Michel Bellehumeur

[Calgary Declaration, May 4th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs says that the unique character referred to in the Calgary declaration is the same thing as the distinct society of the Meech Lake accord. Yet the premiers are playing down this so-called unique character, saying that it does not confer any special status on Quebec.

Would the minister who calls himself the master of clarification explain this major contradiction to us?

[Request For Emergency Debate, April 30th, 1998]

Tell that to those who are dying.

[Young Offenders Act, April 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, in an effort to calm the members of the Reform Party, the Minister of Justice is prepared to ignore the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights on the matter of the Young Offenders Act and go so far as to propose publicly identifying young people aged 16 and 17 who have had run-ins with the law.

Will the Minister of Justice acknowledge that bowing to western intolerance and proposing to publicly identify young offenders do not serve the purposes of the law and do not help in rehabilitation, which she claims to support?

[Victims Of Crime, April 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, given that Quebec already has a crime victims compensation office, will the minister undertake to include in her proposals the possibility for the provinces to opt out of her national plan with full financial compensation?

[Victims Of Crime, April 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, we learned this week at the Standing Committee on Justice that the minister plans to establish a national office for victims of crime.

Does the minister realize that, with such a plan, she is about to willingly create duplication and overlap with an organization which is already performing, in Quebec, a function similar to that of the national office she plans to set up?

[Standing Orders And Procedure, April 21st, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, today's Order Paper provides that we should look at the Standing Orders and procedure of the House and its committees.

This is, in fact, a very important topic, given the government machinery and the legal and financial issues we look at here. I think it is extremely important that parliamentarians be able to say what they think about what is going on in the House, and especially outside it, in committee.

What I find unacceptable, however, is that no follow-up has been announced. Members talk, they talk for the sake of talking here, but I would love to see the government propose substantial amendments with respect to what goes on in the Parliament of Canada.

Some of the things that go on here are pretty strange. One example is how committees operate. Since I have only 10 minutes to speak, I would like to focus more specifically on the issue of committees.

Since 1993, I have had the opportunity to sit on various committees, including the Standing Committee on Justice, the Standing Committee on Finance, and the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. Each time, the drill is pretty much the same.

What is most disgraceful is that, when we look at committee minutes, we see that, when the Conservatives were in power, the Liberals made remarks about these committees, particularly about the way they operated. They were critical of the way committees operated, of the time allowed the opposition, of the way witnesses were questioned, and so on.

Now that the Liberals are on the other side of the House, they behave exactly the same way, and it is all right. This is the way it is supposed to be. Personally, I believe it should not be so.

Currently, the government has too much influence on directives and the way committees work. I believe it is bad, because MPs do not feel valued when doing very important work in committee, where they can have direct access to ministers and effect changes. This is the way it should be in a perfect world, but in actual fact this is not the case.

Also, I am taking this opportunity, the first I have had in the House, to draw the attention of the Chair to the issue of quorum and members who are late for committee sittings. I raised the issue this morning in committee because this happens all too often. Again this morning we had to wait for Liberal members who were late. A committee which was supposed to start at 9 o'clock started at 9.25 a.m.

As a Bloc Quebecois member from a riding in Quebec I have better things to do than wait for Liberals so we can have a quorum in committee. I know I am digressing a bit, but if we want to improve the way the House operates, government members should at least have the decency to arrive on time, especially when they have received proper notice.

This being said, I will return to the topic at hand, which is the recognition of the work done by committee members, among other things. Even though they do not talk about it any more—and I can understand why—the Liberals opposite will certainly remember the 1993 red book, which contained a whole chapter on giving MPs a greater role in the House and in committee.

In reality these red book promises were also broken. Do you know what is most frustrating for an MP who does his job as a committee member? I could give you several examples, but I will talk about a specific bill, the firearms bill.

The Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights heard numerous experts and witnesses, worked hard and travelled across the country. Individual committee members travelled to various municipalities and regions to consult local people. We worked very hard to improve the bill. At the time, the Bloc Quebecois was the official opposition. This took place during the 35th Parliament, but I could also talk about the 36th Parliament. In this case, however, it was so obvious as to be a good example, in my opinion. The Bloc Quebecois worked like mad to propose a series of amendments to the government. During the hearings, which lasted not two or three days but entire weeks, the justice committee heard witnesses and experts of all kinds.

When the time came to adopt this bill clause by clause and for the official opposition, which was the Bloc Quebecois at that time, to submit its amendments, what met our eyes on the other side? Liberals I had never seen hide nor hair of in the justice committee, who had no clue what they were doing there themselves.

They had been given a very precise mandate, however, which was to help defeat every opposition amendment, and to get the bill through without any changes. That bill, on firearms, was highly controversial in all Canadian provinces, Quebec included. The Minister of Justice of the day appeared before the committee and we reached agreement on a point or two.

But as for the rest, the 45 amendments proposed by the Bloc Quebecois, only two or three were accepted, not during the committee examination but in negotiations in the parliamentary corridors. The Liberals who came just to help push the bill through knew nothing about these negotiations.

This is most deplorable, if one wants to make the work of members more relevant. Members are not here just to say yes or no, or to do what a minister tells them to.

Speaking of ministers, another thing that is rather frustrating to committee members is what happens when the minister responsible for this or that department comes to visit. Just yesterday, we had the Minister of Justice come to the Committee on Justice and Human Rights to debate her department's budget. What was involved was not $200,000 but millions. For the Supreme Court alone, the budget is $14 million.

The minister comes, grants us a mere two hours, and we are supposed to be grateful. There we are, 15 or 16 MPs with some fairly precise rules to follow, and very few concrete answers forthcoming from the minister.

What is more, the minister can take up half of the time allocated to us, when we still have a question or two to ask her. We ask her to come back, but it is not known when she will be able to do so. The Minister of Justice is a busy woman, and all the other ministers are equally busy.

I see that my time is almost up, but I think that if we want to enhance the contribution made here by members while improving the parliamentary system, it is time the government took a good hard look at this issue.

I would have liked to say a few words about references made by this House in the past, like the last one, which concerned the Canadian flag. In that case, which was referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, the decision made in this place had already been concocted by the Liberals and the Reformers outside this House to stifle the matter as quickly as possible. And then, to make themselves look good, they referred the matter to the committee, leaving the final decision up to members.

It does not work that way. There are things going on behind the scenes that the public does not see. To ensure that democracy is protected, time has come for government members opposite to take their responsibilities and perhaps to strike a real committee to look into this whole issue and improve the Canadian democratic system.

[Rcmp, April 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Solicitor General.

Yesterday we learned from a television report that confidential information on dozens of citizens was available to Canadian insurance companies from the main RCMP computer.

Will the Solicitor General confirm this disturbing news, and if so, what is his explanation for it?

[Justice, March 31st, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, thanks to the leniency of the Minister of Justice, Joseph Lagana, Jean Lamarche, René Rodrigue, Domenico Tozzi and Raymond Boulanger now belong to the quick release club.

These gentlemen are all important drug dealers and money launderers who have been released after serving only one-sixth of their sentence.

What is the minister waiting for to propose passage of a money laundering bill, as the Bloc Quebecois has constantly been demanding, one goal being to prohibit any release of these major criminals until they have served their full sentence?

[Judges Act, March 30th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I listened attentively to the member's remarks. While I do not necessarily share all her opinions, including those on the Young Offenders Act and the severity of sentences imposed by the courts, on the whole, as regards Bill C-37, we are not far apart in our understanding of it and on the government's obligations regarding decisions by the Supreme Court.

On September 18, 1997, the Supreme Court of Canada handed down an important decision. It is the reason we have Bill C-37 before us now. I will quote a passage from the decision I consider very important, and then I will ask her a question.

The justices said the following “However, to avoid the possibility of, or the appearance of, political interference through economic manipulation, a body, such as a commission, must be interposed between the judiciary and the other branches of government. The constitutional function of this body would be to depoliticize the process of determining changes to or freezes in judicial remuneration”.

My question to the member is quite simple, and I am sure she shares my position on this. Could she tell us what she thinks, in the light of the statement by the Supreme Court justices, of the way judges are appointed to the Supreme Court, to federal courts and to superior courts? Does she not believe that, if we are to depoliticize the process and prevent all economic manipulation, there has to be a commission?

Would it not be more natural or better if the government opposite introduced a bill to set up a sort of committee, commission or whatever for the appointment of justices? Would this serve to prevent all political interference, all political manipulation, as it was put by a certain lawyer with a high international profile in the Supreme Court reference?

Would justice not be better served if the government listened to the arguments put forward by the opposition on a number of occasions? I think the Reform Party also has a platform or arguments on the appointment of judges to superior courts under federal jurisdiction.

[Judges Act, March 30th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Bourassa is partly right. The Liberals are not operating at all like the Conservatives. They are worse.

Never did the Conservative government—and I am not a Conservative, I have no ties to this party—never did it appoint during proceedings two judges, who are deciding on the reference regarding Quebec's right to secede. This Liberal government, for considerations known only to the Prime Minister, appointed two judges during the course of proceedings. No Conservative or other government has ever done such a thing.

I will not get into the criteria that might have guided the Prime Minister in making these two appointments. That is inadmissible. I think the member made this comment without really thinking about what he was saying and without considering the history of the Liberal Party of Canada.

That said, if I were to give the Minister of Justice some advice, if she appears concerned about the independence of the judiciary and especially her image, she should introduce a bill in this House to amend the process for appointing justices to the supreme court.

I think there is something much more important than the pay or benefits of justices and that is the principle of the source of our confidence in judges—their training—which is vital in a democratic system of justice. I believe very sincerely that the Minister of Justice should listen to these comments and particularly to the proposals of the Bloc Quebecois on appointments to the judiciary.

Today, we would perhaps have a much fairer system, as far as the judges of the Supreme Court of Canada among others were concerned, if the Liberal government had taken advantage of the two opportunities it had to put in place a transparent process for appointing these judges. It preferred, as it often does, or to put it more accurately, always does, to play politics. It went looking for candidates among the ranks of the Liberal Party. Of course, they were all perfectly qualified to be supreme court judges, I am not suggesting otherwise. I have great respect for the Supreme Court of Canada.

I think, however, that it would have helped the Supreme Court of Canada tremendously, and especially those selected by the Prime Minister for these positions, to have had a much more open system of appointment, in which the House or a parliamentary committee could have taken part.

We made several suggestions. The government has often told us, both when we were in the official opposition and today in our role as the third party, that we never make suggestions and that we are not constructive. Yet, on more than one occasion, we made some very important suggestions as to how judges should be appointed that even had the support of eminent jurists in Quebec and in Canada.

Many journalists backed up our suggestions for an appointment system, and, at her earliest opportunity, the minister should introduce a bill for making the judicial appointment process as transparent as possible.

That having been said, we will be voting against Bill C-37. We will do so not because we oppose the often fantastic and very professional work that judges do, but out of a concern for equity, solidarity, greater fairness for all. I do not think that today is the time to give a raise to judges, either judges of the superior court, or judges reporting to the National Assembly or the provincial legislatures, when, the premier, ministers and members of the National Assembly and public servants saw their salaries cut.

Given that the bill has to do, in large part, with this issue, the House will understand that we will be voting against Bill C-37. We call on the Minister of Justice to go back to the drawing board, to be more realistic, and to realize that the public is against any bill that would increase judges' salaries.