Steve Mahoney

[Supply, March 15th, 1999]

There is a point of order over there. He does not like the amount of his paycheque, I guess.

[Supply, March 15th, 1999]

Maybe it is a paycheque. That is a bonus, and only in Canada would we be stupid enough to give paycheques to people who want to destroy the country. It is absolutely amazing.

[Supply, March 15th, 1999]

The member says it is the Bloc. It is worse than that. Every day its raison d'être, its reason for coming to work, is to destroy Canada.

[Supply, March 15th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I feel like I have been watching a ping-pong match and wondering who the players are because we have a member of the Conservative Party saying this is not about common currency. We have a member of the Reform Party saying the Canadian public does not want to have this debate but he thinks it should go to a committee anyway.

It is really quite bizarre but it has helped me today in one way. I finally discovered what the united alternative is. I see the member for York South—Weston who would be their leader. Let me tell the member what he will be leading. He will be the Conservatives and the Reformers, and the bed will be awfully crowded because it will be full of separatists. It is truly mind boggling. That is what we are hearing.

We should take this debate today and play it back for the members opposite just to see how much they have gone from here to there during today's debate. It is quite remarkable. The member for Saint John must be shaking her head. She is coming out to give some leadership to her caucus colleague, to say “you didn't really say we were going to support this”. She is probably having apoplectic attacks over the fact that someone in her caucus has committed her caucus to vote in favour of this.

Why would that bother a true Canadian? My colleague from Wentworth—Burlington hit the nail on the head. For someone else to suggest there may be a hidden agenda is bizarre. What is the driving force behind the Bloc every day?

[Young Offenders Act, March 15th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, there are a couple of rather interesting points.

First, I find myself rising today to speak in support of a bill, principles and comments put forward by a member of the Reform Party. For me, that is quite an unusual experience to have and I admit that openly.

Then I see what just happened. I see the politics of the Young Offenders Act which, until this previous attempt to involve politics, was going in the right direction. The member asked for unanimous consent when we have not even finished the first hour of the three hours of debate which have been allocated to this worthwhile bill. I am sure the member who did that will be sending out a press release saying is it not awful the government will not allow this bill to go through. I thought for a moment we actually had a chance to get along, yet I see the opportunism taking place. I just had to comment on that.

I want to go back and try to get along on this bill for a couple of reasons; I think it is important and the government has recognized in the new legislation that the issue is very significant. Also, the bill comes clearly from the heart of a member of this place and his family who have had to suffer the worst possible experience that any parent could ever imagine. He has come before this place and has put a bill forward that might prevent other families from having the same experience.

I suppose it could be seen as being condescending for members on this side of the House to congratulate the member, but I believe that in this case, and hopefully in many more cases, there are reasons we should understand the passion someone brings to this place. We should understand that someone has had to go through a terrible experience and is now trying to do something about it.

I want to quote from the letter sent to all of us by the hon. member for Surrey North asking us to support his bill. He states:

The impetus for this bill comes from personal experience. Some of you may be aware that my son, Jesse, was murdered by a young offender in 1992. What you may not know is that his killer was free in the community on a section 7.1 undertaking, one condition of which was a dusk to dawn curfew. The murder occurred at midnight.

<—obviously in violation of that curfew. The member goes on to say:

In my opinion, the person who signed that undertaking willfully failed in his responsibility to supervise. My son, my family, paid the price.

Frankly, the point the member has made is one of the more thoughtful positions I have heard in this place. The supervising parent of the now convicted murderer who is doing I believe 25 years at the present time—I can be corrected, but he is in jail—made an undertaking to supervise the individual. The member clearly said that knowing that the young offender was violating the terms of that undertaking and the terms of the parole, had the parent made a phone call to the police, there is a possibility, one never knows but there is a possibility, that the authorities could have taken some action. That is so critical in this.

The Minister of Justice has recognized the significance of this kind of an amendment. I say to the member that if for some reason he has heard some members say that they are not going to vote in favour of his bill, one member earlier said because it was redundant and would be in the new legislation, I too would share his concern that we do not delay things too long to make this new amendment reality.

By introducing Bill C-68 dealing with young offenders, the government is saying that it wants to see this implemented. Hopefully the opposition, for a miraculous moment or a slight change, will co-operate with the government so that we can fast track the new bill dealing with young offenders. Why am I skeptical that that will not happen?

The politics of the Young Offenders Act that are played out by the extreme right wing make it very difficult to put in place thoughtful amendments such as the one the member is putting forth today.

We hear about boot camps being the solution. I remember pre-1995 and knocking on doors during the provincial election campaign. As I campaigned, a lot of people said that they really liked the idea of boot camps and getting these guys into some kind of a disciplinary situation where they would have to wear uniforms and perform military service. People thought that was the solution.

I do not say this with reference to the case that impacted on the family of the member for Surrey North, but the real tragedy in many cases with young offenders is that there are parenting problems. There is a lack of direction. There is a lack of a role model. There is a lack of discipline. There is a lack of love. Often that is the case. Young offenders too often come from broken families, from poverty, from the bad part of town if you will. Sometimes they get in with the wrong group. Drugs may be involved.

For us to adopt the rhetoric we hear so often from the Reform Party, that we are not hard enough on 10 year olds is the latest one with regard to the new bill, would be unfortunate. I wish more members opposite would learn from the experience of the member for Surrey North. None of us can really understand the pain of that, but let us learn from it. The member has put forward a very thoughtful solution to a very serious problem.

It is also important that we get the message through to the media that this does not mean a parent is suddenly going to pay the price for a young person's crime. Although there are members opposite who I am quite sure would agree with that sentiment. I know. I have heard speeches by members in this place and in the Ontario legislature where the sole solution to reducing youth crime was to simply find a way to make the parent pay the price.

I had a call very recently from a constituent who suggested we should go further, that we should make school teachers pay the price if the student in their classroom committed a crime. Where do these kinds of half-baked ideas come from? They are destructive. The real long term solution to dealing with youth crime is to reintegrate and help these people.

I am reminded of a time I spent on the licence appeal board when I was a municipal councillor. It pales in comparison to the kinds of issues we are talking about. We have to realize that 87% of the crimes committed by young people are not violent crimes. Thirteen percent is an enormously high figure in my view and something we cannot ignore, but the vast majority of crimes do not fall into that category.

I would like to go back to my example because it very much shaped my thinking on justice issues. We were a three person body that had to sit in a judicial format. It was not like a council meeting where we could leave the room. We heard about a very high profile case in the community that generated a petition for the return of capital punishment.

Because we had to get into the details, we were able to understand that without a doubt there was a tragedy but there was also tremendous remorse. A serious problem had occurred to another family and it totally changed the position of the members on that committee. Justice issues and violence issues are not simple.

Let me once again commend the member for Surrey North for his doggedness and dedication in memory of his son. He does his son's memory proud. I congratulate him for bringing this forward. He and his family can take credit for this being part of the new legislation.

[International Fund For Animal Welfare, March 9th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the International Fund for Animal Welfare has paid a retirement settlement of $2.5 million to its founder Brian Davies.

I wonder what all those people whose way of life and livelihood he and this group destroyed think of that. While he retires in the lap of luxury, they live in poverty. This group led by Davies destroyed the sealing industry in Newfoundland and Labrador, which in turn led to the destruction of the caplin and cod fishery. They deny it. But the truth is, seals eat fish.

And now a $2.5 million golden handshake. Who would have guessed that IFAW was nothing more than a money making retirement fund for its founder. Probably not the donors; certainly not the taxpayers; and not the men, women and children who had their way of life destroyed.

What a shameful display of greed and betrayal.

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, March 8th, 1999]

Grandparented, I stand corrected by the member for Peterborough. I thank him very much. The point of the matter is the minister, the committee and the staff have taken care to make sure that the actions taken do not reflect negatively on the industry. For every action the government takes clearly there is reaction.

Let us assume that the split-run magazines come in. It is very confusing for my constituents who have called. There have not been a lot, but basically they have called to say that we cannot let the Americans put us out of business. I have had none of the types of calls the Reform Party has referred to in this area.

I want to refer to a hypothetical scenario. If we do not act and there is no Bill C-55 and all of a sudden I see the critic standing in his place during question period demanding to know what the heritage minister will do to protect the $400 million in trade and to protect the 7,000 jobs, I can just hear the outrage.

If we were to do nothing in this area, I suspect Reformers would simply, as they often do, switch principles and go at it from the other side. What do we hear but cries of outrage when we hear about the potential for or the fear of selling water to the United States. We hear all kinds of people getting upset and saying tell them it is not so, that we have to protect Canadian resources, that we cannot cave in to the Americans, and let them solve their own problems. On the other hand they say the Americans will beat us up, punch us in the nose with some trade sanctions and we will have to bow down to them.

I tried to come up with an analogy that made some sense in relation to protecting our cultural industries. I think people will understand that we see the tremendous success in the entertainment and the media industries of Canadians around the world.

In the recent music awards something like seven of the top ten nominations were Canadians, people like Shania Twain and Céline Dion. How did that happen? How is it that all of a sudden we have names like those ones, as well as Michael J. Fox and the late John Candy. One of the great successful music groups in Europe right now happens to be a group called the Bare Naked Ladies. I was talking to my brother-in-law the other day. He said they were playing to packed houses. Other Canadian talent is the Tragically Hip and James Cameron, the director of Titanic . The list goes on and on.

Gone are the days when the only two internationally known Canadian stars were Paul Anka and Robert Goulet, singing a medley of his hits. Why is it that we see Canadians succeeding? I think it is because they are tremendously talented people, but I also think it is because the nation through successive governments over the years has recognized the need to protect and ensure Canadian content in print, on the airwaves and in all aspects of entertainment and media.

A country of 30 million people is producing some of the top talent in the entire world and is exporting our cultural capabilities around the world. It truly is an amazing success story. This is frankly no different. We are ensuring the protection of this industry with the bill.

Reform is simply opposing it to be obstreperous. I guarantee if we did not do this it would take the other approach entirely.

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, March 8th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to hear some of the justification that members opposite seem to be trying to put forward to justify why they are actually voting against an industry that, by the member's own admission, generates $400 million in revenue. They trivialize that. They do not seem to think that is important.

As well, the industry employs over 7,000 people.

We have also heard the argument that somehow Bill C-55 is against freedom of speech.

I will deal with the first issue, the accusations and comments about closure, that somehow this government in a heavy-handed way is shutting down debate.

The previous speaker stated that there are 21 clauses in this bill and then went on to say that his critic had put forward 21 amendments which would basically cancel out each one of the clauses.

Does that sound like an attempt to be constructive? Does that sound like they are putting forward alternative suggestions? There are 21 clauses and 21 amendments which are contrary to the entire intent of the bill. It is clearly nothing more than an attempt by the Reform Party to filibuster, to try to stall instead of allowing for debate to take place.

I will give the House an example. This is a quote directly from the government House leader in talking about Reform: “Do they think this is serious debate or is it stalling?” He went on to say: “I think most Canadians would agree that 50 speeches and to still be on clause 1 constitutes stalling”.

Quite clearly they are not interested in getting into why the Canadian parliament is at the point where it is actually passing a law that would restrict the open flow of advertising. Why would we want to do that?

They throw up the threat that the United States is going to retaliate, as if we should just tuck our nationalistic tails between our legs and go home. In fact, they make the comment in a press clipping, saying that Liberals want Reform to roll over in its opposition to this bill. What in essence we are hearing from the opposition is that they want the Canadian government, and by extension the Canadian nation, to roll over to the Americans.

The member said one thing that is accurate. We have the longest undefended border in the world. It is a free border, with free crossings. We have a relationship in trade, to the tune of a billion dollars a day. We have a relationship in terms of tourism. How many Canadians own property in the United States? We have an excellent relationship with them. But are we just to turn around and say that we do not care that what they are doing is in our opinion illegal activity that is damaging an industry? Would we tolerate it for any other industry?

I would suggest that if the fear that is being promulgated by the Reform Party were to come true and the United States were to put a tariff or some kind of a sanction on steel products, clearly that would be against the North American Free Trade Agreement.

There are mechanisms, solutions and ways of dealing with the situation. They cannot simply violate that agreement. This bill does not violate the NAFTA. I do not know how many times we have to say it.

It is somewhat disturbing to me to hear the false impressions that are put forward in question period and in debate. They are impressions that when researched are simply not backed up by the facts.

I can give an example. If a foreign publication is operating in this country for over one year it will not be impacted by the bill. Canadian advertisers are not impacted by the bill. A case in point would be Reader's Digest , which is currently about 75% Canadian owned. There is no negative impact on Reader's Digest . Time Magazine is grandfathered by the bill.

[The Late Joe Dimaggio, March 8th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, from time to time an individual comes along who people admire all around the world, a person who embodies class, hard work, dignity and dedication, a person who is a role model for millions.

Such a person was Joe DiMaggio who died this morning at age 84. Joltin Joe led his beloved Yankees to nine world series titles in 13 years.

Canadians can see a similarity to some of our own heroes like Jean Béliveau and Gordie Howe. The Yankee Clipper, like Howe and Belliveau, starred in another era but his name and reputation are legendary.

Long before the Blue Jays or the Expos, the Yankees and Joe DiMaggio were loved by millions of Americans and Canadians. America has lost a true hero and we finally know the answer to that musical question “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio”. He has gone to rest. May he rest in peace.

[Points Of Order, March 4th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I thought my point of order was a point of privilege as well. The member for Calgary—Nose Hill actually attributed a quote to me during question period that I did not make at any time.

The member said that about a year ago the member for Mississauga West made a statement with regard to this government's tax policy. I did not and I would ask the member to correct the record.