John Bryden

[Criminal Code, October 4th, 1996]

I am coming to that, gentlemen, if you would just wait a minute.

My concern with this legislation has to do with electronic monitoring provision. Ironically I find myself in agreement with some of the observations of the member for Fraser Valley East.

Last night I took time at home in my apartment to read George Orwell's famous novel 1984 . George Orwell, if members recall, made famous the expression ``big brother''. The novel was written in 1949 just after the world had experienced the tyranny of Hitler and had just entered into the deepest phase of the cold war when red army troops had seized eastern Europe. Most of the former democracies and countries of eastern Europe had fallen under the totalitarian sway of Stalin. Orwell's book is a depiction of the ultimate totalitarian state in which big brother, the state, controls every aspect of human behaviour. Orwell creates a picture of this man-his name is Winston-in which Winston's only problem is that he wants to express a certain amount of individuality. He wants to be a human being, if you will.

However, the state has prescribed the type of behaviour it wants from its citizens and has set up an elaborate means of monitoring their actions. Ultimately the state's purpose, big brother in George Orwell's novel, is to put shackles on the freedom of movement of people in society so that they always have to act according to what the state prescribes as the correct behaviour.

Orwell in writing this novel created the ultimate nightmare. It led to a series of other books and popular culture stories that involved the state control of individual behaviour by electronic means, by implanting devices that controlled individuals and restrained them. You can see the parallels that come out of 1984 which in that period was regarded as the ultimate horror for society, state control.

Then I read in the proposed legislation that the government is now considering electronic monitoring. These monitors are intended to be a sort of bracelet. People are ordered to wear these bracelets to restrain certain forms of behaviour. The bracelet can be used to keep track of their whereabouts. If the judge wants to prevent a person coming near some home because it has been decided that the person is a threat to someone, this bracelet would electronically monitor the whereabouts of the person.

Once we enter into this whole business of an electronic shackle, and that is what it is, an electronic shackle, an electronic ball and chain, all kinds of opportunities present themselves in the George Orwellian model. We can have a bracelet that remotely inflicts pain on an individual wearing this bracelet should that individual be about to engage in behaviour that the state wants to prevent.

As the bill is currently constituted, it basically addresses people who have the potential of committing violent offences. It could also be used on, say, a heroin addict. With a smart chip in the electronic bracelet if the addict approached a drug dealer the chip could scent the heroin and could immediately administer an electric shock to the individual to prevent this behaviour. And so it goes. The possibilities with a smart chip in this kind of bracelet are endless. We could restrain all kinds of behaviour remotely.

According to this legislation it is proposed that this is going to be aimed at only a certain type of offender. The problem is that when we get into this kind of thing, we are addressing very fundamental liberties. We are going right to the bottom of our basic freedoms. It is the same thing as our freedom of speech and the constant struggle there is between how to put limits on pornography while still maintaining freedom of speech.

An electronic shackle is the ultimate limitation on liberty. It allows the individual some movement in society, but in fact it is the same type of shackle that the Romans used and that was used in the slave trade.

I will explain what a shackle is as opposed to a rope or a prison cell. A shackle is restraint. We have used the nice words judicial restraint. In fact a shackle is something that limits behaviour.

Let me give an classic example. When slaves used to work in the fields picking cotton or sugar cane, they were shackled with an iron bar, the idea being that if the slave attempted to escape through the fields the shackle would get caught in the underbrush restraining their movements so that they could not get away. The ball and chain held the same idea. The ball was a weight that they had to drag and they could only get so far before they became exhausted. These were the means used by overseers to restrain their slaves in the field for work and not actually have to keep them in prisons. It was an economic tool that was very useful in the days of the slave trade.

To me there is not a great distinction between this electronic shackle and the old ball and chain. Let me just finish a point here. As proposed, this electronic shackle is only going to apply to certain types of individuals who pose certain types of risks.

One of the things I have learned in my three years in the House of Commons is that the great danger when we pass legislation that contains a subsection of a subsection that actually impinges on basic liberties is that while in this particular legislation it may be restricted to one group of individuals, at a later time legislation may come along that will pass in this House that will extend the application of the provision.

I will give an example. Right now the legislation applies to individuals who pose a threat of inflicting bodily harm. I think it is directed primarily toward sexual offenders. However, drunk drivers are a threat to society. Drunk drivers are capable of inflicting physical injury and death. Why not some day have this bracelet imposed on people who have two or more convictions for impaired driving? As members can see, it is so easy to take it to the next step and the next step and the next step until we have an Orwellian state in which any form of dissent or some form of dissent results in an electronic shackle. We can do all kinds of things with that. We can prevent all forms of behaviour remotely.

Where does this concept come from? I suggest the concept comes once again from our neighbour to the south which is confronted with a major crime problem. It is an epidemic problem in the United States. The Americans are building prisons faster than any country in the world and they are actually experiencing economic difficulties because of the difficulty they have in providing enough prison spaces for the number of people they are incarcerating.

One of their reactions to crime, which has been a subject of much debate in this House, has been unlimited acquisition of firearms. Canada has reacted in quite a Canadian way to this issue. We have had a very aggressive debate in the House about the whole question of firearms. Regardless of what side we are all on in the House, we all agree that Canadians do not want to see the weapons possession that exists in the United States. The government has gone to great lengths with the gun control bill to create a different answer to violence that does not involve the availability of guns for protection. Therefore, Canadians have found an alternate solution to what the Americans have found with respect to arming themselves against the criminal menace.

The other side of the coin is that the Americans have come out with this electronic shackling as an economic measure. They are building so many prisons and it is costing them so much that it is cheaper and more economically feasible, instead of putting people in jail, to apply electronic shackles. I am not saying they have gone that far yet, but the opportunity is there. We can see in American society the advantages of using electronic shackles to prevent people from committing armed robberies. They could be used in the drug trade. If these things could be put on people, crime could be limited in certain areas.

The difficulty is that in the United States, crime is centred upon one group in society. The Americans collect statistics based on race. I hate to bring this issue up, but we must talk about the Americans. They feel they have demonstrated to their satisfaction that blacks in particular have a higher proportion of incarceration than other categories in their society.

That is a frightening statistic. I am pleased this is not the kind of statistic which is collected by Canada. Nevertheless, because the Americans are very conscious of this, if electronic shackling is pursued to its ultimate end, then we will see the re-enslavement of a people in the United States. Instead of being shackled to the ball and chain of the overseer on the cotton plantation, they will be shackled by an electronic device which will be more common in one racial group than in any other. This has the appalling potential of returning to the 19th century to an era which we must leave behind.

We as Canadians, on all sides of the House representing all points of view, must not be driven by the type of social forces and dilemmas the Americans are confronting, be it the question of the availability of firearms or the question of the availability of an electronic shackle, an electronic ball and chain. I am very concerned that my government has brought forward the suggestion of the electronic shackle.

I agree with my colleague from Fraser Valley East that it is particularly dangerous because it is not intended to apply simply to people who are convicted of crimes, it is also designed to apply to people who may be perceived as potential criminals. Before the suspect has actually committed the crime, they may be shackled. That is a huge step. I would say it is a dangerous and a frightening step.

There is an easy solution to the problem. We can have this type of restraint if we write into the legislation that it is voluntary. The person to whom the order is to be applied would have the option of electing whether they will go to jail or some other option instead of accepting the electronic shackle.

In some instances I would think that people would voluntarily accept the electronic shackle. If a heroin addict wants to shake his habit, or if a person is a pedophile and cannot control his or her impulses but wants to control them, they might want to have a shackle. Then it becomes a positive thing because we are respecting human will.

I hope the members of the justice committee will read my words and the words of others who have been worried about this one provision. I hope they will think very carefully about the option of making it a voluntary provision.

I will make another analogy. Anyone who is a farmer will recognize what is called a cattle grate. When a farmer has cattle in the field and he wants to go back and forth with his tractor and he does not want to go to the trouble of opening the gate every time he goes through, he takes the gate off and he puts in what is called a cattle grate. It consists of a few bars of a certain spacing and is about a foot deep. The cattle can never cross. When they approach, they see the grate. They know that if they try to cross they could get caught in the grates and could break their legs. The animals recognize this and consequently they are restrained in the field pen.

The grate works very well for all hoofed animals. It is very very good for cattle. It works for pigs, it works for horses and it works for sheep. One thing we do not want to do in any legislation we pass in this House is to reduce our allowance for human will. We are human beings with some freedom of will, some ability to decide between right and wrong. When we reduce human beings by a shackle or by any kind of restraint to the level of animals, I think we are creating a very sad and despairing problem.

[Criminal Code, October 4th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-55 mainly because I am a government MP. As a government MP I naturally would prefer to support my government in any legislation that it brings forward. Indeed I try to do so in all instances.

As a government MP I feel that I have a fundamental obligation to signal my concerns when I see something in the government's legislation that concerns me deeply. The reason this is important for a government MP is that when a law passes the courts go back to the parliamentary debates and examine the discussions and pay particular attention to what government MPs say about the legislation. They believe what they hear from both sides of the House represents the thinking of Parliament with respect to legislation. Judges use that as a means of interpreting the legislation.

[Income Tax Act, September 27th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to speak to Motion No. M-30 which would give a tax credit to home caregivers.

It is particularly a pleasure to speak to this motion because it gives me an opportunity to demonstrate to Canadians who may be interested that we who are members of political parties, be it the Reform Party, the Bloc Quebecois or the Liberal Party, are not necessarily ideologues, that we do not necessarily follow or hold all the views of our respective parties.

In this case I am referring to the position taken by my own Liberal Party on day care during the last federal election. The Liberals came out very strongly in support of government subsidized day care. The NDP came out even more strongly. If I remember correctly, the NDP promised to spend $1 billion on subsidized day care which the NDP said would create some 70,000 jobs. The Liberals promised much less than that; their program was a couple of hundred million dollars which would create about 10,000 jobs if I recall correctly.

From the outset I was opposed to both concepts in principle. I made it very clear when I ran for election that I did not support everything in the red book, and I certainly did not support the Liberal position on day care. The fundamental reason was that in my mind the promise of 70,000 jobs for $1 billion was a promise of 70,000 marginal jobs basically for women to look after children other than their own. I did not see the practicality of that.

The desire for subsidized daycare has its origins in the socialistic movement of the previous decades, of the 1960s and the 1970s. It was based on two premises. One premise was that parents, particularly women, should not have to sacrifice for their children, for raising families. The premise was that they should be able to have children and also have a worthy job. The other premise, an important one, was that the state could provide some fundamental social caregiving like the family in looking after children.

It has become very clear in the course of the 1980s when we see what has happened to the great totalitarian socialist states like the former Soviet Union and even communist China, that institutionalized family services do not work. In the end they create problems. They create young people who become adults who are not effective citizens.

The services become unmanageable in their actual implementation. Look anywhere in the experiences of the Soviet Union and communist China and lesser so in some of the Nordic states and we will find there have been many problems in trying to successfully implement state run family care. It is not a concept that we recognize as being very successful any more.

The proof of the pudding is in my own riding. When I campaigned from door to door particularly on Hamilton Mountain, a great number of the lower income families obviously had both parents employed. As I went along the streets, I saw that block after block the streets were empty, the houses were empty. The driveways usually had spaces for two automobiles. Most of these parents probably had their children in day care if they were not in school.

As the member for Mississauga South pointed out, the emancipation of the other spouse, be they male or female, basically puts two people in a position of marginal income at the sacrifice of the children. The statistic is basically that a person earning $25,000 with two children in day care makes a net profit of $100 a week. I submit that is not worth the trial, tribulation and even the damage which it inflicts on young children.

In my area there are some subsidized day care facilities. I have visited them as a member of Parliament. What do we do when we enter a subsidized day care facility and see the children playing not on real grass but on plastic grass? Money has been raised to support these day care centres and in someone's incredible wisdom the things which children relate to have been removed; simple things

like real grass and real dirt. In other words, the paid caregivers do not want the children to get dirty. I would say that has the potential of being a traumatic experience for children. I cannot accept it.

I have three children. I have also been the parent who has stayed at home while my wife worked. I have been the primary caregiver. My children were preschoolers. I worked at the Toronto Star . I would come home very late at night. I made a point every night before the children were in school to go directly home to read fairy tales to them. Actually, I can imitate just about every voice in every fairy tale. I can do Pinocchio, I can do the good fairy and all of those voices. Also Long John Silver. The pay off was that my children were capable of reading by the time they were in grade 3. They were reading fluently all the books which they had before them. I submit that was because I was the caregiver who read them those stories.

I have had occasion to go to schools to read to children after school was out. They could not go home because their parents were working. They did not have their own mom and dad to read to them, so they had to rely on a stranger. In this case the stranger was a member of Parliament. It is not the same thing. It is not as good.

What the motion directs us toward is looking once more at where we stand as a country with respect to traditional family values and the importance of the family. The motion is a direction to Parliament to set aside the socialist ideologies of the past and to look to the future, remembering that there are genuine values in the traditional family. As we go into the next century these values are going to be even more accentuated.

We have now entered the computer age. I live in a little village far from Toronto, a remote village in southern Ontario. It does not have a lot of amenities. There is a mother who lives across the street who has developed a tremendous business as a computer troubleshooter. She has one room set aside in her home and she is on the phone with businesses all over the world. She makes a good wage.

That mother is also the primary caregiver. She has three small children. She is able to look after those children. She has a career and a sense of worthiness, a sense of participating in society, and she also has the opportunity to give her children the natural care which they deserve. I do not see any reason for the government not to recognize the value which she is contributing to society by being at home and looking after her children.

The present situation is that when one member of a couple, be they male or female, elect to stay at home, the government gives them nothing. The present tax situation is such that the government encourages both parents to work and as we have seen, it is only to marginal advantage.

Finally, tomorrow I face an audience of about 300 people in one of the largest halls in my riding to discuss the Young Offenders Act. There was a terrible shooting in my riding about two months ago in which a young man was seriously wounded by teenagers with a handgun which fired a hollow nosed bullet. The young man is now paralyzed. This has raised an enormous concern in my riding with respect to possible amendments to the Young Offenders Act.

We will discuss the act. But behind our discussion about changing the Young Offenders Act and increasing the penalties and the opportunities for rehabilitation for young people is the fundamental problem that in the past 20 years we have left the family unit behind and we have failed our young people. I think that shows up in the increased incidents of youth crime.

I support the motion 100 per cent. It is a fine motion and I congratulate the member for Mississauga South for bringing it before the House.

[Supply, September 18th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am in great sympathy with the motion from my colleague from the third party.

I point out to the House that what is at issue is not just accountability, which is key to the issue, but also that the Senate would like the country to believe it is a house equal in authority to the House of Commons.

The reality is that there is only one highest authority in this land and that is this House of Commons which is responsible to every aspect of the land. It is the ultimate chamber of accountability. The Senate must be subject to that because it is not elected as are we in the House of Commons.

I strongly endorse the motion put forward by the member for the third party, even though he is a political opponent. He is right. He is on the right track. Accountability from the Senate will make a responsible Senate and the Senate can therefore contribute materially to this nation in a very responsible way.

[Criminal Code, September 16th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to support Bill C-45 and oppose the suggested amendments.

I congratulate the justice minister for the courage of bringing in Bill C-45 which, rather than rejecting outright section 745 of the Criminal Code, provides at least some alternative to absolute rejection of section 745.

Section 745 is a very bad bit of legislation. There has been a lot of talk in the House that it lets criminals sentenced to 25 years out on early parole when the victims of crime suffer the the chance of additional offences by these people if they do get out early.

What is missing in the debate is the suggestion of accountability. Section 745, as we heard from the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, has not led to an increase in crime. I reject the Reform Party suggestion that it has somehow caused fear in the victims of crime that these people will get out and again commit offences against them.

The real problem with section 745, if the members of the Reform Party will listen for a moment, is that it lacks accountability. It was created in an age in which governments in every way rejected basic accountability. In 1976, 20 years ago, governments ran up deficits. It was a time of unlimited welfare. It was a time when kids went to school and instead of demanding they produce good marks, they got a pat on the shoulder and were told: "It is not so bad. You still have other potential".

Section 745 is bad because it does not demand the accountability that society demands today for the actions of everyone. When they talk about victims of crime, they are complaining about those who have been harmed. When after 15 years they have an easy option for early parole, then they are not being held accountable for their crimes. That is the problem.

Added to that is the way that section 745 operates by permitting early parole. It allows a community jury to review the record of a criminal who has been sentenced to jail for 25 years without parole. Unfortunately, this jury of ordinary citizens is allowed to come to a decision by consensus rather than by unanimity. A jury of ordinary

citizens is asked to make subjective judgments rather than to decide the issue on a matter of fact.

Consider that when an accused is convicted of a crime, that accused is convicted by the unanimous decision of a jury based on fact. The fault with section 745 is that it requires consensus and asks a jury of laymen to be subjective in their assessment of criminals.

I can say that someone who has committed a heinous crime is very often capable of deceiving the most clever individual because he or she can dissemble. A person from the community who is not used to the way some criminals can disguise their real feelings is liable to be lured into a sense of compassion which would lead to a decision which may not be in the public interest.

If 25 people have been granted early parole in the lifetime of section 745, it is too many.

Why should the justice minister not do what the Reform Party is suggesting and reject section 745 altogether? I can tell the House why. It is because there must always be hope. We humans live together and we have a strong tradition in the Judaeo Christian culture where we believe that there is at least some possibility of redemption.

If in any law that we create we believe absolutely in the dark side of human beings, if we do not believe that there is some opportunity, however rare, that a miracle may happen and that one or two may be saved, then we are much less for it. I believe that the justice minister has allowed for that miracle.

Rather than rejecting section 745 entirely, he has brought in certain provisions that make it very difficult for a person who has been sentenced to 25 years without parole to gain an early parole.

Let me cite the ways in which that has been done. First, he has eliminated absolutely serial killers and multiple murderers. They are eliminated. They have no chance whatsoever.

Second, he has initiated a screening process where a judge will intervene first and consider the character of the person applying for early parole. This is an excellent provision. Previously the case was brought to the community jury automatically when the application was passed. A very serious problem was that the victims of crime were required on occasion to go before the jury to argue against a person being let out on early parole. I suggest that this caused needless suffering to the victims of crime.

However, when a judge first considers whether the application has any merit before it reaches the community jury, I think that would be the kind of check to make Bill C-45 work.

Finally, the best part of the bill is the fact that it requires a unanimous decision of a community jury to finally allow the applicant for early parole to have the application heard by the National Parole Board. That is as it should be.

If it takes 12 honest men and women to convict and sentence a killer to 25 years without parole, it takes a unanimous decision. Why should it not be the same way with a jury of 12 to decide whether or not 25 years should be lessened or changed in any way?

This is an excellent bill in every way. It addresses the fundamental flaw in section 745 which makes it too easy for people to seek early parole. At the same time it provides exceptional circumstances where all of us as human beings would want to see a miracle occur. Perhaps some person who has committed a major crime is worth saving. The system should somehow recognize this and do something about it.

This is an excellent bill and I congratulate the minister for his courage in introducing it.

[The Senate, June 20th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to speak to Motion No. 221 which calls for the abolition of the Senate. I am particularly delighted today to speak to it because of what happened yesterday when the Senate rejected the Pearson airport bill.

If this motion were a bill that would lead to the abolition of the Senate, if it were put before the House today and put to a free vote, I think the bill would pass. The general feeling in the House after what happened yesterday is that the Senate has walked on its own grave, it is time for the Senate to go. In the next general election I expect every major party to have a platform on the Senate because of what happened yesterday.

Why is it so significant? The Senate has rejected a piece of legislation that was passed by this Chamber, a Chamber which represents the people of Canada. Every member in this Chamber was elected by the people of Canada. The bill went to the Senate and it was rejected by a House, another place, whose members are not elected but appointed.

It is immaterial whether the senators are Liberal or Conservative or what their political affiliations are. The important point is the Senate interfered with a fundamental democratic process, which is that the House of Commons is supreme. When legislation leaves this place it cannot be rejected by the other place. It can be corrected, it can be amended. The Senate has an important role to examine legislation for flaws but it does not have the right to kill legislation, except in the most extraordinary circumstances.

The Fathers of Confederation saw it as a Chamber of second thought that would step in should the elected assembly go completely out of control, but only in the most exceptional circumstances, a constitutional circumstance perhaps or a charter of rights circumstance, not in bread and butter legislation, which the Pearson bill was. It was totally inappropriate and the government is now in the position that it has to consider what its next move is to be.

I am only a backbencher and so I fortunately do not have to speak for the government, but I can provide an idea of the types of choices the government is facing.

We will obviously not back down on this. There is $600 million in taxpayer money at stake, so the government has to move on this. It has two choices, as I see it. It can redraft and make certain changes to the bill, run it through the House of Commons process and then back to the Senate.

The other option is to prorogue Parliament and have a new speech from the throne. Then the bill can be reintroduced exactly as it is.

I suggest the government will probably be considering that very seriously as a point of principle. To change the bill even slightly as a result of what happened yesterday in the Senate would be a concession to the Senate in a way that I do not think the government should do.

The government still has a problem. If the bill goes back through the process, it will cost countless thousands of dollars in the time of this Chamber, the clerks and all the people who are behind the preparation of the legislation. Even if it goes back through this House and to the Senate again, there is a risk of the same thing happening of a tie vote and the legislation being rejected.

The government has to look ahead and consider how it can guarantee the bill will go through the Senate the next time around. It has the option, as did the previous government over another bill, to create eight more Senators. The Prime Minister has the power to go to the governor general and create eight more Senators.

When the previous Prime Minister did that it caused quite an outcry. It was regarded as the Prime Minister's interfering in the Houses of Parliament. People did not see that the Prime Minister of the day had just cause, in my view. He was facing the problem of legislation which had gone through the entire democratic process and had been blocked by an unelected body.

The perception of creating new Senators underscores even more the uselessness of the institution when it comes to interfering in the proper procedure of the House of Commons. I do not think that is a good option. I do not think it would go down well. The government has to make a very serious decision about what to do with the Senate. Obviously we cannot allow it to go forward to have this incident occur a second time.

The motion put forward by the member for Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup is a good motion, and the government should seriously consider it. We should abolish the Senate.

One of the objections raised by some members who spoke on this issue is that the motion does not define what we replace it with. I certainly have some thoughts about that, and the hon. member for Calgary Centre had considerable thoughts.

There is the suggestion of the three Es: elected, effective and equal. The problem with that scenario, an elected Senate, is we will have the same type of situation as in the United States of two democratically elected bodies. That would actually paralyse Parliament. It would not be effective at all.

We already have an efficient system. What we have to do is return the Senate to the original idea of the Fathers of Confederation. As mentioned during the Meech Lake accord discussions, it should represent the regions of the country. We should find a formula where the Senators are appointed for a very short term but reflect regions of the country. That would be a big step toward addressing some of the concerns of my Bloc Quebecois colleagues.

The motions simply says abolish the Senate. I agree. Let us do that first and then we can talk afterwards on the new formula for the Senate. I feel very strongly in light of what happened yesterday, the interference with the decision of the elected body, the House of Commons, that the other place should now become no place.

[Canada Elections Act, June 18th, 1996]

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I will come to a conclusion very rapidly.

The point I wish to make is this. The opportunity to speak across the country, even when someone represents only regional interests, is what a national party should be all about. It does not matter whether it ultimately has regional interests at heart.

I support in principle in Bill C-276 because it would force a party like the Bloc Quebecois or any other party that would want to represent only a province to get out of that province and deliver their message to the rest of the country so that the rest of the country could better understand it.

It is when we are separate, when we represent only regions, then we become strangers.

[Canada Elections Act, June 18th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I will begin by correcting an impression of my colleague from Elk Island.

Bill C-276 does not affect the ability or the right of a person or a group of people to run as candidates in an election. It addresses the right of a group of people to become a registered political party whereby they would be entitled to certain remunerations, certain tax breaks and equal broadcasting time during an election.

This is quite a proper thing for government to concern itself with because we are a national democracy and we define our country by how we define our members of Parliament. We choose to define our members of Parliament by political parties which receive some government funding based on the number in that party; the present law requires 50. Or, as in the case of Bill C-276, it would be required that the members of a political party that receives government funds would have to have nominees in seven out of ten provinces.

Bill C-276 is fundamentally directed against the concept of provincial parties, against parties which instead of coming to Ottawa to represent and to debate the interests of all parts of the country, come to Ottawa to debate only the interests of one part of the country, specifically a province.

We can test the wisdom of the concept behind Bill C-276 by extending the idea to its ultimate extreme. Consider a House of Commons in which there is nothing but regional and provincial parties where every group of people represents only the provinces in which the members of Parliament were elected.

Then we would have a House of 10 parties. We would not need to have a federal election at all. We could simply use the members from the 10 provinces and territories to come to this place one or two times a year to debate and pass laws. We know what would happen. It would not work because each group would represent only its provincial interests and we could be described by that famous term which is relevant even today. We would have a total balkanization of the country where only provincial interests were represented.

The bill is aimed directly at that. It is aimed even more specifically at the Bloc Quebecois.

We heard earlier the hon. member for Bellechasse admitting that the Bloc Quebecois would have a great deal of difficulty with this legislation if it were to pass because the Bloc Quebecois represents only the interests of Quebec. That is how the Bloc Quebecois defines itself.

The member for Bellechasse conveyed the impression that because the Bloc Quebecois represents only one province-and it is a province that seeks some sort of sovereignty association

relationship with the rest of the country according to its current government-he made the assumption that the Bloc Quebecois would have no relevance in running members of Parliament in other parts of the country. Here I disagree most wholeheartedly with him.

In the recent byelection in Hamilton East 13 candidates ran as well as candidates from the major parties. Absent was a candidate from the Bloc Quebecois. I asked myself what would have happened if a member of the Bloc Quebecois would have run in that byelection. How would that candidate have been greeted by the people in Hamilton East?

I occupy a riding not very far from Hamilton East. I imagine a Bloc MP running in Hamilton East and being received very well by the people. I know, Madam Speaker, you might find that statement surprising coming from someone like myself who is certainly very much a federalist.

I have considered some of the important issues I heard the Bloc Quebecois express many times on behalf of Quebec. One of them is self-determination. The people of Hamilton East would understand the concept of self-determination very readily. I could tell my colleagues from the Bloc Quebecois that the people around Hamilton East have a very proud sense of their territory, a sense of the region.

Indeed, there is quite a sense of rivalry between Hamilton and Toronto. There is a great desire in the people from Hamilton, and particularly in Hamilton East, for a kind of self-defining and self-determination. If a Bloc Quebecois member ran in Hamilton East and tried to express the concept of self-determination for Quebec, he or she would be understood.

If the Bloc Quebecois ran a candidate in Hamilton East and spoke about the need to preserve language, the people in the audience in Hamilton East would understand him precisely because those in Hamilton come from many origins. In that part of the city there are predominantly people of Italian origin.

The people in Hamilton East are of many different language groups and sometimes of a different first language. It is often Italian, sometimes Greek, Portuguese, Spanish and sometimes French I might add. They have a great sense of pride in their language. They would understand a candidate who aspired to being a member of Parliament who wanted to defend a language; who felt a language and a culture was worth defending. They would understand that.

Again that certainly follows with the concept of a distinct society. I know the Bloc Quebecois has not exactly supported the Liberal initiative in that regard. Nevertheless it is a principle that underlies much of what Quebecers refer to as nationalism or at least sovereignty. I still see it as a kind of provincialism, in the sense of province, not in the sense necessarily of being narrow.

People in Hamilton East would understand it if a Bloc Quebecois candidate explained things like the difference of the civil code, the difference of the traditions in Quebec. Even better, it would give them an insight into what motivates so many people who do support the Bloc Quebecois and the Parti Quebecois. It would help enormously in their understanding. They could relate to it in a sense that in my part of Ontario there is a very strong sense of pride at being from Ontario. Indeed around Hamilton, MPs are expected to serve the interests of their province and their city.

I submit that there is not a great deal of difference between that and Bloc Quebecois members who get up and want to represent, somewhat narrowly perhaps, the interests of Quebec. There would not be much difference there.

I could go on. I have often seen the Bloc Quebec members in the House defending, very expertly, social and cultural issues. Sometimes it has been an irony to hear the Bloc Quebecois more effectively attack the government when it is talking about cutbacks to major cultural institutions like the CBC. It has often been the Bloc Quebecois that has sprung to the barricades, rather than the Reform Party.

That would be understood, certainly, in Hamilton East as well because there is a great sense of pride in cultural institutions, in song and dance, and the need to communicate among us.

I do not think, for the most part, a Bloc Quebecois candidate in Hamilton East would have much difficulty in delivering a message to which people would listen quietly and with great attention.

The only place where the Bloc Quebecois candidate would have difficulty is with the concept of sovereignty. We each define sovereignty differently in our minds. However, when the concept of sovereignty is extended to the idea of actually breaking away from the country, actually separating from Canada, I have to admit that no Bloc Quebecois candidate would get much support. On the other hand, the Bloc Quebecois candidate would do much for the good-

[The Constitution, June 3rd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague from Mercier on her excellent speech. I listened to it with great attention.

I noted that the speech dealt obliquely but nevertheless very really with the question of distinct society. Implicit in everything the member said was the recognition, at least I felt so, that the people of Newfoundland are a distinct society in terms of their traditions, their culture, their educational system and their religion.

I was very much encouraged by the expression of support and confidence in the people of Newfoundland by the member. It is entirely appropriate in a question dealing with religion and education that she and the Bloc Quebecois support the premise a distinct society, whether defined by language or region of the country, has a right to have its need for self-determination heard and decided upon by the House.

I take great encouragement in this point. I am the first one to agree that Quebec represents a distinct society and that Newfoundland is a distinct society as well.

I ask the member to comment on the desire of the people of Newfoundland. Their national assembly through their provincial parliament, I point out to the member, voted unanimously to take this matter to the federal Parliament. It is not just a matter of a referendum. Indeed I think the referendum is a secondary issue here. It is a matter of the rights of a distinct society to have desires for change or for the status quo expressed by its government to the Parliament of Canada when the desires become constitutional issues. Consequently it is right and proper for Newfoundland to do it.

I would be very interested in the views of the member.

[Constitution Amendment, June 3rd, 1996]

Madam Speaker, with the greatest of respect, I disagree most emphatically with the member for Anjou-Rivière-des-Prairies and the member for Broadview-Greenwood, who both assert that this whole debate today has to do with referenda. In my opinion, and in the opinion of many experts in legal matters who know far better than I do, it has nothing to do with referenda.

The legislative assembly of a province has sought a constitutional change which it is perfectly entitled to do. If for example the assembly in either of the provinces of Quebec or Alberta had a situation on which it was unanimously agreed a constitutional change was wanted, I would expect that the province would take the request for the change to the federal government. That is exactly as it should be.

When that request arises in this House, I would expect as is going to be the case today, the Parliament of Canada would decide on that request in a free vote. When there is a vote in this Chamber on a constitutional issue, as we have in the case with Newfoundland today, or any other province that may bring a constitutional issue before the House, it should be a free vote so the people of Canada shall speak on the issue and decide.