John Bryden

[Marriage Capacity Act, October 29th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I commend the member for St. John's East on his speech because he captured the feelings of many of us who are opposed to the legislation perfectly.

I would like to correct an impression conveyed by some of those supporting the legislation. It is true that the majority of Canadians support equal benefits to dependent couples, be they dependent couples in a same sex, heterosexual or family relationship. However the majority of Canadians do not support the idea of same sex marriage and there are some very good reasons for this.

I really do not like to be tarred with the brush of being discriminatory because I do not agree with the bill. I believe that we must provide equality to all Canadians in dependent relationships. The concept of marriage goes back several thousand years and it is intimately connected with religion, not just Christianity but other religions. The religious institution of marriage preceded the civil institution of marriage. We do a great disrespect to religion when civil society takes what was originally a religious concept and turn it to its own ends.

Even as a civil institution, I have difficulty with the idea of marriage as a same sex relationship because it could affect the rights of children. I believe that when all things are absolutely even we should regard children as being better off with a heterosexual parental relationship rather than a same sex parental relationship.

This is not to say that we cannot have same sex parents who are very good just as we can have heterosexual parents who are very bad. The natural order of things is that we would assume until there is real proof to the contrary that children are better off, all other things being equal, with heterosexual parents. Until we can prove otherwise we have to allow for the rights of children before the rights of adults.

That is all I have to say on the subject. I believe that the member who introduced the bill believes in what he is intending. I took very much to heart his idea of the romantic concept of the same sex relationship, but in the end we have to set aside our desires for absolute equality as adults and defer to the absolute rights of children.

[Foreign Missions and International Organizations Act, October 22nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I think sometimes on this side of the House I am regarded as a somewhat conservative Liberal in the sense that I am very much a proponent of financial prudence, of financial transparency. I deplore the effect special interest groups have on government policy and that kind of thing.

Having listened to the member for Medicine Hat speak just now, I realize that despite these, shall we say, conservative tendencies, I belong on this side and not that side because the member for Medicine Hat brought in the concept of property rights and individual rights versus collective rights. If something defines me on this side, and I think defines the Bloc Quebecois, the NDP and the Conservatives as well, it is the idea that collective rights have to take priority over individual rights.

The member for Medicine Hat is actually echoing a philosophy that exists in the United States, indeed, it is actually written in the constitution of both the state and the federal constitution in the United States. It is the idea that an individual has vested rights in property against every other influence.

We on this side of the House, and I think some opposition members, would think that the collective good actually transcends the individual's right to his or her own personal advantage.

He mentioned the species at risk legislation in which property rights may be in collision with the need to preserve species.

[Anti-terrorism Act, October 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Parkdale--High Park. I want to begin by saying that I echo the comments made by my colleague opposite. I believe that the time for tolerance of violent protest is at an end because violent protest is a type of terrorist activity. It is designed to intimidate and to disrupt the democratic process. However, I would stress in the same context that we would not want the legislation to interfere with rightful dissent and peaceful protest and I do not believe it does.

I would also like to echo the idea of a sunset clause. What is contained in the legislation is so profound, so important and so contrary to the way Canadians would like to see themselves and yet so terribly necessary in the context of international terrorist threats. I hope the government will seriously consider, instead of a statutory review, a sunset clause perhaps after five years, not counting an election year.

The reality is that a committee will never examine the issues contained in the legislation in the kind of depth that parliament should examine it. I hope the government will seriously consider that prospect.

The government may have to separate out from the legislation as a consequence the clauses dealing with the statutory creation of the Communications Security Establishment, and rightly so, because the Communications Security Establishment is a very important institution that pertains to national security and is little known and understood in this country. It ought to be subject to a separate debate in the House. That is something that I would like the government to consider.

More important, something that concerns me very specifically, and I sound the alarm, is clause 87 which would change the Access to Information Act. There are other clauses such as clause 103 and clause 104 which would change the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and the Privacy Act. These clauses give the Attorney General of Canada the right to issue certificates that prohibit the disclosure of information pertaining to international relations, national defence or security.

We can see the rationale for that. There is certain information in times of crisis that one would want to protect, but the trouble with clause 87 is that it makes an exclusion instead of an exemption from the Access to Information Act. The clauses amend section 69 of the Access to Information Act by adding a further section, section 69.1.

Section 69 of the Access to Information Act excludes cabinet confidences. It provides for the release of cabinet documents after 20 years. By adding section 69.1 after section 69 there is no 20 year release date.

In other words, what happens is that the Attorney General of Canada would be able to exclude information from public view forever with no review, no outside ombudsman or court. No one can see what it is doing. One might argue that since this pertains to international relations and national defence there could be a case made that there are secrets in those two areas that should be kept indefinitely, however not security.

Section 87 enables the government to withhold information pertaining to security issues forever. Mr. Speaker, that is terribly dangerous. That is the excuse that has been used by dictatorships throughout history and around the world. We are talking about police information being withheld forever.

Mr. Speaker, we cannot have that. I hope the government will seriously reconsider what it is doing by this particular clause 87 and the ones relating to the other two pieces of legislation. This cannot be. I am sure it is an oversight on the part of the government.

I point out, Mr. Speaker, that the Access to Information Act does provide exemptions for security issues and for international relations. An exemption enables a review by the access to information commissioner and by a federal court, which in the interests of democracy I think is a much better situation, but the Access to Information Act is still flawed because these exemptions also withhold information indefinitely. At least there is a review by the courts, but nevertheless, the information can be held under the current legislation indefinitely.

One change I would like to see to the Access to Information Act, which could be put in this legislation, would be that security information, international relations information, defence information, should have some automatic release review, a timeline of, say, 30 years or even 50 years. The point is that when we are dealing with the need for government to act in secret, certainly in the public interest when it is acting in secret, we must make sure in a democracy that there is a time for disclosure. Under the current Access to Information Act with an exemption there is no time for disclosure.

This legislation makes the situation even worse because an exclusion makes it impossible for any kind of oversight or review. So, Mr. Speaker, I do hope the government will review its position on that.

There are other areas of the legislation that interest me that I would like to see a little bit more on, such as requiring charities and non-profit organizations to be financially transparent. It is one thing to put up penalties for fundraising for terrorism, but we have to have the mechanisms to see actually how funds are moving. We can see it in a casino. There are mechanisms to track how casinos use money. We cannot see how money is used in charities and especially non-profit organizations.

Mr. Speaker, charities have to send in a financial information return to Revenue Canada, which is a very incomplete document and anyone can fill it out, but at least it is some kind of information for the public, but when a non-profit organization sends its financial information return to Revenue Canada, it is not a public document. Consequently, there is no transparency whatsoever for a non-profit organization.

The difficulty with this legislation is while it has provisions for lifting the charity registration status, a charity that is raising money for abusive purposes, not just terrorist activity but for laundering money or for organized crime, can just move on to become a non-profit organization and have a higher level of secrecy.

So these are some things that I think should be reviewed by the government.

I also point out, just to go the full circle, the legislation would appear to capture the special interest groups that promote violent activity, like some of the animal rights organizations. I think we will probably hear from them in the course of this debate.

[Anti-terrorism Act, October 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, earlier I put a question to the member for Winnipeg--Transcona and I do not think I expressed it very well so I would like to try it again.

Subsection 83.01(b) defines terrorist activity. It clearly and explicitly would include the kind of violent protest that we saw in Quebec City, the throwing of Molotov cocktails there, as well as whenever leaders from across the world meet at World Trade Organization conferences and there are attacks on police and barriers with the use of violence.

Does the hon. member feel that parliament should endorse this as a definition of terrorist activity in the ambit of this legislation? Is this something we want the bill to catch?

[Anti-terrorism Act, October 16th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, the member for Winnipeg--Transcona has anticipated some of the concerns that I will be putting forward myself when my turn comes to make remarks.

He mentioned the problem of protests and worried about whether the legislation applied to proper protest movements, labour marches and that kind of thing. I wonder, does he think the legislation should apply to protest movements where violence is planned, where it is deliberate?

I do not think APEC is a good example, but Quebec is a good example of where protesters actually deliberately organized assaults on the police lines, if you will, and there was a deliberate planned intention to use violence. Should that type of individual come under the ambit of this act?

[All-Numeric Dates Act, October 2nd, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I do not know whether I can do it in three minutes, but I wanted to comment that the member for Peterborough was often at the high noon in his reform proposals. However, this time I have to say it is more like at the dawn. The member for Peterborough and the member for Elk Island in my view have failed in their proposals to allow for the fact that we are in the computer age.

Space on a computer screen is money. Space on a computer screen is jealously guarded. I note in this particular piece of legislation that the devil is in the details. We see in clause 5 that what is specifically proposed is that the year be represented, going from left to right, by four digits, followed by a space or hyphen, followed by two digits for the month, followed by a space or hyphen, followed by two characters for the day.

The problem there is that it is a total of ten characters. I would suggest that if the member had considered using Roman numerals for the month, he only would have had a selection of 12 characters or letters to choose from. He would have been able to reduce the space for January 1, 2001 to 01I2001, which is seven characters, or he could reduce it to I101 which is four characters. Indeed it does not matter which order he uses the letter. He could mix it. He could put the letter at the beginning or the end and have 1I01 or if he forgoes the 01 to represent the year he could have 1I1.

In medieval days they recognized that there could be confusion between the letter I and the number one and they substituted the letter J . So we could have, for January 1, 2001, 1J1. I cannot stress enough the potential elegance that is available if we were to use Roman numerals.

For example, August 18, 2001 would be 18VIII01. Not only does that evoke the Romans and the coliseum and encourage children to understand the history of numbers, but I point out that my suggestion is entirely in keeping with the intention of this legislation, which is a representation of dates in an all numeric form. Sometimes we forget that Roman numerals are not letters at all, they are numbers.

I would urge the member to reconsider this legislation. Certainly if it goes forward and is debated in the industry committee, I would think that the industry committee should consider my proposal because, if we use Roman numerals, we can do without the hyphens and we can have a maximum of eight characters rather than ten on our computer screens to represent unambiguous dates.

[Supply, October 2nd, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I really respect the speech given by the member for Prince Albert, but in his concluding remarks he made one statement that I would like him to elaborate on.

He deplored fanatical Muslim fundamentalism. Would he not agree that any kind of religious fundamentalism that leads to fanaticism, whether it is Christian, Hindu or any of the other great religions or even minor religions, is something to be deplored and regarded with caution? I am a little nervous that he cited Muslim fundamentalism because Muslims are not the only people who have extremists in their group.

[Supply, October 2nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I was very pleased that my colleague opposite expressed the sentiment that there was no rising tide of intolerance. There are some isolated incidents that we all deplore but I would also make the comment that these incidents arise from ignorance and fear. I would observe that this is precisely what the terrorists wanted.

The idea of terror is to spread fear and I would suggest to my colleague opposite that the fear that the terrorists wanted to generate was not just the fear of safety in travelling in aircraft, but to generate fear against their fellow Muslims. My own view is that the target of terror is to create intolerance. I would hope that we as a country are one of the strongest to resist this type of terror.

I wonder if my colleague would like to comment on that.

[Supply, October 2nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the one thing that bothers me about the motion before the House are the words “rising tide of intolerance”. Everyone in my riding is of ethnic origin. There are people whose ancestors are from western Europe, eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, North America and South America. I do not experience, among all these ethnic groups that exist in my riding, a wave of intolerance to Muslims as a result of the attack on the World Trade Center. There have been a few incidents of fear, but not a wave of intolerance.

I wonder if my colleague could comment on that. Is she experiencing a tide of intolerance in her riding?

[Supply, October 2nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, security experts around the world expressed concern about some charitable organizations financing terrorist groups.

I noticed today in an English language newspaper that leaders of these charitable organizations, here in Canada, are opposed to Bill C-16, which revokes the charitable status of organizations that finance terrorism.

I would like to hear from my hon. colleague opposite on this issue.