John Bryden

[Supply, September 29th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I will try to make it a very quick question then. I am sorry for the delay.

In a situation where an organization is charged with monitoring foreign intelligence sources, does the member agree it is very difficult to bring it before a parliamentary committee for open examination because of the tremendous political, social and economic implications of possible leaks of confidentiality?

[Supply, September 29th, 1994]

I am coming to it. I will speed it up. I am sure my hon. colleague is interested because it is apparently-

[Supply, September 29th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to hear my hon. colleague's remarks because I am particularly qualified to answer at least some of them.

I am the author of a book called Best Kept Secret that deals with the early history of the CSE and brings it up to the present. It was published last November. The member is welcome to get it. I regret however it was published only in English, but I would greatly appreciate it if the member could find me a French publisher, a Quebec publisher, so it would be available to him in the language of his choice.

The history of the CSE goes back to the second world war. I will help the hon. member by giving him some background. It was part of the allied effort in code and cipher breaking during the second world war. It began with the examination unit that was in the house next door to the Prime Minister's residence during the second world war.

It was engaged in breaking codes and ciphers primarily Japanese and Vichy French. The breaking of codes and ciphers was a shared arrangement, both diplomatic, economic and military during the second world war. The Americans specialized in Japanese ciphers in particular and the British specialized in German and Italian. The Canadians were left with some Japanese and Vichy French.

The reason Canadians got involved-and this is important so the member will understand the perspective right now-was that Canada was the best country in the world for picking up radio signals. It was because of the radio skip phenomenon where the radio waves bounce in the atmosphere and come down in various parts of the world at focal points. Canada was excellently situated to pick up all kinds of messages. That is how we got involved.

Naturally during the second world war this was a highly secret endeavour. It went into the post war period. Canada continued to be involved first as the communications branch under the National Research Council and subsequently it became the Communications Security Establishment.

There is no secret about what the Communications Security Establishment does. If the member would look at my book, I cite in it a particular presentation before a committee, the name of which is in my book, by the deputy clerk for security intelligence, Ward Alcock, a couple of years ago. He explained that the mandate of the Communications Security Establishment was to listen in on telecommunications worldwide, just as do the Americans, the Australians and the British. The idea was to try to pick up intelligence that may have a bearing on Canada's political and economic security.

There might be a case where Canada has entered into international agreements and one party or another is not obeying those agreements. Am I going on too long, Mr. Speaker?

[Department Of Industry Act, September 26th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his excellent remarks and I would like to add a little to them and perhaps get a comment from him.

I wonder if he would agree that the incentives for tourism are something that apply to this country nationally and are as relevant and advantageous not only to the country at large but to the country in its parts, to the west, represented by the Reform Party opposite and also to Quebec, represented by the Bloc Quebecois.

Does my colleague not agree that this kind of incentive for national tourism is something that is very good for Canada and for national unity?

[Gun Control, September 23rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, a large number of legitimate gun owners gathered on Parliament Hill yesterday to express their concerns about the government's pending gun control legislation.

They listened to the assurances of the justice minister and, in their turn, submitted a lengthy petition of many thousands of names.

The time for the presentation of petitions yesterday had passed. I wish them to know that their petition was promptly given to the Clerk of the House to review it for possible presentation in this Chamber or for formal delivery to the Minister of Justice.

[Immigration Act, September 22nd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I have waited all morning in patient expectation to hear the speech on this subject from the member from Calgary who is well known for his knowledge on immigration matters, and I have an almost subservient respect for his views on the subject.

I found myself disappointed in that his speech addressed many examples of the failures of immigration and refugee policy in the past. It never at any time-I think Hansard will show this-offered a constructive criticism of any aspect of Bill C-44.

I do appreciate that there have been abuses in the past. Indeed, some of the horror stories he mentioned will be addressed in other legislation and belong in other legislation. I was hoping to hear specific criticism.

To help him in this regard, I would like to suggest that he give us his views as a former police officer on the question of identity, the use of false identity, false documents, as a mechanism by which criminals get through the immigration process, getting into this country.

Would he not agree that in Bill C-44 we are making a giant step toward enforcement and for keeping out these undesirables? Would he not agree as a former police officer that this is an excellent step and this is an excellent bill?

[Immigration Act, September 22nd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I have the greatest respect for my colleague from Port Moody-Coquitlam. We serve on the same committee together. She is well known for her carefully reasoned remarks on all issues.

I must say that I was surprised that in her speech she suggested this bill does not provide sufficient precautions for keeping deported criminals from re-entering the country. I was surprised at that remark because coming from a western province she will know that Canada has one of the longest undefended borders in the world and that it is traditionally and always has been impossible to keep illegals of all sorts from crossing the border at one point or another.

I would suggest to her that this bill addresses that fact by its provisions for the seizure of false documents. The way our security authorities keep track of illegals, be they criminals or otherwise, is by the fact that their documentation eventually comes under scrutiny and thus raises a red flag for the proper authorities to take action.

I point out that we are talking here about criminals who as a means of getting back into this country and staying in this country falsify passports, drivers' licences, health cards, birth certificates and so on.

I would request that my colleague opposite comment on this. Surely she would agree that this is a fine and progressive measure in this bill to close this loophole of false documentation to get these illegals out of this country.

[National Revenue, September 20th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Revenue.

Currently the annual financial information returns of charities are available to the public whereas those for non-profit organizations are not.

Since non-profit organizations like charities are indirectly supported by the taxpayer, would the minister consider making their annual financial information returns also available for public scrutiny?

[Lobbyists Registration Act, June 17th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure to speak to this motion to send Bill C-43 to committee.

I cannot think of a type of legislation that is more important to all members of the House of Commons. I like to think that this is the kind of thing I was sent by the people in my riding, to do in the House.

I took notes of two things as this debate progressed. One is the tremendous co-operation that has been shown by members of the opposition parties to examine this bill very candidly and to look for ways to improve the bill and to find deficiencies. I also took note of the minister's statement this morning that he is willing to entertain any kind of bona fide, progressive suggestion, any kind of amendment.

I do have something I would like to add to this bill as an amendment. It has to do with a subject that is of great interest to me and to other members of the House and that is special interest groups.

For the last three months I have made it my particular interest to examine the past practices of governments funding special interest groups, particularly government funded advocacy groups. These are really another type of lobby as we have heard already in the House.

I have looked very carefully into these groups. They are usually non-profit organizations. They are usually umbrella organizations that claim to represent hundreds of thousands of Canadians and hundreds of other organizations.

One of the very great difficulties with this situation where organizations like this are funded is that the nature of the law, both the Access to Information Act and the laws governing Revenue Canada make it impossible for a member of Parliament or a member of the press to independently examine the books of these special interest groups. Even their applications are protected under the Access to Information Act. The balance sheets they present annually are as they choose to present them. They are not subject to close examination unless by chance government audit. We have no control in that respect.

Even if these special interest groups, be they advocacy groups or other special interest groups are audited, it would be found that the majority of them are incorporated companies. It means that the principals of those companies which are not accountable for how they spend government money, are not accountable when the auditor comes by and perhaps finds something very much amiss.

I do not want to name any particular groups. I am deliberately being general. This goes even beyond that. In my research I have looked at many government funded advocacy groups that are up front, but among the special interest groups there are many groups that ostensibly are using the money for charitable or non-profit purposes. Because we cannot independently examine their books, we do not know whether they are using some of this money for lobbying purposes. We have no control. We may have lobbying with government money under the table, shall we say, and this is a very serious concern.

I would like to address this problem with two amendments to Bill C-43. We are talking about special interest advocacy groups, probably over 100, and we are talking about millions of taxpayers' dollars. Mr. Speaker, I hope you will give your due attention to the wording of these two proposed amendments. I have worked very hard on them. I have to say I am not skilled in preparing amendments and I am sure the staff can do better than I.

The first amendment I would suggest is that for individuals or organizations defined in the act as lobbyists it shall be an offence to use money received from government to lobby government. That is the first amendment and would take care across the board of all these umbrella groups that are taking money from the taxpayer and using it to lobby government, which at the very least is a conflict of interest.

On the other hand, we do not want to discourage legitimate charities or legitimate non-profit organizations from lobbying government when situations arise that affect them very closely. I would suggest that the Canadian Cancer Society certainly would want to speak to the government on the issue of the price of cigarettes and similar health issues. We have to provide that they can still lobby to some degree while shutting off those special interest groups that are secretly lobbying.

The second amendment I propose is this. For individuals or organizations that are not lobbyists as defined in the act it shall be an offence to use more than 10 per cent of money received from the government to lobby government. In this way we have taken care of the legitimate concerns of charities while actually putting teeth in the law for those who would abuse the privilege of receiving government money for acts of charity and use it instead to lobby for special interest purposes.

I hope that when the committee considers Bill C-43 they will also consider these two proposals.

I would like to just touch very quickly on a few deficiencies in the act. Some members of the Bloc have mentioned them. I have difficulty with the one tier, two tier system, but for different reasons than I have heard here. The one tier system is defined as an individual, whereas the two tier system is basically organizations and corporations. The one tier individual actually is required to declare more than the tier two organization.

The difficulty is many lobbyists incorporate themselves as companies so rather than being individuals they can incorporate and become tier two. We need to very carefully plug up that problem because we want to make sure that the individual consultant type lobbyist is fully governed by the restrictions and limitations that we wish to put him under.

I have one other difficulty. I have a problem with the ethics counsellor and the concept of an ethics counsellor in one respect. He is empowered to investigate and bring forward the results of his investigation to Parliament.

The problem is that nothing in the act indicates whether the ethics counsellor, when he gets his evidence, whether that evidence is going to be subject to the restrictions of the Access to Information Act and Privacy Act.

In other words, you could have a situation where the ethics counsellor gets third party information which he is not allowed to disclose as a result of the Access to Information Act and Privacy Act.

You would have a situation in which he would be investigating but we, the parliamentarians, would not be able to see a full and candid report.

Therefore I really urge the committee to look very carefully at the implications of these two acts, the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act, and make sure that however it is done the ethics counsellor is able to report as fully as possible on his findings before this House.

[National Action Committee On The Status Of Women, June 15th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in defence of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. It was the subject yesterday of a churlish attack by a member of the party opposite who suggested, incredibly, that this women's group does not really represent

hundreds of women's organizations and millions of Canadian women. Indeed, it has been suggested that it is merely a special interest group with its hand out for government cash.

I call on the National Action Committee on the Status of Women to put these accusations to the lie by immediately rejecting all government funding, by immediately raising all the money it needs from its own supporters. I know it can do it. I know millions of Canadian women will show their support by their dollars. That way the government will save hundreds of thousands of dollars which can then be spent directly on the many women in this country who truly desperately are in need.