John Bryden

[Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, May 5th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to thank the member for raising the issue of the Red Hill CreekVvalley in his remarks. That is a valley very close to my riding at the eastern end of Hamilton. Never could I imagine a case where so much environmental destruction is going to be undertaken for so little valid reason.

This is a valley that is a major flyway for migratory birds. It is one of the few major wild channels of forest that leads from the lake up above the escarpment. It is going to be destroyed for no other reason than to encourage residential development on the mountain, which will then create a traffic bottleneck at the Skyway Bridge going toward Burlington. This is a project that has been driven by business interests. It has not been driven by a decent respect for the heritage of Canadians to preserve wildlife areas close to urban settings because life is so much more than just streets and parking lots and shopping malls. It is also about places of wilderness refuge that we can take advantage of as urban Canadians.

I have a question for the member. He is familiar with the situation with his work on the committee and he appreciates that the act has failed us in preventing this project from going ahead. Is there any hope whatsoever that he can see for those of us who are very desperately concerned about the destruction of this habitat and is there anything left for us to do?

[Health Care, April 29th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the people of Flamborough, Dundas, Ancaster and the rest of Hamilton that neighbours my riding, I would like to pay tribute to Charles and Margaret Juravinski for their extraordinary gift to health care in the region: $2 million to the Hamilton Health Sciences hospital; $5 million to the Hamilton Regional Cancer Clinic; $5 million to St. Joseph's Villa, a seniors residence; $2 million to McMaster University health care; and $2 million to St. Joseph's Hospital. Thousands are going to benefit for years to come.

The Juravinskis, I should explain, are famous in Canada's horse racing industry for having built, owned and operated Flamborough Downs, one of the premier racing venues in Canada. They owe their success to teamwork, acumen, common sense and luck, good luck that they wanted to share. Well, share they did and it is a generosity that will never reach any finish line.

Thank you, Margaret and Charles Juravinski.

[Criminal Code, April 28th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I remind the member that what was proposed by her colleague was a motion. It was not legislation. What we had before and the change that we have here is legislation. It is the actual building change. It is not enough to simply come before the House and express one's good intentions.

I think the member's colleague, if he had been really serious about his intent to change the Criminal Code, should have presented it as a private member's bill. Indeed, I suspect he probably would have succeeded. We do not know looking back, but private member's bills from the opposition have succeeded in the House. The Bloc Québécois for certain has had several and I know the Canadian Alliance has had several. As a matter of fact, there have been more successful private member's bills from the opposition than from the government side.

It was a motion and we cannot go back in time. Perhaps this side may have felt that the motion was not the way to go and I do not remember the original wording. However, I am sorry that the member did not succeed in the sense that he obviously contributed much to the debate at least to Bill C-32.

If I may say to the member and to her colleague, we all succeeded by the changes in Bill C-32 that arose because we were lobbied. It was not just the Canadian Alliance that was lobbied. We were lobbied on this side and a motion or a bill could have come as easily from this side as a private member's initiative, but in the end it was the government that took up the baton and championed the cause.

[Criminal Code, April 28th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is very important to remember that every province has labour laws and there are federal laws as well that control the workplace to ensure that the workplace is safe and if there are unsafe practices being followed they are spotted and the people fined.

The problem with the negligence idea that was advanced by the member's party in its private member's legislation was that it would create a penalty of negligence that would be applicable to every farmer.

Obviously, the member opposite has never worked on a farm as I have. Perhaps he has never worked in small enterprises. Perhaps he has never worked on a ship at sea. However constantly, and certainly regrettably, people in these small enterprises that are not controlled by large unions take shortcuts and they knowingly take shortcuts.

If we were to send them to jail every time they took a shortcut, then we would stop all of industry. We would certainly stop the farming community because we cannot legislate to death human nature. People do take chances. I am sorry. It is regrettable, but it does happen.

However, I do not want to see a world in which everyone is afraid to move, afraid to take any risk whatsoever for fear that big brother will come down with both thumbs.

There are adequate laws and adequate legislation provincially that govern the workplace. To accelerate it, to make every farmer, fisherman, baker, and small entrepreneur liable to criminal negligence, I think would require a little tempering in what we are trying to do. No matter how well intended, we must always look at the grand unintended consequences and what the grand unintended consequences would be in this case.

[Criminal Code, April 28th, 2003]

In my past, Mr. Speaker, I was a police reporter and I covered a lot of accidents that occurred in the industrial world. The most common cause of accidents that I covered as a reporter, and these were fatalities, were those that occurred in small businesses. It could be a bake shop where someone gets caught in the dough making machine. In fact, that actually happened.

The majority of industrial accidents that led to fatalities in my experience involved small businesses and small corporations. One of the reasons for this is that small enterprises--whether they be fishermen on the east coast or farmers, another good category--hire temporary workers. Lamentably, there is a tendency in these small businesses to ignore the rules or be ignorant of the rules. This often leads to innocent people being killed. Indeed, a very unfortunate accident happened like this very near to home with me in which a young man was killed. In fact, it was United Co-operatives, a farm co-op, where the young man was killed.

The difficulty with the legislation that has come to the House at various times as private members' legislation is that if we were to apply it to large corporations, like the Westray instance, that in fairness we would have to apply it to all corporations and all small businesses. I think this would be very difficult. If we were to pass that legislation in that form I think the sad thing would be that many thousands of small entrepreneurs would be driven out of business or alternatively would be sent to jail because that is what was proposed in those private members' bills.

I am very sympathetic to those who lost lives in the Westray mine disaster. There is no doubt that there was incompetence and improprieties that occurred at the time. However, to take that instant and try to apply it across all of Canada and all businesses from large to small, I think is something that may save some lives, a few lives perhaps, not many perhaps, but it could cause a lot of harm and damage to the many small entrepreneurs who do, I am sorry to say, take short cuts. While we lament that they do, I am not sure that we want to pay the cost that is proposed by the private member's legislation that was discussed here.

[Criminal Code, April 28th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-32 appears to have broad support in the House. I appreciated the remarks from the members opposite. It is encouraging to see that when good legislation comes before the House we all come together and support it. I am very glad to have an opportunity to speak to the bill for the good reason that it is an excellent example of how Parliament does work very well.

Exactly a year ago a delegation of the Hamilton Professional Firefighters Association came to my office. It was a year plus one week; I think it was April 23, 2002. They came to make a representation on behalf of all firemen that the Criminal Code should be amended whereby people who set dangerous or deadly traps in order to harm firefighters responding to alarms would be subject to the maximum penalty that the law allows, life imprisonment, if that trap actually killed a firefighter.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to read the proposed amendment that the professional firefighters brought before me in my office a year ago. They hoped to amend section 433.1 of the Criminal Code. That amendment would have read:

Every person who intentionally or recklessly causes damage by fire or explosion to property, whether or not that person owns that property, is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for life where the fire or explosion causes death or bodily harm to a firefighter who is acting in response to the fire or explosion.

The object of that amendment was to complement another amendment that they also proposed to the Criminal Code which read that every one who commits an aggravated assault, who wounds, mains, disfigures or endangers the life of a firefighter acting in the course of his duties would be subject to these offences under the Criminal Code.

What that basically refers to, Mr. Speaker, is the idea of setting a trap for firefighters responding to an alarm which might emanate from a premise that is engaged in some sort of illegal activity, presumably drugs or something similar. We have heard from earlier speakers that actual incidents occurred where sites where illicit drugs were being manufactured were deliberately booby trapped so that firefighters who responded to an alarm would be harmed or even killed.

What delights me as a member of Parliament is the fact that this was an initiative to change a law that came from the people, in this case the people were the association of firefighters, responding to a similar situation that was occurring in the United States.

I am happy to stand in the House and draw to the attention of the public that the government did indeed act. Again, as members have commented, what the government has done by Bill C-32 is it has amended section 247 of the Criminal Code and specifically defines the crime of setting a trap for the purpose to injure a firefighter.

What happens here, Mr. Speaker, is that if a person sets the trap, just the very fact that he has set a trap or knows that a trap has been set means that is an offence right at the outset and is liable to a term not exceeding five years. It further goes on that if this is done in a place where there is illegal activity, the term of imprisonment is 10 years. Better than all of that, and which reflects what the firefighters were after, is that everyone who commits an offence under section 1, that is setting a trap, and I am now reading from Bill C-32 “and thereby causes the death of any other person, is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for life”.

Mr. Speaker, I submit to you that is a very good legislative initiative. It is important to remind Canadians that this is Parliament--I will not just say government--this is Parliament acting as a result of representations by Canadians going not just to government MPs, but to Canadian Alliance MPs, to Bloc MPs and to Conservative and NDP MPs.

I well remember when I first came to Parliament nearly 10 years ago that it was quite uncommon for citizen groups to make representations to MPs in their offices, to lobby the MPs. The normal practice was to lobby government officials. In the 1980s under a previous government here in Ottawa, lobbying flourished and that lobbying was primarily directed toward bureaucrats.

I think if one change that has occurred here that has been a very positive change in the last 10 years it is the fact that more and more Canadians are recognizing that the appropriate people to lobby for changes in law, to lobby first, to get onside, is not even the government, is not even the ministers, it is come to the MPs first.

This was a classic example. The association of professional firefighters divided the job across the country. My group came from close to my riding and they were people who were already known to me and made these representations. And there we have it, exactly one year later the law has changed, and the law has changed in a way that I think actually improves the original proposal of the firefighters. I wanted very much to make that comment.

I wanted to comment also on another change that I do not think has been mentioned so far in this debate. That is the change to the Canada Evidence Act. In this change there are three paragraphs in the Canada Evidence Act that refer to information received from a foreign entity that pertains to the Security of Information Act, and then it goes on to make the connection to national defence or--and this is the change--it inserts the words “national security” where only the word “security” existed. Then it goes on to discuss the whole process of getting a certificate pertaining to this secret information.

The reason I wanted to mention that is that is a change that reflects an error or an oversight that was in our anti-terrorism legislation that was brought forward and passed in the House I believe about a year ago. That was Bill C-36. It was Canada's response to September 11, in which various very necessary changes were made pertaining to the protection of secrets, pertaining to the collection of information. This touched on the whole business of terrorist financing and so on and so forth.

When Bill C-36 was introduced, it caused, I thought, a lot of very healthy debate in the House because similar legislation to Bill C-36 was coming forward in Britain and the United States, the homeland security bill specifically in the United States. This was all to strengthen the ability of the police and the security services to deal with the terrorist threat.

The problem was that in bringing in laws that increase security, that increase police powers, there is always the danger that they will interfere unnecessarily with civil liberties. We had extremely active debate in the House on all sides in which MPs tried to balance the needs for increased police powers with not intruding any more than was necessary on civil liberties. I would like to say actually that I believe that Canada's legislation in Bill C-36 struck this balance better than occurred in the United Kingdom or the United States where I think that there were serious erosions of civil liberties in their parallel legislation.

The reason I am telling this story is that when Bill C-36 was in first reading and was dealing with changes to the official secrets act, which was changed to the Security of Information Act, there was a clause in which it defined potentially injurious information.

This particular definition is an important definition that affected all other aspects of the bill, or almost all other aspects. In defining potentially injurious information, the original Bill C-36 said:

“Potentially injurious information” means information of a type that, if it were disclosed to the public, could injure international relations national defence or security.

What was wrong with that clause and why it was so necessary to change it was that the definition of potentially injurious information which affected all kinds of information that was to be collected and distributed by the police services, simply said “national defence or security”. By not having the adjective “national” security and simply using the word “security”, it opened the door in this legislation to expanding police powers that would touch all manner of policing events or all manner of criminal or even quasi-criminal or non-criminal investigations. Security was far too broad a word and it was a dangerous word.

This is another example, I want Canadians to know, of this place working I think extremely well. Some of us behind the curtains actually, approached the minister of the day and pointed out the danger of this clause referring only to security and not to national security. I am happy to say that subsequently when the bill came to report stage, the government amended that particular clause and put in the words “national security”.

I cannot emphasize how enormously important that apparently small change was because it limited the expansion of powers to terrorist acts, to acts that affected the entire country, not to acts that may affect narrow police interests or narrow security interests. I thought that was a very fine reaction to the government and Parliament working at its best.

The reason why I am referring to this in Bill C-32 is I do not think people would otherwise have noticed that the government is continuing to make sure that the police powers do not go too far and that there are proper limitations on police powers, because in making that change to Bill C-36 the government would have appeared to have overlooked the fact that the Canada Evidence Act has a similar problem where the word “security” was used without the adjective “national”.

Therefore, one of the changes in this legislation is to make these changes to the Security of Information Act. This is our official secrets act. It is a very important act because we cannot have the government keeping secrets for any security reason. We cannot give the government huge powers to clamp the lid on things for any security reasons, as they have done in other jurisdictions. We are not a police state. We are a democracy and it is very important to define that it is national security, not all security. There we have it. That is the change that is in Bill C-36. Quite frankly, it is an excellent bill in other aspects, but that change alone I think is simply excellent.

If I have a little more time, I would also like to comment on another aspect of this change that I think may be otherwise overlooked in the bill. My involvement in this particular debate is that I am very interested in issues of secrecy and police powers. I think it is important to note that this bill also corrects another problem that existed in Bill C-36, the anti-terrorism legislation, in making a change to the Security of Information Act, again the original official secrets act. This change is a classic example. The drafters have to be very careful in legislation because just a simple past tense or present tense error can lead to a serious problem.

I draw everyone's attention in Bill C-32 to a change in section 21 which changes a single paragraph of the Security of Information Act. It basically says that there should be security of information on the identity of persons or bodies that have been approached to be confidential sources of information to the intelligence services of Canada. In other words, spies and human resource personnel for the gathering of intelligence.

In the original Bill C-36, they forgot to include those that may have acted in this capacity for Canada in the past. What we have here is a change to change the present tense to the past tense so that those who have given sensitive intelligence, police intelligence, or anti-terrorism intelligence to Canada in the past could continue to enjoy the protection of the Security of Information Act.

[Committees of the House, April 9th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I think so. The suggestion I would put out, and I would love to see explored, is not to take away from the United Nations because I remain a very ardent supporter of that institution.

However because it is a question of surveillance and enforcement, I wonder whether we should be having talks with NATO. NATO is a body that was created to look after the North Atlantic security interests. I would suggest that NATO's role as a defence and security international organization has diminished. The threat that led to its creation has disappeared.

The very real threat that has emerged is the threat of international destruction of the environment. When we talk about the nose and tail of the Grand Banks, what we are really talking about is something that is a microcosm of an enormous worldwide problem that in the end could cost far more lives than most wars would cost.

When we think of NAFO and when we think of the countries that are ignoring the regulations, we have to remember the countries that have so little. I mentioned Estonia. We have to remember that it is a country where its opportunities to bring home any kind of income for its people is extremely limited. As time goes on, more and more states will be tempted, because they are impoverished, to exploit the international resources.

I suggest that this debate is not simply about the problem of the fisheries in Newfoundland and Labrador. This is a far larger debate. This is a debate about the planet.

While we respect the United Nations, we have to also acknowledge that the United Nations is only one international organization. I would suggest, and perhaps it is a recommendation the House could make to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to take to cabinet, that maybe what we ought to be doing is talking with NATO as well.

[Committees of the House, April 9th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, you may think it a little unusual that a member of Parliament from southern Ontario should want to take part in this debate but a problem in one part of this country, a serious problem, is and should be of concern to all of us. I do not see any fences between provinces or between areas of the country that prevent one MP from one region engaging in a debate about a problem in another region.

In fact I took a very active part in trying to come to grips with the disappearing fish stocks on the east coast in particular because soon after I was first elected as MP in 1993, the major issue of the day was the effects of the cod moratorium that had been brought down by the previous government and was affecting the east coast fishery. One of the first things that the Liberal government of the day did was bring in an Atlantic assistance program aimed at the fishermen who had lost their livelihoods and who required some kind of financial assistance.

Also, that was the time of the famous Spanish fish war where this government seized a Spanish trawler on the high seas and towed it into port because it had been overheard through our intelligence services, in fact, that the captain of that ship had been on a radio telephone to his home port in Spain and had been heard to mention that he had undersized fish behind false bulkheads. That Spanish trawler was seized on the high seas and taken into port.

This is relevant to the subject under debate. I remember vividly meeting the Irish ambassador at a reception soon after Canada had seized that trawler. That particular diplomat was quite outraged at the thought that Canada, or any nation for that matter, should seize a ship on the high seas because it was apparently violating the conservation measures with respect to a resource that was shared by the world, and that particular trawler was on the high seas.

As the cod war, so-called, unfolded and public opinion around the world latched on to what the Canadians had done, it was interesting to see the way public opinion did change. Six months later, around the world it was acknowledged that states did have a need and a right even to protect international resources because the destruction of a food stock fish in international waters was exactly equivalent to dumping pollution in the high seas.

We went through a period at the end of the cold war, with the collapse of the former Soviet Union, when there was an attempt to dump nuclear waste. Even now today there are companies in various countries around the world that specialize in collecting all kinds of dangerous garbage and taking it on the high seas to dump. This of course endangers a resource of the planet.

We have here an issue which is actually a revisiting of the problem of the cod wars of 1995. We have this issue again where it is perceived that international fishing fleets are over-exploiting the nose and tail of the Grand Banks. Just as eight or nine years ago, the assumption, the connection is that by exploiting the nose and tail of the Grand Banks, they are adversely affecting the total fish stocks, not just cod. As has been mentioned many times, fish swim and they swim in circles, and while fish may be off in the nose and tail at some time, they will be within the 200 mile limit as well, so it is the total stock of fish that is at risk.

So here we have a report of the fisheries committee that suggests as a solution to this problem, instead of sending in one of Canada's frigates and shooing everyone away, that we make amendments to the appropriate legislation and attempt to achieve some kind of custodial control over the nose and tail of the Grand Banks.

Custodial control basically means extending the state's jurisdiction beyond the 200 mile limit and enforcing conservation measures, again in what are seen to be international waters. I should note in passing, Mr. Speaker, that a lot of Canadians think the 200 mile limit as we know it is some sort of absolute zone of control belonging to nations. In fact, it is merely a zone of economic control that, by consensus in the United Nations, and I suppose now under the UN convention of the law of the sea, represents a zone of economic control of nations. It is not territorial waters in the most strict sense. I do believe territorial waters are only about three miles offshore, a very short distance, and a lot of Canadians do not realize that.

With the fact that nations around the world do generally respect the right of countries to oversee and police conservation measures within the 200 mile limit, we have an international consensus that has been arrived at, but obviously in this particular case we have to go further. We have to try to get control of the nose and tail.

Here is the dilemma, and it is very relevant to what is happening in the world today. Canada has for many years been committed to multilateralism to try to solve problems through either the United Nations or suitable international bodies that are set up to meet and agree to try to come to some kind of agreement on how to manage what is essentially an international resource. The Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization is the particular organization involved here, and not just the committee but the fishermen of Newfoundland have for a long time now been expressing a lot of concern and even despair that the members of NAFO are not respecting the agreements, even the agreements that are brought together by the various memberships. The memberships of NAFO, of course, are the various countries that are coastal to the Atlantic, on both sides of the Atlantic, and have an interest in the fish stocks.

There certainly are situations where small countries like Estonia are on the nose and tail and taking fish in a way that, according to NAFO, they should not be. It is ignoring the regulations.

It is very hard to police that kind of thing, because we do not have the ability to implement meaningful trade sanctions on a country like Estonia or any of the other small countries that are exploiting international waters adjacent to our 200 mile limit, so the question becomes, what do we do? The reason why this question is so pertinent now, and I hope people do not feel this is too much of a stretch, is that we have a situation in Iraq where a decision has been made to act unilaterally because of impatience with the process of multilateral agreements.

I suggest that in regard to the difficulty of trying to get custodial control there is a genuine block here, because Canada's long tradition of respecting multilateral solutions does make it very difficult for us to impose a solution on the nose and tail, particularly in the current international climate where there is a lot of criticism against international institutions and, even worse, outright attempts to dismantle international institutions, including the United Nations.

I can only speak for myself, but I cannot see the solution, quite frankly. I think we have to take this as a nation to the very highest level. We certainly have to take it to the United Nations. I cannot see any unilateral solution that works, but I really do think that in this particular international climate this is the time to put severe pressure on the United Nations to adopt enforceable conservation measures, which would affect not only the nose and tail of the Grand Banks but other areas of the world where there is incredible destruction of fish stocks in boundary waters and on the high seas.

All kinds of things are going on now. They are taking shark in the Far East. Shark is a higher order animal on the food chain in the oceans. Sharks take a long time to mature. They are selling shark for peanuts in comparison to the sophistication of the animal that is being destroyed.

At the other end of the scale, and what really disturbs me, is the fact that countries around the world are destroying the food stock fish like caplin. I have heard various comments from members here who have alluded to the fact that here in Canada we still maintain a commercial fishery of caplin. I deplore that. It is one thing to say, and I agree, that we have to cull the seal herds because of the pressure they are putting on all fish, but to be taking caplin is equivalent to cutting a person off at the ankles. These are the fish that feed all the other higher order fish, going up to the very top of the chain, which of course is the seal.

I find it incredible that the government has not acted to close down that industry. Even if it does not take a high proportion, there is the very principle. If we are going to talk conservation, I would think no one on the east coast would argue that taking caplin is in the interests of conservation. I would suggest that the fisheries minister could begin there. I know he might not be popular in some areas of Newfoundland and in other areas of the Maritimes where there are caplin plants, but again this is a food stock fish that is being taken and sold for peanuts. It is extremely destructive.

This debate gives me a chance to also talk about a few other things pertaining to conservation in the waters off the east coast. I should tell the House that after the cod wars, when the Liberal government put out what I think was about $1 billion to assist the east coast fisheries industry to help it ride through the period of the cod moratorium, which was thought at that time would be of very short duration, my wife and I travelled to Newfoundland for a couple of weeks for three consecutive summers. I did not go as a member of Parliament but just as an ordinary person. We travelled around the various coasts. I have been all around the coasts of Newfoundland and to Labrador.

We stayed at the bed and breakfasts and talked to the people there. We went down to the docks as well and talked to people there. One of the things about the people from Newfoundland is that they must be one of the friendliest groups of people on the planet. They always welcomed strangers. It was a wonderful experience.

But some things came clear to me as we travelled around. One of the interesting things, and it is as an aside to this debate, was that much of the money going to help the jobless fishermen in Newfoundland was not reaching them. It was going off to other people.

The people I talked to in Newfoundland were themselves critical of the way that money was dispensed. The problem is that one cannot address the collapse of an industry by giving people money. The fishermen themselves wanted to fish. They did not want to sit there and receive money. In the end, what was happening was that a lot of that money was going to plant workers and the periphery of people associated with plant workers. It went on and on.

The point of it all is that it was not a program that I thought was working very well. If we do have to go that way, I hope we manage a program much better than that.

One of the things that struck me, and it may be controversial for my colleagues who are from Newfoundland, one of the things that struck me historically is that it was not just a problem of the nose and tail, as I saw it, as I came to learn it, it was also a problem of the way the inshore fishery had developed. There had been huge government subsidies over the years. What was originally a fishery, which was a small operation with open boats and hook and line, had been developed because of government funding. Through loan guarantees and various other government incentives, there was a huge expansion of people going from open boats to powerful trawlers and to fishing vessels that enabled them to take enormous amounts of fish and sell it. There is very clearly a bulge in that people did get more affluent in Newfoundland, these fishermen who were able to take advantage of these programs.

It is only a theory, but it made me wonder, though, whether or not part of the problem is not just the overfishing of the international fleets but overfishing on the inshore.

One of the things that struck me, and I could never understand it, is that we could go around Newfoundland and it was very hard to get local fish in the restaurants, because what was happening was that people would go out and fish the fish, the fish would go to the fish plant and the fish plant would send the fish to Toronto somewhere. They would send the fresh fish or they would send the fish in cans to Toronto. There is hardly any fish to be bought by tourists roaming around Newfoundland.

One of the things that struck me, and it still strikes me today, is that I can never understand why the Newfoundland government did not attempt to marry the food fishery with tourism. It is one thing to go to Newfoundland and look at whales jumping and that kind of thing, but the fact of the matter is that the only way my wife and I could actually try the famous dishes of Newfoundland was to go to a bed and breakfast where the host of the particular house would make these dishes for herself. In the restaurants, we would get food that we would find in Toronto. I have never understood that. But I digress.

The other area that I think we should look at very carefully with respect to what may be happening to the collapse of the fish stocks on the east coast, which I think has so far been overlooked in this debate, is the dumping of chemical warfare munitions during the second world war. I have some familiarity with that, because I did some research on Canada's role in chemical warfare weapons development during the second world war. After the second world war, a lot of these munitions, a lot of mustard gas, a lot of nerve agent that had been brought over from the Germans, was then taken out to sea and dumped. Also, for the ships returning from the war theatre at the end of the second world war, almost all of them that were carrying munitions also carried chemical munitions, again usually mustard gas. All this material was dumped at sea, much of it in the shallow water of the Grand Banks, but some of it, perhaps, in deep adjacent water

I have wondered for a long time whether or not after 50 years the containers are secure. They were just simple oil drums that the mustard gas was contained in. There were thousands and thousands of tonnes of it, many thousands. I think we are looking at maybe about 30,000 tonnes, much of it produced here in Cornwall, Ontario, some of it produced by the Americans as well, who also dumped it at sea.

The question is whether this mustard gas is finally getting into the water after 50 years. If I understand it correctly, we are not entirely certain of the life cycle of the cod. If that life cycle in some way intercepts something like mustard gas being released into the deep water of the ocean, or even the shallow water, that may be one of the reasons why there is such a crisis in the cod all along the east coast. I would suggest that it is very suspicious that the cod disappeared almost simultaneously all along the maritime seaboard, including offshore Maine. I would suggest that this may be the problem.

[Situation in Iraq, April 8th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, of course I am not suggesting that any of these countries have democracies that are superior to those of Canada, the United States or Britain. I think one of the great tragedies here is this attempt to bring our values to those countries by force of arms. I do not think that is going to be successful.

But the member opposite did not answer my question. Let me ask it again more precisely. Does he think that were the White House occupied by President Carter, for example, or Al Gore, should he have been fortunate enough, the United States would be now at war with Iraq under the current circumstances?

[Situation in Iraq, April 8th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I did not say that. If we check Hansard , we will see that I did not say any such thing. The member should be careful in his language because Hansard can be checked.