John Bryden

[Health Care System, October 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the member who just spoke acknowledged that $5 billion is needed but that $5 billion could not possibly come simply from trimming government waste. I must say to the member that I take that as a compliment to the efficiency of the government, that cutting waste in government would not provide $5 billion.

I would like to advance a very serious question to him. The reality is that health care spending, we understood from an earlier speech, amounts to about $75 billion a year, chiefly spent by non-profit organizations that are not directly accountable for their actions through the Corporations Act and not otherwise transparent. Would he feel that perhaps increased efficiencies would come of bringing these institutions, including the great hospitals, under the Access to Information Act and under the Canada Corporations Act, where there would be standards of corporate governance that they must obey, and would he not feel that this move alone would probably create sufficient efficiencies to not only find the $5 billion but to find far more than $5 billion?

[Lobbyists Registration Act, October 25th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, who I have great respect for, drives me crazy when in attacking governments he attacks Parliament and the democracy in this place.

Canada, as you know, Mr. Speaker, is one of the oldest democracies in the world. We had a democracy when they were all monarchies and dictatorships in Europe. We have held one of the largest land masses together with the greatest ethnic diversity. We are a country of two official languages. The whole world knows that Canada has the most admired democracy in the world and one of the most successful democracies.

The member complains, as an example of a lack of democracy, that the Prime Minister appoints senior officials to government. How would he have it? The Prime Minister is elected. Would he have unelected people appoint these people?

It just drives me crazy because we do have a democracy and it is the best democracy in the world. The reason the government appoints the officials is that the government is elected by a majority to take these actions.

Coming to Bill C-15, the amendments to the Lobbyists Registration Act, I will not go over the debate that went on here earlier because I think all would agree that the bill that is before the House is a good bill. I do not think there is anything in the bill that is contentious and that should not go through the process and be passed into law.

However I do agree with the member from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, who, I point out, is a member on the opposition side, that the bill does not go far enough. I am not satisfied that we took advantage of the opportunity, when were reviewing the legislation, to make it stronger and to throw more light on the way lobbyists operate in government and how they influence government.

My connection to the legislation goes back to 1994, to the previous review, when I served on the industry committee at that time. I said it then, and I have proposed it at various times in the intervening years, that the shortcoming of the legislation is that it provides for transparency in terms of who it is that is lobbying the government but that it does not provide the identities of those who are being lobbied in government.

As a former journalist, I am not particularly interested, either as an MP or a former journalist, in who is doing the lobbying so much as I am interested in who is being lobbied. I have had occasion to use the Lobbyists Registration Act and the Access to Information Act on various occasions, particularly in connection with the animal cruelty bill, Bill C-15B, in which I was very concerned that there was policy being implemented that was coming from lobbyists. I wanted to trace not only who was putting the influence on government but who was reacting to the influence. I could identify the International Fund for Animal Welfare as the lobbyist but I could not figure out how it was getting to government.

The problem, and it is a serious problem, is not whether or not lobbyists are reaching senior bureaucrats, ministers or politicians. The danger is when lobbyists are reaching mid-level officials, mid-level officials who may be preparing policy papers which they are going to send up the line. There is no way of determining whether these lobbyists are getting in the back door and influencing the deputy ministers because they have been lobbied.

One of the proposals I had at the time, and on which you can be ready, Mr. Speaker, because I will be moving an amendment in due course, is that I believe we need to have a situation where the officials keep a log of the lobbyists who approach them. We, not the senior officials, need to know what these lobbyists are doing, how they are making contact, how they are influencing the mid-level bureaucrats and the extent of that influence.

I can say that I was very concerned regarding the animal cruelty legislation that there was improper lobbying in my view, that there was lobbying behind the curtains that had got to low level bureaucrats, low level officials who had influenced the people up the line.

Another aspect that we need to address in the legislation, and one I hope we can address through an amendment, relates to what I have been saying, the influence that former members of Parliament, ministers and former bureaucrats have on the lobbying process.

One of the ironies is that when the industry committee studied the Lobbyists Registration Act in 1994, the chairman of the committee became a lobbyist. He now lobbies government. I can cite former ministers who are lobbying government and cite senior bureaucrats who are lobbying government.

There is no problem, in my view, with allowing those people to lobby. They are recorded under the Lobbyists Registration Act. However, in the interest of transparency and in the interest of understanding how policy is developed, we want to know who they are lobbying. The Lobbyists Registration Act is entirely silent on that. We can find out that they are lobbying the Department of Justice or Environment Canada but we cannot find out who they are lobbying.

I would suggest that if bureaucrats and officials were required to keep logs of the lobbyists who approach them, and by that I mean a telephone log or a mail or solicitation log, and if these logs were accessible to the public so that we could see which officials were being approached, I think we would have a better grip on how policy is made in this place. It is of great concern to members of Parliament that decisions are being made and influence is being brought to bear in ways that give the advantage to those who are paying for the influence legally and to the disadvantage of those of us who are here representing Canadians and the points of view of Canadians. That is a major change that I would bring in.

I actually put that forward in 1994 and the government responded that it felt that it would be too much of a burden on officials to keep lists of the lobbyists who approach them. I submit that in the eight years intervening computer technology has advanced so far and so fast that there would be little problem in keeping such a record. Indeed, in my own constituency office I routinely record all the telephone calls that come in for some very good reasons.

Years ago when I was at the Toronto Star that was again a routine procedure made much easier now because we can put it right into the electronic file. I do not see any reason why this cannot be done. If the officials have nothing to hide, and indeed they should not have anything to hide, then I think this is something that the government could consider. I can assure the House that I intend to put it forward as an amendment.

One final point is that Professor Stanbury, when he appeared before the committee in 1994, pointed out that it would be very advantageous to know how much money is being spent by an organization to lobby for a particular point of view. It is not the lobbyist and the hiring a lobbyists that is so interesting, what we really want to know is how much money someone will spend behind the scenes to influence officials in order to get their way. Members of Parliament really have nothing but this place in order to bring influence to bear, to change legislation or to act in the public interest.

Lobbyists, on the other hand, or organizations that hire lobbyists, have vast sums of money and I think the public is entitled to know when vast sums of money are being used to influence public policy.

So those are two changes that I hope the committee and the government will consider before the legislation comes back to the House.

[Export and Import of Rough Diamonds Act, October 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I do not have any problem with that whatsoever. That is not what was said by the previous speaker from the Canadian Alliance however, who would have us believe that property rights take precedence over human rights.

Of course someone whose premises have been entered in a forcible manner should have some right of recourse. I would suggest to the member for Elk Island that he should support the bill so that type of amendment can be put forward in committee. It is a reasonable thought. It has to be put in the context of similar situations as described in the Criminal Code.

I know the member for Elk Island is himself a very compassionate human being. He is simply saying in his intervention that we should always have a regard, not for property rights, but we should always have regard for individuals to whom the government may inadvertently do injury. Of course those individuals have to be protected.

I see that the member for Elk Island would agree however that if the authorities have reason to believe that narcotics or conflict diamonds are held on the premises, they should be able to enter those premises and establish whether or not such articles are there.

[Export and Import of Rough Diamonds Act, October 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, here we see the gap between the Liberals and the opposition member who just spoke and his party.

I do not take back my remarks whatsoever. Human rights exceed property rights. The human condition is what we as Canadians must always address first and foremost. Obviously when we have to make a choice between human rights and property rights, property rights must come second. What would happen if somebody had a ton of heroin on their premises? Are we to say that we could not go in and seize that heroin?

Conflict diamonds, like hard drugs, do the same kind of damage to human beings. We as citizens of this country, as Canadians, have to put the safety and security of human beings before the rights of private property.

[Export and Import of Rough Diamonds Act, October 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would just say that human rights always has to take priority over property rights. I appreciate where the member for Elk Island is coming from because his party, and I do not mean this in any way in a disparaging sense, has always been a spokesman for protecting property rights.

If the member for Elk Island were to give this bill a chance, particularly after it goes to the committee stage, I think he would find that, in the interests of solving the problem of trafficking in these diamonds for unlawful purposes, the bill is a reasonable curtailment of civil liberties in terms of the need to search and seize property if there is a reasonable expectation that this property may be held for purposes that are contrary to human rights that may injure people either here or elsewhere.

[Export and Import of Rough Diamonds Act, October 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by congratulating my colleague, the member for Nepean—Carleton, for his longstanding initiative on this issue that has led to the bill before the House today.

Whether the bill is perfect of not, the credit must go to the member for Nepean--Carleton for keeping the government's attention on the issue. The member made a number of visits to Sierra Leone and saw firsthand the awful conflict, financed by the type of diamond that is basically scrabbled from the earth and then sold on the international markets, both legally and illegally.

Bill C-14 gives me an opportunity that I will take advantage of to tell a story of refugees and something that happened in my riding. It pertains very closely to the issue, although it may take a little time before members appreciate where I am coming from with this story.

In October 2000 in my constituency office I was approached by a gentleman who has a longstanding reputation of bringing refugees into Canada. He operated through an organization called Operation Lifeline. This person wanted me to intercede on behalf of two young men from Angola who had apparently been denied their refugee status. This is a common occurrence in an MP's constituency office. We try to cut through the red tape or try to intercede in compassionate circumstances because all MPs have this direct line to the immigration and refugee authorities to help out in situations like this.

I take this business of writing directly to the minister and asking for her intervention very seriously. I always do due diligence. I sought and obtained the file of the refugee hearing on these two young men before I actually interviewed them.

There was no question in my mind that the Immigration and Refugee Board was absolutely proper in its decision to reject the application of these two young men who had come in and sought refugee status at Niagara Falls. The description that they gave at the board hearing was full of contradictions. Basically their story was that they were two young men whose father worked as a chauffeur for the government in Angola. According to them, their father had fallen out of favour and had disappeared and been mysteriously shot. Suddenly, a few days afterwards, some unknown person, a benefactor, arranged for the two young men to be smuggled out of Angola and flown to Zimbabwe, from there to Rome, from Rome to Switzerland, from Switzerland to New York, from New York to Buffalo. This is quite a trip.

As the refugee board members queried them, it turned out that the young men could provide no detail. In fact, most of their information was very contradictory. Apparently, they said that when their father disappeared their mother contacted government officials. Of course that did not make sense if the government was supposed to be responsible for killing the father, and so the story went on. I had serious reservations about these two young men right at the outset.

Subsequently, just at about the time the election was called, these two young men came in with their sponsor. Their sponsor explained that they had been in the country for some nine months and they were in a local high school in grade 11 where they had, somewhat miraculously in my mind, acquired fluency in English. Angola of course is Portuguese speaking. These two young men were suddenly so fluent in English that they could obtain very high marks in grade 11, which is certainly very impressive.

He explained that various schools and organizations were very much in support of my interceding on behalf of these two young men with the minister, and so I talked with them. I had the same experience as the refugee board. They spoke but there were all kinds of inconsistencies in their story. One of the biggest inconsistencies was they could not tell me who financed their trip from Angola to Zimbabwe to Rome to Switzerland to New York and to Buffalo. They had no idea. They could not name the people who were their benefactors.

There are two problems of which we have to be aware. One is the fact that it costs a lot of money to go on the kind of particular trip we are talking about. These two young men were supposed to be the sons of a lowly chauffeur for the government of Angola. Second, is the fact that Angola is notorious for the exportation of conflict diamonds. Sierra Leone and Angola share two things in common: they are failed states with perpetual civil wars and those ugly civil wars are fueled by conflict diamonds. What is basically happening is the illicit scrabbling of diamonds out of the soil and those diamonds are usually smuggled around the world where they wind up in the hands of legitimate companies.

As has been referred to here several times, Zimbabwe of all countries is another state that very obviously is actively engaged in black market and contraband trades. These two young men went first to Zimbabwe then to Rome and then to Switzerland, the centre of the world trade in diamonds, and then on to New York and Buffalo. In my view, it was reasonable to suspect that these two young men were likely either couriers for conflict diamonds or their passage had been financed by conflict diamonds. I could hardly ask the minister to give them a minister's certificate allowing them to stay in the country and bypass the decision of the refugee board.

Where the story gets really awkward is the fact that this occurred at the beginning of the last election. One cannot imagine what happened. First, the people sponsoring these two boys made it very clear to me. They said that if I wrote to the minister and asked that these boys be allowed to stay, the minister would grant that request. Second, they indicated they would work against me in an election campaign if I did not write the minister.

What subsequently happened, and I have it here and I am sorry I cannot display it, but these individuals were good to their word. I was flooded with about 300 letters and e-mails as they went to every church and school in my riding. They went everywhere. When I campaigned door to door, people asked me what I was doing about these two young men. They asked me why I would not agree to let them stay in the country.

I want Canadians to know that MPs can resist that kind of pressure. I do not know how many votes I lost in the last election, but in the end those two young men were deported. I do not know what happened to them subsequently. All I know is that there was a genuine, reasonable doubt of the bona fides of these two young men. It would have been totally irresponsible for me, to merely guarantee my re-election, to have written the minister and ask that they stay in the country.

What does this all have to do with conflict diamonds? It has to do with the fact that these diamonds are not only used to finance conflicts abroad. They are also used to finance the movement of all kinds of illicit peoples around the world. This is the kind of payment that people smugglers take. This is the kind of payment that terrorists receive.

The member for Nepean--Carleton is very right to have zeroed in on this problem, not just because of the conflicts in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Angola, but also because conflict diamonds are financing terrorism around the world. They are financing people smuggling. It has to be stopped.

Bill C-14 is a very good bill because it basically requires legitimate diamond traders to issue or receive diamonds by means of a certificate of authenticity or source which says that the diamonds have been bought and purchased through legitimate channels and are not ultimately diamonds that have been obtained in countries like Angola or Sierra Leone illicitly.

I will not go through the bill in detail but I would like to draw attention to one small aspect of the bill just in case the people watching have not noticed it. That is subclause 9(2)(c) which says in effect that any diamonds which are possibly conflict diamonds and which are in the country now are exempt from this bill provided that the person who possesses them at the time this bill comes into force can show documentation on how they obtained them. In other words, if a legitimate diamond trader has diamonds that he or she knows are probably originally conflict diamonds which have been brought into the country illegally, he or she can declare this and be exempt from the impact of the bill. In other words, he or she will be able to keep the diamonds and trade them.

Here is the kicker. If, on the other hand, any trader in the country has received smuggled conflict diamonds, then he or she will not be able to present the evidence that these diamonds are indeed legitimately acquired. In other words, the beautiful trap that this bill sets is that all conflict diamonds that are in the country by way of smuggling will be trapped in the country and the only way they can be used is by smuggling them out of the country into another country. Of course I do not need to tell members that smuggling has a whole other series of penalties under the laws of Canada, with all kinds of delightful fines and terms of imprisonment. Of course this is what we want because in the end what this whole question of conflict diamonds really amounts to is the financing of death. It has to stop.

This bill takes a huge step forward. It is going forward in concert with many countries around the world. I regret to say that Canada is not actually leading this; it is among many others. However one thing that no one can take away from anyone in this place is the fact that the member for Nepean—Carleton initiated this move in the House with his private member's bill, which has now become a very fine piece of government legislation.

[Export and Import of Rough Diamonds Act, October 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I have a comment to those looking in. The tradition in the British parliamentary system is that the second reading vote is for agreement in principle to legislation, the idea being that the legislation at second reading is probably flawed, that these flaws are to be worked out at the committee stage, and that if a member still feels dissatisfied that the bill does not meet his objections and concerns, then third reading is the time to vote.

I would make the observation that the member for Elk Island is taking a position that would be more appropriate at third reading rather than second reading and that he should support the bill if he agrees with it in principle. If he does not agree with it in principle, then he should certainly vote against it.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, October 8th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Edmonton North was so uncharitable. The least she could have done was damn the Prime Minister with faint praise but there was no praise whatsoever.

We on this side will recall that the Prime Minister was the one who brought in the clarity bill, and that, I do believe, is indeed a legacy for the Prime Minister insofar as it was an enormous contribution to national unity.

I have a question for the member for Edmonton North. She said in her remarks that the person who should have been in the chair during the Speech from the Throne was not there. If I recall correctly, the Queen was invited to read the Speech from the Throne but she declined.

Does the member for Edmonton North think that was an appropriate response from Buckingham Palace?

[Committee Business and Reinstatement of Government Bills, October 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, we are debating today a motion that would bring back to the House the legislation that was before the House before the time of prorogation, that is legislation that was before the House in June, and also bring back to the House the evidence that was before the committee at that time.

People should understand that when the House prorogues all these bills and evidence basically collapse and are lost unless Parliament moves a motion that allows them to be brought back. This motion would allow all these bills to be brought back at the same standing as they were in the process they were last June, at the discretion of the minister.

I am in sort of a funny situation. There is an amendment to the motion that was moved by the member for Macleod. He suggested in his amendment that the former bills, Bill C-5 and Bill C-15B, should be exempted from the motion. In other words, the motion could go forward but the two particular bills, one the cruelty to animal bill and the other the species at risk bill, would not be allowed to go forward where they are right now, which is in the Senate. They would have to begin the process all over again.

I find myself in a quandary. Had the member for Macleod simply said that Bill C-15B should be excluded from this motion, I think he would have received a chorus of support on this side of the House. I myself would have supported that motion. That bill, which is now in the Senate and almost ready to be passed into law, is a terrible bill.

There is no doubt on this side of the House and many of the MPs, particularly from rural Canada, are very much against this piece of legislation. There has been a long battle both in the House and behind the scenes to halt that piece of legislation.

Even though cruelty to animals is a dreadful thing, and we all want to prevent cruelty to animals, that piece of legislation is incredibly and horribly flawed in its definition of animal. Basically that definition says that any creature that has the capacity to feel pain is covered by the legislation. Amoebas, worms, lobsters and so on, all these creatures have a capacity to feel pain because we can see their reaction when they are subject to any sort of physical violence.

Therefore, we have a piece of legislation that is so broad in its reach that we expect that special interest, animal rights lobbies will use this legislation to bring all kinds of cases before the courts which will enable them to do all kinds of fundraising and will create great anguish and unhappiness in the farming community because the farming community and its farming practices will be unfairly the target of this type of litigation as a result of this over broad definition.

If ever there was a bill that is now in the Senate or ever has been in the Senate that I would wish, as one MP, should be restarted or perhaps forgotten altogether, it is the former Bill C-15B.

Unfortunately the amendment includes the former Bill C-5, species at risk and I have a completely opposite attitude to that. The species at risk bill was enormously contentious but which spent years being wrangled upon in committee, negotiated and talked about in the House, behind the scenes, between House leaders and so on. I remember no other bill in my nines years in this Parliament where there has been so much toing and froing, so much struggle to come up with the final version, and I suppose all legislation is a compromise, a version that I think is reasonably acceptable to all Canadians.

It is a very important bill, but unfortunately we are dealing with legislation that has the possibility of interfering with the rights of property owners, which is one of the things about the species at risk bill. It requires the protection of habitat, mostly on public lands indeed, and sets up a regime for the protection of habitat and the protection of endangered species. That was the subject of a lot of controversy. However finally compromise was reached and I believe the species of risk legislation in the Senate now should be passed and it should not be restarted.

I have this dilemma. I find myself with an amendment to the original motion which I would love to support, but cannot because I really do believe that the species at risk bill must go forward as it has taken literally years to get where it is.

I would point out, however, that the cruelty to animals legislation has no such history. It was, shall we say, sprung on Parliament and on the Liberal caucus out of the blue. It was the result of behind the scenes lobbying from various animal rights organizations which had a better line into policy-makers than perhaps most members of Parliament sometimes have. It is very unfortunate.

The story goes with the rest of the bills that are being brought back.

For the most part, I have to support the main motion because the other bills that are being brought back are non-controversial and need to go forward quickly, in the public interest. By that I mean the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, which is another very important piece of legislation; the Copyright Act, which is in the Senate, and that has been contentious as well, and it is very important that it go forward so that we have security in the whole regime of copyright because there are a lot of problems in copyright legislation right now; the Pest Control Products Act which is in the Senate; and the specific claims resolution act which is in committee. We do not really need to go back to the process with those.

However there are other bills that would be reintroduced at the same level as they were last June that I have reservations about and I would prefer that they be started at the very beginning. One is the assisted human reproduction act, which is in committee. We cannot have too much debate on the subject. This is the whole question of whether embryonic material can be used for research purposes to look for cures for various disease. This is the stem cell debate.

I took part in that debate before second reading. It was one of the most elevated debates I have ever seen in the House of Commons. Both sides were trying to find a way around, a problem that touches the very core of our human values. On the one hand, there are the people who are very afraid that the use of embryonic stem cells will open the door to a disrespect for human life. Then there are the people on the other side of the equation who feel that any type of research or any means that can save lives and who feel that the use of discarded, and I stress discarded, embryonic cells could speed up research that would lead to cures of Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, ALS and all these other diseases is a worthy aim. However that debate is not over.

I would not be opposed to seeing that piece of legislation start again through the process so that we could have a similar debate again because I think it is Parliament at its best, first and foremost, and it is an issue that, because it touches the core values of individual Canadians, really needs to be debated at great depth in the House. I would actually hope that the minister does not reinstate it at the committee stage and that he actually brings it back as a new bill.

The other bill that I would like to see started at the very beginning is the first nations governance act. Again this is very important legislation. If it is reinstated, it will be in committee. We did not have enough debate on that. The message is not going out clearly enough, particularly to the aboriginal community, that this legislation, of all the bills before the House, is tremendously good for Canada's native people. It would require aboriginal organizations to have democratic elections and to open their financial books to scrutiny.

Right now we know, and nobody likes to hear it, that all kinds of money goes to aboriginal communities and never reaches the people. This is federal money that just never gets to the people who need it. Therefore, we have this peculiar situation where the federal government is putting out many billions of dollars to assist Canada's aboriginals and that money is just not getting there. The reason the money is not getting there is that the aboriginal people themselves cannot see how that money is being managed.

I think all Canadians should support transparency and accountability. It is a given. Unfortunately, that bill, particularly because of its timing in the life of the House this past year, did not get the debate it deserves. Therefore, I would like to see it actually restarted.

Again, I am in this quandary. I have to support the main motion because, quite apart from the bills I think need to go forward immediately, what is even more crucial to me and what is key, and I am directing this right at the opposition members who are giving me very good attention and I thank them, is the motion would reinstate evidence before committees.

That has two consequences. It means that the evidence the committee on public accounts, of which I was a member, heard pertaining to the sponsorship files, all this notorious stuff about organizations, businesses in Quebec receiving government money to provide advice to the government on sponsorship, the advertising of or putting forward of the government logo, would be reinstated. There was I think quite a justifiable concern when the Auditor General and others reported that there appeared to be no records kept of these transactions, many hundreds of thousands of dollars, and little evidence that any work was actually done. Public accounts heard evidence on this.

Public accounts tends to work in a very non-partisan way. I think all members of public accounts felt that we had done a good job in hearing evidence. We felt that we had a report that was of great value to the House. However, unless this motion goes forward in allowing the reinstatement of evidence before committees, the House will never hear its report. I think it is so important that the committee hear what we have to say on an issue that caused great discomfort to members on the government side, in the front benches.

The other committee that had evidence before it that we need to see reinstated is the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, which heard a lot of evidence about the need to reform private members' business. It heard from MPs on all sides of the House. This is a terribly important issue to private members. As the situation stands now the whole business of bringing forward private members' legislation is totally flawed. If a member tries to bring forward a bill of value, it may be defeated for partisan and political reasons. That is not acceptable. It is not acceptable that private members' business can be interfered with by the leadership of any party, for example. That is the situation right now.

After much debate, the procedures and House affairs committee recommended that all private members' bills be votable, at least one member per session. What it means basically is that each MP will be entitled to put forward, per parliamentary session, one bill and that bill, no matter what it contains, would be votable. It would go before the House to be debated. The system now is a blind lottery. It is a flawed committee process that sees very good initiatives from both opposition and government MPs fail.

What has happened is the Stanting Committee on Procedures and House Affairs has tabled the report on that debate, has made that recommendation, and all that needs to happen is for the government to adopt that report and then there will be a change in the Standing Orders that will permit private members' bills to be votable. With prorogation that is lost unless the evidence of committees is reinstated as proposed in this motion. Then of course we would expect the government would reissue the same report that it tabled last June. I can say that if it did not, there would certainly be trouble on this side, not to mention, I am sure, the other side.

There it is. It is a dilemma. The motion is to reinstate bills and evidence before committees to the same status that these bills and evidence were before prorogation last June.

Mr. Speaker, no matter what side of the House, one always finds oneself in the position where one is forced to support a flawed motion or a flawed piece of legislation. I would certainly support this motion, but I can tell you one thing, Mr. Speaker: If this motion goes forward I can assure you that on this side of the House there will be pressure put on the individual ministers to make changes to one or two of those bills, because the thing about the motion is that these bills can only come back at the status they left the House last June if the minister reintroduces them without changes.

I would suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that perhaps the Minister of Justice make a little change to the cruelty to animals legislation, forcing it to go back to the beginning. Perhaps the Indian Affairs minister could make a little change to the Indian accountability act that would force it to go back to the beginning. Maybe the health minister could do the same thing with the assisted reproduction act.

So even though I would have supported the amendment proposed originally, I cannot support it now because I want to see the species at risk bill go forward, but I do hope that the Minister of Justice will have second thoughts about the cruelty to animals bill because we do not like it over here. A lot of us have a lot of reservations about it. I would love to see it go back to the beginning again because I doubt if it would survive the process a second time.

Having said all of that, let me say that even if this motion goes forward--and the motion will go forward, I am sure it will pass the House--there will be those of us on this side and those on that side, Mr. Speaker, who will be working on the ministers to try to persuade them that certain of those bills should be started at the very beginning and perhaps some of them will come out of the process much better than they certainly are in their current state.

[Committee Business and Reinstatement of Government Bills, October 4th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, that is more like it. It is all about the opposition attacking the government. The reason for my original intervention was the member for Elk Island was attacking Parliament. I realize, when I hear the debate that has ensued, that he really meant to be attacking the government. We have to, as parliamentarians, protect this institution because we are extremely fortunate as Canadians to have a place where we can engage in this type of debate and rhetorical conflict.

If I may say so, what gave me great joy was not just that the opposition members were attacking the government but that they were attacking one another. That is Parliament at its superb best.