendous sum of money.

I say to my friends in the Bloc that I came to this place because I believe that this Chamber is to take all the money that comes from the communities that are doing well, from Toronto, Vancouver or Alberta, and distribute that money in a fair and equal manner. We are here to do that so that we can build a nation.

I believe that it is incumbent upon all of us in the Chamber to be like the Speaker was at one time, a referee. We are the referees of that tremendous sum of money that comes to us. We are here to make sure that if there are special circumstances, and I do not care which province it is, where there are difficulties, when remote regions need extra support, whether it is for infrastructure or for certain unforeseen situations, we are here to use the treasury of Canada to treat every region of the country in a fair way.

For me, the notion of further decentralizing the Chamber is just out of the question. In fact I would say with respect to many of my own colleagues in the executive of the government, that they have gone way too far in decentralizing the national government. I think that at times we have gone further to the right than the previous prime minister.

If there was ever a moment in time when we needed to rethink the fiscal framework of the country and the distribution of funds to the provinces, it is this moment. It should not be evolving more. It should be reclaiming some of that responsibility. It should be bringing it back so that we are in a position to reach out to those people in our communities who are most disadvantaged.

I have to say to the members opposite and to the esteemed finance critic of the Bloc Quebecois that in our province right now we have a provincial premier who is very solid in his position. We have a very difficult position with affordable housing. We cannot get our federal-provincial relationship going in trying to get affordable housing.

All of us in the House announced on March 5 that $500 million was to go to the farmers of the country. As of this moment that money has not been distributed because the federal-provincial agreements have not been worked on and have not been signed.

We as national members of parliament should have a mechanism to use when the provinces are not co-operating with us in the national interest, especially where low income Canadians are not being served. I think we should intervene, we should go direct, in order to solve those problems. It is for that reason that I do not think we should devolve any more dollars or tax points other than what is the basic amount now.

I also want to bring up a very important case for the leader of the Bloc Quebecois and its finance critic. The hon. member has a situation right now that exists in his province just outside of Montreal on the Kahnawake reserve. It is the Mohawk Internet technology park. The situation there is that our first nations people are trying desperately to become part of the mainstream economy. They have hired expert advice and are attempting to become part of the main economy of Montreal, Quebec. Their own province is walking away from support.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, May 29th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I could not agree more with the member. A mother should be given the option to stay at home or to work. If a mother chooses to work, obviously that is not a debatable point. However if she wishes to stay at home and raise her children, there is no way tax policy should punish her for doing so.

It is no secret that I have been a passionate supporter of that idea for many years. Those of us who believe in the idea will keep promoting it so that one day a majority of us in the House will realize that it is a very special experience and a very special gift for young people to have a mother who chooses and can afford to stay at home and give that added amount of time to her children.