Wendy Lill

[Competition Act, May 31st, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to make a few comments on the proposed changes to Bill C-23, which now comes to us by way of the red chamber.

First let me say that the amendment made by the other place seems to be minor, so I plan to comment on some of the larger aspects of the bill. I will start with some of the long overdue changes that the bill makes in the powers of the Competition Tribunal and the commissioner as they relate to air competition.

I had hundreds of constituents stranded when Canada 3000 collapsed. As members will recall, Air Canada's new subsidiary, Tango, had just been launched and the Competition Bureau was on the verge of slapping Air Canada on the wrist when Canada 3000 went under.

I am not confident that the minor baby steps the bill takes in the right direction will result in better or cheaper air service in Nova Scotia. I am encouraged by the new carriers that say they will be braving the skies to compete with the reality of the virtual and quite brutal monopoly held by Air Canada in Atlantic Canada, but I fear and I know that many of my constituents also fear that we will see a repeat of the Canada 3000 fiasco.

Bill C-23 does nothing to stop Air Canada from using its new subsidiaries Tango or Jazz, or whatever new dance step name it comes up with, to simply undercut new competitors and drive them out of business by having the deep pockets to survive an expensive fight. I fear that in a year we will back where we are now with travellers in Atlantic Canada paying very high prices for poor service provided by an Air Canada monopoly.

I wish that the government and the Senate had come up with real regulations that would have stopped Air Canada from effectively killing competition. I wish that the Minister of Transport had a vision of air service in Canada that went further than the office of Robert Milton. Bill C-23 does nothing to tell me that he does.

On another change that Bill C-23 makes, I congratulate the government. The section dealing with protecting our seniors from unscrupulous direct mail and telemarketers' offers that lie to people as a way to steal their life savings is long overdue. The problem is not unique in Canada, but our laws seem to have been well behind the times.

As the Library of Parliament brief on the bill correctly notes, in June 2001 the U.S. senate permanent subcommittee on investigations heard testimony from victims of and experts on telemarketing fraud. Almost all of them described Canada as a haven for such fraud. The committee heard that phone scams swindle more than $35 million every year from Americans, mostly seniors, and although apparently some fraud originating in the U.S. is aimed at Canadians, it is only a small fraction of the amount aimed at Americans.

Experts praised the U.S.-Canada working group on telemarketing fraud that has reportedly caught a few of the perpetrators. Project Colt was formed in April 1998 to co-ordinate efforts among the RCMP, the U.S. customs service, the FBI and various arms of the Quebec police. Since its inception the project has returned $12 million to victims. Law enforcement officials on both sides of the border met in Ottawa in June 2001 to discuss these and other related issues.

The creation of an offence of deceptive notice of winning a prize will help protect poor and vulnerable people. It is easy for those of us here who make a good salary and who have a huge infrastructure to support us in our work to simply warn people that if someone is promising something for nothing they should not believe it, but there are so many Canadians who live with poverty, who are seniors with inadequate pensions, who have a lack of education and struggle with minimum wage jobs or live with disabilities. They live in a society where culture is based on success, with happiness equalling wealth. When we look at TV or read the sage opinions of our opinion leaders, who are all business leaders because pro-business leaders own all our media, we see that the only goal in Canadian life is to be wealthy, that this is how Canadians would be happy.

This culture leaves those who are poor desperate to become rich, not only so they can get better things, but because it is a culture that says if a person is poor, that person is a failure. Therefore when someone who is poor gets a notice in the mail falsely saying they have won money, the joke is extremely cruel.

When these notices are being used to try and take money from those who already have too little money, then it should be a crime. The creation of this criminal offence in the bill and the mandating of officials to proceed with the prosecution of this crime as a criminal and not an administrative offence is a very good thing.

One last section of the bill I wish to comment on is the increase in international co-operation to investigate competition offences. With globalization becoming a greater reality, we need to have international codes of conduct that transnational corporations have to live by.

Too often companies are using differences in laws and differences in the way that records are kept to escape basic responsibilities, like the paying of a fair share of taxes as good corporate citizens, protecting the environment, and treating workers safely and fairly. I would hope that the provisions of the bill that deal with requests by foreign states for assistance in gathering evidence in Canada required for prosecution of competition offences in a foreign country are a first step by the government to creating rules for the international corporate community.

Using the bill, with references to agreements for foreign states, Canada may enter into an agreement if the Minister of Justice is satisfied that the laws of the foreign state are similar to Canada's; that the confidentiality laws of the foreign state are similar to Canada's; that the agreement will contain provisions for circumstances where Canada can refuse assistance and applicable confidentiality provisions.

As well, the agreements will contain undertakings that the foreign state will provide similar assistance to Canada. Information will not be used for any other purposes. Information will be returned or with consent destroyed. All information will be confidential. The Minister of Justice will be informed if there is a breach of confidentiality. The agreements will contain a termination provision.

The act further states four different judicial orders by which evidence may be gathered for use in a foreign proceeding. These orders are: search and seizure order, which is search and seizure of the evidence; evidence gathering order, which is the examination under oath of a person; a virtual presence order, when a person's virtual presence is requested by video link or similar technology; and finally, lending exhibit order, which requests the loan of an exhibit admitted as evidence.

Let us see these forms of international co-operation as a beginning in the real regulation of all international corporate activity.

I hope that the next step the government brings forward is a Tobin tax, an international environmental protection standard that international companies must respect and enforce in order to have truly international enforceable labour standards.

[Airport Security, May 31st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister.

On May 10 the U.S. congress rejected a plan to double the U.S. security fees at airports. On May 14 the European parliament passed legislation to have security costs come from general revenues and not from airports or air travellers. In both cases wisdom prevailed to protect their air and tourist industries.

The Liberal government is penalizing hundreds of thousands of Canadian travellers with this air travel tax, which is the highest in the world and which threatens to cripple our tourist industry. Will the minister listen to reason, follow our U.S. and European allies and change this unfair tax?

[Canadian Forces Day, May 31st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, on April 25 the House of Commons proclaimed the first Sunday in June as Canadian Forces Day in recognition of the great contribution by the Canadian forces both at home and abroad in our NATO and Norad commitments, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, search and rescue, peacekeeping and peace support operations.

Over the years I have been honoured to be part of other special days spent with veterans and peacekeepers who carry the scars of their struggle for democracy within their bodies and minds, and with the families on the Halifax jetty as they have said hello and goodbye to their loved ones leaving for tours of duty in a violent world.

I was present at the funeral for Nathan Smith, one of our Princess Pats killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan. He was a young man who loved soldiering, loved his life and country, and the values of freedom and justice which he held deep in his soul.

Canadian Forces Day will join Remembrance Day, D-Day and the many other days of the year that we remember to thank the brave and selfless men and women for their love and loyalty to this great country.

[Public Safety Act, 2002, May 30th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I am deeply concerned that again we have this legislation before the House in its present form. It is especially disturbing that the government has decided to refuse the reasoned and rational requests for major amendments. The bill has to be changed. Like its predecessors Bill C-36 and Bill C-45, which was wisely withdrawn, it gives priority to an anti-democratic measure taken in the name of protecting our democracy. It fails the basic test of protecting our civil liberties from the state.

We are a country with a proud tradition of fighting for democracy. On Monday, I was dockside for the return of one of our proud naval vessels from anti-al-Qaeda patrols in the Arabian Sea. It is alarming to see the paradox of our brave sailors putting their lives on the line for our democracy while parliamentarians are trying to rush through a bill which would take powers from parliament and allow more single decisions from ministers to deprive Canadians of their civil liberties.

As an example, let us first look at the part of the bill that I find most troubling, the so-called military security zones from Bill C-42. These have now been changed to “controlled access military zones” in Bill C-55. The bill, with amendments, stipulates that these zones can be created only to protect Department of National Defence property or foreign military assets within Canada. These changes do not sufficiently address our concerns about how the power to create these zones could be abused. The basic message of the bill is that all of us, and including the very institutions Canadians have created to express their democracy and protect their freedoms, like parliament, like a free press, like public debate, have to trust the decision making ability of a single minister to restrict access to a designated place for any length of time the minister would like and we should not be able to question the decision. In fact we may not even publicly know about the decision.

Given our history of policy over reaction at APEC or in Quebec City or at the G-20 meetings just down the street from our Chamber, I frankly do not trust any single minister to protect the civil liberties of Canadians. Given the state of allegations of scandal and mismanagement being levelled at the ministers opposite, I am not sure that any Canadians trust any single minister to protect their civil liberties when left behind closed doors, yet this is what Bill C-55 is asking us to do. By doing this, the bill is attacking the democratic values those brave sailors who came home on Monday are fighting to defend.

Last year, along with my leader, I met with women from the Muslim community in Halifax and Dartmouth and we heard their very real fear of the legislative changes that the government was bringing forward in response to the September 11 attacks in the United States. Many of them came to Canada because they believed that our democratic traditions would protect them from oppression, but this series of security bills, of which Bill C-55 is the latest, makes them afraid to answer their doors: once again it may be the police taking them away because of the ethnicity of their name. Specifically, I wonder if provisions of the bill could be used against them because of their religion or their ethnic background.

I have been with teachers opposed to this bill because of the attacks on their civil liberties. I have met with immigrant service organizations who tell me of the fears of their clients. This legislative reaction of the government in response to the September 11 attack goes way too far and, we believe, way too fast. Where is the sunset clause on these measures?

One of the ideas touted by numerous witnesses on Bill C-36 was the idea of an American style sunset clause. This would have had the effect of forcing the government to reintroduce, debate and amend the legislation for it to take effect for another period of time. A three-year time limit affecting different aspects of the legislation was suggested by numerous witnesses.

The New Democratic Party proposed an amendment that addressed these concerns. However, the government had already decided that it would only include a watered down sunset clause by which the House and the Senate would vote after five years for a motion to extend the investigative hearings and preventive arrest sections, two of the most controversial measures in the bill. Though this is better than no clause at all, it is not a sunset clause in the true sense. Rather than the government having to reintroduce and re-examine legislation, this would simply require that the government tell its members and senators to vote an extension of that which currently exists in Bill C-36. The government refused to sunset Bill C-36 and it has never even entertained debate on a sunset clause for Bill C-55.

In just a few weeks there will be a G-8 summit meeting in Kananaskis, Alberta. I was amused yesterday to see that the member for Wild Rose was on his feet calling protestors terrorists for insurance purposes even before any protest has taken place. Even though I fully expect that the people in the Calgary march and the demonstrations will be peaceful and I believe that if there is a protest village in the bush the only violence committed will be against the mosquitoes and the black fly population, I fear for the protestors' safety because of reactions of people like the member for Wild Rose, people who have already called these peaceful labour and anti-globalization activists terrorists, a word that has serious legal consequences thanks to Bill C-36 and Bill C-55.

After seeing the violence at the summit of the Americas in Quebec City and at the APEC conference in Vancouver, I wonder how long it will take for the minister of defence or others in the government to simply start using these laws to stifle legitimate dissent that threatens the political future of the minister, dissent that does not have any real threat for the nation. Do not get me wrong, I oppose vandalism, even of McDonald's, but I also oppose any law that would equate these actions with the evil events of September 11.

I am strongly suspicious of the government. The tens of thousands of peaceful protestors are also suspicious of the increasing use of police force against demonstrators. The stubbornness of the government in refusing reasonable amendments to this historic legislation gives credence to these suspicions.

I believe in a democratic Canada. I take our civil liberties, given in our charter, extremely seriously. Let us take the time and make the effort to produce a law that protects our security while it defends our civil liberties in this anxious period in our history.

[Disability Tax Credit, May 29th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the arrogance of this government is astonishing.

Last October the government told 106,000 Canadians with severe and prolonged disabilities that they had to reapply for their disability tax credit. These are Canadians who are quadriplegic, who are blind, who have Down's Syndrome and who have schizophrenia. In response MPs from all sides of the House wrote to the minister of revenue demanding these letters be withdrawn. We never received a reply or an acknowledgement.

Today I am asking again for the government to fix this problem. I call on it to respond to the MPs' letters and tell these 106,000 disabled Canadians that last October's letter was a mistake, that the review is on hold and that the rules for the 2000 tax year will be applied until a reasonable and appropriate review of the program can be conducted.

I also call on the government to redo the medical form after real consultations with the disability and medical communities, and most importantly, I ask that this arrogant government offer these Canadians a written apology.

[Westray Mine, May 9th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I want to honour Lawrence McBrearty and Verne Theriault, who are on the Hill today to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Westray mine disaster in Plymouth, Nova Scotia.

Today we honour the memory of John Bates, Larry Bell, Bernie Benoit, Wayne Conway, Ferris Dewan, Adonjus Dollimont, Robert Doyle, Remi Drolet, Roy Feltmate, Charles Fraser, Myles “Sparkie” Gillis, John Halloran, Randolph House, T.J. Jahn, Lawrence James, Eugene Johnson, Steven Lilly, Michael MacKay, Angus MacNeil, Glen Martin, Harry McCallum, Earl McIsaac, George Munroe, Danny Poplar, Romeo Short, and Peter Vickers.

They were fathers, grandfathers, husbands, lovers, brothers and friends. They were workers who died in a mine that the management knew was unsafe. They are victims for whom the law has failed. Let us fix the law in their memory.

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

Mr. Chairman, I thank the minister for his answer. However I have in front of me a letter from the Public Service Alliance of Canada. This is what PSAC has said to me:

As a union, we are opposed to the privatization of Canada's DND Supply Chain. This privatization is not in the interests of our members who will be forced out of the federal public service and into work with a British-based contractor. These workers will suffer reduced benefits and job insecurity.

Our concerns as a union extend beyond the impact on our members. We are concerned about the future security of Canada. We are concerned about escalated costs for lower quality service.

PCAC members are concerned, as am I, about the privatization of our military. It is certainly an issue with the many defence workers who live in my community.

I have a question about the northern command. The minister is answering many of these tonight. We are seeing the development of a northern command. Does the minister plan to hold talks with his U.S. counterparts on the issue of Canada's north and our Arctic sovereignty? How does our Arctic sovereignty, including our sovereignty in the Northwest Passage, relate to the American concept of the North American defence perimeter? What is the government planning to do to ensure our Arctic sovereignty?

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

Mr. Chairman, I will ask a question about privatization and the whole alternate service delivery model.

We are facing unprecedented pressures on our forces. They are understaffed and underfunded for the number of missions the minister is asking them to do. At the same time his priority is to put the provisioning, supply, transportation and warehousing system for all military material into the hands of a British multinational corporation.

One could say the minister is creating a potential military Walkerton. If the minister says we are at war, why is his priority the elimination of properly trained civilian workers so they can be replaced by a low cost bidder from another country?

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

Mr. Chairman, in every other area we try to get consumer groups and stakeholders involved in policies and planning for the future. To give confidence to returning peacekeepers and their families would the minister consider a consultation group of peacekeepers and active military personnel to oversee the decision making process regarding issues such as DU, post-traumatic stress disorder and all the ailments visiting people when they arrive home?

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

Mr. Chairman, I will ask the minister about wounded peacekeepers and people returning from fronts with various disorders.

There has been strong testimony at the standing committee about the denial of proper assessment and treatment to personnel suffering from gulf war syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder or exposure to depleted uranium while serving in the Gulf War, Kosovo or now Afghanistan. It is clearly not a figment of the imagination when these people come home and are exceedingly ill almost as soon as they return. There are major health care issues we must deal with once they arrive back in Canada.

Can the minister tell us what resources are being allocated to preserve the health of our troops suffering from these conditions not only in the field but when they come back? What methods does the minister see for compensating soldiers and their families if they are exposed to depleted uranium or suffer from other debilitating conditions acquired in the line of duty?