John Bryden

[Parliament of Canada Act, May 7th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I commend the member for his excellent initiative. I think he is going to strike a chord with all Canadians. I am sure his bill will be passed in the House without any difficulty at all.

I would like to ask him a question. I have before me the Quebec oath that members of the provincial legislature in Quebec swear. I will read it in English and perhaps he would like to comment on it. It states, “I swear that I will be loyal toward the people of Quebec and I will exercise my functions as a member of the provincial parliament with honesty and justice and with respect to the constitution of Quebec”.

Perhaps the member could comment on that.

[Canada Airports Act, May 7th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I would make the observation to the member who just spoke that all legislation that appears in the House is flawed. One of the reasons we have debate is to try to identify those flaws and correct them. I like to think that the government is open to the suggestions of the opposition as much as the government is open to the suggestions of the backbenchers.

I wonder if she would comment. Is she disappointed with the standards of corporate governance that were defined in the legislation and that are to apply to all airport operators, the business of having financial statements that are open and audited financial statements? Surely it is reasonable to set one standard of corporate transparency and governance for all airports across the country, large and small.

[Canada Airports Act, May 7th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, all I can say is that I do believe the government can always use improvement, and as a backbench member of the government side I am always trying to achieve that end.

[Canada Airports Act, May 7th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I trust the member was not being sarcastic and that it was really an attempt at gentle humour, because actually I do feel that here in the Liberal backbenches we can have an impact and we can sometimes get an amendment put forward. I do hope that the member will move his own amendment on that in committee.

He gives me an opportunity to make a further comment. He triggers the comment by the reference to Nav Can. Possibly one of shortcomings in what we are trying to do here with this legislation, Bill C-27, is that by off-loading federal enterprises or federal ministries or federal responsibilities, shall we say, to the private sector, as in the case of the port authorities and the airport authorities, it is certainly true that if we put in the proper regimes for accountability we have enterprises that should run like a public business. My problem is that we lose the ability, however, to examine them internally with the Access to Information Act.

Nav Canada is a good example. To me it is not enough in the end that the airport authorities operators or the port authorities conform to the standards set out in Bills C-44 and C-27. What we really need to do is to bring these arm's length institutions under the Access to Information Act so that we do not just see audited financial statements, so that we do not just see the numbers. Those things are important, but what we really need to be able see is that there is no nepotism in the operation, that there is no fundamental mismanagement.

One of the reasons why I campaigned so vigorously to reform the Access to Information Act is not that I believe the bureaucratic part of government is being run so badly. There are a lot of checks and balances in the way government ministries are actually operating in delivering services to people. What concerns me is this terrible movement in the provinces and in Ottawa here in the federal government to off-load the provision of services to arm's length organizations, be it the CRTC, Nav Canada, or these airport authorities, because they are then out of the reach of the Access to Information Act. They are out of the reach of our ability to really ensure in the public interest that they are being managed appropriately.

So my ultimate target in trying to reform the Access to Information Act is to create a model, particularly with crown corporations, that could be applied to institutions like these authorities we are talking about and that ultimately could be adopted by the private sector. Because I really do believe that in this global economy where competition is everything and survival is everything, how one wins in the global market is not just by one's prices but by one's efficiency as a corporation.

I think that Canadian corporations have much to gain if the Canadian government can lead the way to harness the Internet so that there can be protocols of transparency the likes of which have never been seen before. I think that will enable Canadian enterprises, both public and private, to lead the world in their ability to compete.

[Canada Airports Act, May 7th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his intervention. I did read the clause on fees and I was impressed by the fact that there were parameters put on the way airport operators can impose fees. I think that is very positive.

As to the member's point, however, I think he raises a very important point. If memory serves me correctly, the way the port authorities are composed, and this is in Bill C-44, the marine bill that I alluded to, which changed the administration of harbours to port authorities very much like what we have here, certainly in the Hamilton instance it did require that stakeholders be represented on the board of the port authorities.

It may be a little bit more difficult in the case of airports in the sense that the carriers may not be in the same city; they may be based elsewhere in the country. I think the member raises an important point and that is something that should be dealt with and examined in committee.

I will make a further point. This is one of the reasons why we have debates such as this: so that we can hear constructive suggestions like that of the member.

[Canada Airports Act, May 7th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-27 because as the House is aware I have been a long proponent of increasing transparency and accountability in the financial administration of government and crown corporations. Indeed, it is a principle that I would apply to any kind of institution that is charged with looking after the public trust, whether it is a private corporation, a crown corporation or a government.

This business of transparency and accountability has come to be rather accepted in this day and age, particularly after the public collapses in the United States of large corporations like Enron. The idea that institutions should be foremostly transparent and accountable is somewhat novel in comparison to the situation of just 10 years ago.

When I first came to this House in 1993 and started this crusade to bring transparency and accountability to everything the government touched, part of that crusade was to reform the Access to Information Act and to amend the Canada Business Corporations Act, and do a number of things including bringing transparency and accountability to charitable institutions.

I guess I was a voice in the wilderness originally but as time went on the government, I am happy to say, has bought more and more into the principle that there must be legislated transparency and accountability wherever taxpayers' money is being spent or wherever the public trust is being looked after in a way that involves finances.

In 1994, the first year of the government's mandate, the government took over a program that had been initiated by the former Tory government. It was the implementation of the national airport policy. That involved taking federal airports and transferring them through specific agreements to local authorities who in turn often hired or came into agreements with private operators to run these airports. This legislation deals with these entities. In the grand sense the entity that runs, for example, Pearson airport is an airport authority in this legislation. There is also a smaller category of airport operator which by and large applies to John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport in my riding in Hamilton.

When those agreements were struck across the country that basically semi-privatized the federal airports, the principle of ensuring that there was a single standard of corporate governance, a single standard of financial reporting, and a single standard of disclosure to the public was not implemented at that time. These airport authorities and airport operators were set up with different types of standards. Over the nine years since these airport authorities and airport operators have been operating, it has become apparent that the level of disclosure and the level of transparency has been uneven across the country. There have been some concerns expressed about the management of some of these airport authorities and airport operators.

In 1996 the government embarked upon a similar program to transfer the federal marine assets over to port authorities. In my riding the Hamilton Harbour Commission was replaced by the Hamilton Port Authority. The difference between 1994 and 1996 was that the government inserted into the legislation, creating the port authorities, excellent standards of corporate governance, transparency and accountability. I was very proud at that time because I would like to think I had some role in that because I was pestering the minister of the day about the necessity of bringing that type of standard in with the port authorities.

We now have Bill C-27 which, nine years later, is the logical step to take after bringing the regimes of corporate governance to port authorities and bringing them to airport authorities and airport operators. It is a good thing to do.

I have been following the debate in the House and I cannot fail but note that even on my own side there have been colleagues who have criticized Bill C-27 and have spoken against it. I must cite the member for Hamilton West who is a colleague of mine. On an earlier day of debate he gave a speech on the bill in which he castigated the government for this legislation. I must note that nowhere in his speech did he actually cite a single criticism of the legislation. He decried it in general but not in specifics.

It is important for people watching to know that even on this side of the House there is great freedom of opinion and we are able to debate openly. I do not begrudge my colleague's opinion about the legislation, but it was his remarks that prompted me more than anything else to set the record straight in my view, and remember, Madam Speaker, it is my view.

I would like to take members of the House through a bit of the legislation to give them an impression of what the legislation actually does and why I think everyone in the House should support it. There may be areas that could use some technical amendments, but by and large, I think it is excellent legislation.

I draw the House's attention to part 5 of the bill under the heading “Disclosure and Accountability”. Clause 120 would require all airport operators to prepare financial statements annually. In those financial statements there must be a statement of revenues and expenditures, a summary of capital expenditures, and a statement of revenues from passenger fees. This is important information because we must remember that these airports, even though they are operated locally, are institutions of the public trust. In other words, every airport is derived ultimately from the Crown, so the public would expect to have access to that kind of information.

Clause 123 would require every airport operator to submit a business plan for the upcoming five years. I am probably a bit fanatical about the need for financial disclosure with the public and institutions, including private corporations. The legislation would require that the airport authority or airport operator provide annual financial statements. The legislation goes into great detail about what is required in these financial statements. It says, for example, that financial statements must disclose the revenues derived from landing fees, terminal fees, other aeronautical fees, passenger fees, and from car parking concessions and general rental.

This is a very important part of understanding the success of an institution, a business enterprise in this case being operated in the public interest. It is very important because ultimately these airport properties are a resource of the nation. It is very important for the public to be able to see for themselves through audited financial statements how effectively the airport operator is carrying out its task. I submit that this detailed requirement is an excellent provision to put in the legislation.

This is not to say that many airport operators are not providing this kind of information already. The important thing is that it is a standard that goes across all airport operators including the one in Hamilton and many others. Therefore, it is a very positive thing.

A little further in the bill we would expect to see and indeed we do find that there has to be an auditor's report of the financial statements. That of course should be a given. I am sure it is in most airport agreements, if not all, but it is very important to put it in legislation.

There is also a provision for regular annual meetings. A very good idea, that was derived from the port authority legislation which incidentally was Bill C-44 in its day, is this idea that every so often the airport authority must submit itself to a performance review. That performance review of its operations and everything that it is doing and the way it is carrying out business is to be done by an independent agent. That again is a very positive thing to do. I think the public must be satisfied that there is transparency and accountability.

However, realizing that not everyone is going to be scrutinizing the financial statements of the airport operator every time they come out, we must assure ourselves that there is something built into the system to ensure that there is an annual independent assessment of how well management is performing its task.

It is something that the government is very used to. We certainly have a system in the government where the performance of various departments are subject to annual review and indeed we apply it to many pieces of legislation. The Canadian Environmental Assessment Act is a good case in point because it was just in the House this week. This is legislation that comes up for review every five years. The Lobbyists Registration Act is another example. In the operation of government itself various departments have mechanisms in place to review performance from time to time. Therefore, I think this is very positive.

There is also material here regarding the mechanism for setting airport fees. Again, that is very important because we do not want a situation where an airport operator can arbitrarily set fees that may help generate revenue but may have a negative impact on passenger travel or access to the airport or whatever else. Airports like ports are not simply business enterprises. They are enterprises that have great national significance and they cannot be administered totally in isolation of national policy. This is why Bill C-27 has come forward.

Obviously I quite support the bill and I would like to put it also in the context of another piece of legislation that is coming before the House; it is in committee. That is Bill C-7, which is a bill that will bring financial transparency and accountability to the administration of Indian reserves. Some 600 bands and reserves are going to be covered by this legislation. What it basically does is put standards where none existed before, national standards pertaining to the election of officers of bands, their requirement to disclose their proceedings to their band membership, the need for audited financial statements and so forth.

The reason why I mention it is that this is part of where the government has been going in the last few years and I am extremely pleased that it is going in this direction. More and more, we see the government moving toward patching up areas of the national fabric that have existed for many years without adequate oversight. Because when we talk about transparency and accountability, what we are really talking about is public oversight of enterprises that are in the national interest.

Bill C-7, Bill C-27 and the bill on the port authorities represent very important progress on the part of the government in this direction. That gives me an opportunity to encourage the government to carry on in this direction, because there is much more to be done. I remind the House that I have been campaigning very hard over many years to persuade the government to reform the Access to Information Act. That would bring greater transparency, accountability and scrutiny, shall we say, to the administration of government. This was pioneering legislation in its day. It needs overhaul very desperately and I hope the government will move in that direction very shortly. I would rather it did it immediately because time is running out on this particular government's mandate.

There is another area that I really wish the government would move forward on. It has been very slow and I find it very unfortunate. It is the whole idea of bringing in standards of accountability, transparency and corporate governance to charities. It is just like port authorities, just like airport authorities. Charities are large enterprises that spend billions of taxpayers' dollars.

I believe the charity sector in this country, which we can rightly call an industry, has revenues and expenditures in the order of about $100 billion a year. This is a huge amount. These charitable institutions, be they large hospitals or the small charity that gets on the telephone to us, or usually to our aged parents who cannot think very clearly for themselves, and solicit money and spend that money, these organizations are still not under meaningful, legislated standards of corporate governance and transparence. I know that sounds incredible. Canadians listening probably think it is absolutely amazing that a $100 billion a year industry should be without the basic standards of corporate governance that exist in this legislation.

Finally I would say in conclusion that the government is moving in the right direction. This is what Canadians want. This is what society wants. I think it is very clear from the catastrophes in the financial market, particularly in the United States, that we cannot rely on trust alone to ensure that enterprises that are acting in the public interest are living up to their commitments. So we must bring in legislation that defines standards of corporate governance and deals with transparency and accountability. I think Bill C-27 is a good step in that direction, but there is much, much more to be done.

[International Transfer of Offenders Act, May 7th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I am delighted to have a second opportunity to pose a question. One other feature of the bill that I certainly have been impressed by is the fact that it has made adjustments in the legislation to the recent youth criminal justice law which has finally come into force in Canada after much debate in the House.

I wonder if the member could comment on the principle of applying the ideas in our youth criminal justice legislation, which basically is designed to try to rehabilitate youth at the same time as protecting the interests of the public, and applying these principles to those young people who may be arrested in foreign countries, and the bill provides for returning them to Canada so they would be subject to Canadian punishment.

[International Transfer of Offenders Act, May 7th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his excellent remarks. One of the interesting features of this legislation that is new to the legislation is provision to transfer prisioners who may have been terrorists in their original homeland and to negotiate with that homeland to have them transferred back to that homeland. Conversely, when people who have Canadian citizenship are arrested in foreign lands, the bill provides that while they can be brought back to Canada under this legislation, the governor in council has the option of not returning them if there is a security risk, the idea being that the unfortunate reality every country is faced with is the danger that their own nationals may participate in terrorist activities in other lands holding our passports.

I draw my colleague's attention to the situation just recently involving two British individuals who held British passports and who were engaged in a bombing in Israel. That could have been people holding Canadian passports.

Does my colleague agree that it is prudent of the government to insert measures into legislation that protect Canada from inadvertently acquiring an unfair share of people who have committed terrorist acts abroad by bringing them back to Canada to be kept in our jails?

[International Transfer of Offenders Act, May 5th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, that area is not my particular expertise; I examined the bill primarily for its security provisions. But I will say that one other reason why the bill clearly needed to be a new bill rather than simply amendments to the former bill is that it deals in considerable depth with changes brought about as a result of the passage of the Youth Criminal Justice Act. It would appear that with quite a few of the programs and sentencing and that kind of thing there is an attempt to make this legislation conform to the Youth Criminal Justice Act in the sense of bringing young offenders from foreign countries back to Canada.

[International Transfer of Offenders Act, May 5th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I think I can constructively add to the discussion on the bill by observing that, among other things, it is also clearly part of the government's anti-terrorism legislative package. That was not dealt with by the parliamentary secretary and I do not think it has been commented on so far in this debate. However the proof of the pudding, shall we say, is in the comparison that one can make between the Transfer of Offenders Act and Bill C-33 and the changes that one sees between the two pieces of legislation.

When I came to look at Bill C-33, my first question was why the government felt it had to reintroduce a completely new bill rather than simply amend the old. Clearly the reason is that the changes to the Transfer of Offenders Act, as expressed in Bill C-33, are very consequential and they have everything to do with September 11 and the changing climate with respect to the situation of terrorism in the world.

I draw the attention of the House to a new clause in Bill C-33, in paragraph 10, which reads:

In determining whether to consent to the transfer of a Canadian offender, the Minister shall consider the following factors: (a) whether the offender’s return to Canada would constitute a threat to the security ofCanada;

That is new. Then a little further on in paragraph 10(2) we have similar wording but broader and in a different context. I will read paragraph 10(2)(a):

In determining whether to consent to the transfer of a Canadian or foreign offender, the Minister shall consider the following factors: (a) whether, in the Minister’s opinion, the offender will, after the transfer, commit aterrorism offence or criminal organization offence within the meaning of section 2 of the Criminal Code;

We can see what is happening here. It is that Canada must realistically consider the prospect that a Canadian, travelling abroad on a Canadian passport may undertake a serious criminal offence, a terrorist offence, and that person may be captured in the country in question. We then have the question of whether that person should be transferred back to Canada or held in the country where that person was captured.

Coincidentally, we have a very pertinent case that occurred only just last week in Israel with the suicide bombing involving two young people who were travelling on British passports. All we have to do, in our imagination, is to change the British passports to Canadian passports and we can see the type of problem that the changes in the bill are trying to address.

There is also the other example with the war in Afghanistan. We had a situation there where captures were made involving a family which had come from Pakistan and settled in Canada. The family members had Canadian passports and were found to be involved in Afghanistan, fighting against the coalition, including Canadians who were attempting to deal with the terrorist regime in Afghanistan.

The problem is twofold. A Canadian was captured abroad, perhaps undertaking a suicide bombing, but was captured. If that person were returned to Canada, he could be deemed to be a security threat because he would be able to take advantage, under the legislation, of the early parole provisions. In other words, that Canadian national could be returned to Canada and released earlier than he would be in the country in which he was captured.

The other problem is that we could have a person who has Canadian citizenship and who might be discovered to be a major player in a terrorist organization abroad. I will extend it a little bit. The person may be a major player in an organization linked to some kind of ethnic conflict. We should not focus only on the Middle East because this could apply almost anywhere.

That person could be brought back to Canada and if he is brought back to Canada, again, there could be a security threat because that person may bring with him all the anger, concern and political problems. He may be in a Canadian jail but it could cause all kinds of difficulties in Canada.

I am thinking, for example, of the situation that occurred recently in Turkey where I think it was a Kurdish leader who was captured and returned to Turkey. One can imagine the situation if that person had Canadian citizenship, and it is quite possible. Dual citizens are all over the world and many of them have Canadian citizenship. There could be this very difficult situation where if that person asked and was returned to Canada, it could cause a major political and ethnic problem, even leading perhaps to violence. That all makes perfect sense and it is what Canada has to do in the context of international terrorism.

Canada is very proud of its open door policy and the way it invites people of all nationalities to come to Canada. We have an extremely, shall we say, forgiving criminal justice system. We have a very civil way in which we deal with one another, regardless of our particular backgrounds. We make no distinction between Canadians who are born here and Canadians who acquire citizenship.

However we have to recognize that can pose a serious problem in a world in which there is a major threat of terrorism. We do not want a situation where foreign nationals deliberately acquire a Canadian citizenship so they can return to their countries of national origin and engage in illegal acts fully in the belief they can eventually, if caught, return to Canada and enjoy the civility of the Canadian prison and Canadian attempts to return people to the community, rather than incarcerate them for a very long time. It is positive in that sense.

I think when this goes to committee, the committee has to look at it very carefully because the bill works in the opposite direction as well. Paragraph 10(2)(a), to which I referred, also makes it possible for the government to transfer a foreign national back to the host country if that foreign national has been convicted of an offence in Canada.

Now that raises some difficulty because we have to be concerned in Canada about people who are captured on Canadian territory. We like to think that the principles of Canadian justice would apply but we have to recognize there are other countries around the world that have much more severe criminal justice regimes. The temptation may be political where the Canadian police forces may capture a foreign national and because that foreign national is captured on perhaps some relatively minor crime in Canada but is suspected of major crimes in another country, that other country might seek to have that person transferred back to the foreign country.

Therefore we have a situation where if the other country suggests that person will return to the other country and commit a terrorist offence, we would have the additional problem that the minister has to have the opportunity to deny the transfer as well. The scenario is simply this. Canada captures someone. That someone is convicted of a fairly minor offence in Canada but the country in which that person has alternative citizenship seeks the return of that person to serve in a jail in that other country.

But what if that person is suspected internationally of being part of a terrorist organization? Suspected only, Mr. Speaker. Again, paragraph 10(2)(a) would permit the minister to deny that transfer if the minister--and it does not spell what criteria the minister would use--thinks that there is a possibility that person may be returned to that other country, and because he is a local hero in terms of the ethnic conflict that might be going on there, not just terrorism, ethnic conflict, might cause a problem, so the minister reserves the right to hold that person in Canada.

We can see how that fits into the anti-terrorism legislation. We have to persuade our allies that we are part of the war on terrorism and that our laws do not have significant loopholes that enable people to be transferred out of Canada and back into another jurisdiction in which they can cause considerable harm, not necessarily in that jurisdiction, but considerable harm in terms of international terrorism.

I would make another observation as well. Something else new is in clauses 31 and 32. This also relates to anti-terrorism, or a stricter regime for making sure that people who are a danger to world peace or peace in other countries do not get back or do get back. What happens here is that the idea of administrative return is introduced, where, if Canada does not have a treaty for the return of offenders with a particular country, a country can approach Canada, which does not have a treaty, and Canada has captured a person of that country's citizenship, we can do a deal that is outside of the treaty to arrange for the return of that person to the country has requested that return.

Again this is something that the committee has to look at very, very carefully, because we have to do our role in the war against terrorism and do our role in terms of maintaining international order and reducing international crime. We must be very careful that we do not pass legislation that would allow the government to be manipulated for reasons of foreign policy rather than reasons of security and justice.

I have to say that I have not had the time to examine this bill in the depth I would like, and quite frankly I do not think I have the skill, but I do call upon the committee that receives the bill to examine those two points very carefully, because Canada tries to strike a balance. I think that we have done extremely well in our anti-terrorism legislation and our new security legislation in that we addressed the problems of the new international threats with minimum damage to civil liberties. But it is this kind of legislation that is a relatively small bill that comes into the House without much fanfare, we just come upon it rather suddenly, and that is the type of legislation in which a flaw could occur that could, if not endanger civil liberties, erode or run contrary to how we see ourselves as Canadians, certainly as a people who are very conscious of the need for and our role in maintaining world security, but a nation also that tries very hard to make sure that we do not inadvertently give powers to the government that properly belong with Parliament or with the courts.