John Bryden

[Constitutional Amendments Act, November 30th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague. I would like to point out to him that sovereignty, as he describes it, and separatism look inward. He has to admit that the separatist movement is building walls around Quebec.

[Constitutional Amendments Act, November 30th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House today to speak on a subject that is near and dear to my heart. However, I would like to take it in a slightly different direction and speak of my own riding.

My riding is at the head of Lake Ontario, near Hamilton. It is probably as anglophone a part of the country as we could possibly hope to get. Yet the first European who set foot in my riding was René Robert Cavelier de La Salle. He came there in 1682. He came by canoe through Hamilton harbour, climbed the escarpment by a stream and visited an Indian village near the present town of Waterdown.

Around my riding there are signs everywhere, vestiges of French explorers. Just two miles from my village there is a creek called Fairchild Creek. This is a reflection of the coureurs de bois who explored the Grand River and its tributaries in the 17th century.

La Salle was exceptional. I do not wonder that my Bloc colleagues are very proud of their heritage when we think of this man who in 1682 came to the Hamilton area and then for the next 10 years explored everywhere around southern Ontario. He was searching for the Ohio River, which he believed would lead to the orient. In doing so, he was the first man to build a ship for the fur trade on Lake Erie at Niagara Falls. He also became a great entrepreneur in the fur trade at Kingston, which at that time was Fort Frontenac.

I say this to point out that the early people of New France represented the most fantastic spirit of adventure we could wish to find anywhere in the world.

What of myself as an anglophone? I can parallel that. On my mother's side of the family there were United Empire Loyalists. They settled in the United States in the 17th century and after the American revolution came to my area, the same area La Salle explored, to settle when they fled the Americans. Here we have a situation of my ancestors, like the ancestors of my Bloc Quebecois colleagues and my Quebec colleagues, who have this wonderful spirit of adventure.

I could look at my own father. My father came over to the country in 1924, leaving England at the age of 17. Again we have this sense that we share. Whether we are French or English speaking, we share this very Canadian sense of adventure, the sense of reaching out and trying brave new things to do.

When I was a young man I tried to cross the Sahara Desert to visit Timbuktu. I have to say that as I crossed the Mediterranean I met another young man. We recognized one another because of our passports. He was another young Canadian from Quebec who was on the same type of adventure I was. There we were, doing what I think is one of the things that unite us as a people, whether we speak English or French, a people who have a true spirit of adventure.

I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that if you travelled the world now you would find young Canadians, both French and English speaking, in every corner of the globe on similar missions of adventure.

I mention this because separatism, the movement we see today to withdraw Quebec from Confederation, is not in the best tradition of our ancestors. It is a defensive reaction. It is building walls. Separatism today is fear rather than bravery. That is a great shame. What has made this country the richest nation in the world and the greatest trading nation in the world, whether we speak English or French, is our spirit of adventure we have inherited from all our ancestors.

To return to my history lesson, La Salle did not find the Ohio River. A decade later, after running around in southern Ontario and making a killing on the fur trade, he crossed over to the Mississippi River and explored the entire length of the Mississippi. He arrived there in 1682 and claimed the entire territory for France. Thus, Louisiana was born.

Louisiana became a far richer colony of France than Quebec. It was on the edge of the Caribbean. In those days the resources were much richer in that region than they were in the frozen north. What happened to Louisiana? In 1803 Napoleon sold it to the Americans. The Americans did not move in and change Louisiana into an English speaking state. They were totally laissez-faire about the situation. Louisiana was left alone with its language and culture. However then, as today, there was an enormous economic boom in North America. The west was opening up, the Mississippi was opening up and there were entrepreneurs everywhere.

The net effect of the freedom that Louisiana had as a state of the United States, rather than the protection it had when it was a French colony, was that within a century it lost most of its French culture. The French language was replaced by English. Now this former French colony, which was bigger than Quebec, is merely a shadow of its French self.

I submit that is the kind of danger that is presented by the prospect of Quebec's separation today. The reason why Quebec still exists, perhaps some of my Bloc colleagues will not agree with this vision of history, is that there were accommodations reached between Britain and Quebec right at the beginning, right after the conquest. This spirit of accommodation has been a characteristic of Canadian society ever since.

The other thing that makes all of us Canadian is the fact that for centuries we have had to accommodate our differences. Our most fundamental difference was language, and not just in Quebec, but in northern Ontario and Acadia. Nevertheless, that is what has sustained Quebec all those years.

We now come to Bill C-110 and the distinct society resolution. I feel these two things are very important moves. There is the spirit for separation in Quebec which has always been with us and will always be with us. There is nothing wrong with that but right now there has been a resurgence. There are more people in Quebec now than ever before who are afraid of losing their language and culture. We in the rest of Canada cannot afford to see that happen because so long as Quebec retains its language, its culture and its traditions, then the rest of Canada has to accommodate and make room for something that is an essential difference.

It makes us a society that is truly tolerant and truly generous. That is why the rest of the world sees us as the best country in the world in which to live. It is not because we speak English, not because we speak French, but because we tolerate one another and we have a spirit of generosity that goes back through the centuries.

I hope the people in Quebec are listening to this and understand that the movement toward separation is a movement that will hurt us all. It will hurt those who speak English as well as those who speak French.

Debate is good. It is always good for us to come to Parliament or anywhere in this country, examine our differences and come to understand one another once again. However, separation is not the answer. The movement with respect to Bill C-110 and the distinct society resolution are a form of reassurance from all the people of Canada that we need to stay together and respect one another.

[Bank Act, November 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in debate on Bill C-100. I am going to bring something a little different to this debate. I take my hon. colleague's comments very much to heart. This debate has been well motivated by the very best spirit of Parliament to try to bring all kinds of light to a very important piece of legislation before the House.

I have listened very carefully to the debate. We are dealing with the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions and the Canadian Deposit Insurance Corporation. I will confine my remarks primarily to the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions because this legislation is designed to enhance the protection of the assets of ordinary people. This is the kind of legislation that Parliament and the government should be all about. I believe it is exactly that.

Small people put their life savings into financial institutions which are regulated by the Government of Canada. We must at all costs ensure that their deposits are safe. This legislation builds on earlier legislation, primarily because we have seen some unfortunate incidents in the financial marketplace of late. I am thinking of the collapse of Confederation Life and the earlier difficulties with other institutions. Certainly the depositors and the investors in these organizations were paid back. Nevertheless, a question of confidence arose from these eventualities.

Bill C-100 is an effort to address this problem of confidence. In a nutshell the legislation gives a mandate to the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions to investigate, along with various other things.

I am very interested in this legislation because it is a model for what can be done in other sectors. It is a model for what can be done in the not for profit sector.

It is well known that I am an MP who has shown a great deal of interest in the regulation of charities and non-profit organizations, which currently are, basically, very poorly regulated now. They are controlled by a hodge-podge of legislation here and there, court precedents and that kind of thing. Yet the not for profit sector represents about $120 billion of revenue a year going in and out of these organizations.

On the other hand, deposits of around $600 million are covered by Bill C-100. We have comparable huge industries, one that is subject to very fine regulation now, one that does not have very much regulation.

I would like to go through Bill C-100 and put it up against what I would like to see happen with the not for profit sector.

First, Bill C-100 gives a mandate to the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. In effect, it lays out the rules. It says this organization can investigate and monitor all institutions that are in the business of taking deposits from ordinary citizens. We would like to see with the not for profit sector a charity commissioner with a similar mandate, which incidentally does not exist at this time.

Bill C-100 also adds something that is vitally important and very near and dear to my heart. It enhances disclosure. The public throughout Canada is demanding that institutions be more transparent than they have been hitherto. To give the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions the ability to track what is happening in deposit organizations Bill C-100 requires a higher level of disclosure.

For example, it requires all deposit institutions to disclose their balance sheets in much more enhanced detail than is defined by regulation. It requires the disclosure of executive salaries. That is a favourite issue with me because executive compensation is not a matter of privacy when dealing with the public trust. It is a way of determining whether the executives of an organization who have the public trust are acting in the public's best interest. In other words one of the most instant signals of trouble with an institution is a very high executive salary and very low results on the balance sheets.

Bill C-100 requires an enhanced level of disclosure of the assets and liabilities of deposit taking institutions. Some of my colleagues feel that is an invasion of the central government into the affairs of an organization. Indeed it may be a provincial organization such as the caisses populaires in Quebec.

Nevertheless if we are to know what is happening we need the details. It requires an enhanced monitoring of assets and liabilities. I can compare that with non-profit organizations and say that it would be an enormous step forward if the public had access to the details of how non-profit organizations are spending their money and what are their assets. Presently no such regime exists for non-profit organizations. As such, for charities it is very restrictive in its level of public disclosure.

Bill C-100, however, would give all this to the public so that everyone could see what is happening, including the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. This is the most important.

Bill C-100 defines the role of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions as his office monitors deposit taking organizations. There is a whole schedule of warning bells. Certain things happen. Certain things appear on the books. The Superintendent of Financial Institutions will ask questions. If further problems occur the questions will be more probing. They will go deeper and deeper. There is a whole schedule of early warning levels for the Superintendent of Financial Institutions.

The organization knows the benchmarks at each level, the benchmarks going down as it gets into trouble. It knows what to expect, what it has to give, and what is expected of it by the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. Bill C-100 lays out very clearly what will happen when there is a crisis and what are the steps if an organization is deemed to be in significant trouble, for example if its liabilities exceed its assets or that kind of thing.

I can compare with charities and non-profit organizations and say that is precisely what we want with charities and non-profit organizations that also have the public trust and are in effect chartered by the government. They ought to be able to convince the public that they are using the money wisely and well.

When it is determined that a deposit taking organization is in a sorry state financially, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions can move in to take over. Basically it will dismember the organization or sell it.

We need the same for the not for profit sector. Right now if a charity is deemed to be in trouble it is a painful and difficult

process to take it out of action no matter how extraordinary its failure is. In the case of not for profit organizations there is no real legislation to take them out of the picture at all if they have problems. We only find out about the problems when they get into such difficulty that it hits the news or if there is a criminal or extraordinary charge. Otherwise secrecy is the order of the day with respect to charities and non-profit organizations.

Bill C-100 applies transparency and a whole regime of what to do when organizations that have the public trust get into trouble. There is a series of regulations to look after the problem. I wish the revenue minister and the finance minister would take note of the structure and effectiveness of Bill C-100.

One problem of the not for profit sector is that it has been unregulated for many years. The problem of bringing in legislation to control it seems insuperable. However Bill C-100 is the model that could be used to set up a charity commissioner or a not for profit commissioner who would bring the entire $120 billion sector under regulation and into transparency so that public confidence in charities and not for profit organizations could be restored.

My comments will be in another direction temporarily. I listened with great attention to the debate on the bill in the House last Friday. I was struck by the comments of Bloc Quebecois and Reform Party members who tend to be opposed to the bill. At one point the Liberal member for Willowdale stood and with great passion complained that the opposition to the bill of the Bloc Quebecois, and to some degree the Reform Party, was as a result of their separatist leanings.

I listened with great attention to what I heard from the Bloc and the Reform Party and I did not hear separatism so much as I heard provincialism. I heard from the Bloc Quebecois and the Reform Party about the fundamental problem with Confederation. There is always a tension between the federal government in the central power and the provincial powers. The provinces are always looking for more power and saying: "You are intruding into our affairs". This is natural and normal aspect of Canada as we know it today. It is a pity that the Bloc Quebecois translates provincialism into separatism. Bill C-100 clearly illustrates why federalism works and why provincialism in this case should not be the order of the day.

I will explain myself. Certain aspects of our political life occur at a provincial or municipal level. At that level politicians are normally taken up by local needs, almost selfish needs. It is very difficult sometimes for local politicians to look at the grand scheme of things when they have local community and provincial concerns to look at. This was illustrated last week by a Reform Party motion dealing with the suggestion that the federal government should force municipalities to provide better sewage treatment rather than dumping effluent into the seas. It was a classic case of where it was easier for the municipality to use its taxes on things that matter to its people locally rather than to worry about the environmental aspects of a problem being caused to the country at large or the world at large.

So it is with financial institutions, with charities and non-profit organizations. The need for central regulation of charities and non-profit organizations is amply illustrated by the example of the Nanaimo Holding Society in British Columbia that is under investigation for suspicion of having diverted charity funds to the provincial NDP of British Columbia. Without commenting on where that investigation will go, it is the kind of reason we need arm's length regulation of public institutions with the public trust.

At the provincial level or the municipal level these organizations may be subject to undue political influence. If there is something like the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions that can look from afar at an organization and be out of reach of local politicians we are better guaranteed that the public trust is being served by the organization. The warning will be sounded by an organization that has no axe to grind or has no involvement in the institution.

The classic example was during the recent referendum when it was claimed that the caisse populaire was supporting the Canadian dollar. We learned from the caisse subsequently that it was not doing any such thing. Nor should it. It is a classic reason for needing an organization like the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. If undue influence were exerted by the local political power, be it the province or the municipality, control would be in an arm's length organization that exists outside the zone of political interference.

Quebec and the caisse benefit from federalism because of an organization like the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. The benefit is even greater because all deposit taking organizations are dependent on the rest of the country for the confidence the public has in them.

Let us just suppose that every banking institution, every deposit taking institution were separately administered in each province, as I suspect has been suggested by the Reform Party. We would not have the level of confidence in the institutions that we have when people in Quebec or British Columbia, for example, know that the institution is subject to the same rules of transparency, openness and honesty across the country from sea to sea. It does not matter whether the organization is in Quebec or in Nova Scotia. Because we have organizations like the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, Canadians from sea to sea can have confidence in their institutions.

Bill C-100 deserves the support of the entire House regardless of our individual viewpoints on centralized government or decentralized government. This legislation serves us all regardless of our political viewpoints. It serves the ordinary person.

I should like to discuss the bill at great length but I know my time is up. It is the kind of legislation which makes federalism work and of which I am proud as a member of the government.

[Members Of Parliament, November 24th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in support of Motion No. 39. I congratulate the member for Scarborough-Rouge River for having introduced the motion.

He touches on something even deeper than what he remarked on in his own speech. That is, while we all agree that judicial processes should be as transparent as possible, this is particularly important when it comes to order in council appointments.

One of the things he failed to touch on in his speech is what we are dealing with here are boards and tribunals of a quasi-judicial nature, which may have officers of the judicial body who are appointed by government. The motion is very important in this regard, for if you have a quasi-judicial body that consists of government appointees and you do not have a mechanism whereby the deliberations of that body can always be monitored by a

representative of the elected people or by the public in some way or another, then you have a very dangerous problem.

I looked at the Immigration Act where it describes the conditions for in camera proceedings. I also noted the remark by the member for Bourassa who said that only the refugee status hearings were the ones held in camera. I submit that the refugee status hearings are precisely those hearings where all the action takes place. This is where we measure whether or not the quasi-judicial body is doing its job. This is where we measure whether or not the people appearing before it should be granted refugee status.

When it comes to the role of the opposition and the role of all members of Parliament in all this, I would expect that opposition members and government members would be extremely interested in how a refugee board or a parole board was performing. This is exactly what we should be doing. The member for Scarborough-Rouge River has a very good point that at the very least if we cannot open these hearings to journalists and the public at large, a member of Parliament should be able to attend them freely.

This is no worse a level of entrusting confidentiality than we would to a minister, a priest or any other person who has a particular position of confidence and importance in the public eye. Who could be more important, if I may say, in the public's eye than someone elected to represent the people?

The question that follows is whether the elected member will hear something he or she should not hear. The member for Bourassa was citing examples where there might be descriptions of personal abuse. I expect members on all sides of the House would respect the reasonable confidences of the innocent people whose testimony they may hear.

On the other hand, members hear independently the performance of the judicial board. For example, it is very important in the interests of democracy to make sure that order in council appointments are not gross patronage. We want to know that the people appointed by the government are people of quality who can do the job. How can we do that unless a member of Parliament from either side sits in on the proceedings?

In the final analysis, the MP has an important role in all of this quite apart from checking the quality of the job done by the members of the tribunal or that justice has served the person appearing before the tribunal. The member of Parliament has the ultimate responsibility because he or she is the law maker. We are the law makers. We cannot make laws unless we can see clearly for ourselves in person that the laws are working. If there is any area of government whatsoever where the law maker, the member of Parliament, cannot go in and see whether the laws are working, then we have a very serious problem.

I congratulate the member for Scarborough-Rouge River for raising this matter because it is a very large and important issue. I would suggest to the members of the Bloc that they should consider this very carefully. They are always saying they believe in the parliamentary system, parliamentary democracy and the need for transparency, and I believe them. I would suggest they reconsider this motion and give it their full support.

[Bank Act, November 24th, 1995]

No, no.

[Supply, November 22nd, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Saint-Hubert for her excellent remarks. I appreciate the support she shows for the government in this debate.

I would like to ask her a question which pertains to her remarks about sovereignty, the role of the Bloc and the direction in which her party is going.

In the context of sovereignty and in the context of the motion before the House, in her attitude toward sovereignty, would she recommend that individuals born in Quebec who commit major crimes be incarcerated only in Quebec or should they be put in jails across the country? Is it a federal thing or a separatist thing for her, the incarceration of prisoners who are born in Quebec?

[Treatment Of Municipal Sewage, November 21st, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to speak to Motion M-425 because I want my Reform colleagues to know that I support it wholeheartedly. I am delighted indeed that the Reform Party has brought it forward.

I regret that my colleague from Mississauga West and I find ourselves on different sides of this debate. The reason I support this bill so wholeheartedly is that not only does it address a very serious problem and address it in a very responsible way, but it also addresses the problem of federalism versus regionalism. I find to my absolute delight that the Reform Party has put a motion on the floor that actually argues for a strong central government rather than regionalism, as that party tends to support generally.

I am very aware of the sewage problem that occurs in Victoria, where sewage treatment consists of building a longer pipe into the ocean so that the effluent does not come back to the beaches of Victoria. I am also aware that the United Kingdom is very angry right now because constantly on the beaches of the Hebrides and the Orkneys and the northern coast of Scotland are effluent, plastic materials, and garbage that can be identified as coming from Canada. This is absolutely an intolerable situation.

Why can we not rely on municipalities to spend the money to give the kinds of treatment facilities that are demanded by this motion? The answer is that municipalities are driven by local interests. Often they have priorities that are very local and are unwilling to support things that actually pertain to society at large and to our global environment. In other words, if it is not in one's own local backyard then it is easier to spend elsewhere.

We have a situation where regional interests cannot look after the problem and we must look to a strong federal government to provide the money and the leadership to attack this problem. I regret absolutely that we do not have in the Constitution some provision that says the federal government would have the power to prevent Victoria from simply dumping sewage into the sea.

Not only is this motion well taken, but it is ironic, because it shows that the third party-and I have great admiration for the third party on certain issues-supports the kind of concept that we Liberals have when we see a strong central government showing leadership in many ways.

I have to add that implicit in this motion is the suggestion that the federal government should have the necessary funds to provide minimum sewage treatment in various municipalities across the land.

In conclusion, I do not support the Bloc amendment because that is a regional amendment, but I want the Reform Party to know, especially the member for Comox-Alberni, that this is a very fine motion. I congratulate them on bringing it before the House.

[Department Of Human Resources Development Act, November 21st, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I was not here for the first vote. I would like to be recorded as voting with the government on this amendment.

(The House divided on the amendment, which was negatived on the following division:)

[Supply, November 21st, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on his remarks which I listened to with great interest.

I want him to know I have quite a bit of sympathy for his comments on the closing of Collège Saint-Jean. It is indeed a beautiful military college with a great history and tradition. I want to remind him that the government in closing Saint-Jean also closed Royal Roads in British Columbia. A lot of my family live in Victoria and I know Royal Roads very well. It was a very fine military college with a great tradition.

All Canadians feel pain when cost cutting affects jobs and the people of our regions. I sympathize with the Bloc member and all Bloc members when they bring that kind of position forward in the House. However I would submit to my hon. colleague that the government did approach this matter, certainly in the closing of the colleges over which it did have control with great equality of spirit.

Is the hon. member familiar with Royal Roads? Can he speak with the same passion about this college near Victoria as he does with Collège Saint-Jean? Does he not agree that however unfortunate it was to close Collège Saint-Jean and Royal Roads given that we had more college space than we needed in these cost cutting times, the government really acted very responsibly and with a sense of fairness?

[Points Of Order, October 17th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I draw to the attention of the House the fact that Bill C-64, an act respecting employment equity, on which we are to vote tonight has passed through the House from report stage to the conclusion of third reading in five consecutive sitting days. This is as a result of a new procedure whereby the bill went to a committee after first reading.

However I also draw to the attention of the House that the new procedure, which was instituted for the very best reasons, has made it impossible for some MPs like myself who have serious reservations about the bill at report stage to have our reservations answered by bringing witnesses to committee, because the committee no longer sits after report stage reading.

Consequently the speed with which the bill has gone through the House presents a problem for MPs who would like to see all legislation going through the House given full and due consideration so that they know how to vote in the most informed way possible.