Lost his last election, in 2000, with 39% of the vote.
National Library Act May 27th, 1994
Mr. Chairman, I do not know if the same problem exists in other provinces but, in the specific case of the Bibliothèque nationale du Québec and the National Library of Canada, will the parliamentary secretary provide a precise answer to the hon. member for Rimouski-Témiscouata regarding the issue of double book depositing in two libraries, which also involves a double deposit of money? Will the Secretary of State provide a clear answer regarding this issue?
National Library Act May 27th, 1994
Mr. Chairman, I do not know if appropriate attention was given earlier to the Official Opposition's answer, but I want to point out the financial burden which will be imposed on the cultural world because of this double deposit requirement.
The secretary of state said that discussions had taken place between the National Library of Canada and the Bibliothèque nationale du Québec. Therefore, I want to ask her if the issue of double deposit, both in terms of books and related money, has been discussed and if the upcoming regulations will take that additional economic burden into account.
This is my first question. With your authorization, Mr. Speaker, I will raise other issues as well. I would like to hear the secretary of state on this.
National Library Act May 27th, 1994
Mr. Speaker, Bill C-26 entitled an Act to amend the National Library Act proposes to update the provisions in the legislation governing the legal deposit of books with the National Library of Canada.
Consultations with several groups affected by the legislation have led us to conclude that overall, publishers are almost unanimous in recognizing the validity of the legal deposit process.
Furthermore, almost all praised the positive relationship that generally exists between publishers and the National Library of Canada. Finally, all of them acknowledged that a country must take the necessary measures to safeguard its collective memory.
Legal deposit is an important tool, one that ensures the preservation of Canada's heritage and ensures that taxpayers have access to it. Under the current act, a Canadian publisher must send a copy of any book published to the National Library, when the retail value of the book exceeds $50. The National Library of Canada may acquire, at its own discretion, a second copy using money from its purchase fund.
According to our sources, the National Library would have to spend roughly $700,000 each year to acquire second copies of books. Like most government agencies and Crown corporations, the National Library of Canada must operate on a tight budget and it no longer has the financial means to purchase second copies.
As for the crux of the matter, this bill would require publishers to deposit with the National Library two copies of any book published in Canada, regardless of the retail value of the book. Obviously, in this context, "book" is taken in the broad sense of the word. In the current act, a book is defined as follows: "library matter of every kind, nature and description and includes any document, paper, record, tape or other thing published by a publisher, on or in which information is written, recorded, stored or reproduced".
The second amendment concerns the fines that apply when the legislation is contravened. The bill proposes to increase the maximum fine payable from $150 to $25,000, in the case of a corporation, and to $2,000, in the case of an individual.
The office of the critic for National Heritage consulted a number of publishers and I would like to share with you today some of the comments that were made as part of this consultation process.
The government could take the suggestions they made and concerns they expressed at that time into consideration in making the related regulations. Incidentally, I deplore that these regulations could not be tabled at the same time as the bill. They are crucial, in the case of art books among others, but I will come back to that later.
The publishers whom the office of the hon. member for Rimouski-Témiscouata spoke to pointed out of course, as I indicated earlier, the need to be involved in the creation of a collective memory. They also described the statutory requirement under Bill C-26 to deposit two copies of a book instead of one, no matter what the retail price is, as an additional financial
burden on the publishing industry. I repeat: "an additional financial burden on the industry".
Furthermore, this requirement will be particularly demanding on Quebec publishers who already send two copies of their books to the Bibliothèque nationale du Québec and will now have to send two copies of all their publications, whatever their retail value, to the National Library of Canada. The hon. secretary of state referred earlier to consultations between the two libraries. The government's attention should be called to this duplication.
Based on the information provided to us in a departmental briefing session, the National Library of Canada is planning to save $400,000 in so doing. The government is transferring this financial burden onto an industry it is already depriving of substantial revenues through cuts in other programs.
The government could have been more imaginative and looked for an approach that would have allowed publishers to be compensated for the new requirement to deposit two copies of all their publications with the National Library of Canada. The government could have considered, for example, giving them a tax credit equal to the retail price of publications sent to the National Library of Canada. This would have covered the losses incurred by publishers as a result of this bill.
I stress that it is never too late to do some good and that the Minister of Canadian Heritage can still review this measure and have it implemented in the best interest of the industry he claims to be protecting.
One word about art books. These books can be sold for thousands of dollars. I have been informed that their average sales price is $2,000 in Quebec. The number of copies printed is therefore limited. Some of them require the co-operation of master binders, poets and lithographers and are so elaborate that they are referred to as luxury books. For these craftsmen, the legislation is costly, and I hope that the Canadian regulations will take this reality into account.
When the Quebec government reviewed the legal deposit legislation, it chose to restrict the two-copy deposit requirement to books whose total value does not exceed $250. Publishers of books worth more than $5,000 are not required to deposit them at the Quebec national library. That is why we are very disappointed that the regulations accompanying this bill have not been tabled today, thus preventing us from assessing, with full knowledge of the facts, the true extent of this bill.
Microfilm producers are particularly concerned. Production costs of microfilms, weeklies and dailies are high and buyers are few. I have been told that a micropublisher sells two or three copies of his work and that the National Library of Canada used to buy microfilms. From now on, micropublishers will have to provide two free copies of their work for the National Library of Canada and another two copies for the Quebec library.
When one sells one copy of a microfilm and gives two away, it is understandable that the Canadian microfilm society denounces Bill C-26 as a disaster.
In its May 20 letter to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, the society wrote: "We want micropublishers to be totally exempted from the legal deposit requirement. Without such an exemption, we will be forced to completely stop microfilming weeklies and dailies and selling the resulting reels of positive prints."
As you can see, this observation and this appeal are very, very serious. Since the regulations are unknown, I would hope that the minister will note the micropublishers' concerns, especially since the heritage minister is well placed to know because the Canadian Microfilm Corporation is now doing very important heritage work. This corporation is the one that microfilms the Courrier de Laval ; the first eleven years of that paper were not microfilmed and were lost in a fire. Without appropriate regulations, all of the Courrier de Laval and our weeklies will disappear from our collective cultural memory because they will not be microfilmed.
On another topic, the government could also have taken the opportunity to combine in one place the documents to be filled in for legal deposit. In the consultations undertaken by the office of the member for Rimouski-Témiscouata, it was mentioned more than once that what irritates publishers is not so much legal deposit in itself but having to complete various forms for legal deposit in Quebec and in Canada and additional forms for copyright and publication notices, to name only these. So I leave this suggestion for the minister to work on and remind him that if he acts on it, he will have the co-operation of the industry, which is fed up with bureaucratic red tape.
I cannot conclude these few remarks without mentioning duplication.
As you probably know, in 1967, Quebec passed a law governing the legal deposit of all Quebec works, and rightly so, since culture is essential and is what defines us.
It seems obvious to me that the federal government should seek to conclude an agreement with the Government of Quebec to turn over to the Quebec National Library the management of all documents collected by the National Library of Canada under the legal deposit provisions. This would be a good way to manage public funds.
Furthermore, such an agreement could include tranferring to Quebec everything from Quebec that the National Library of Canada has acquired over the years. By investing $2.5 million to buy documents in Canada, the federal government is appropriating archives that were made in Quebec and bringing them to Ottawa. I think it is logical for these documentary materials,
which will be used mainly by Quebecers, to stay in Quebec so that they are available in French.
I think that such simple measures would help taxpayers regain confidence in their institutions and show that we take taxpayers' interests to heart and organize for maximum efficiency.
Non-Confidence Motions May 25th, 1994
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate on the motion standing before us which reads as follows:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should permit Members of the House of Commons to fully represent their constituents' views on the government's legislative program and spending plans by adopting the position that the defeat of any government measure, including a spending measure, shall not automatically mean the defeat of the government unless followed by the adoption of a formal motion.
Mr. Speaker, the votable motion of the hon. member for Mission-Coquitlam suggests that members will be called upon to speak on the matter of confidence and thence, on the question of free votes.
Moreover, I already rose to speak on the matter in conjunction with the debate on free votes and in keeping with what I said, I would like to make two observations at the outset. When I read the text, two things caught my attention and left me with some serious doubts as to the relevance of this motion.
The motion starts off by saying that the government should permit Members of the House to fully represent their constituents' views. One has to wonder why a member would not now be representing the interests of his constituents. What the motion is really saying is that a member who does not vote according to the party line is not representing the interests of his constituents.
If we follow this logic, we can only conclude, first, that the election platforms of political parties do not have universal support and, second, that constituent views vary from one riding to the next.
This view of political reality is absurd and purely fictional. Let us not forget that political party platforms are aimed at getting as many voters as possible to embrace the same ideology and to share the same social, economic and political vision of community organization, be it municipal or regional.
It should also be noted that this perception of reality negates regional realities. For example, the electorate who voted for the Bloc Quebecois represents a regional entity that shares a certain geopolitical vision of that part of North America known as Quebec. How can a reality such as this be denied?
The second part of the motion deals with the principle of confidence which underlies our parliamentary system and the concept of responsible government. In accordance with this principle, the party forming the majority in the House of Commons must be able to demonstrate that it enjoys the support of the majority of the members in the House.
In a majority government situation, this is seldom a problem, except when the majority is very slim. In a Parliament with a government in command of a majority, the matter of confidence has really been settled by the electorate. Consider the last election. The province of Ontario enabled the Liberal Party of Canada to capture an overwhelming majority of seats in the House. Which means that the government party is strongly represented in this province.
Why then should the scope of this principle be weakened, as the motion seems to want to do, if in a parliamentary system, the matter of confidence has only a minimal effect on the way in which House business is conducted? In view of these facts, the Bloc Quebecois has some difficulty understanding the relevance of such a motion and supporting it.
Before touching more specifically on the Bloc's position with respect to Motion No. 89, I would like to draw the House's attention to a very timely observation made by the Standing
Committee on House Management which appeared in the committee's April 1993 report on parliamentary reform.
The report stated the following, and I quote: "Each party has to make its own decisions as to whether and when free votes are to be allowed-it is not up to the House, or to other parties. There is no single definition of what constitutes a `free vote': one can see it in terms of a Member's conscience, a Member's role in reflecting majority opinion in his or her riding, whether the Member's party caucus has taken a position or decision on the issue or not".
No, there is no single definition of what a free vote is and we cannot really have such a thing in the House of Commons. The political environment is changing and is never really the same from one election to the next. How could we have such a rule for a Canada which is so divided, where the very existence of a single nation is challenged by at least a fifth of the population? Under these circumstances, again, it is hard for us to support this motion.
We have said many times that the Bloc Quebecois has no mandate at all from its constituents to reform federal institutions; its mandate is to defend Quebec's interests in the House of Commons according to parliamentary rules and traditions. We do not believe that having free votes in the House could be in Quebecers' interest, since we think that it could diminish the opposition's ability to call the government to account.
Nevertheless, members of the Bloc Quebecois are fully aware of the value for democracy of having the citizens' representatives vote freely in the nation's legislative assembly. If anything gives backbenchers their freedom, it is free votes.
Less party discipline is undoubtedly an effective way to increase a backbencher's autonomy. Having members vote freely in the House on a daily basis would necessarily involve a redistribution of political power in Canada and Quebec.
Of course, we consider free votes for members of the House of Commons to be utopian and in the present Canadian context, we have trouble imagining a situation where all members could express their own political vision of their society, without any search for consensus or any reflection of regional reality.
Nevertheless, let me say in closing that the election results of last October 25 are in a way the expression of a free vote by some two million Quebecers who, by electing 54 representatives from the Bloc Quebecois, stated their dissatisfaction with the old parties. We know that these voters have had it with the Canada-wide politics of the Liberal and Conservative parties and gave the Bloc Quebecois a mandate to achieve sovereignty for Quebec.
Non-Confidence Motions May 25th, 1994
Mr. Speaker, I would like to give the floor at this time to the hon. member for Beaver River and, with your permission, speak after her.
Transportation In Remote Areas May 6th, 1994
Mr. Speaker, if the minister admits there is a serious problem, how does he intend to solve it since the cost of regional transportation is rising at the expense of citizens? And how does he intend to solve this problem and help people find solutions?
Transportation In Remote Areas May 6th, 1994
Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport. Transportation deregulation in Canada has had a negative impact in that it brought down the level of service and made it more expensive to travel to remote areas. The Minister of Transport talked with fervour of action and co-operation. I should remind him that he was asked three times by Rural Dignity of Canada to hold public hearings on regional transportation.
My question is quite simple: When will the minister take action on the request of Rural Dignity and hold public hearings on transportation in remote areas?
Recall Act April 29th, 1994
Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to speak in the debate on Bill C-210 and consider certain aspects of this bill.
Speaking on behalf of the Bloc Quebecois, I would like to start by saying that the essence of the act to provide for the recall of members of the House of Commons may be expressed as follows: "any elector ordinarily resident in an electoral district who wishes to seek the recall of the members for that district may file with the Clerk an application for the recall of the member in a prescribed form". The recall procedure which exists in 15 American States, allows for the dismissal of a member of Parliament or public servant.
I would like to provide some historical background. A similar system exists in four swiss cantons. Significantly, the procedure exists only with a very restricted socio-political framework, and even at that level, its use is extremely limited. In the United States, for instance, the system only operates at the municipal level. At a higher level, we have only the case of a Governor of the State of Oregon who was recalled in 1921.
To define more clearly the position of the Bloc Quebecois on this question and to explain the political background of the recall concept, I think it is important to go back in history, and I intend to go back a little further than the hon. member from Vancouver Quadra, in fact, to the end of the 18th century. It was the Age of Reason in Europe, a philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas and gave birth to the broad democratic principles that would guide western societies and still do. In continental Europe, the principle of sovereignty was transferred from the absolute monarch to the people. Although this movement started two centuries ago in England, France and Germany, it has gained in depth and acquired a more universal dimension.
For Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for instance, sovereignty is the "general will" which is always fair and equitable and thus a very effective concept. We see the idea of democracy emerging, where the people decide. But is democracy, in the sense of power to the people, the best form of government? And by the same token, is the right to recall based on the concept of power to the people a good way to control the actions of politicians? If this right to recall existed, would politicians be more likely to answer to constituents for their actions?
As for the foundation of government legitimacy, after royal authority was abolished at the end of the 18th century, in Rousseau's opinion, the people became the ultimate holders of the decision-making power. That is why he rejects the idea of representative democracy whereby the people can only wield their influence at regular intervals. About the English people, he said this: "The people think they are free, they are sorely mistaken; they are only free during elections. As soon as the members of Parliament are elected, the people revert to being slaves, to being nothing". That is why Rousseau wanted to give people the right to recall their representatives on a daily basis.
So, as we can see, recalling elected representatives is not a new idea. I think the main flaws of representative democracy, in particular the principle that citizens can only exercise their right to vote once every four or five years, deeply troubles all democrats since the beginning of universal suffrage.
The question raised at the dawn of representative democracy can still be raised today: "How can the sovereign power exercised by a few parliamentary dignitaries result from people's sovereignty?" The notion of democracy expressed through people's sovereignty, through the idea that every citizen of a sovereign state can influence the decision-making process, that everyone wields political power, will quickly take the form of state sovereignty with the application of democracy.
Throughout the 19th century, especially with the advent of universal suffrage, we see that the people's will expressed through the election process does not coincide with the general will. This is important: it does not coincide with the general will. As we move away from the great revolutionary movements that swept Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, the notion of people's sovereignty gradually gives way to the more absolutist concept of parliamentary sovereignty.
Given what I just said, the Bloc Quebecois considers this bill to be fully justified and symptomatic of people's misgivings about their representatives and of the massive failure of the Canadian political system. Actually, this bill would be impossible to enforce, but it shows a democratic conscience deeply disillusioned by over 100 years of a system that simply does not work. Parliamentary sovereignty has lost all credibility, and making members of Parliament subject to recall will not restore its credibility.
Clause 4( d ) of Bill C-210 says that a statement of 200 words or less would be sufficient to trigger the recall process. This provision would necessarily lead to anarchy in many ridings. Further on, clause 6( b ) mentions the requirement to have a petition signed by a majority of the constituents of a riding in order to recall a member. Such a procedure would make the democratic process too costly and completely uncontrollable. I
note what the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra said about this.
This bill is not practical throughout a country whose population numbers in the millions. It results from a nostalgic feeling about the democratic idealism which arose in 18th-century Europe. That is why the Bloc Quebecois is opposed to this bill and prefers, along with some of our fellow members, like the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra, to take the option of developing within the institution of Parliament itself all the mechanisms for recalling members who are unable to do their job and represent their constituents democratically.
Pearson International Airport Agreements Act April 29th, 1994
Mr. Speaker, because its credibility is at stake here, the government has no other choice but to confirm the need for a commission of inquiry to examine this matter as soon as possible. We need an inquiry.
Pearson International Airport Agreements Act April 29th, 1994
May I conclude my remarks?