John Bryden

[Supply, April 27th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I can only talk about what I said. I cannot talk about what others said.

I would like to pick up on the ethnic cleansing. It is so very important to make the distinction between ethnic cleansing and genocide. It is very difficult to forgive genocide under any circumstances.

Because so many nations historically, going back to the ages of the Greeks and the Romans and even before, have been guilty of one form of ethnic cleansing or another, after the war the Serbians, Serbian Canadians and Kosovars can at least appreciate that nothing has happened in Kosovo, however horrible, that is any different than what has been going on in nations and societies across the world since the beginning of recorded history.

It is when we apply too big an epithet that we make it almost impossible for the people to communicate after the war. Then we entrench hate. There is enough hate in the Balkans. We have to find a way to get people to stop hating one another.

[Supply, April 27th, 1999]

Absolutely, Mr. Speaker. I will on a very rare occasion break caucus secrecy. In fact, at the last national caucus I did rise and go to the microphone, in front of the Prime Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and all of my colleagues, and I urged them very strongly to look to Russia to help us out of this impasse that is occurring in the Balkans.

One of the golden opportunities that is presented here is that Russia can become involved. If Russia can be part of the peace plan, then it will help Russia feel a restoration of confidence of its important role in the world.

I talked about countries and peoples hurting, and we have to realize that the Russians are hurting now as well. They are not hurting just economically; they are hurting because the end of the century has been hard on them. We have to give them the opportunity to find their dignity. They can find their dignity by taking an important role in bringing peace to this region. That is what I said in national caucus last Wednesday.

[Supply, April 27th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Mississauga West.

Earlier in this debate, the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle recounted how he visited Biafra during the Biafran war in the late 1960s. He told of the horrors of seeing the people starving and the people suffering in Biafra, and just generally the horrors of war.

There is another side to that equation because at the time of the Biafran conflict I was in Britain at Leeds university doing post-graduate work. I chummed around with two other young men of my age, in their mid-twenties. One was a Jewish fellow from London and the other was a fellow by the name of Bennett Okuwosa. When I first met Bennett he was a Nigerian. When I last met him at the end of my two year term he was a Biafran.

The relevance of the three of us and my friend being Jewish is that in the two year period that I knew these two young men both the six day war occurred in Israel and the Biafran war broke out in Nigeria. One young man was, shall we say, on the side of the winners and the other young man, my friend Bennett Okuwosa, was on the side of the losers.

Before these tragic events came about we were very much the three musketeers. We used to shoot pool together and drink beer together and go to dances and sometimes we studied and, though we came from very diverse backgrounds, we had as much in common as young men around the world would have in common.

But then my friend, who we used to call Bennett, confronted the problem of the Biafran war. What happened there was another case of ethnic cleansing. The Biafrans had spread out of Biafra, which is a province of Nigeria, into the rest of Nigeria and had taken over many of the positions of responsibility in the Nigerian economy and political society. This created a great deal of resentment among the Muslim population.

Biafra was a classic situation, as so often occurs, where religious strife breaks out which is really only a guise for economic competition and economic resentment. So it was in Nigeria. The Biafrans were expelled from all positions and were basically driven out of all of Nigeria and back into Biafra. In Biafra they decided that they would form a break-away state, which led to the Biafran civil war and all its horrors.

Communications stopped with Biafra basically. My friend Benno had a very large family. He endured the time when his brothers, who had various positions of authority, were picked up by the Nigerian police and disappeared. Of course, throughout the Biafran war he had to endure the knowledge that his people were suffering terribly.

Ironically, his contribution to the war, because he was in the agricultural sciences, was to try to raise rabbits for Biafra because, of course, there was a terrible shortage of protein and terrible starvation in his home country. In the end, I do not think he ever went back. The last I heard of him was a letter from Berlin. I think he settled in Germany in the end and raised his family there.

I will jump from that to events of just a week ago Monday. I held an open town hall meeting in my riding to which I invited everyone to come and express their feelings on Kosovo. My particular riding, Wentworth—Burlington, and the whole area around there has a very high percentage of Serbian Canadians. We had an open meeting and it was a very emotional event because, while one might have expected much anger, in fact there was much anguish, much hurt.

I held the meeting because I wanted to give the opportunity for the Serbian Canadians to come and express their feelings because this is a democratic country. Although there were some remarks on the causes of the war and the fact that the ethnic Albanians had taken over society and Kosovo and all of that kind of thing, and many of them were there illegally, those arguments did not ring with as much weight as the terrible anguish that these Serbian Canadians had, not only for their kinfolk, but for what was happening in Kosovo, in the former Yugoslavia. Or in Yugoslavia, I suppose it is called still.

For instance, one man asked me “What will happen if Canada actually declares war on Serbia? Will it mean that I will be interned?” Another woman worried about her son in the Canadian forces. What is going to happen if he is sent over in a combat contingent and winds up in combat with his kin? One can imagine the situation.

Many people were worried about the young people of military age who had left the country a few months before the actual bombing started. They knew that their children would be called up. Indeed the call is now for anyone of 14 years of age or over to join the military forces in Serbia to combat the invasion. One can imagine the terrible fear.

These were my fellow Canadians suffering. They were hurting and they were hurting because of what was happening in the homeland that they had left. There is no doubt that they are Canadians now, but they still have strong ties to where they come from.

When thought of that way we have to realize that this is not just a matter of stopping the bombing and coming to a diplomatic solution. This is not a matter of partitioning Kosovo or making it independent. This is a matter of making sure that as we lead up to a settlement of this conflict we leave the door open for forgiveness so that Kosovars and Serbians can live together once more.

I think that Canada has an indirect role to play in this because we are the classic example of a country with all kinds of ethnic diversity and of people who come from conflicts in other parts of the world who can live together.

To this end I think it is very important on the part of the government and on the part of all of us to make sure that we are very careful in the distinctions we make when we talk about what is happening in Kosovo. Biafra was a clear case of ethnic cleansing. The Biafrans were driven out of the rest of Nigeria because they were Christians and the others were Muslims, although I say to members that religion was only an excuse. In 1915 in the former Ottoman empire I believe that the Armenians were driven out of Turkey primarily because Turkey was at war. This was another case of ethnic cleansing. But these are not necessarily cases of genocide. Genocide is probably the ultimate horror and the Holocaust was genocide. It was not just a matter of ethnic cleansing but a matter of destroying the very ethnic memory by killing everybody.

Almost every nation in the world has been guilty of ethnic cleansing at one time or another. I will give an example of our own Canadian experience in the 18th century with the Acadians. The British expelled all the young Acadian men from Nova Scotia and distributed them down the shores of the American seacoast. The Boer War began in the 19th century. The British were at war with the Boer farmers in South Africa. Women and children of the farmers were rounded up and put in concentration camps where they died and had terrible experiences. If we want to go back to a case of genocide we can go back to the American west. Here the American authorities systematically destroyed the food supply of the aboriginals, resulting in their death. We could go to the Ukraine between the wars and we will find Stalin who systematically destroyed the food supply of the Ukrainians. This is genocide.

Genocide is a terrible word, but when it comes to civil war, and the expulsion of an ethnic population, almost every nation in the world has been guilty of it to some degree or another. We have to bear in mind that we have to make these distinctions. If we do not make these distinctions, the people I saw at my town hall meeting will feel that they are branded with a guilt, with a stain, which they do not deserve any more than the Americans, the British, the French or anyone else who has been in colonial power who has engaged in some kind of civil war or repression, however terrible. Some kind of repression is involved in the expulsion of an ethnic, religious or racial group. We have to make those distinctions very clear.

We have to think now in terms of how we are going to find a way to bring the Serbian community, the Serbs and the Kosovars back together. I believe this is the country that can lead by example. As long as we as members of parliament, and we as Canadians everywhere are prepared to go out into our communities and listen to one another, no matter what our backgrounds, our religions or our languages, we set an example that hopefully can be followed after this war.

[Supply, April 27th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, there has been a lot talk in this debate about international law. I point out to the member that there are several instances in the very recent past where countries have militarily done things that would appear to be in violation of international law.

I cite, for example, Canada's seizure of the Spanish trawler, which was a seizure that actually occurred on the high seas. This occurred during the cod crisis. The reason for the seizure was that the Spanish were fishing on the high seas, just off Canada's fishing grounds, and were destroying the cod stocks.

I remember very vividly talking to a member of the diplomatic community who said that seizing a vessel on the high seas is a declaration of war.

We know now, in retrospect, that most of the world agrees with that move; that countries do have to take action, even on the high seas, if it is a matter of protecting not only their own resources but the world's resources.

I point out also that we have another unusual circumstance in this situation. Canada still has representation from Yugoslavia here in Canada, even though we are in the position where we are making military strikes on Serbia.

Is it not now a situation where we should be expecting to revise some of the international laws and conventions that were basically framed in the 19th century and the early 20th century as we go into the new millennium?

[Public Sector Pension Investment Board Act, April 26th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I will try to keep my remarks cogent.

As has been variously raised, mainly by the Reform Party, the issue of the word conjugal has turned up in the act. There have been a number of questions through our side and the suggestion that we do not want to deal with the issue raised in the bill, that is same sex survivor benefits.

I have speaking notes provided by the government. As a matter of fact I think by the department, and I presume they are available to every member of parliament. These notes make it very clear that this legislation is about giving survivor benefits to same sex couples. It notes in the notes that I have that this is merely following in concert with various court decisions that have come down recently.

I see the member for Calgary Centre in the House. In his remarks he focused on the issue of giving survivor benefits to people in conjugal relationships. He has a very important point, because rather than the bill specifying very clearly that the intention is to provide survivor benefits to same sex couples, the bill seems to have, shall we say, gone around the corner the long way.

I have the bill here. What it has done is taken the section in the original bill that deals with survivor benefits, and that section in defining who is eligible for survivor benefits uses words like person of the opposite sex to whom the contributor was not married, the surviving spouse, the spouse of the contributor, become married to the contributor on a certain day and so forth.

In other words, the existing section of the act talks very specifically about spousal relationships and marriage relationships as defining the people who are to be eligible for the survivor benefits. Because they are talking about spouses and marriages it is assumed that it is a heterosexual relationship.

For the purpose of the act this area was changed in various places, but to avoid use of the word spouse, married or anything like that, the act defines the relationship. It says for the purposes of this part when a person establishes that he or she was cohabiting in the relationship of a conjugal nature with the contributor and so on and so forth. The key word, as pointed out by the member for Calgary Centre, is the word conjugal.

Here is the problem. I for one believe it is high time for this government to recognize that there are special relationships, that there are same sex relationships that are dependent relationships and are very emotionally tied together in almost every way we can imagine. Whether there is sex involved or not there can be relationships between two individuals that have the force of a marriage, even though they are not a marriage, but are not necessarily conjugal.

The problem is that when we use the word conjugal we not only imply but we actually say that the relationship we are talking about is the married relationship. More than that, when we use the word conjugal, depending on the dictionary we use, we are even implying a heterosexual family relationship involving parents and offspring.

What I see as a result of this problem is that the government may be missing on the very thing that it wants to achieve. In other words, by saying conjugal in this bill the government may be leading the courts to strike down any attempt to apply these survivor benefits to same sex couples.

The member for Calgary Centre had a point but he did not pursue it in sufficient depth. What is really wrong here is not that the government is trying to pull the wool over our eyes or go around some corner to do something the public does not want it to do. The government has been very open with respect to its intention to try to honour what the courts have said and to honour what most Canadians are saying, that there are certain special relationships that do justify people receiving survivor benefits.

However, I think the government has erred dreadfully in using the word conjugal rather than actually coming out and saying it for what it is. If we do not want to use the term same sex relationship then dependent relationship could be defined elsewhere in the legislation, the word dependency. The use of conjugal in this context may lead to problems with this legislation. I hope the government will re-examine the way it has written these particular clauses.

[Public Sector Pension Investment Board Act, April 26th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member's remarks with great interest.

I want to draw his attention to the fact that the Canada pension plan was roundly criticized and condemned because the investments were primarily in government instruments, in government bonds, and consequently the CPP did not grow anything like the rest of the economy. By contrast, Quebec, which manages its own plan, the QPP, invested in market instruments and indeed attained a better level of solvency than the CPP.

It seems to me we are doing precisely the same thing with the public service pension plan. By taking it out of low risk, low return government instruments and giving the government an opportunity to invest it into the marketplace, we have an opportunity to benefit the taxpayer. Any money that is earned on that $30 billion surplus will ultimately go directly or indirectly to lowering taxes. I would appreciate the member's remarks on that.

[Public Sector Pension Investment Board Act, April 22nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think the member for Yukon quite understood my earlier question. It is my fault I am sure for not explaining it very well. I will try again.

I have a great deal of difficulty, coming from a riding in which there are a few unions, understanding the logic that the union is claiming ownership of this $30 billion of alleged surplus, even though it cannot increase its benefits because its benefits are fixed and even though this $30 billion surplus has actually come from the taxpayers. It has come from the ordinary small people, the barbers and the grocery clerks and these small people in my riding who do not have the protection of a union and do not have a circumstance where they can put in $30 and get $70 from the government. However, that money from the government is coming from those grocery clerks and those small people in my riding.

That money could be invested more wisely and get a better return. We see the same kind of conflict we had with the Quebec pension plan which invested wisely and aggressively and is a much healthier plan than the Canadian pension plan which invested only in safe instruments. Is it not better for the small people, the ordinary taxpayers, that we try to use this money in a way that actually reduces taxes for ordinary Canadians?

[Public Sector Pension Investment Board Act, April 22nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great attention to the member's comments and I would like to make a couple of observations.

One of the key points she made was that the surplus, to use her own words, was the exclusive property of the employees who contributed to the pension plan. I have to give her my perspective on this because I come from a riding where there are very few unions. I do not think there are unions of any size in my riding. In my riding it is mostly small entrepreneurs, farmers, people who are self-employed. They will have contributed to this surplus.

As I understand it, the government has been paying 70% toward this pension plan and the employees 30%. When the government pays money to anything, it comes from taxpayers. Every person in my riding who has been paying taxes and who does not belong to a union has been contributing to that 70% that has been going to this pension plan. In other words, the people in my riding would feel that they do have a stake and as a matter of fact they might even claim ownership of the $30 billion of which we are speaking.

The member also said that the benefits in this whole $30 billion is part of the wage packet of the employees. I point out she also said that the payout of benefits is determined by an act of parliament. We have a situation where the benefits are already determined and we have a surplus that is exceeding by far the amount of benefits that can be obtained by the employees.

Finally, it would appear to me, using that logic, that indeed that $30 billion actually belongs to the ordinary citizens of Canada and not to the union, as long as the union is guaranteed that it does indeed receive the benefits that are part of the contract.

[Public Sector Pension Investment Board Act, April 22nd, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I just wanted to make a comment on the member opposite's question of the parliamentary secretary.

I think the problem he is alluding to with respect to the transparency and accountability of this investment board is really a matter for the Access to Information Act. I think what we have to look at is not changing this legislation but making sure, when the time does come forward and when we have a chance to look at the Access to Information Act, it provides for accountability and certainly transparency for the type of arm's length board we have in this legislation.

[Code Of Ethics, April 13th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I had not intended to speak to this motion. It is just happenstance that I happen to be here. However, I will say that I always like to support any motions or legislation which call for greater transparency.

However I do have to make a comment here because the flaw in the motive behind this motion, is basically that there is no code of conduct for MPs.

I was amazed when I came to this House from a background in journalism to find that there was no written code of conduct for MPs, in the same sense that there is for journalists. At the Toronto Star , for example, there is a binder which contains page after page of descriptions on how expensive is an acceptable gift, how expensive is an unacceptable gift.

I have been incredibly surprised that there is no questioning whatsoever when MPs go on very expensive trips around the world which are financed by corporations. It is one thing to travel with a parliamentary committee when one is supported by one's whip, but when one accepts freebies on the part of corporations one has to question the ethics of the individuals who are accepting those freebies. Yet many in this House would see nothing wrong with accepting those freebies. I can assure members that when it comes to gifts in the world of journalism there are very strict rules.

I think the problem with the reluctance to disclose a prime ministerial code of ethics is that we do not have a minimum standard of ethics that applies to MPs in general. If we had that minimum standard I would suggest to the hon. member who is proposing the motion, whose intentions are very good, that there would be no need for the motion because then we could appreciate that the prime minister, any prime minister, might have a different level of ethics that he applies to his cabinet that pertain to the political ethics of the way members of cabinet conduct themselves both within this parliament and in the community.

I would never like to find myself on the side of not supporting a request for transparency, but the reality is that we cannot put any prime minister in the position where his code of ethics, which deals with politics rather than fundamental ethics, would put him in the situation where he would be disclosing what indeed are potential cabinet confidences. I think there is a real issue which pertains to the Access to Information Act.