John Bryden

[Marine Liability Act, October 6th, 2000]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for the question but he misunderstood me just slightly. I find no fault with the fact that the government has introduced this bill in the Senate first where it has been examined and has come back because the Senate has had a chance to examine the bill in detail. It is still a government bill. The government is elected by the people and the government is initiating the bill. Whether it is initiated in this place or that place does not matter; it is still accountable to the people because it is the government.

What I am very strongly opposed to is senators introducing their own private members' bills in the Senate and those bills coming to this place as private members' legislation. Senators are not answerable to the public. The difficulty is that they can introduce controversial bills.

I remember one senator once proposing something about making it against the law to spank a child. All kinds of controversy was endured by Liberal members of parliament because it was a Liberal senator that introduced this idea. This is not a proper reflection of either the Senate's role or the way this place should be working in my view.

With Bill S-17, I think probably the best way to have expedited this very important legislation was to have done exactly what the government did and that was to introduce it in the Senate first. We have a full chance to examine it here.

[Marine Liability Act, October 6th, 2000]

Madam Speaker, I want to make two points if I may about the legislation. First, this is legislation that is introduced from the Senate. I think Canadians who are watching the debate here need an explanation of why a bill should be appearing before the House at second reading that has emanated from the Senate rather than following the normal procedure of first reading in the Commons and second reading as we are now.

There is reason for concern because the Senate, the other place, comprises an unelected chamber. The senators are not answerable to the people. We must pause as parliamentarians and as all Canadians when we see a bill coming from the Senate. If legislation is coming from people who are not elected then we need to be very concerned that this is the proper procedure. I am absolutely opposed to bills coming from the Senate that are private members' bills.

However, in this instance this is not a private member's bill coming from the Senate. This is a government bill that has been introduced in the Senate. As the member for Cumberland—Colchester just remarked, the bill is essentially a piece of legislation that was before the last parliament and died on the order paper with the calling of the general election in 1997.

We have here an instance where the Senate can fulfil an important role. That role is to expedite non-controversial legislation that is very much in the public interest which might otherwise experience considerable delay as it falls behind, shall we say, more politically pressing government legislation if it were to be introduced at first reading and follow the normal procedure in the House of Commons.

When I say politically pressing, I am not in any way suggesting that this is not very important legislation. Bill S-17, or Bill C-53 as it was known before, actually addresses an area of concern that is really crucial to Canadians. Indeed, as I was looking through the actual text of the legislation I was amazed to think the type of protection we are talking about here does not exist in law already.

What we are dealing with is the idea that when people buy tickets and board ships in this country with Canadian ownership they basically have no protection if disaster overtakes the ship and they lose their lives or are otherwise injured. The regime that exists now is that people who find themselves in this situation are forced to go to the courts and use common law procedures in order to recover damages.

This legislation sets up a regime where the shipowners are required to have insurance and where there is a personal liability regime put in place for people who wish to travel by sea or, I should say, by our freshwater lakes.

Coming back to my point about the Senate, this is important legislation. One of the difficulties is that the government and politicians in general do tend to be responsive to the political pressures of the day that might be forthcoming. I will give a classic example.

We are expecting legislation in the House very soon pertaining to the implementation of the national health accord that was just struck between the Prime Minister and the premiers of the various provinces. This has to do with our national health and the ability of our hospitals to provide decent services. This has to do with the amount of money that comes from the federal government and is transferred to the provinces. This is a politically urgent bill.

The sad thing about the way this parliament operates, and this is not a criticism of the way this parliament operates but is a reality, is that politically urgent bills sometimes take priority over bills that are less politically urgent but are nevertheless just as important. This is the case with the marine liability bill.

Because the legislation has gone before the Senate I think the Senate has had an opportunity to examine it in detail. I do not expect, certainly not in the debate we have before us now, that any members are going to be raising really controversial issues with respect to this legislation. Not in this debate. This is one of the advantages of having it begin in the Senate.

As the member for Cumberland—Colchester said, it will go to the transportation committee where it will get a thorough examination as would any other bill coming through the normal process in the House of Commons.

Having said that and having lauded the procedure that I am told goes back to Confederation, this is not unusual for the government to introduce legislation in the Senate in this way. It gives me an opportunity to stress how much I am absolutely opposed to bills coming from the Senate that are introduced by senators themselves.

I have a specific bill in mind, and that is the current bill coming from the Senate called Bill S-20, that reflects a senator's initiative with respect to trying to impose an extra tax on cigarettes in order to raise money to finance advertising campaigns to lower the incidence of youth smoking. I am sure that is laudable but it is very wrong for senators to introduce controversial bills when they do not have to answer to an electorate as any one of the members of this place have to do.

I want to make sure that the Canadian public out there realizes that what is happening here with Bill S-17 is something that is fully in conformity with the rights and privileges of elected representatives in this place. It does not reflect what may be happening with respect to this bill coming from the Senate.

Coming back to the marine liability legislation very briefly, as the member for Cumberland—Colchester spoke very well on the issue, many Canadians have taken car ferries within Canadian waters. Many Canadians have taken ships to England or even cruises on the western shores of this wonderful land of ours. Many of them would be appalled to realize that they have not been covered properly, as they would see it, by insurance. This is legislation that is not only timely but overdue.

I will make one other very important point that was alluded to by the member for Cumberland—Colchester. That is the business of shipowners providing an exemption of liability on the ticket. Basically they purport to contract out their liability if an accident overtakes the passenger who bought the ticket.

The problem with that is that it lets the shipowner off the hook. For all the person buying the ticket knows, the insurance company that has taken the liability contract may be a fly-by-nighter and disappear overnight. It is really no kind of protection at all. This legislation, in addressing that and in requiring shipowners to have liability insurance in the first place, is very progressive legislation.

I second the sentiments of the member for Cumberland—Colchester. We should expedite this legislation as quickly as possible, certainly at this stage of debate, get it into committee and get it passed. I can assure him the he has nothing to worry about. I am fully confident this bill will pass this time well in advance of the next general election call.

[Privilege, September 27th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I just wish to say that the pertinent documents had been tabled at the time I made the original interventions, with the exception of one additional document, a letter from the privacy commissioner to me that I would like to submit to you for your consideration.

[Holidays Act, September 25th, 2000]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-496, an act to amend the Holidays Act (Christmas Day).

Mr. Speaker, the purpose of my bill is to make Christmas Day into a heritage day holiday and not just a religious holiday.

One of the sad things is that so many Canadians who are not Christian cannot celebrate Christmas Day. By making it into a legal holiday, we celebrate the fact that Christmas Day is not only a religious holiday, and indeed is not a religious holiday to many, but is part and parcel of being Canadian. This goes back to the very early days of Canada to our ancestors who in the wilderness when the winter was upon them sat and huddled around the fire, drank, ate and felt fellowship and good cheer. That is part of the Canadian tradition. My bill, I hope, will enable those people who are not Christians to celebrate Christmas with the rest of Canadians.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Political Parties, September 19th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians are tired of political party leaders who want to download government, who urge slashing taxes to benefit the rich, who are prepared to jeopardize our health by privatizing public services, who think backbench politicians are better at home in their riding schmoozing for votes than debating how to make the best laws possible.

Canadians are not fooled by political party leaders who think governing is a series of personal photo ops, publicity stunts, private press conferences and attack ads. I have proof, unassailable proof. On September 8, in a provincial byelection in my riding, the Liberal candidate swung 20,000 votes away from the Ontario Tories in a landslide rejection of the policies of Premier Mike Harris.

Where walks Mike Harris stalks the leader of the Canadian Alliance. It may take some time—

[Organized Crime, September 18th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, It is a pleasure to actually stand here in the House and represent them and have them formally named each time that I do stand.

The member opposite, the member for Wild Rose, spoke excellently. I think he came up with a number of very good suggestions on how we could stiffen the laws to get at organized crime. However, I invite him to review his own words in Hansard tomorrow and he will find that nowhere in his speech did he actually make an argument for using the notwithstanding clause to adjust the constitution or the charter of rights to limit association, to make it a crime to join motorcycle gangs.

The closest he came to a criticism of the constitution was when he brought up the issue, as he alluded to it before, of the child prostitution legislation that was attempted in Alberta. I am absolutely on the same wavelength with him there. I think it was good legislation and it should have survived but it was overruled by an interpretation of a lower court.

I think if he really thinks about it, the member for Wild Rose will realize that the problem is not the constitution. The problem is the interpretation of the constitution that is taken in varying forms by the courts.

I would like to get his reaction here because we are having a debate in which we have an opportunity to put forward novel suggestions. I think one of the problems that has bedevilled us as a society since the constitution came in and since the charter of rights came in is that there have been interpretations of the charter that we as parliamentarians know, from our own feelings, from contacts with our constituents and from our own sense of the nation, are sometimes not right.

What I would suggest to the House is that one of the reasons why we get this feeling is that we are never invited to appear before the courts for these interpretations. We make the laws but we never have the opportunity to explain to the courts what we mean by the laws. We never get to go before those courts.

I would ask the member to respond to this right now. When there is a challenge before the supreme court, the justice department sends lawyers. I am not always sure that our justice department can advocate for the laws we pass in the way that I would wish, as indeed, Mr. Speaker, in our debates here, I often find myself at odds with our own justice department. Would he think that it might be a good innovation, a good initiative, if we brought more lawyers into the House of Commons so the House of Commons lawyers could advocate on behalf of parliamentarians? It is this place, parliament, that creates the laws, not government. It is a myth that it is government. Government brings them in and they go forward but in the end it is the vote of the parliamentarians here that determines the legislation.

The courts never hear the opposition arguments when legislation goes through. They only see one side. Unfortunately, as it stands now only the government advocates on issues pertaining to interpretations of the charter.

I would suggest that the member opposite and all opposition parties should get on side and pressure the government, pressure the Board of Internal Economy and pressure the Speaker to create more lawyers in this House to sit at that table who would act for we parliamentarians and advocate for the interpretations of the legislation for us on all sides of the House.

Then perhaps someone can say that maybe the charter should not apply to children in this circumstance. Indeed, Mr. Speaker, if I had an opportunity to plead before that court, I would say that my intention as a parliamentarian is never to put children at risk in that context. The charter was never intended to do that.

However, I cannot do it alone. We need to have another voice in interpreting the charter. It is not the words that are the problem. If you start monkeying around with the words, Mr. Speaker, you will get into trouble. That is exactly what Hitler and Stalin did. They limited the right of association and that is how we got the night of the long knives or the night of the broken glass. That is how we got the genocides in the Ukraine. We cannot do that. We cannot limit the words of the constitution but we can certainly try to get parliament represented when interpretations of the constitution are going forward in the courts.

[Organized Crime, September 18th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, so we invoke the notwithstanding clause and we pass legislation that makes it a crime to belong to Hell's Angels, for example. What if Hell's Angels organizers or the real Hell's Angels grab some kids off the street and say “Wear this jacket with Hell's Angels on it?” The kid is going to wear the jacket because he is going to know that if he does not wear the jacket he is going to be beat up and then he is going to be arrested by the police.

Do you not see, Mr. Speaker, how simple it is to destroy that very principle? We are talking about sophisticated criminals. I suspect, as a matter of fact I am sure, that the head of the Hell's Angels is somewhere over in Taiwan or out in the Indian Ocean. Organized crime is a vast octopus even though the all powerful President Clinton cannot get a grip on where the leadership is coming from. It is just like a bad James Bond novel. They will be clever enough that they will embarrass this government and they will embarrass this country so much that if we actually restrict the liberties they will make sure the people we grab will be the innocent.

What I ask the member opposite, who cannot reply because it will not be his turn, is what he will do then if we circumvent the constitution, if we erode a fundamental right and we put innocent people in jail, and the Hell's Angels and the other motorcycle gangs go on in their lovely gun running, drug businesses as before? It is not the answer. It is the abyss and we must not step into it.

[Organized Crime, September 18th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate and I regret that the leader of the Bloc Quebecois has made fun of my kind words concerning Mr. René Lévesque who was a journalist and a Premier of Quebec.

How arrogant of me, an anglophone, to dare say something positive about a famous Quebecer. I truly admired Mr. Lévesque as a journalist. Mr. Lévesque understood human rights and liberties.

Mr. Lévesque must be turning in his grave at this proposal of the Bloc Quebecois to limit freedom of association. This is the very freedom Mr. Lévesque defended as a journalist and as a premier of Quebec.

How ironical. The members of the Bloc, the sovereignists want to reduce the scope of this legislation. That is impossible, for if we reduced basic rights, criminal groups would win.

I have something to say in this debate and I have waited a long time. I am one of the few people in this Chamber who is a former journalist. I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, that in my view, René Levesque, as one of Canada's most celebrated journalists, would indeed be turning in his grave at the very thought that his colleagues in Quebec would be proposing to lessen the rights of Quebecers, lessen the rights of Canadians as an instrument to get at criminal organizations.

I must tell a story, Mr. Speaker. In my early young days as a reporter I myself had my own encounters with organized crime. I have great sympathy for the Quebec journalist who found himself wounded severely in the recent incident that has led to this debate. When I started out at the Hamilton Spectator many years ago as a police reporter, the city editor at the time really admired the way I seemed to be able to get information out of anyone. At that time I was only a reporter for two years.

Hamilton has had a Mafia problem for some time and I imagine it still has a Mafia problem now. It certainly did then. There was a particularly notorious Mafioso by the name of Johnny Papalia who lived in town. A couple of years ago he was gunned down in a contract killing. Even for 20 years he has obviously had quite a reputation in his own organization and it cost him in the end. He was notorious and he used to operate from a little company called Monarch Vending which is on Railway Street, a little blind street in Hamilton.

What was happening was the Globe and Mail was running a series of exposés on the Mafia and the city editor in Hamilton wanted to match the exposé. The exposés were about a different Mafia leader altogether, but he suggested I go down and get Johnny Papalia's reaction. No one had ever interviewed Johnny Papalia. He was notorious. He was a tough guy.

Anyway, I dutifully decided to take a taxi rather than my own car because of course even journalists do worry about these things and I did not want Johnny Papalia's friends to get my licence number. I took a cab down to 10 Railway Street. The cabbie said to me “You are going to see Johnny Pops”. I said, “Well, yes”. The cab dropped me off. He was kind of interested. He drove down to the end of the street and backed up into a driveway. He wanted to see whether I would come out.

I went into Monarch Vending and there was this great big guy. There were lots of thugs around in those days and they looked like thugs. I said I wanted to see Johnny Papalia and they were so amazed. This Mafioso guy came out. He was a tough looking hombre and he said “I will tell you once, take off. How dare you come here”. I said, “Look, Mr. Papalia, I just came here to get your side of this article in the Globe and Mail ”. He raged at me and I backed up and out of the door and down the driveway and past his Cadillac. He had a Cadillac in the driveway. I got a little mad myself and I said “All right, if you do not want the damned story” and I took the newspaper article and spiked it on the radio aerial of his Cadillac. I have to tell you, Mr. Speaker, for some time afterwards I did look under my car in case there was a bomb or any other thing but there was not.

In those days, I think generally speaking, there was an unwritten rule. That unwritten rule was that one did not intimidate, harass or threaten the life of journalists.

Why we are having this debate tonight and why it is so very important is that organized crime has broken that code. They have attacked a journalist in the course of his duty. I have great admiration for the Quebec reporter. I am glad he survived but we should all be desperately concerned when an event like this occurs.

I think it is absolutely right for this parliament to go on the attack against this kind of threat but I caution everyone that there is no journalist in this country, I am sure, who would really want to sacrifice our fundamental liberties just because one or two of us get killed because that is what does happen. I lament the Bloc Quebecois. They do not realize it is the same tradition of journalism in Quebec as it is in the rest of Canada. Nothing is different.

Quebec journalists follow the same tradition of defending basic rights.

You do not sacrifice a fundamental right like freedom of association because a journalist has been attacked, but what parliament must do is it must make these organizations pay. The only way you can make organizations like this pay when they attack journalists, when they attack politicians, or when they attack justice officials, is to take business away from them.

I proposed earlier, Mr. Speaker, that I really do think that the government has been going at this problem in bits and pieces. In fact over the last five or six years the government has failed to comprehensively address the ways in which organized crime is making money.

I have followed this debate this entire evening and a lot of the debate has focused on increasing policing. There were some very good comments about taking the ports police away. I do believe that our open ports and the ability to export any kind of contraband out of Canada is one of the major things that is fueling profits for organized crime. That has been a very good suggestion.

But just adding police is not the answer. As I alluded to earlier, we have to stop the ability of organized crime to make money in Canada and to launder money in Canada, and to engage in easy cross-border transportation, both in money, and information is another thing, and contraband. We have not done very well there.

We have had an opportunity in the past and we have not exploited it. We need to go after, as I mentioned, non-profit organizations and charities. I know this sounds preposterous that I should be bringing charities into a debate about organized crime, but I can assure the members opposite that this is very, very serious. The charity industry is over $100 billion.

I was going through my pile of correspondence as I was listening to the debate. I had a number of annual reports from major charities. I will not name them because it is a little hard on them in the context of this particular debate, but some of these charities were very prominent charities. They sent their annual reports out and there is no financial detail. There is no audited financial statement.

Major charities are operating with no transparency and it is an absolute invitation to organized crime. One can set up a charity anywhere in this country and there is no requirement for them to report. So the charities have become famous, I think worldwide, Mr. Speaker, for the ability for organized crime or ethnic organizations to finance terrorism abroad, you name it. They are able to finance everything through the various charitable non-profit organizations in this country.

I have complained about this issue many times. I regret that the government has been slow to respond, but I regret also that I have had very little support from the opposition benches. The opposition benches are constantly looking for opportunities to embarrass the government, and when a backbench MP comes along with something that really is central to solving the organized crime problem—or not solving, nothing solves it—but making it costly for organized crime to operate, I just have not had the support. I regret that because I really think that many of the members on the opposite side are very sincere in what they try to do. I think that by and large this debate, except where it entered into the delicate ground of interfering with our fundamental liberties, has been well aimed.

I have to be a little careful because I do not want to cast aspersions on the justice minister and the solicitor general who very patiently took part in this entire debate and I hope receive some very good suggestions, but the responses from the justice minister and the solicitor general are still partial. No one seems to recognize or appreciate that the Internet and electronic communications and the global marketplace are a boon to organized crime, an absolute boon to organized crime. What we really have to do is have an open debate.

It was quite a revelation to me to know that the subcommittee on organized crime was having in camera discussions. That is pretty useless, I want you to know, Mr. Speaker, because I am a person who did not happen to be on that committee. I can tell you that I would have had some input in that committee. I can tell you that it was one of the places where I would have liked to have had some input.

I learned tonight the subcommittee received a submission to which the justice minister alluded. It was a consultation paper on the intimidation of key players in the criminal justice system. This consultation paper arose from a survey that was done in 1998 following a court case involving the Hell's Angels in which Quebecers were asked whether or not they feared reprisals if they did jury duty on a case involving organized crime like the Hell's Angels.

I think 81% of them said they feared intimidation, so the justice department issued a consultation paper which the subcommittee on organized crime is supposedly considering. It seeks laws, regulations or penalties specifically aimed at intimidation of people in the criminal justice system like judges, juries, policemen and prison guards, but they left out politicians and journalists.

This whole way in which we try to control the bad side of society, the way that we try to get control over the negative, shadowy forces that would steal, that would kill, is through our politicians and journalists as well as through our criminal justice system. I would submit that it is more so with our politicians and journalists. The journalists are the ones who write the stories and put their lives in danger, and the politicians are the ones who act upon those stories and pass legislation.

There is ample opportunity for organized crime to get at politicians. There is the instrument of blackmail. I believe that there have even been instances where politicians in this parliament have been physically threatened. That is possible. One can have one's family physically threatened. I am not talking about the Quebecois member. I think the problem is a bit more general than that.

We cannot allow that to happen. If there is to be a consultation paper that seeks to put in place new penalties or new laws preventing the intimidation of people in the criminal justice system, then those penalties, those new innovations, those initiatives, should apply also to journalists and politicians because there is no doubt about the seriousness of what has occurred.

I welcome this debate. I am just a little saddened that members of the Bloc Quebecois do not appreciate that they allow the criminals to stampede the politicians into passing laws. That is what they are proposing, the notwithstanding clause to circumvent the constitution so that in one particular instance somebody can be arrested because they are wearing a Hell's Angels jacket. That is unacceptable, because if we had a law like that it could be used by another government against a separatist party or against any other kind of organization, the flavour of the time shall we say, decided was a threat to peace, order and good government.

We must never allow that to happen. The final analysis is that when we allow criminals to diminish our fundamental rights and freedoms then crime wins.

[Organized Crime, September 18th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I just want to congratulate the member opposite.

It is rare in the Chamber that I rise and say that I agree with everything that was said by a member in the opposition party. The member is absolutely right. We must not be stampeded into compromising our fundamental rights because of the activities of organized crime. When we do that organized crime wins. We must never do that.

I agree with him, as I mentioned earlier and I will be mentioning when I speak myself, that the way to get at organized crime is to get at the way they make their money. The member opposite pointed out very correctly that our ports are leaky sieves in which all kinds of contraband is going out of the country. I have had many reports and have made many representations to my ministers saying that we must do something to stop it. It is not checking the contraband that is coming in, it is the contraband going out that is the problem.

What happens is that the Americans send their contraband across the border because it is an open border. It is then shipped out of Canada to Africa, to Jamaica and to countries that want the illegal goods. We have a real problem there.

I would like to ask the member if he agrees that if we were to compromise freedom of association as a response to the motorcycle gangs in Quebec, would we not be jeopardizing the very freedoms that the Bloc Quebecois itself enjoys? I recall a time when the RCMP attempted to read the mail of the Parti Quebecois because it was a separatist organization. There was outrage in the entire country. Everyone was angry.

I would like the member's comment on this. Surely the Bloc Quebecois, of all the parties in the House, should be saying that we should not use the notwithstanding clause, that we should protect freedom of association and find other means to combat the problem.

[Organized Crime, September 18th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I am a former journalist. As a journalist, I know that the most famous journalist in Canada and Quebec was René Lévesque.

He was a journalist who defended human rights here in Canada and abroad. I admired René Lévesque. He was the veritable image of a journalist, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and a good sense of humour. He was a very honest man who understood well what it was to be a journalist.

Quebec is proposing that the right to freedom of association be limited. I wonder what René Lévesque would have thought of this proposal to limit the rights included in the charter of rights and freedoms.

How does the hon. member think René Lévesque, who defended all these rights, would have reacted?