Jake Hoeppner

[Criminal Code, September 23rd, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I would like to respond to the hon. member.

[Criminal Code, September 23rd, 1996]

That is the truth. It is the honest to goodness truth, and the hon. member knows it. Six hundred billion dollars in debt and his grandchildren will never pay it. That is the truth.

If hon. members say that is not the truth, then let them call it a lie. If it is not the truth then it is a lie and we have $600 billion of debt.

I am sure the people who helped implement the policies which created that debt are not going to pay it back. They would not even want to try.

It is the same way with the justice system. If they want to try to reverse the system they had better start getting on track and doing something about it instead of using rhetoric which sounds like it was taken from some futuristic generation that did not know what death was. That is what we are talking about.

When I stand at the graveside of one of those murdered people I know there is an imprint on that family for its entire life. Nobody can erase it no matter how the criminal is rehabilitated. The impression on the memory is there.

I will tell the House how I know this. My grandmother, who came out of the Russian revolution, reminisced day after day before she died about the tragedies she had faced. She died while in a coma. These families that have murder victims in their families will never forget it no matter how rehabilitated the criminal is.

If that is not a message that should go to everyone's heart I do not know what else I can say. Does anyone want to see that vision in their dying days? Does anyone want to lay there in a coma thinking: "I was there and I helped defend the criminals instead of going after the protection of the victims and the citizens"?

We heard a Bible quote from someone which stated we should forgive. I also know a Bible quote which states that the government has been given the sword to exercise it. That does not mean just to defend its borders. The government is there to exercise that sword to protect its individual citizens, which is one thing this government is not doing. It is weak-kneed and arrogant and will not listen to the general public.

If we went to a referendum today on capital punishment, if any indication of my constituency has an effect over the country, it would pass by 85 per cent to 95 per cent. Why are we afraid to go to a binding referendum? Why do we not give the people in this country a chance to say what they feel? Why do we not finally listen to the grassroots people and do what they want us to do? No way. That is too easy. We would rather sit here day after day and joke about the problems we have in this country.

It is not a joke anymore when we have hundreds of people murdered every year and hundreds of thousands of people on welfare who cannot find a job because we have spent the future they deserved. What else can I tell this Parliament? Disband and have an election? No, we do not want elections too often because that is costly, I agree, but I am sure that a lot of these issues will not be talked about in the next election. They will be hid underneath some other political rhetoric.

What are we going to do about that? After 60 years in this country I have seen the good times and the poor times, but I hope we get better times. In 1972 when we had probably the most fluent times in the farming industry, when wheat went from $1.50 to $5 or $6, my mother said you will see starvation in this country. This is exactly what happened in the Soviet Union in 1912 to 1914. People got rich. I said it could never happen. Today I have seen it. I have seen food banks which I have never seen before in every city and every town, something we thought could never happen in this country.

There have been drive-by shootings which we thought could never happen in this country. We have had mass murders to an extent we had never seen before and we are saying that the price of justice is not a deterrent. Punishment is not a deterrent. Why are we implementing any legislation? Why are we giving speeding tickets? Why are we giving this and that? Abandon them. If punishment is not a deterrent let us forget it.

I appreciate these few moments. I hope I have a few members thinking.

[Criminal Code, September 23rd, 1996]

Madam Speaker, it has been a lively debate and time is drawing on.

It is very obvious that the Reform Party believes that all persons convicted of first degree murder should be imprisoned for life with no chance for parole or conditional release in any form for 25 years. Consequently, section 745 of the Criminal Code should be repealed.

I remind the hon. gentleman from Scarborough West that when a criminal or a murderer is before the justice system, he gets convicted or he gets released. If the sentence he gets is not to his liking, he can appeal the decision and he can keep appealing the decision until he reaches the Supreme Court. We have seen in the last decade or so that anyone convicted of murder receives the best judicial people in the world to defend them. If we have gone through the process and the person is given a life sentence, it should mean life.

It is only because some weak-kneed politicians have refrained from making decisions which would benefit this country that we are $600 billion in debt today which our future generations will probably never look after. Weak-kneed politicians, out of convenience, have said that punishment is not a deterrent. I would like anyone to prove to me that punishment is not a deterrent.

I wonder why the government is continually bringing forward bills which introduce severe punishment for society. The non-compliance bill is definitely one which tries to infer that stiffer punishments will deter violators. If it works in monetary bills and in other bills, why will it not work in the justice system?

The Reform Party mirrors very well Canadians' displeasure with the current weak justice system. Criminals are brazen and tough and do not respect the justice system.

During the weekend of September 16 in Winnipeg a senior of 75 years of age found herself with two intruders in her bedroom at night. What did these people do? They rolled her up in a blanket and made sure she could not move. They tried to take off her wedding ring. They said if they could not get the ring off they would cut it off. Finally they tore off the chain which was around her neck. They went through her premises, ravaged about and took what they wanted. Then they stabbed her in the neck and in the shoulders and left her for dead.

What happened? This lady managed to get to a telephone. She called the police to tell them what had happened to her. What happened within 15 or 20 minutes after the police arrived? The same criminals came back to the same house looking for more stuff to plunder. They thought they had probably killed the lady and she would not have been able to phone the police. They were brazen enough to take the chance to return to take more items.

I suggest to the House that these people probably felt that if they got caught they would be better off inside the prison system anyway, so why would they not go back to see if there were more things in the house? Is this the type of society we want to protect or that we want to encourage to develop in future generations?

What happens to the victims and their families? Fortunately, I have not had to stand at too many murder victims' graves. I have never seen any faint hope clause for them. There is not one single instance where those victims will take another breath of fresh air. Those people are put six feet under the ground and all the families have to remember of that person is a mound of dirt and a headstone.

I listened to the family who had their 16-year old daughter abducted in the middle of the afternoon. She was tied up, thrown into a storage shed and froze to death. After 15 years I have never heard those people say: "We don't wish that our daughter was back".

It appalls me when I hear some people in this House say that we have to rehabilitate these criminals. The person that committed that

crime was never found. These people have never had to think about how they would feel toward that criminal, but every time they talk to a community or share their experience, all they have left are the positive memories that child provided for them. This teenage girl had a tremendous influence on her class and on her community, and her life was snubbed out without any consideration.

Now they want to tell me it is some chemical imbalance that makes people do something like this. Never in my 60 years had I even thought of considering that. The people who commit some of these heinous crimes have never had any discipline. They have never had any punishment. They have always had their way and they only think of one thing: themselves. They would not hesitate to put a knife or a bullet into somebody else if they thought they could get some advantage from it.

I do not know what it will take for politicians to realize that in the past 25 years this country has become a worse place to live in, not a safer place. Twenty-five years ago we had been farming for about a dozen years and we never thought of locking the door. We never thought of locking our gas tanks. We never thought that we should stay at home at night because there could be somebody loose and on the prowl. My in-laws who lived in town never dreamt of locking their doors.

Today people dare not go away. If they do not get robbed or if their buildings are not ransacked, something is wrong. I wonder if this is the type of society we have come to appreciate and accept. As long as I am in this House I will speak against this type of society. I have been to countries and have seen what has become of societies that have to protect themselves from the criminal element. They put steel fences around their property and they keep the criminals out, not in.

If this government does not start to realize that is the direction we are going in, it will not be too many generations before we are doing the very same thing. We can see the start of it in some communities already. Rather than protecting their homes from criminals, they are protecting themselves so they cannot get out into society.

One Monday morning in early September I turned on the radio and heard of a young girl named Megan Ramsay. She was five years old. Her mother's common law husband smashed her head in with a baseball bat. A five-year old kid. How can a human being be so degrading that they can do that?

I had to put down animals when I farmed but I never had the heart to use a stick or a bat to kill them. I would go for some kind of instrument that put them away quickly. Here in a family situation a stepfather used a baseball bat. And when he was arrested he was charged with second degree murder. Tell me ladies and gentleman, how can we put second degree murder on somebody who uses a baseball bat to kill a five-year old girl?

That is how insensitive we have become to this type of conduct. We have come to the point where we know it is going to happen every day. If it has not happened to us personally, we say that we are lucky. But there is no place in this country where it is safe anymore. Twenty-five years ago I did not know what a drive-by shooting was. Today we see it in rural communities like Miami and Altona, Manitoba, areas where there was practically no crime 25 years ago. What has happened to this country? We have representatives in this House who really do not care in what direction we are going as long as it buys them a vote and they will be back here.

I hear members say that society has made these decisions. I have never seen a referendum on capital punishment. I have not seen a referendum on section 745 to circumvent the judgments the judicial system puts on the criminal or murderer.

If we are going to stand up in this House and use rhetoric that seems to suit our ears instead of addressing the issues, we will not make very many decisions to benefit this country.

Why am I so dead set against reversing sentences when they have been pronounced by our judicial system? If we circumvent one law we can do it in other laws.

There is a situation right now in my province where a farmer has gone to jail for selling his own grain for the best price he could. That is not the worst violation, but we also have a farmer who has been benefiting tremendously by keeping his mouth shut and not opening up to say what really happened. If this is justice we are going down the wrong track.

When we are going down the wrong track it is only a matter of time before we have a derailment. The derailment of the justice system over the last 25 or 30 years is something everybody saw coming as soon as capital punishment was done away with, without going to the people for their advice. It was politicians who thought they knew better. They knew what the country needed. Today I must say we have gone a long way toward that derailment and sooner or later the whole train will crash.

We have seen it in different countries where that has happened, Rwanda, Africa and other countries in Asia. We can name one after another.

We still have a democracy where we can change things, but if we are going to address our problems the way we have in the last couple of sessions, I do not have very much hope that we are going to avoid catastrophes.

Hon. members across the way know that when we came in here and said zero in three they threw up their hands and said "no way, we don't need to balance our budget". If they had done it three years ago as we asked them to do we would have money to spend

on rehabilitating some of these minor criminals, not the major criminals.

[Criminal Code, September 23rd, 1996]

Do you believe in elections?

[Criminal Code, September 23rd, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I ask the hon. member how many individual families he knows that have suffered this trauma of having somebody in their family murdered, what the consequences were for these families and how they coped with this situation.

I know a few such families and I find it almost unbelievable that we do not address this issue. We looked more or less at the issue of rehabilitation rather than at the trauma these people have caused in the communities.

[Supply, June 19th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy listening to my comrade from Brandon-Souris. I know he has his heart in the right place and he likes to look at things objectively.

I have read a lot of the presentations made to the Western Grain Marketing Panel. I still have not heard one of those presentations state that it wanted to have the wheat board stay status quo. I wonder if the hon. member could identify one of those presentations which stated it wanted to keep the wheat board the way it is. I have not found one yet.

There is another question I want to ask the hon. member. I agree pooling is a nice way of doing things and getting good and equal prices. However, what would he do with farmers who are in a position of having land which is overtaxed and overpriced and who have to pay five times as much for their property tax as some of their neighbours? Should the cost not also be pooled so these farmers can continue to operate?

[Supply, June 19th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy listening to the hon. parliamentary secretary. He tries to be honest and objective.

I will address a few of the issues he raised. I have raised the issue a number of times that I do not think the marketing panel is that credible any more because of the in camera meetings that were held. Only a few representatives were invited to attend: certain grain companies and certain farmers who supported the wheat board. That is one reason, whether or not the decision is good, the marketing panel will not be as credible as it should be.

The parliamentary secretary raised another issue about political gain. During the last Conservative government there was a debate on whether we should have a dual marketing system or single debt. People who are familiar with it will know what I am talking about.

The Prime Minister and the wheat board critic before the election promised western farmers that there would be a plebiscite on the dual marketing issue of barley and that farmers would be given that choice. Farmers have now been stymied for three years not having that choice. Now there is supposed to be credence and credibility on a marketing panel that has heard the issues time and time again.

The marketing panel knows the issues. When it is not prepared to openly indicate whose grain is being marketed, I am very uneasy about the results of the marketing panel. When a farmer pays the bills, owns the land and produces the crop, it is his grain. He should have some type of input into how it is marketed.

I challenge the parliamentary secretary and the member for Malpeque to agree to have their operations run by people hired by somebody else, pay the bills, pay the pension plan and never squawk a minute about not having enough profit left over at the end of the year. I will put my farm up against theirs that they will not agree to that. It is an even bet.

When I have an operation, pay the price, own the property and do not have any input into how it is marketed, it is bogus. It does not belong in a democracy. It belongs in a communist country. It has been tried time and time again and it has failed. People have overthrown those systems. Sooner or later western farmers will overthrow that system if they are not given some input into how their grain is marketed. They will not continue to raise it year after year and take for profit whatever somebody else decides to give them. They want some input into it.

My bet is on against the Malpeque constituency and against the parliamentary secretary's assets that they will not agree to have their businesses run by somebody else and have no input into how stuff is marketed.

[Supply, June 19th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the correction. I was reading from the article and I did not consider the minister's name was involved. I retract that and apologize for it.

A recent Toronto Globe and Mail article accurately identified the government's paradoxical approach to monopoly. On one hand the article states the government believes that a coven of oil companies are conspiring to defraud consumers through backroom deals creating a secret gasoline cartel''. The industry is now under investigation by the Bureau of Competition Policy.The message is monopolies are bad''. Or is the message that monopolies are good? Which way do we really want it?

Then we have the government's desperate attempt to defend the statutory Canadian Wheat Board monopoly on the export of western grain. When farmer David Sawatzky was acquitted on charges of illegally exporting his crop to the United States, the federal government moved swiftly to close this loophole in the Customs Act.

The minister of agriculture is working overtime to keep this monopoly intact. This time the message is monopolies are good. Which way do we really want it?

I will read from the wheat board act. This is what both judges and both court rulings stated: "In the case of a producer convicted of an offence relating to the delivery of grain-to a fine of an amount equal to one-third of his initial payment for the grain in relation to which the offence was committed, but the amount shall not be less than $50 or more than $350".

The minister and the people know very well that with that kind of penalty farmers will continue to cross the border with their grain because they make way more profits than $350 on each load.

After my election to Parliament I was approached by farmers who provided compelling evidence of serious irregularities in the marketing practices of the wheat board or grain companies. Since then I have endeavoured to secure a response to those allegations.

I embarked on the runaround of a lifetime. Every time I held a news conference and provided the documentations, I talked very honestly to the people. I told them I had sent the information to the ag minister, to the wheat board and to the grain companies telling them: "Here are documents farmers have provided me with. Would you refute them or would you at least determine whether they are legal and whether they are practical documents that were issued in the exportation or the selling of grain".

Initially I raised this issue with the solicitor general and the RCMP. They lost the file. On my insistence they retrieved the file but took no investigative action. They arbitrarily decided there was insufficient evidence to proceed with an investigation. Interestingly this decision was made by the RCMP division that aggressively investigated Mr. Sawatzky.

It has now come to light that an officer of this division was so anxious to prosecute that he falsified information to mislead a provincial court judge in establishing a basis for issuance of a

search warrant to raid the Sawatzky home. Is this the way a justice system should work?

The time limitations of this debate prevent me from fully disclosing the extent of resistance I have faced from the government and the wheat board since attempting to have these farmers' allegations investigated.

Briefly, since contacting the RCMP I have requested assistance from the solicitor general, the minister of agriculture and the customs minister. Most recently I requested a judicial inquiry to be launched by the justice minister. This is due to the fact that the former assistant wheat board commissioner, Mr. Beswick, openly and quite fervently admitted and pointed out western barley producers lost at least $180 million last year because of the inefficiencies and inadequacies of the Canadian Wheat Board in its marketing policies.

I am wondering if this should go on. Should farmers really have to carry these losses when it is openly admitted they are there? When one looks at $180 million of losses to farmers, it means it takes about a billion dollars out of western Canada's economy.

During the three press conferences I sought information through the Access to Information Act. When I did not get any response from the ministers I tried the information act. What I did I get for my attempts to represent farmers? In the two and a half years since I have tried to secure some answers, I have been expelled from the House. My life has been threatened twice. The wheat board has tried to intimidate me through court actions, the intimidation of detractors being its modus operandi. It has threatened to sue me. It has threatened to do all kinds of other things, even to take legal action against the party and have me expelled.

That sounds to me like something is being covered up. Why is it so determined to shut me down? All I have done is provided documents which farmers have given to me. They are legal documents of grain transactions and grain sales. If these people are not willing to verify they are false, why would they put the pressure on me to quit bringing more evidence before the wheat board and probably before the ministers?

The minister always wants to say the western wheat marketing panel will solve the issues. The minister has tried to hide behind this bogus marketing panel. We have seen that the wheat board, together with the advisory board, has held secret in camera meetings half an hour before the marketing panel was to hold its hearings. It was trying to direct attention in some way to make it look like farmers were totally supportive of the panel and the CWB. Hansard records will verify the agriculture minister has answered every legitimate question posed by Reform members with deference to the western grain marketing panel. It is as if the minister has no idea what is going on in the agricultural industry until the Western Grain Marketing Panel tells him. The minister needs a wake-up call. The problems with the CWB and our western grain marketing industry are evident to everyone but him.

The marketing panel was asked by a presenter: "Whose grain are we talking about? Is it the farmers' grain, is it the grain companies' grain or is it the government's grain? Who owns it? Who should have title to it?" The panel's response was that is too political to answer. Why is it too political to answer who owns the produce farmers' grow?

In my book when somebody manufacturers a product, pays the expenses, has the product inspected and gets it ready for distribution, it is his product. Nobody in this free country of ours would accept what is being done by the Western Grain Marketing Panel which will not even identify who are the legal owners of the product. To me it is almost like heresy.

As an elected representative I have not only the right but the duty to put these irregularities before the government, before the wheat board and before law enforcement officers. When I am intimidated and when I get death threats I get very upset and I get very determined. I will make sure that sooner or later the people doing this will be brought to justice.

I would like to pause for a minute and put this question to the House. In the case of Sawatzky I have heard people say he was a criminal, that he did something wrong and broke the law. He probably broke the wheat board act but he never broke the Customs Act. When I saw the way the appeal read in the paper it really distressed me. The appeal claims that Judge Conner made several errors in law, including reopening the trial by calling an interpreter to translate the French version of the law. It was the wheat board solicitors who demanded they prosecute Mr. Sawatzky under the French version of the Customs Act.

In my experience in the House the law, whether it is in French or in English, is supposed to be the same. The interpretation is supposed to be the same. Now this wheat board solicitor is using that angle in an appeal. Bond says the appeal is necessary because order in council would not apply to anyone charged before the loophole was closed. There are a significant number of charges still out there, about 100 farmers.

Is that the way to treat western farmers who are doing their utmost to produce the best grain for the least cost to feed the most people? Is that the type of treatment and publicity they deserve?

The problems have become very serious and we have no leadership from the government. Farmers are being aggressively pursued and prosecuted by the government for attempting to freely market their own products. They have caused harm to nobody.

They have only brought extra dollars into the economy, which helps create jobs, which does not deter jobs.

These farmers have found an avenue to increase their revenue so they can hang on to their property and honestly make a living. If it is dishonest to sell grain for the best price available, I wish the government would come out openly and say so. There are a lot of other people in the country who are doing it and they have the right to do it. If the only ones who do not have the right are farmers, let us hear it from the government.

The Canadian Wheat Board is the last bastion of monopolistic control in a free enterprise country which holds something sacred, which holds competition sacred. We are used to that in a democracy. Competition is sacred. In socialist countries every monopolistic country has gone down the drain. Now we are trying to enforce that system. Why are the attempts to chip away at this protective wall met with such heavy artillery by the feds? One has to wonder what the government and the wheat board are trying so desperately to hide.

Yes, the time is long overdue for the Canadian Wheat Board to be opened up and held accountable to Canadian taxpayers. The agriculture minister must wake up and provide leadership.

The Canadian Wheat Board has long term debt of $6.8 billion and when we try to find out where that debt is, what the interest rates are or what is happening to it, who it is being written off to, we are stonewalled. Neither the auditor general nor the people from the estimates committee can fill us in on what is going on.

If democracy does not succeed in this issue, what will be next under attack? When governments find vehicles to pamper their ledgers, pamper their own pocketbooks, it becomes very dangerous.

If democracy loses, not only the Canadian farmers lose but the Canadian consumer loses and world customers lose, the world's people who are dependent on the supplies we as western grain producers produce. Producers have come to the point where they are becoming fewer and fewer because of government manipulation of practices of selling and marketing our grain and not bringing a true price to the farm community.

If the threats and intimidation continue, I firmly believe that we still have a justice system and that these people will eventually be caught and brought to justice. I sincerely hope the inaction of the government has not aided the individuals in their actions. The intimidation and threats I have received are some of the worse signs just before a democracy loses its power and influence over a country.

I appreciate these comments. I hope the government and the minister listen to farmers instead of to bureaucrats and take the interests of farmers first, not those of wheat board commissioners or bureaucrats who try to run it.

[Supply, June 19th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak in favour of the motion brought forward by my colleague from Kindersley-Lloydminster.

Canadian farmers who are the most efficient and progressive and provide the highest quality food in the world are restricted from locating or accessing markets that are more lucrative than those provided by the Canadian Wheat Board. Farmers would have liked to have had the opportunity to at least elect the wheat board commissioner so they would have more input into the Canadian Wheat Board.

A few minutes ago the minister of agriculture more or less intimated he had a lot of support and that there were articles written in favour of the issue he was addressing. I will also quote from the Western Producer :

Wheat board supporters have not used the time Goodale has given them to mobilize their own show of support. He looks isolated, leading up that phantom army of alleged Board true believers who do not appear to care enough to join the political battle.

That does not sound like very solid support.

Even inside his own government, Goodale likely has few enthusiastic allies.

I would like to go on record saying that the one strong ally Mr. Goodale has is the member for Malpeque.

[Supply, June 19th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc member was not finished. Will he speak after me or does he intend to finish?