Lost his last election, in 2000, with 29% of the vote.
Ukrainian World Congress December 3rd, 1998
Mr. Speaker, I welcome the Ukrainian World Congress as it holds its seventh world congress this week in Toronto.
The congress is an international co-ordinating body and is spokesman for the world-wide Ukrainian community in 20 countries and over 230 organizations and represents over 20 million Ukrainians.
The Late Dulce Huscroft December 1st, 1998
Mr. Speaker, for Dulce Huscroft, giving was a way of reaching out to people.
She gave freely of her time whenever called upon and often because she alone saw a need.
It seems only a few short weeks ago that her family and friends rallied together to show her just how much they cared. Today we gather again to pay our respects and to say goodbye to a truly caring person.
Dulce always put her family first and to them I offer my sympathy.
She touched many of us in her busy life as a school trustee, community volunteer and as a caring parent. We will all miss her.
Division No. 247 October 27th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, one issue that arose repeatedly in consultations with the provinces and territories, the clients and the public was accountability.
Essentially there is a desire that the proposed new agency be accountable both to what it does and how it operates. Bill C-43 establishes a number of accountability mechanisms that will ensure that the agency despite its new structure and potential increase in services on behalf of the provinces and territories will remain accountable to parliament and its clients and to the public for its action.
Full ministerial accountability for the program, legislation and overall control of the agency by the government will be maintained.
The Minister of National Revenue will remain responsible for the administration and enforcement of the program and legislation such as the Income Tax Act, the Excise Act and the Customs Act. The minister will be able to direct officials to exercise authority under the legislation.
The minister is currently named in 1,470 various pieces of program legislation as the person with the authority to exercise specific actions such as assessing tax returns. The minister will continue to be the person named to exercise those authorities. This means that the minister will retain personal accountability for the way the programs are run. This direct accountability ensures that the minister has the authority to inquire into any matters of program administration. This is important because the minister can ensure that the clients of the agency have been treated fairly and equitably.
The minister will continue to respond to questions in the House and from the public on program and policy matters. The minister will continue to be able to respond to members of parliament when their constituents seek their help in dealing with tax or customs matters.
The minister will retain the primary role in establishing the strategic direction of the agency. The minister will approve major corporate documents, recommend approval of the agency's business plan to Treasury Board and table an annual report to parliament on the operation of the agency.
While the minister is accountable for how the programs are carried out, the agency has a considerable amount of autonomy in the matter of internal management.
The agency will be directed by a board of management which will be accountable to parliament through the minister for management policies of the agency, such as human resource activities in staffing and compensation; mandates for negotiating with its bargaining agents and collective bargaining agreements; service and performance standards; and the appropriate allocation of internal resources.
Some people have expressed concern that the board of management, consisting of private sector individuals, might ignore the public interest and act in a way that is motivated only by revenue generation.
There are sufficient checks and balances in this bill to ensure that the agency will remain within the overall government policy framework. These checks and balances include Treasury Board's mandate to approve the corporate business plan and the need for the agency to report annually to parliament. Ultimately, if problems do arise, the minister will have the authority to give direction to the agency on matters within the board's jurisdiction if they affect public policy or materially affect public finances. It is doubted that this direction authority will ever have to be used, but it is there as an insurance policy.
The commissioner, who is a full member of the board of management, would act as a full time chief executive officer of the agency and be responsible for the day to day operations of the organization. The commissioner will be accountable to the minister for the administration and enforcement of the program legislation.
With regard to accountability for the administration of provincial programs, the commissioner will offer to meet with provincial and territorial finance ministers and to report on such matters as service and revenue levels and to receive feedback from them.
As indicated, the agency's corporate business plan will require Treasury Board approval and its appropriations will be made through the regular government estimate procedures.
In addition, certain human resources aspects will form part of the corporate business plan. The public service commission will have authority to review and report on certain aspects of the agency's staffing program.
The Minister of Finance will continue to be responsible for the development of tax and trade policy and legislation. The Minister of National Revenue, through the agency, will be responsible for implementation. The important and necessary relationship now in place between the Departments of Finance and National Revenue will continue between the Department of Finance and the agency.
The Auditor General of Canada will be the auditor for the agency and will play the same role as with Revenue Canada.
Bill C-43 also provides a full scale review of the legislation by a committee of this House five years after coming into force. This does not exist, of course, to prevent parliament from exercising its normal authority over the agency in the interim.
Parliament will have all of the normal opportunities to ensure that the agency is being properly managed, such as review of its corporate business plan, its annual reports and its annual appropriations. It can require a further in-depth review at any time.
In summary, ministerial accountability, overall control by government and parliamentary oversight will be maintained for the new agency.
Those being served by the agency, especially the provinces and the territories, will have new means at their disposal to ensure that the agency is accountable to them for its performance.
Accountability for fairness is the cornerstone of our government's legislation, policies, regulations and processes.
Fairness is an essential foundation to the entire revenue administration. It is a system based on voluntary compliance and if the clients do not believe they are being treated fairly, one cannot expect them to comply voluntarily.
The issue of fairness is a priority for Revenue Canada and it will remain a priority for the Canada customs and revenue agency.
Revenue Canada's record on fairness is excellent. The fact that 95% of filers comply voluntarily is a testament to that record. That compliance rate can be even higher.
However, one can only maintain this level of compliance if taxpayers believe that the tax system is fair to them, fair to their neighbours and fair to everyone.
One also knows that complacency is no way to deal with fairness. Canada's business, economic and social environment is dramatically changing and that is one of the reasons that the agency is being created: to respond to those changes and to provide better service to clients.
Last spring an initiative was launched to look closely at fairness: what measures were in place; how well the department was doing at providing fairness; what improvements could be made to provide a greater level of fairness to the department's clients.
This has been a broad and comprehensive consultation effort. It has looked to the department's many independent advisory committees, to stakeholder groups, to the general public and to our own managers and front-line staff for their ideas and advice.
In addition, an assessment was performed of the best practices of other customs and revenue administrations around the world.
To ensure that this has been an open, credible and transparent exercise, the Confederation Board of Canada was retained to help design the consultation, gather and analyse the feedback and produce a report.
Fair treatment means being open, clear, courteous, responsive, timely and accessible.
For Revenue Canada, applying legislation fairly means applying it impartially, justly and consistently.
The commitments that Revenue Canada makes to fairness will be commitments for the Canada customs and revenue agency. The agency is all about providing better, more effective and more efficient service to Canadians.
Fairness is part and parcel of service and an efficient organization that is not fair to its clients is not an effective one.
As the Canada customs and revenue agency is created, there have been suggestions that an ombudsman forum be created to ensure that the rights of taxpayers are protected.
It would be premature to consider the establishment of an ombudsman or any such office until this process of public consultation is complete. In fact, early feedback from the fairness initiative is reinforcing the longstanding practice of building commitment to fairness throughout the organization as opposed to isolating it in a separate office.
Fishers' Bill Of Rights October 26th, 1998
Madam Speaker, the bill before the House is impractical and unnecessary and as such should not become law. It is unnecessary for many reasons.
One of the reasons is that the participatory role it seeks for fishermen is already becoming a standard practice. Procedures and processes for ongoing consultations with stakeholders are in place as a matter of policy.
For instance, fishermen are already involved in stock assessment and conservation issues on the east coast through their participation in the fisheries resources conservation council. Last month the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans announced the formation of a similar council on the west coast, the Pacific resource conservation council chaired by Hon. John Fraser. In addition co-management arrangements are in place in a number of fisheries that give fishermen an expanded role in the decision making process.
The bill is also impractical because it would tie the minister's hands and prevent him or her from making decisions to protect the fisheries at a time when this protection is urgently required.
For example, the bill would require that fishermen be represented on or be heard by a body involved in the process intended to produce a division or recommendation respecting fisheries stock assessment, fish conservation, the setting of fishing quotas, fishing licensing or the public right to fish or, in the case of an order to be made by the governor in council, to have the opportunity to comment on every proposed order before it is made.
The hon. member must know that the minister issues many such orders in response to changing conditions in the fisheries. Sometimes these orders must be made on an emergency basis. This clause would institute a cumbersome and time consuming review process that would delay the implementation of any decisions until all appeals had been exhausted. It would bring fisheries management in Canada to a standstill.
The bill is impractical for another reason, its potential cost to the taxpayers. The bill would require that every fisher who suffers a loss as a result of the abrogation of fishing rights other than as a result of a process that would involve fishermen shall be entitled to compensation for a loss. This could create a huge financial obligation for the government. Where does the hon. member think this money would come from? It is fine to be free with the taxpayers' money but we have spent five years sacrificing to bring the country's deficit under control. Now is not the time to be incurring substantial obligations.
Consider the double bind that this would create for the minister and his officials. Suppose they were faced with making a decision to protect a specific stock but to do so would mean paying a huge sum of compensation. Is the intent of this bill to discourage the minister from taking needed measures to protect the fisheries, or is the intent to load the taxpayers up with new financial burdens?
The bill is not precise in its wording and focus, touching on many legal issues, including some that are outside federal jurisdiction and would be impossible to implement in any effective manner. The wording is so vague as to be open to multiple interpretations.
We can take our pick of phrases but let us take this one: the consideration of the effect of fishing on traditional lifestyles including but not restricted to aboriginal traditional lifestyles. What exactly does this mean? Leaving aside the ambiguity of “the effect that fishing on traditional lifestyles”, how much consideration would the bill require? Whose traditional lifestyle? How do we distinguish traditional lifestyle versus a non-traditional one? The bill does not say.
The bill is both unnecessary and unworkable. Worse still, it misses entirely what should be the focus of our attention: protecting the ocean and its resources.
It is not just Canada that has seen the consequences of overfishing. Other nations from New Zealand to Norway have all seen fish stocks damaged by overfishing. We all now recognize that the survival of some of these stocks hangs by a thread and that if we do not take action now, it may be too late. That is why the focus of government policy must be and is on conserving and protecting the fish stocks. This bill would do nothing to advance those goals.
What we need are effective conservation based management policies, policies that balance the competing demands we make on the oceans with their ability to sustain their demands. This government is putting those policies in place. It continues to work through the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization, NAFO, to implement mechanisms to stop overfishing.
Last month we saw the formal adoption of 100% observation coverage for all fish vessels in the NAFO regulatory area. The decision meets one of the most important conservation objectives advanced by Canada at the NAFO annual meeting held in Lisbon in September. NAFO has acknowledged the success of the pilot program for 100% observation coverage and has noted that the apparent infringements of its rules have declined by over 80% since the pilot program was implemented.
The United Nations fisheries agreement, the result of a Canadian initiative, provides the means to strengthen international arrangements such as NAFO. Parties to this agreement will help to create a new enforcement system for the high seas. This system will provide for the protection of straddling and migratory fish stocks on the high seas. It will provide a binding and compulsory settlement for fishing disputes among states.
Canada is in the process of developing an oceans strategy that will set the course for management of our ocean resources into the next century. This strategy has three principles: sustainable development; integrating the management of human activity in estuaries, coastal and marine waters; and the precautionary approach, a commitment to err on the side of caution.
The strategy is based on the premise that everyone with a stake in the future health of the oceans must work together to preserve and protect them. This is the thrust of the government policy with regard to the oceans and their resources, and it is both appropriate and effective.
Rather than focusing on creating rights for any particular group, we must concentrate on protecting the oceans and the conservation of their resources for all Canadians because without them, there will be no fishermen and fishing communities, traditional or otherwise.
I urge the House to reject this bill.
Women's History Month October 20th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House to recognize Women's History Month in Canada. In honour of this important occasion I would like to discuss the increasing involvement of women in science and technology.
In the 1960s few women studied chemistry and engineering because the attitude was that girls were not engineers. Today the number of women working in science and technology is on the rise, but we still have a gender imbalance.
Statistics Canada reported that in 1994 only 12% of students or professionals in the natural sciences, engineering and mathematics were women. Encouraging and developing the talents of young Canadian women can only benefit our country and help keep Canada competitive in the global economy.
Government initiatives such as the National Research Council's women in engineering and science program and support for organizations such as the Canada Coalition of Women in Engineering, Science and Technology will help ensure that this indeed happens.
Breast Cancer October 5th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the 5,000 Vancouver area residents who participated in Sunday's run in support of a cure for breast cancer.
They raised more than $200,000 for the Canadian Breast Cancer Society's largest special event.
I want to extend personal congratulations to residents in my riding of Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam for producing the largest team, 223 friends neighbours and colleagues who ran in support of breast cancer sufferer Dulce Huscroft. Dulce could not participate. She is far too weak.
Mrs. Huscroft is a wife, a mother, a school trustee, a community leader in Port Moody and a very brave person.
The run for the cure took place in 23 communities across Canada. Breast cancer is the largest cause of death among women in Canada between the ages of 34 and 54.
More people join the run each year because cancer knows no boundaries.
Dna Identification Act September 29th, 1998
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to address the House today on third reading of Bill C-3, which provides for the establishment of Canada's national DNA data bank.
Bill C-3 will make Canada one of only a handful of countries in the world to have a national system of this kind. It is important to recognize that this is ground breaking legislation and a major milestone of the government's safer communities agenda.
Public safety is a priority of this government. To that end, Bill C-3 is an important part of our commitment to Canadians. We know that Canadians want a data bank for better public protection.
The intention of this legislation is to create an effective law enforcement tool, one that stands the test of time. We must be careful in creating this data bank so that it is a tool that balances public safety needs with the privacy rights which are highly valued by Canadians.
The government has heeded the call from those on the front lines who have told us that this new law must help them to do their jobs. We have taken the advice of those who have told us that it must not infringe upon basic rights under the charter. We have listened to those who have told us that we must get on with the business of putting this valuable enforcement tool in place. I believe that we have found the right balance in Bill C-3.
Since the bill was introduced last year, members of this House have proceeded cautiously in their consideration of this proposed legislation. The government has welcomed this debate. Given the scope of the issues surrounding the potential misuse of DNA profiles and samples as well as the legal and ethics concerns, it is vital that a bill of this nature be debated thoroughly, taking all views into account.
This is the very reason why Bill C-3 was referred to the all-party Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights before it proceeded to second reading. The solicitor general did so at the time of introduction because he had the very expectation that we would come out of this exercise with a better bill. He expected that amendments would be made to improve it and in fact encouraged the committee to focus on making the bill better. In my view, this is exactly what has been achieved.
The committee examined this bill thoroughly. The policing community, those on the front lines included, provided their views. This government listened to those views and we acted on them.
Last week we heard from critics in this House who asked the very same questions that were brought and debated before the committee. We have heard those same concerns time and time again. We have addressed them in the amended bill before us today.
We must not lose sight of the benefits of Bill C-3 and of the value it will bring as one of the most powerful investigative police tools to date. To do that, we need only to reflect on the development of Bill C-3 from the time it was introduced one year ago.
From there we can easily see how it has been improved as a result of extensive consultations at every stage along the way. Perhaps more important, it becomes apparent why this bill provides that bodily samples be taken for DNA testing at the time of conviction and not at the time of arrest or charge.
The introduction of the DNA identification act marks the second phase of the government's DNA strategy. The government recognized early in the process that the first important step involved laying out the requirements for when DNA samples could be obtained in order to be used in criminal investigations.
As a result in 1995 amendments to the Criminal Code allowed police to obtain DNA samples from suspects by using a warrant. That first step provided the police with an extremely effective tool that has helped them solve many serious crimes.
It has been effective because it has been used to help eliminate suspects and secure convictions. It has been effective because it has been instrumental in obtaining guilty pleas therefore sparing victims the trauma of testifying. It has been effective because it has helped to reduce overall court costs. It has also withstood constitutional challenges.
With the DNA warrant legislation now firmly in place in Canadian law and in the police investigation process, the government is now in the midst of the next phase of its DNA initiative. We are now creating the framework for storing DNA samples and for using that information in the investigation of serious crimes.
A national DNA data bank will be an important tool to help police link a suspect with evidence left at a crime scene. The ability to store and later retrieve DNA profiles will shorten investigations and help prevent further violence by repeat offenders. This means better public safety for all Canadians.
Bill C-3 will authorize police to collect DNA samples from offenders convicted of designated criminal offences. These include the most serious personal injury crimes such as homicide and sexual offences. They are crimes that are most likely to be associated with DNA evidence found at the crime scene.
Samples will be analysed with the resulting profile entered into the convicted offenders index of the data bank. The data bank will also have a crime scene index containing DNA information retrieved from crime scenes. The purpose of having this structure is to ensure that the DNA profiles in each index can be cross referenced and a match in the system can be identified.
The benefits of using the system like the one we have laid out in Bill C-3 are very clear. Stored DNA information will help the police more quickly identify suspects where they may otherwise not have had any leads. It will allow them to identify repeat offenders no matter what police jurisdiction they are in. It will also have a deterrent effect as criminals will know that because their DNA profiles are already in the data bank they can no longer slip through the cracks.
Throughout the development of Bill C-3 the federal government has sought the advice and expertise of many groups and individuals. I want to make the point that those on the front lines have been consulted from the very beginning and throughout the process.
In addition the standing committee held 15 hearings on the bill and heard from representatives of 17 different organizations. Those 17 organizations, which included police, victims, and officials in our legal communities, represented thousands upon thousands of Canadians.
While it is true that one of the critics of this bill, the Canadian Police Association, may represent 35,000 front line police officers, we have heard from even more who support this bill wholeheartedly.
We have considered all views represented in our country. Our consultations revealed strong support for the creation of a national data bank.
There were also a number of concerns about fundamental values that make Canada unique and are reflected in the rights guaranteed to all Canadians by our charter. These include individual rights to privacy and equality under the law, as well as public protection. To respond to those concerns and to improve the strength of the bill, a number of amendments were made since the legislation was first introduced.
I would like to share some of those concerns and changes. Various interest groups, including the privacy commissioner, the Barreau du Québec and the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, have suggested that the bill did not contain sufficient safeguards.
Infrastructure May 28th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister responsible for infrastructure.
The federal government has extended $65 million in infrastructure payments to the province of British Columbia. What specific projects were announced and how will they benefit the people of British Columbia? Will the government commit to keeping this level of participation?
Ukrainian Heritage May 12th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, I would like to tell all members just how proud I am of my Ukrainian heritage. If I speak in an unique way it is something I will wear as a badge of honour. My father, mother, grandmother and grandfather came to Canada in 1891 and settled near Hafford, Saskatchewan.
They were, in fact, the first Ukrainian family to settle in Saskatchewan. My family was among the thousands of immigrants from all over the world who built the west. We owe those pioneers an incredible debt of gratitude.
I am proud to speak with a Ukrainian accent, but at the same time I am shocked at the Reform Party that would be asking me to speak English.
Privilege May 7th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, I heard it directly from the member for Langley—Abbotsford while I was speaking.