John Bryden

[Gun Registration, October 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, recently in the House, Reform and Conservative members vigorously spoke against gun registration, arguing that licensing firearms was a massive intrusion on individual rights. Some MPs even raised the spectre of a police state, suggesting that registering guns was a prelude to their seizure by a government fearful of citizens with arms.

Later the same Reform and Conservative MPs spoke equally vigorously in favour of DNA sampling of individuals on arrest by police. In the interests of efficient law enforcement, these same MPs argued that police should be enabled to force individuals to surrender the most intimate physical data possible without their consent, without their being charged with any crime and without them having been convicted by any court.

This is big brother big time. The opposition wants to take away the most fundamental liberties of Canadians: the right to privacy and the right not to have to submit to arbitrary arrest.

No wonder Reformers and Conservatives like their guns. In their world they need them.

[Supply, October 5th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, the member for Winnipeg—Transcona is an experienced member of the House. He will remember, particularly during the Mulroney years, that the federal government transferred a large proportion of tax points to the provinces for social spending.

I would suggest to the hon. member that this has seriously eroded the ability of the federal government to intervene in the delivery of health care and social spending by the provinces. At the rate we are going with the transfer of actual tax points, the that federal government would have little to say in this entire debate would be quite academic.

Would the hon. member support a return of those tax points? If after due debate the House decided that we wanted to reverse the process of giving provinces absolute control over federal money, how they would spend it in social spending, and turn the calendar back so that the federal government had more power and could intervene in setting standards and play a more active role than appears to be the case now, would the member support that?

[Supply, October 5th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, the member spoke repeatedly about partnership and leadership. As I understand it what the 10 premiers agreed upon was that they would take no leadership from the federal government in the matter of how they would spend the social and health transfers.

I would suggest to the member that surely as we do live in a country that is an assemblage of provinces and territories we should expect leadership from the national government and the national government should demand to have representation in how the national government's money is spent. Otherwise how will we ever have high standards of health care that are universal across the country?

Would the member at least consider allowing that the Government of Canada should have a say in establishing standards of health care all across the country?

[Supply, October 5th, 1998]

I would like to put a question to the member. We are taking this debate very seriously. I realize the Conservatives cannot take a debate in the House seriously but I think Bloc Quebecois members will listen to me.

There is a problem. It is not the provinces that are mismanaging health. The problem is there are no good, on the ground rules and standards of transparencies at the hospital level. In my riding we know there are problems in the hospital where there are real inefficiencies and money being misspent and not enough money spent on services instead of administration.

Would the member for Drummond agree that some standard from the federal government would be useful before the money is spent to ensure that all the provinces manage health care through their hospitals equally across the country?

[Supply, October 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, in reply to an earlier question the member for Timiskaming—Cochrane said that health care should be in the hands of citizens.

This is part of the problem as health care in the provinces is not in the hands of citizens. It is administered mainly by hospitals which are either charities or incorporated non-profit organizations. As such, there is a very low level of transparency among hospital organizations and in the implementation of medical care across the country.

[Supply, October 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague opposite for his remarks which I listened to with great attention.

The issue we are debating is very important to us all. If we believe that all Canadians from sea to sea, and Quebeckers, deserve the same minimum standards of health care, do we not need to have the federal government set some kind of standards or parameters and enforce them in the provinces when it gives money under the health and social transfers? How can we do it without the federal government demanding something of the provinces?

[Division No. 230, September 29th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, following that logic, why should the government not take DNA samples of every individual at birth and order DNA samples from every individual that exists so that any time a crime is committed that tattooing mark is available to the authorities? That is too big a power for police to have and that is too big a power even for government to have. I would not support it.

[Division No. 230, September 29th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member was so lengthy in framing his question it was difficult for me to follow it. The danger with extending the legislation as proposed by the opposition to taking samples upon charge is that it would encourage police to go on a fishing expedition.

We have to protect the rights of the people who may be assumed to be the type that would commit crimes. We believe in this country that you are innocent until convicted and we must not lose sight of that. We must be very careful on how wide a mandate we give the police as far as their powers of arrest are concerned.

[Division No. 230, September 29th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have the opportunity to speak in this debate. It gives me occasion to raise with all members what I think is quite an important issue which spins off from the debate about DNA sampling.

I will first address the DNA sampling issue as I see it. If I were on the other side of the Chamber and if I were listening to groups like the Canadian Police Association, I would indeed take the stand I hear from those on the other side. Fair is fair.

There are some good grounds for believing that if DNA samples were taken on charge there would be advantages in tracking down criminals and bringing more safety to our streets. I do not think there is any doubt that the more tools we can give our law enforcement officers, tools which they demand and want, the better they can carry out their jobs.

However, I must be frank with members opposite and tell them why I cannot support that position. I sympathize with what they are saying, but I cannot support it. And this is me speaking, not the government. The reason is that DNA sampling takes personal identification to a much higher level than just fingerprinting.

We heard people say earlier in the House that DNA sampling on charge is not much different from taking fingerprints. They said that taking fingerprints had not been a problem with respect to the charter of rights. Actually, there had been a problem. When the breathalyzer test procedure was first introduced it was challenged before the supreme court, which found that while on the surface it would appear that forcing people to give breath or blood samples appeared to be contrary to their charter rights, there was an element of reasonableness in the procedure, the good it did for society, which permitted the courts to uphold the principle of taking a breathalyzer test or a blood sample at the time of charge, or at least forcing them to be taken.

If we go from fingerprinting to breathalyzer testing to DNA sampling, we go into an enormous domain that goes much beyond simply blowing into a container. The problem with DNA sampling is that it is the ultimate fingerprint.

DNA sampling is based on the fact that each one of us as individuals contains unique sets of DNA markers on our chromosomes. Consequently, any sample is believed, at least so far science tells us, to be uniquely identifiable with an individual. One can see where this could be an enormous crime fighting tool.

But a DNA sample is like a tattoo that we all carry. All that has to happen is for an authority to peel away a tiny bit of skin, reveal the tattoo, put it on the record and there it remains.

This is where the difficulty comes about. It was only 55 years ago that a similar tattooing procedure existed in Europe. I do not want members opposite to get excited about this because I am not casting aspersions on their position. But the reality is that at one time in European history tattooing became a useful tool of the police forces to keep track of undesirables in society. These undesirables were Jews, gypsies and the mentally infirm.

We know where that led in the end. That led to a genocide that this world has not forgotten and I hope never will. It was a systematic genocide. It was conducted with the agreement of the state, using police forces.

The problem is that when we come to something like the absolute identification of us as individuals, we become that much closer to that type of state interference in our personal and private lives which led to the atrocities that finally occurred in Nazi Germany.

I am not saying that this could happen in Canada, although we have to always remember in a democracy that there is always the danger that if we allow the state too much intrusion into the privacy of the individual, into the identity of the individual, we run the very serious risk of becoming a cipher, of becoming a tattoo, and if the state or the police get a little out of control, then the rights of citizens can indeed be destroyed.

It is an ethical issue that disturbs me. I am not saying that a DNA sampling at charge is necessarily not the thing to do. What I am saying is that it is too early for us as as a parliament to make that grand a decision. We have to go out into the community and, over time, talk to the people who are concerned about ethics in society: talk to the church, talk to all those who are worried about the human dignity of being an individual, rather than a number. When we look back at the tattooing that was done during the period of Nazi Germany, what distresses us most is not just the death it led to, it is the fact that human beings were reduced to numbers.

I say that DNA itself is nothing more than a human bar code of the 1990s. Before we engage in using this as a tool for the police we have to have a very serious debate, not just with parliamentarians, not just with the police, but also with church leaders and others. I would think the Jewish community might have something to say about this whole question.

Nevertheless, the real point that I came before the House to discuss was not the DNA sampling because it is an ethical issue. I did not expect to change the minds of those opposite because they are charged to be in the opposition and to speak in opposition to government bills. But one of the things that disturbs me in this whole debate is that I, like every MP, received correspondence from the Canadian Police Association, lobbying heavily to have DNA sampling accepted at charge rather than after conviction. I have no problem with the Canadian Police Association lobbying for this because it is very concerned about successful law enforcement.

Where I have the problem is that the letter I received from the Canadian Police Association contained a threat. What it basically said was that if I as a parliamentarian did not agree with the Canadian Police Association, that if I chose not to—that is, not to support the position of the Canadian Police Association—the letter tells me that “we as police officers will be forced to explain to the grieving family members that his or her government had the information and the ability to prevent such an act of violence but chose not to”.

What is happening is that the Canadian Police Association has taken it upon itself, in this instance and in other instances, to apply political pressure on the people in this Chamber to do what the Canadian Police Association thinks is right.

Also I refer to the campaign that was conducted by the Canadian Police Association during the last election in which it took out huge billboards showing pictures of known murderers and compared those people to the local Liberal MPs who rejected the private member's bill that would have made retroactive the legislation regarding the faint hope clause. It would have made it retroactive so that no convicted killers could go before the early parole procedure which then existed. Our justice minister changed that provision but did not make it retroactive. The billboards occurred during the election campaign. They were propaganda and they lied.

During an election we accept a bit of stretching the truth. It occurs not only among politicians during an election, but among the special interest groups that back one political party or another. We accept that. However, what was happening in this case was that we had a police body engaging in an attempt to influence politicians.

This is an issue of great concern to parliamentarians. The British parliamentary tradition is that the legislators, the courts and the police are supposed to be separate. I cannot interfere in a police investigation or with the courts. The courts cannot interfere with the politicians, and so it should have been with the police. It has always been our tradition that the police do not attempt to put direct pressure on politicians.

This is now occurring in Toronto as well. The Toronto police association is attacking local politicians over their attitude toward the special investigation unit.

I suggest that this is a serious threat to our fundamental democracy in parliament and every parliamentarian has to be very concerned. The reason we have our own police force in the House of Commons and not a state police force, the RCMP or any other body, is because of the tradition that parliament has to keep the police and the military separate from politics. I hope the police association hears my remarks and considers very carefully what it has been doing in the past.

[Canada Small Business Financing Act, September 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to draw the attention of the House and anyone watching this debate to the fact that there has been quite an innovation introduced into this bill that I am very much in favour of. I do not think members of the House have noted it.

There is the suggestion that the small business loan program will be extended as a pilot project to the voluntary sector. In other words, the minister is suggesting this at least as an experiment to see what it is like to provide loan guarantees to organizations financing charities and non-profit organizations.

What is important here is that very clearly the not for profit sector is taking more and more of a role in society in providing certain social services, certain benefits.

In many senses this is a positive thing and in another sense it is a negative thing. What it really means, especially in Ontario, is that the Ontario government is getting out of providing the social services that governments normally provide. It is leaving it to non-governmental organizations like charities and non-profit organizations.

This minister has recognized that there is a major change coming in society. He is obviously, in this legislation and in the regulations that will follow, preparing for it by providing at least an experimental try at how we go about financing or giving loan guarantees to those who would finance not for profit businesses.

There are dangers to this because not for profit organizations operate as businesses but they have advantages in the sense that they do not have to pay taxes. If they are a charity, they actually can issue tax receipts that help them cut their costs when they enter into the marketplace.

There is a lot of controversy out there right now with not for profit organizations competing with for profit organizations in the marketplace. As an example, in my riding there is quite a controversy about the YMCA coming in to build an enormous facility for one of my communities. It will be financed entirely out of memberships.

The YMCA is a charity and the complaint is that private entrepreneurs who are selling fitness in the area are complaining that they are getting unfair competition from a charity.

There is some merit to the complaint of for profit companies when they find themselves up against a charity or non-profit organization that has the advantage of tax receipts or tax breaks.

Another instance is in Winnipeg where the Habitat for Humanity charity is in competition with a for profit used lumber recycler called Happy Harry's. Happy Harry creates jobs. He pays taxes and he is up against a non-profit organization that has advantages in the marketplace.

The warning is simply this. A not for profit organization is an umbrella term for non-profit organizations that do not pay taxes and for charities that do not pay taxes and issue tax receipts. Those are two categories of not for profit organizations that stand to benefit from the proposal in this legislation.

We cannot assume that because this is a non-profit organization or a charity it will be running more efficiently. The reality is that no matter what kind of business someone is in, if there is a profit incentive it usually leads to efficiencies. Take away the profit incentive then we run into the danger of a lack of accountability in the actual organization, the actual costs and the revenues and expenditures.

While I think this is a very intriguing and interesting experiment proposed by the minister and it is a good thing that we do this pilot project, I stress that we need to have a strong debate at the committee level and we need to make it very well known in the entire business community that we are proposing this initiative. We then may find a way we can support particularly charities that are engaged in business activities to the public good. However, we have to define the parameters and those parameters can only be defined through proper debate in this House and in committee.