John Bryden

[The Middle East, April 9th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Algoma--Manitoulin.

I just have a few things to add to the debate. I do not want to cover the points that were covered by other members, but I think a few words about the media war in the Middle East might be appropriate given that in my previous life I was a senior journalist with the Toronto Star , the Globe and Mail and other newspapers.

In my view, Israel has lost probably one of the most important battles of all and that is the battle for respect from the world. It is not the battle for media attention. It is not that all. It really boils down to the fact that Israel took a very serious step backward in its own interests in this current conflict by banning TV coverage of the war on the West Bank. This sends an unequivocal message to the international media that when a state does that it means that it does not want its military actions covered by the world press. It does not want its military actions to come under the scrutiny of the world.

The media know how to interpret that. The media always interpret that as the country having something to hide. In the case of the incursions into the West Bank, in my own view the Israeli government and Mr. Sharon desperately needed to have that world coverage, to have those TV cameras and reporters go with them into the West Bank if he is going to have any pretensions of justifying taking the war against terror into the Palestinian villages and towns neighbouring Israel.

He did not do that. There is no explanation, really, because what we see now is that the Israeli government gives us video footage from the Israeli defence force of bomb caches and it shows some shooting and fighting, but the world media will inevitably interpret that as propaganda. The difficulty there is that even if it is true, even if the Israeli government is giving us a true picture through its military video coverage of its own fighting on the West Bank, it will not be believed. It shows a catastrophic naiveté on the part of the Israeli government with respect to how the world needs to perceive this kind of conflict.

This naiveté goes back a long time. One of the reasons that I wanted to speak is to draw the attention of those who are following this debate to the fact that Israel has had a long history of controlling the media and trying to control the story that comes out of Israel vis-à-vis its relationships with the Palestinians.

I was the features editor at the Toronto Star in 1979. I had just taken over the job. It was a brand new job for me. The Toronto Star is a very large, world class newspaper organization. It was world class then and it is world class now. Consequently we received a lot of wire copy from around the world and we prided ourselves on our international coverage. It was quite remarkable in those days because it turned out that one could not get a story out of Israel that was not previously vetted by the Israeli government. If the Israeli government, the authorities of the day, did not like the story, then the privileges were withdrawn from the journalist. This would be journalists from Germany, from the United States, from Canada, from wherever. The stories that we got that gave us a picture of what was happening in Israel at the time usually were a result of journalists deliberately going from Israel to Cyprus and filing their stories, or else they would write a story when they were done with their tour of duty in Israel and did not expect to go back.

The irony at that time was that the world press, certainly as I saw it from the Toronto Star, was very sympathetic to Israel's position, because it was not so many years after the six day war in which certainly the sympathy of the world was toward Israel, which seemed about to be overwhelmed by a much more powerful foe, but it is from that time in 1979 to this that the opinion in the international media has more and more gone against Israel as there has been a liberalization of media coverage and we have had more opportunity to see that there are genuine stresses from the Palestinian point of view in the state of Israel.

Now we are getting into a situation where the Israeli government is engaged in what is essentially a civil conflict with people it has lived side by side with for many, many years. As I understand from the television tonight, there is extreme fighting in Jenin but the media is not allowed to attend. The media is not allowed to see it.

The difficulty is that after this is all over, after Israel has withdrawn its troops and has gone back to the normal frontiers of Israel, I am afraid that there will be terrible stories coming out of the West Bank, because I think another thing that perhaps the Israeli government has not appreciated is that times have changed since 1979. Even though we can go into the media headquarters of one of the Palestinian media outlets in Ramallah, as we saw in the National Post today, and destroy all the equipment, and we know why one wants to do that, one wants to limit the story that is coming out while one is engaged in conflict in Ramallah, but this is the age of the camcorder. I think it is extremely naive if the Israeli government, the government of Mr. Sharon, does not think that what is going on in the West Bank right now in Jenin or wherever else is not being recorded.

I am terribly afraid that after Israel withdraws from the West Bank Israelis will see a picture of conflict that will not sit well on world opinion and will reflect badly not only on the Israeli government but on its principal ally, the United States. It is something that I think the Israeli authorities should have thought of more carefully, because it is a cost of engaging in this particular conflict. I should add, just to make sure there is no misunderstanding, that normally during a war certainly the military, the authorities, do attempt to control some of the media distribution. That is primarily so information is not given to the enemy, but in this case there is no enemy there to take advantage of any information that might be released by media coverage because we are dealing with a civil conflict, not an organized enemy state.

Finally, I would like to touch very briefly on this, because I am also very, very concerned about what is happening to the prisoners being taken by the Israelis. There is almost no coverage of this. Where are they going? Are names being taken? Are they being subjected to torture? Are there appropriate NGOs and world organizations overseeing those prisoners or are they being held in some sort of situation like Guantanamo Bay in the United States where they are outside the law? Will we have a situation where, after this is over, after the incursions into the West Bank are completed, people will never come back? Is there any record of the people who have been taken? These are things that are terribly important, regardless of the justification of the Israeli response. I do respect it. It is a terrible horror, these suicide bombings, but if retaliation is not carefully measured in terms of the type of reaction and the opinion it will create from those on the sidelines who want to believe that the cause is justified and that the force is only enough force as required, the reputation of Israel, not just tomorrow but for decades, is at stake here.

[Excise Act, 2001, March 22nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I apologize to the member opposite for interrupting him, but this is an opportunity that I would like to bring forward to seek unanimous consent to make my private member's bill, Bill C-391, votable.

The member who was speaking will appreciate that it is very difficult to make bills votable. This is a bill that would amend the oath of citizenship and bring in the principles of the charter of rights and liberties. I would seek that unanimous consent.

[Dalton Camp, March 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday Canada lost its favourite curmudgeon of political commentary with the passing away of Dalton Camp.

Familiar, especially to Toronto Star readers, Mr. Camp was an intelligent and witty writer whose Tory vision of Canada was too liberal for some and not conservative enough for others, but enormously influential nonetheless.

Dalton Camp passionately cared about the political process and the Progressive Conservative Party in particular. He deplored extremism of every stripe and was outspoken in his criticism of political opportunism. He demanded intellectual honesty of friends and enemies alike.

Mr. Camp has left an indelible mark on the political history of Canada and we all shall miss him.

As one of his former editors who knew firsthand something of his peppery personality, it is with both sadness and fondness that I say a final 30, a goodbye to Dalton.

[Middle East, March 15th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to deplore the killing of an Italian journalist by Israeli troops during fighting in Ramallah on the West Bank on Wednesday.

Freelance photographer Raffaele Ciriello was hit in the abdomen by a burst of fire from an Israeli tank as he and an Italian TV cameraman were covering the actions of Palestinian gunmen.

This, regrettably, was the fatal outcome of a number of incidents where journalists have come under fire in the Middle East and is a reminder that journalists put their lives on the line in their effort to keep the eye of the world on tragic conflicts such as that now ensuing between Israelis and Palestinians.

[Supply, March 14th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, just very quickly, the member might not have been in the House because he does not seem to realize that a motion was passed for unanimous agreement. We all agree with the motion. That is because everyone in the House on both sides, including urban MPs like myself and the member from Mississauga who spoke, were all concerned about this. We agree because we passionately feel this must be repaired. This did not become a partisan debate until the member rose.

[Supply, March 14th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I found the member's remarks very ingenuous because his own first speaker mentioned that it was a powerful lumber lobby in the United States. It is a bully. They are not acting very American, if I may say so, and they are applying muscle against the Canadians. We have done everything in our power. What it really boils down to is that in this sector there is a lack of goodwill on the American side. They are far more powerful than us.

In the end, will he not agree that the only way this situation will be resolved, short of going to the WTO, is to appeal to the goodwill of the president of the United States? That is precisely what the Prime Minister is doing at this moment. We have to hope that the Prime Minister is successful because there appears to be no way that we are going to find our way through the powerful lumber lobby.

[Supply, March 14th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, the member commented on free trade, but this is not an issue of free trade because when the agreement expired we had free trade. The problem is that the Americans are applying restrictions. They are rejecting free trade. The issue was summarized best by the member for South Shore when he said that the Americans want to impose stumpage rules and other mechanisms on Canada to jack up the price.

How do we deal with a country that wants to impose on this country unfair pricing practices? It is a matter of sovereignty. It is very difficult.

[Supply, March 14th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate the concern expressed by the member opposite. He is obviously speaking for an industry in his constituency that is in serious trouble.

I cannot help but be struck by the irony. For the past six months, so often the Canadian Alliance has told the House that the Americans are our best friends, that the Americans will do us no injury as a nation and that we should support them in everything they do. Here we do have an instance where the Americans are very difficult and powerful friends to be beside, and they can be a bully sometimes.

I understand the member suggesting that we should stop negotiating directly with the Americans on softwood lumber, that we bypass the Americans and go directly to the World Trade Organization or the other dispute resolution panels. I sympathize with him on that, but I do have a question with respect to that. Will that not take a long time?

The difficulty with going through the formal dispute mechanism is it may add another year onto a resolution of the problem. Is negotiating with the Americans first not a better tactic?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2001, March 11th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, budget debates are a time traditionally when members of parliament can raise other issues in the House that bear some relationship to things fiscal and financial. I am particularly pleased to see the member for Elk Island here today in the House as I make my speech because the member for Elk Island was on of two members of parliament in this House who raised the issue of gambling and criticized gambling as a problem that is afflicting Canadian society, during a debate in 1998 that had to with controlled substances.

It was Bill C-51 and that also included the government's proposal that the criminal code be amended so that casino gambling could take place onboard ships. The member took the opportunity to raise the issue to express his concern that gambling in general had become a problem across the United States certainly but across Canada.

The member for Winnipeg--Transcona also raised the issue during that debate. He has a particular interest in it because there are two casinos in Winnipeg and gambling in general in Manitoba is an example where people are genuinely suffering.

The problem is that no one wants to talk about it any more. Nobody is talking about it at all other than these two instances in the House but gambling has become a scourge, an affliction that is doing all kinds of social damage to Canadians at every economic level in society.

Six hundred thousand to a million Canadians are problem gamblers. We have situations where people are losing their houses. They are losing all their worldly goods. They are going to the casino or sometimes the bingo halls, usually the casinos or even worse the video lottery terminals, and they are losing hundreds if not thousands of dollars in a single event. There is a relationship between this occurrence and an increase in certain areas of crime because of course these people have to pay for their habits.

I should help you recall, Mr. Speaker, that up until 1969 the criminal code forbade gambling and under pressure from the provinces the federal government amended the code to allow lotteries, and you will remember Lotto Canada started in 1969. Only a year later the provinces persuaded the federal government to offload the responsibility or the right to raise money by gambling through lotteries to the provinces. That was done in exchange for some $30 million. That was the revenue that the federal government was to get in exchange for giving this right to the provinces.

That has never changed except through inflation. The federal government's total take on gambling across the country after these amendments to the criminal code, and most of the gambling is conducted by the provinces, is only $43 million but the total take of the provinces is $9 billion. That is not the figure that really should concern us. The total money spent by people in casinos, at video display terminals and at the track is $27 billion.

What has happened is that the provincial governments and the charities indeed have become addicted themselves to revenues from gambling. They pay no attention to the social costs. I invite you to do as I have done. I go across the country. I am not a gambler, but I go to every casino that I can and it is amazing to see the social differences in casinos. In the casino in Montreal, for example, it is mostly high stakes tables. In the casino in Winnipeg it is nickel slot machines.

We can see the clientele in the casino in Winnipeg. The people are on social assistance and are senior citizens. What we cannot see and what the few studies that we do have are pointing out is that this scourge of gambling is reaching into the middle class as well. What is happening is the people who are well educated, people who have university degrees and who have good jobs, are now going to these casinos and to these video lottery terminals and are spending money.

The irony is that we are destroying people's lives through these gambling institutions that every province is now supporting and most charities are supporting. We are destroying lives and we are giving nothing in return. There is almost no money being spent on trying to rescue people who have been afflicted by gambling.

Every one of us knows that we do not need fabulous studies to see in our communities people whose lives have been destroyed by gambling. The irony is that if it was not for the fact that the federal government amended the criminal code, if it was not for the fact that the provinces have set up casinos and VLTs wherever they can, these people would not be victims of the disease that afflicts them. We know that gambling is very like alcoholism. It is a weakness we are basically born with, and when the temptation is presented, some people, no matter what their best intentions, are going to fall victim to it.

We are doing nothing about it. All we are doing is pocketing the money and it is basically the provinces that are pocketing the money.

I will give you an example, Mr. Speaker. Federally we spend $90 million a year on the tobacco reduction strategy. We spend nothing to help problem gambling across the country. There is the odd $100,000 here or there to some social agency that has it as part of its mandate, but there is no plan, no strategy, at the federal level and nothing at the provincial level to actually address the problem of problem gamblers.

We are talking about 4% to 6% of all the people who have access to gambling venues. These are the ones who are problem gamblers who cannot control their habit, or pathological gamblers, where they go and go and they will rob banks and will do anything that is necessary in order to feed their habit. This is a very serious affliction.

I feel very strongly that the House has to address the problem of gambling, because it is not going to come from the provinces. I will give the example of Ontario. Ontario takes in $2 billion in profit from gambling. It says “Ah well, this money is going to be used for charity”, but it gives only 5%, that is 5%, to the Trillium Foundation of that $2 billion. That is the charitable component. Instead, the rest of the money goes to enable the provincial government not to raise taxes.

Mr. Speaker, I will tell you that if gambling is the source of revenue that replaces raising taxes, then what you are doing is raising taxes on the weak and the poor and you are taking advantage of people's weaknesses. I only have contempt for charities that take that money, take the $100 million from the Ontario government and purport to use it in the public interest when in fact, in a very real sense, if the money comes from casino gambling or VLTs and charities are using it, then in every sense it is blood money.

We have to, as a parliament, do something about this.

[Supply, February 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am really pleased to have the opportunity to speak to this motion because it gives me a chance to submit a kind of wish list, the 12 things that I would do if I was Prime Minister, so the opposition will just have to bear with me as I go through because they have had their opportunity to say what they would do if they formed the government.

If I led a government on this side what I would first do is reform the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act. That is number one. These two bits of legislation, when they were originally introduced, the Access to Information Act in 1983, it was the second piece of legislation of its kind in the world, the second freedom of information legislation.

Now, it is sad to say it is now lagging behind just about every freedom of information legislation elsewhere in the world, and similarly the Privacy Act. It is most important and in the interests of the nation to amend both pieces of legislation in order not only to enhance the public's right to know but to create efficiencies in government in order to make Canada a globally competitive nation.

Secondly, I would write legislation requiring charities to be answerable in terms of transparency and corporate governance. We have a $100 billion industry, actually a $122 billion industry if we count the non profit organizations, that is run without any kind of legislative transparency whatsoever.

We know anecdotally that there are problems all through that industry. We know of small scam charities, but most importantly the large hospitals, the health care institutions in this country which spend some $40 billion a year are charities, and they are not transparent or they are not required to conform to legislative standards of corporate governance. I believe if they were then our problems with financing health care would be solved because we would save billions if only we could rein in the way administrators manage the health care industry. I just in passing point out that the CEO of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, for example, makes $500,000 a year, twice that of the Prime Minister.

Thirdly, I would amend the old Bill C-31, the amendment to the Indian Act that was passed in 1985 that created over 100,000 new Indians, many of them with no connection to reserves, no connections to their Indian heritage whatsoever. It was intended to correct a problem with respect to the spouses of people who married off the reserve. It has created a nightmare where we are now passing in the House race based legislation that discriminates based on race in our urban communities.

I was the only one on this side of the House to vote against the youth justice bill Senate amendments that came to the House because what they did is they required the courts to consider race, whether a person is an aboriginal or not, in sentencing and I would say that is unacceptable.

Fourthly, the federal government must rein in gambling. It is an issue that is not talked about at all in the House anymore but you will remember that a change in the criminal code actually has passed to the provinces this incredible cash cow which is called casino gambling and video lottery terminals. This has now created a $27 billion industry, if we will, that preys on the weaknesses of our fellow Canadians.

I have travelled around the country and I always go to casinos to see what the casinos are like, and each of those casinos preys on a different sector of the community, and for example the casino in Winnipeg has video lottery terminals that are operated by a nickel. In other words, the clientele in Winnipeg is not sufficiently wealthy to put in $1 or $5 so the terminals are directed towards getting the money from the people on social welfare, the really poor people, and so we have nickel terminals and we are creating a massive addiction.

The provinces are pretending that this is okay because they are taking the profits and giving them to charities, and I deplore the fact that charities are financing themselves on money that is obviously coming from people who are either addicted or cannot afford the losses that they incur when they go to casino gambling.

Fifthly, I would change the general federal policy with respect to aboriginal affairs. We have to look at it again because what has happened is that it is not working. I spent three years on the Indian and Northern Affairs committee and my heart really went out to the witnesses from the various aboriginal communities across the country that came to the committee. Something is very, very wrong with our policy because what we are doing is we are creating a culture of dependence rather than a culture of pride. That should be a number one priority for any new government, to actually come back and re-examine where we are going wrong in our aboriginal affairs policy.

Sixth, I would revisit the Supreme Court Act. This parliament forgets that the supreme court is beneath parliament. In other words parliament is the supreme court of this land, not like in the United States. We have the supreme court making decisions when it does not even have a majority of the judges onside, decisions that the Government of Canada interprets as binding decisions, as binding interpretations of the charter of rights and freedoms.

Madam Speaker, I should tell you that the supreme court judges themselves can make these incredibly important decisions based on only three hours of testimony, most of the work actually being done by law clerks. We have to take a look as a parliament and satisfy ourselves that the supreme court is serving the nation the way it must.

Seventh, on that note I think we should return to the Singh decision. The Singh decision was a Supreme Court of Canada minority decision in the mid-1980s that the Government of Canada has used as justification for saying that anyone who lands on Canadian soil, any foreign alien, must be treated as though that person were a citizen and have access to all due processes of law and all the benefits of Canadian society.

Madam Speaker, if you actually examined the Singh decision you would find real doubt that this was the intention of the court at the time, but we have to go back to that because we are one of the few nations in the world where foreign aliens can come onto our soil and have all the rights of citizenship. We have to address that problem because it is causing all kinds of difficulties in immigration and refugee policy.

Number eight, I would take back the tax points that we have given to the provinces on health care. We have to take control of health care in the provinces because what we know as a federal parliament is we are putting money out to the provinces for health care and they are using it in other ways, so we have to get control of health care spending. We have to make the medical health of Canadians a federal responsibility centrally because I believe the provinces are failing in their obligation in that regard, and they are forever saying that the federal government is not giving enough to the provinces but in fact if we took back the tax points that we have given the provinces I think we would more than bring the spending on health care under control, and we could combine that with better transparency with hospital administration.

Number nine, I would declare that Canada is indivisible. I was never comfortable with the clarity bill in its suggestion, and it is a suggestion only, that this House could actually decide that one province or another could walk away from the Confederation. As a government or a prime minister I would say simply that as long as I was around and as long as my government was around this would never be on the table. This is one country.

Number ten, I would dump our equity employment policy and all gender based government programs. Our gender based programs were brought in way back in 1973 as a result of a report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women. In 1973 they were undoubtedly relevant but they are not relevant in 2002. I do not believe the women of this country by and large, by the grand large, actually feel that they have to be treated in special fashion. They do not. This is a land in which there is equality of opportunity regardless of gender, and I think it is a disgrace that we suggest that women are in some way inferior and that they have to have special treatment, so I would scrap that entire program.

Concerning number 11, I would dismantle the arm's length agencies like the CRTC. Here again there has been a long policy of the government avoiding its responsibility and its accountability.

The last one is that I would change the oath of citizenship so that it reflected the values of Canadians, the values of the charter of rights and freedoms.