John Bryden

[Privilege, March 13th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the committee is not going to make a decision with respect to this, it is going to assess the words. It is not a member who is being sent to committee, it is the words that are going to be evaluated.

I would ask Bloc Quebecois members if they believe in the parliamentary system. If they believe in democracy then they should support this motion so we can get it into committee and evaluate the situation without prejudice and in the manner that is appropriate for MPs.

[Privilege, March 13th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I will go back to the communiqué, but I will make a little abridgement to it. The relevant passage that we are talking about and which is at the centre of the problem is:

The day after a yes vote-I think that members of the military from Quebec will respect the people's decision and shift their loyalty to the new country for whose security they will be responsible.

It states that the day after the yes vote, members of the military forces, regardless of whether they speak English or French, which is the racist comment raised by the Bloc Quebecois members, are being asked to take action to separate their loyalty to Canada. That is a bad thing to do.

[Privilege, March 13th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the member's question is not at all relevant. We are talking about members of the Canadian forces who took an loyalty oath to the crown. We are not talking about a labour situation. I am very disappointed with the member.

I suspect no member in the Bloc Quebecois can answer my question about democracy. Why do they not want this to go to a committee of their fellow MPs who would simply assess whether or not the member for Charlesbourg went a little too far? That is all we are looking for.

[Privilege, March 13th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I do not like to say I am on the wrong side of the House but it is very difficult to speak to hon. members while they are behind me. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the remark.

The Bloc Quebecois misses a wonderful opportunity here because if the words used by the member of Charlesbourg which caused me so much concern and caused Canadians concern were debated by the committee, we are not looking to attribute blame or to assign une mauvaise entente. We are looking to define the parameters of our debates in and outside this House on the question of sovereignty.

I believe that in all probability the member for Charlesbourg acted foolishly, acted impetuously but did not act wilfully. However he has acted in a way that we should all be concerned about. It is a way that some may consider dangerous, a way that some may consider inciting high emotions and certainly in a way which when we compare the Martin's Criminal Code passage I cited and the actual words from the communiqué we have every reason to be concerned.

I urge the Bloc Quebecois to support the motion to send this to committee so that we can all get an impartial assessment of whether or not the member for Charlesbourg went too far. It does not matter whether or not there is criminality. I am sure that no member of any committee would ever suggest such a thing. It would define the debate. It is in the interest of democracy, the very democracy that the members of the Bloc Quebecois are so fond of citing and indicating that they have great respect for.

In conclusion, I think it very much is a matter of the current situation with sovereignty and a question of democracy.

[Privilege, March 13th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in this debate with a sense of great concern because I feel, as you do, that the issue is very important. Future generations will be looking at this debate. I want to take this opportunity to put on the record what I think is the very core of the debate.

The member for Scarborough-Rouge River mentioned that the reference to sedition in the original motion may be in error. There is another category in Martin's Annual Criminal Code which may be appropriate. Mr. Speaker, with your indulgence I would like to read that passage in its entirety into the record and when people refer to this debate they will see it before them.

This is from section 63 of Martin's Annual Criminal Code , concerning offences in relation to military forces. Military forces refers to the Canadian forces:

(1) Every one who wilfully

(a) interferes with, impairs or influences the loyalty or discipline of a member of a force,

(b) publishes, edits, issues, circulates or distributes a writing that advises, counsels or urges insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny or refusal of duty by a member of a force, or

(c) advises, counsels, urges or in any manner causes insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny or refusal of duty by a member of a force,

is guilty of an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a period of five years.

I am not a lawyer, I admit that. This is the section in Martin's Annual Criminal Code that seems to be more relevant than this arcane debate we are having about the definition of sedition. It would appear to me from the communiqué I read that this section of Martin's Annual Criminal Code is the most important portion.

The member for Berthier-Montcalm spoke earlier and made the observation that there is nothing in the communiqué that should cause us concern or alarm in the context of sedition. Also, I should say in passing that there was nothing in the communiqué that specified francophones as opposed to anglophones. There was a suggestion that the communiqué may have been directed at some people because of their French language ability.

I point out that the Martin's Annual Criminal Code passage I cited involves all the Canadian forces; it does not make distinction by language. It does not make any distinction in that way at all. If a person is in contravention of that passage, it regardless of the linguistic origin of the member of the Canadian forces talked about.

In that context I would like to read into the record a couple of passages from the communiqué which my Bloc colleagues seemed to have overlooked in the course of the debate. I will read them in French. One relevant passage is on the second page of the communiqué:

"The day after a yes win," he says, "Quebec should immediately create a Department of Defence, an embryo of a major state-"

-that ought to read "of a military staff"-

-and offer all Quebecers serving in the Canadian Forces the chance to integrate into the Quebec Forces "while keeping their rank, seniority, pay and retirement funds as a means to ensure a better transition-"

The other relevant passage is at the very end of the communiqué. It is a quote from the hon. member for Charlesbourg:

"All this expertise will not disappear with Quebec's accession to sovereignty and personally, I think that soldiers of Quebec will respect the people's decision and will transfer their loyalty to the new country whose security they will ensure", Mr. Jacob concluded.

We must take note of the last words:

-whose security they will ensure-

We have to go to the beginning of the paragraph:

The day after a yes win-

I am not a lawyer, I am just an ordinary Canadian and an ordinary MP. It is not my position and not my responsibility to interpret the law. I can say however that as an ordinary person I did find the words in that press release, which I read for the first time today, very troubling in the context of the passage I quoted from Martin's Annual Criminal Code . Very troubling indeed.

I am not prepared to support the Reform Party motion as presented because that motion has two flaws. It has the flaw the hon. member for Scarborough-Rouge River mentioned that it stresses sedition. We have reason to believe that it might not be sedition.

On the other hand it also prejudges the situation with the hon. member for Charlesbourg. As a member of Parliament and an ordinary Canadian I am not willing to prejudge anyone and I do not think it is proper to do that. I support the amendment which would send the motion to a committee of the House for a deliberation on the issue, whether something was done improperly here or not.

I was very disturbed that the Leader of the Official Opposition disagreed with the motion on the grounds that there would be some danger the committee would not judge the situation in the motion that would come to it without any kind of prejudice or prior conclusion. He seemed to think that members of Parliament would not be able to judge and analyse a situation dispassionately in the very sense of justice and fair play that we in this Parliament should all believe in.

That is one of the things that disturbed me because the Bloc Quebecois, with the greatest respect, have always argued absolutely that the debate with respect to sovereignty or separatism or call it what you will has to be conducted in a democratic fashion. It has to respect all levels of our parliamentary institutions.

I have been disturbed to hear several members suggest that by referring this issue to a parliamentary committee, having changed the original motion so that there is no prejudice in it-we just want to examine the issue-that the Bloc Quebecois finds that this is not something it can support. Having heard its members so many times say that we should conduct ourselves in a parliamentary fashion and that this is a democracy, this is something that they should get behind in every way.

I support the motion. It does a great service it has for you, my fellow colleagues in the Bloc Quebecois-

[North American Aerospacedefence Command, March 11th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak during this debate. I may be able to add something to it. Everyone in the House was given a briefing book from national defence on NORAD and I would like quote one sentence from that document: "Following the second world war in February 1947, both Ottawa and Washington announced the principles for future military co-operation, including air defence". I will comment on that February 1947 agreement because it involved much more than settling the principles we needed for a collective air defence.

Canada shared with Britain and the United States the most intimate military secrets. At the end of the war they knew about radar, they had done the most intimate experiments in chemical and biological warfare research and they shared communications intelligence. Canada was directly linked with the United States and

Britain in intercepting radio signals and decrypting them, as well as decrypting diplomatic signals.

Canada also ended the war as the second nuclear power in the world. Nearby in Chalk River the second nuclear reactor outside of the United States started up in 1945, precisely at the same time that Igor Gouzenko, the famous Soviet cypher clerk, defected to Canada and actually launched the cold war. It was Gouzenko who warned the British and the Americans that the Russians were not allies at all but were planning world domination. That led very directly to the secret accord of February 1947.

The details of that agreement are still unavailable in the archives of Canada and the United States although various historians have been able to piece together what it consisted of. It dealt in the sharing of communications intelligence and signals intelligence. It included the sharing of biological and chemical warfare research. Canadians undertook on behalf of the allies to do most of the chemical warfare testing at Suffield near Medicine Hat.

The agreement also included the setting up various intelligence organizations in Canada which did not exist before. These included the joint intelligence committee which was the clearing house of secret intelligence, and the joint intelligence bureau which examined topographical intelligence, geography and that kind of thing.

Once the threat had been appreciated, that Stalin was a dictator much along the lines of Hitler, it was realized that the United States was the next likely target. The Americans decided that the attack was likely to come over the Arctic. Therefore, Canada in a very real sense had no choice but to co-operate with the United States in setting up some sort of air defence plan in the Arctic.

I have actually seen a document in which the former prime minister, Mackenzie King, advised his deputy minister of foreign affairs that Canada had to come to an agreement with the United States because American planes were already mapping Canada's Arctic and if Canada did not come to a military agreement on the defence of North America with the United States it would be a serious erosion of our sovereignty.

However, the agreement for the defence of North America, which finally took place in 1957, was not that hard to come by in the sense that Canada, the United States and Britain were already intimate allies in terms of secret intelligence. We shared then, as I hope we still do now, the most intimate military secrets without question. I can give you an example of that actually, Madam Speaker, and I will in a moment.

When the North America air defence system was set up it consisted primarily of three lines: the DEW line, the distant early warning line which was a series of radar stations in the high Arctic that looked over into the Soviet Union as far as they could go. The idea was to spot the masses of Soviet bombers as they approached Canadian territory. Then there was the mid-Canada line which was a series of automatic radar stations that would indicate which direction these masses of bombers were flying, whether they were going to Chicago, New York or wherever. This was followed by the pine tree line with one station up near Barrie, not very far north of Toronto. That line was designed to zero in on the interceptors. We had aircraft stationed at North Bay that were designed to shoot it out with the incoming Russian bombers. That was the situation toward the end of the 1950s.

It was apparent that this was a very expensive thing to put together. What I have to stress again is that this required the most intimate co-operation between the Americans and the Canadians. By 1960 it became apparent that it was going to be very difficult to shoot down the masses of bombers. It was at about that time, in the early 1960s, that the Canadian government under Diefenbaker decided to abandon the famous Avro project which was the fighter bomber that the Canadians had developed which was a superb aircraft, no doubt about it, in favour of Bomarc missiles. Canada, at the pine tree line level, became armed with Bomarc missiles. These were the most modern missiles of their time.

Madam Speaker, I am going to tell you something that you do not know. These Bomarc missiles which were stationed in various places in Canada were equipped with nuclear warheads. At the time, the government denied that there were nuclear warheads on Canadian territory but in fact the archives just down the street will show that Canada actually did have nuclear warheads on the Bomarc missiles. The reason for this was that if the bombers came down in waves then a small nuclear warhead could shoot down 30 or 40 bombers rather than trying to bring them down individually.

I mention this to illustrate how absolute was the exchange of secret intelligence between the United States and Canada at that time and how absolute was the confidence that the Americans had in Canada because it actually permitted another foreign country to have missiles on their soil which were capable not just of shooting down Russian bombers, but also capable of attacking the United States. Given the American isolationist or independence mentality, to have that much trust in another country is quite remarkable.

That leads me to why I am glad to have the opportunity to rise during this debate because now we come to the present. The threat has changed and it is a different threat. It is not the Soviet Union perhaps but there are cruise missiles, biological warfare weapons, nuclear weapons going around the world who knows where. The threat still exists so there is good reason to want to renew this NORAD agreement with the Americans.

Earlier in this debate several of my colleagues from the Bloc spoke very strongly for the agreement and felt it could be extended to the rest of North America. It cannot be extended. The history of secret intelligence in Canada has been an exchange of information between the United States and actually less so with Britain.

Those who would argue that we can separate this country and not lose some essential things are wrong. I can suggest the one thing that we would lose, certainly a separate Quebec would lose, is the ability to be a partner in the secret intelligence arrangements that have existed for 50 years between the United States and Britain. I suggest that type of isolation would not only be unfortunate for a separate Quebec, it would be very dangerous.

[North American Aerospacedefence Command, March 11th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, Canada and the United States had to share the most intimate secrets in the context of the NORAD agreement. Of course, Mexico was not included. Does my Bloc Quebecois colleague believe that the United States would like to share a highly confidential agreement such as NORAD with a third country, like a separate Quebec?

[The Budget, March 7th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated my colleague's remarks. However, I was surprised that in congratulating the Minister of Finance for improving the opportunities for charitable donations, given the interests of his party, he did not make some remark with respect to the fact that charitable organizations need to be brought to a level of accountability and a level of competent management and openness which would justify the type of hand that the Minister of Finance is extending to them. As a Liberal member, bringing this level of accountability to the charitable sector is very near and dear to my heart.

I would ask the member if he would support me in that type of effort. This is the kind of suggestion that was made by the Minister of Finance and something we hope to see in the future.

[Speech From The Throne, March 5th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Bourassa comes from Chile, a country with a lot of political problems.

The hon. member for Bourassa is an immigrant. He comes from a country where there is violence and instability. The hon. member is a refugee. Welcome to Canada, hon. member.

I would like to ask him this: Could he tell us, from his own experience in Chile and now in Quebec, whether political instability costs jobs and creates unemployment?

[Speech From The Throne, March 5th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Port Moody-Coquitlam for her remarks because I find myself very sympathetic to her position on the family.

During the election campaign, I well remember canvassing from door to door in an urban portion of my riding. I went past house after house where no one was home, where the houses had a double garage and double driveway but the house itself was very small. It was very clear that both parents were away. The children were either in local day care or elsewhere. Therefore, the member brings up a very important point.

However, the member was a little unfair when she suggested that the economic necessity of both parents working is a result of taxation. I suggest to her that it is a trend that has occurred as a result of changes in the labour force, changes in the marketplace and changes in the global economy.

I wonder if she has taken that into account and has any suggestions on how one could address that in the context of the economic necessity of both parents working.