John Bryden

[Petitions, November 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition calling upon the government to repeal section 13(5) of the Canada Post Act in order that rural mail couriers would have the opportunity to collectively bargain.

[Parliamentary Reform, November 20th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, first, a minor comment about voter apathy. One reason for voter apathy is the fact that for so long we have not had a strong opposition facing the government benches. In the British parliamentary system, one really needs a strong choice to galvanize the electorate. I just make that point in passing.

The member has a lot of experience in the House and I would like to share with him one thing that distresses me with the way Parliament works, and that is the total monopoly the Department of Justice has on the creation of legislation. One often finds oneself in the House trying to effect changes when the horse is already out of the barn.

I deplore, first and foremost, the new practice of referring bills to committee after first reading. What happens there is it deprives this chamber and people like myself of debate or to be even aware of the bill before it goes to committee. The member will agree that, as committees are presently structured, the committees can be so weighted that there is not genuine debate in committee.

Second, could member also comment on any way he can see to give the House of Commons a greater role in the creating of legislation and in the analyzing of legislation, be it by adding to the legal staff of the House or by the creation perhaps of legislative committees that could be involved in drafting legislation, not just for private members but for government as well?

[Parliamentary Reform, November 20th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to pick up on the electronic voting proposal. I have voted against the government about six times in my nine years here. Always it took courage to rise in my place and be seen to be voting against my colleagues. On one occasion I was the only one who stood.

It serves two purposes to stand and be counted. One is to make sure that members do not squander party solidarity by too easily being able to vote without being seen by constituents and without being seen by one's colleagues. Alternatively, one of the reasons to stand up and be counted is to send a message to the government that members are not happy with the legislation before them.

I would suggest to my colleague opposite that if we have electronic voting, these two great instruments of standing up and being counted and sending messages to the government and to Canadians at large on how we stand on legislation is an important privilege of being a member of Parliament that should not be lost.

[Supply, November 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I often find myself at odds with Canadian Alliance policies, but I often find myself very much in agreement with individual Canadian Alliance MPs. I feel that all of us are motivated by the same ideals in the House. We run under different flags, but we all have the interests of Canadians at heart. This debate is a good example of it.

[Supply, November 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am not quite sure what the member is saying because it sounds as though the member is playing God.

I do not see anything wrong with being honest with the people who come before me. To simply say that everyone who comes before me should use the bureaucracy and we should let the bureaucracy decide, is that the answer that she really wants? She contradicted herself because what she said on the one hand is to leave it to the bureaucracy to decide and then in the next breath said that I intervened in this particular case.

We all agree that when someone comes before us we need to intervene and check very carefully to see whether there is a problem. One just does not simply say, “In my view, you should go to the bureaucracy”. When we look at them and see in our heart of hearts that people need an entirely different kind of help and not a disability tax credit kind of help, we should try to be honest with them. I do not see any problem with that and I will have to continue the way I am.

[Supply, November 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, certainly MPs in their constituency offices should not play God. On the other hand, I do try to be scrupulously honest. When it is a person who in my view does appear to have a severe disability, then obviously I will intervene as best I can, but we have to be honest with those who may be kidding themselves. When people come in and want to claim that credit and they say they have a disability, then when we interview them and we think to ourselves really that does not fit the criteria, we have to still in my view take them at their honest word, but we have to be candid with them.

I do try to do what is right with all the people who come before me in the office and sometimes it is a matter of giving them very bad news.

[Supply, November 19th, 2002]

On the other hand, the Canadian Alliance has always argued, as do most people of a conservative ideology, and I do not like the word ideology, of a conservative attitude, shall we say, and would normally argue that we must have accountability and transparency in the system and we have to do everything we can to make sure that when we apply money to social programs it really does reach the people in need.

What struck me as so fascinating in the remarks, particularly from the Canadian Alliance, is that social programs are always risk management. The key thing that I would have thought differentiated Liberals from the Canadian Alliance is that the Liberals would say that we should err on the side of compassion if the choice is simply saving money, to always err on the side of compassion rather than saving money. What has delighted me enormously is that this is the argument that I have been hearing from the Canadian Alliance members. They have been saying constantly to err on the side of compassion in this program, not on simply saving money.

I agree with that. I would think and I would hope that all members of the opposition would agree with that. In the end, we have to try to find a balance. As responsible parliamentarians and lawmakers, we have to try to make sure that money for social programs is spent effectively, but we always have to bear in mind, as an earlier speaker said, that there are those who would abuse the system, there are those who would defraud the system. Whether it is a disability tax credit or it is money for poverty programs, drug programs or whatever, there are always those who will abuse the system.

We must try to set up rules that are effective, but in the end I agree this time with my Canadian Alliance colleagues that always we should err on the side of compassion.

[Supply, November 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I have been following this debate this morning and this afternoon with a great deal of interest because it is a debate about finding a balance.

I remember when the new rules for the disability tax credit came in some years ago. I felt that it was a positive thing, because we do not have to be members of Parliament sitting in our constituency offices to know that there are those Canadians who, for reasons that may be psychological, reasons in their own backgrounds, make much of what may be only limiting disabilities, make much in the sense that they use these limiting disabilities as perhaps an excuse not to work, an excuse to withdraw from society and an excuse not to participate.

I think the parliamentary secretary made a most important point when she underlined the fact that the disability tax credit is supposed to be applied to people who are severely restricted in their ability to participate in society. It is not intended to reward people for having a disability. In that sense I supported the change that came down, because I think that at that time we on this side of the House, and this entire Parliament, were reviewing the way in which government social programs were being applied. We went through, I think, a period, particularly in the late seventies and throughout the eighties, of general irresponsibility in terms of how we were applying our social programs insofar as many people were taking advantage of the social programs who did not genuinely need them. I think we were losing many, many millions, if not billions, of dollars, because we did not demand scrutiny and accountability on the way programs were applied. I think this is the case in point with the disability tax credit.

As a member of Parliament since the program change came in, I certainly had experiences where people came in who were questioned. That was what happened. There were 106,000 Canadians who were automatically receiving the disability tax credit and who were suddenly required to justify, in documentation by responding to a questionnaire, why they should still be receiving the disability tax credit. Indeed, I did have in my office, I remember very vividly, a person who came in. She had filled out the questionnaire. Her disability tax credit had been refused. When she came to my office it was very evident that she was suffering from an extreme form of arthritis. Literally, her limbs and her fingers were tied up in knots.

The reason why she was denied the credit was that she had replied on the form that she was still going out there and being active in the community, so it was assumed by the bureaucrats that this was a person who did not have a severely restrictive disability. In fact she did have, and what was happening is that she was paying for her courage in losing this disability tax credit. I have to tell you, Mr. Speaker, I naturally intervened as best I could in her case. Indeed, it was reviewed and she did get the credit in the long run.

However, I contrast that with other people who came into my office and talked about the fact that they had been denied the disability tax credit. While one cannot get into the minds of people, it did seem very apparent that just by the way they moved around and the way they spoke and everything else, they did not seem to have the type of disability that would prevent them from participating in society in some useful way or, indeed, earning a living.

The problem is how to strike a balance between those two extremes. It is very, very difficult. One of the things that has fascinated me about this debate today is a sort of shift in sides between the Liberals on this side and in particular the Canadian Alliance on the other. We expect the NDP to always be in favour, as they always have been, of applying money, basically without question, to social problems.

I do not mean that in a disparaging sense but, shall we say, the social left of the political spectrum tends to put the money ahead of the requirement to make sure the money is well spent.

[Supply, November 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite in her closing remarks touched on an area of great sensitivity in this issue.

I would ask her a very direct question. I am very much with her on the need for transparency and accountability. We have in some sense the conflicting intent of wanting to show compassion for those who need the help of government because of circumstances beyond their control.

I would ask the member a risk management question. Would she, as a legislator, be prepared to accept some fraud in the system if it meant reaching out to more people who actually needed the help of government as disabled people?

[Supply, November 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I think all of us in the House would agree that we want to treat people with disabilities in a humane and compassionate manner, but surely one of the problems in something like this is the difficulty of framing rules that are indeed humane and compassionate, as was proposed by the subcommittee.

The member opposite cited the example of the 50 metre rule for walking ability and asked why it should not be 49 or why it should not be 51. May I ask him, then, if he were to frame such a rule to test somebody's level of disability in terms of how far they could walk, what would he do?