Roy H. Bailey

[Petitions, March 3rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition, mainly from people in the city of Estevan in my constituency, who are asking that the hours of entry at the port of No. 47 highway which is directly south of Estevan be extended. A number of Americans are coming north to shop in this progressive city. I am very proud to present this petition at this time.

[The Budget, March 2nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly have a great deal of sympathy with my colleague from Newfoundland in that he has outlined some distinct problems that province is having.

Those in my area were very disappointed with this budget. With our paved roads going back to dirt roads and with our railways being abandoned for hundreds of miles, the word transportation or roads was not mentioned. From a province which probably pays more money on a per capita basis in fuel tax, we got zip.

If it is true that there is a two tier system, how many tiers will there be if the present rate of funding continues?

[Winterlude, February 18th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, back on the Hill after last year's great success the Canada snow sculpturing competition showcased 12 teams of professional carvers from every province and territory in Canada.

I ask all MPs in the House to join with me in applauding the participants for making Parliament Hill a highlight attraction of Ottawa's Winterlude with their works of art.

Today I make special mention of the sculpturing team of Bryan Lane, captain, Ian Jones and Darcy Baranosky for their creation of “The Legend of Qu'Appelle”. These three artists represented my home province of Saskatchewan and won this year's Winterlude snow sculpturing contest on Parliament Hill.

Congratulations to these three carvers and to all who came to share their artistic skills for the enjoyment of thousands.

[Privilege, February 17th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I join briefly with my colleagues on this particular point. I arrived at my office around 7 o'clock this morning and was told I would not be able to enter the office. I went and had a coffee and then came back and explained to them. At that time I was allowed with a security guard to go to the office.

In the function of carrying out my duties, this is the first time in my life I have ever been inhibited or shamed in trying to get to my place of work. My office was four hours without contact with my constituency. I could not carry out my duties because my staff was not allowed to be in my office. As the hon. member mentioned, that is a violation of the rules and precedents of the House.

[Privilege, February 17th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I would admit that it is similar but there are some differences in my case.

[Citizenship Of Canada Act, February 16th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I will agree with the point that those people who come here for a purpose of establishing themselves make good Canadian citizens. The hon. gentleman knows my area of complaint. Canadians from coast to coast have pushed that complaint before this government.

I want to make one correction. It seems to me that immigration leads to citizenship. We are bringing in a new citizenship act when we should be bringing in the controls and everything else surrounding immigration and then go to the citizenship act. I am sure the government has a purpose in doing so but you do not sow your field in the spring before you have properly cultivated it. It seems like we should be dealing with immigration.

I am proud of those people I have worked with. I am proud to have worked with immigrants for years. I am proud to have their children within my educational institution. But we have a new responsibility to make sure those people who are coming to Canada do not fall into the 16,000 to 20,000 people we have in Canada now, and I do not know how many before that, who are still here but should be deported.

[Citizenship Of Canada Act, February 16th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to discuss Bill C-63 for the simple reason that nothing has ever given me more pleasure in an official capacity than to go down to citizenship court and shake the hands and congratulate people who have just received Canadian citizenship.

Part of my life and part of my studies have been dealing with citizenship in itself. I come from a part of Canada, a part of Saskatchewan, that enjoyed the benefits of massive citizenship and immigration, as the two are inseparable, from the spilling over from the Dakotas. At that time Canada adopted for itself, almost word for word, the American homestead act and these people moved to Canada and became citizens.

I have visitors here visiting me in Ottawa whose grandparents, if we go back far enough, came from France across the peninsula, the thumb, as they call it in Michigan, on into part of Saskatchewan. The remarkable thing about all this citizenship is when one goes through that great era, the last best west, I served as a justice for 25 years and I do not remember one single case of any of these gallant people ever becoming involved with the law or criminal activity.

I am also very proud to stand here and say that I have three adopted part Chinese sisters. If one takes their heritage and go back, they too were proud of their Canadian citizenship.

Speaking of particular roles of citizenship, in my lifetime I was always involved before I came to this institution in working with people. I have, up until the last few years, never once heard in the rural areas of my province of those people who came to this country and took citizenship, as the Chinese did, in any town that I worked, and there were a good many of them, ever becoming involved in a defamation of Canadians or their new country.

Maybe we should look at the past and ask ourselves what we were doing right then. We are not proud of our record in some cases of what we did to immigrants from Ukraine. By the way, the Ukrainian people are still the second largest ethnic group in Saskatchewan. We are not proud of what we did in World War I when we deprived them of citizenship and pushed them way up in Alberta and let them lose their land and virtually starve to death. We are not proud of that but it happened.

We are also not proud of what we did to the Chinese when they came here to get their citizenship. They worked on the railways and got less than average pay. When one died on the railway they just pushed him into the grade and covered him up. There was not even a decent burial.

Citizenship has to mean more than what it has meant in the last 25 years in Canada. We cannot be proud, as my hon. colleagues have mentioned, that at any one time we can have 16,000 to 20,000 illegal immigrants in Canada and the fact is that about 80% of them will stay here. Surrounding this court of citizenship, Canadians know what it is like. Canadians see it as a massive corruptive unit. Let us hope that this changes for good.

What steps will we look back at to see how we brought hardworking people to this country who contributed greatly to this country?

Today when I know of people I have assisted coming in 35 years ago and I try to get some of their family in, I get such reports as “Don't bother going to your MP. There is a good Liberal lawyer and he will pull the strings a lot faster”. This is a fact and a terrible thing but it happens.

Last week when I was home I was confronted by individuals who asked me how I was getting along with this case. They told me they had word that if they went to see a certain lawyer downtown he could speed the thing up.

Are we going to take legislation like this and, pardon the pun, liberalize it to that extent? I do not have too many immigrants coming. They are all leaving now. What happened here? What happens when we face a situation in this country where the majority of the people who are apprehended and with charges were illegal immigrants? Many of those people are still here. I believe we ought to exercise more care.

If Bill C-63 does just what I hope it will, then we will be going back to the golden era of the last best west days when we brought in people who had no criminal records. They had the ability to survive and work. They were welcomed in Canada and they made outstanding citizens. In the immigration and citizenship record in Canada, while I know many to come in have been fine people, we have opened the gates and many of those people are still here and will not be deported. While we do that we are denying at least 10 people I know who are hardworking, dedicated people, relatives here, and I am having one heck of a job getting them into Canada. Let us hope this bill changes that.

Above all, if we are to have a deep meaning for the oath, which the hon. gentleman talked about, things have to change in this department from the past five years.

How does this bill reverse the terrible records of this department in the last 25 years? What steps are being taken now to prevent illegal immigrants coming to this country? What steps are being taken to speed up the deportation of these people? These are the questions which Canadians want an answer to and I do not see the bill answering those questions. I wish I did but I do not.

We need to bring back some sanity to the immigration and citizenship portfolio. We need to truly look at bringing people to Canada who brought the same honour and glory of the last best west. These people are still with us. Some of the ancestors of these people sit in the House but we never had to deport one of that area that I remember. I wish I could say the same thing for the past 10, 15 or 25 years.

[Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, February 15th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, last Saturday night was one of the few times I had the opportunity to sit down and watch television. I watched the performance at Maple Leaf Gardens. The players of the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and so on were honoured. They looked back at the achievements of the great players who gave their hearts to Canada's national sport. They had tears in their eyes and were so very proud of their accomplishments.

I wonder what will be the record of this government when we look back at the 35th and 36th parliaments. The government has set a record which is a shame to democracy. The Liberals shut down this House 35 times in the last session. No other Government of Canada has come near that number. The government has said 35 times that it does not need the opposition or as one of my hon. colleagues just said, it does not even have to consult the opposition. We are barely into the 36th parliament and the Liberals have shut down the debate in this House 11 more times. That is a record no government should be proud of.

It really hurts me to sit here and listen to the hon. members opposite make certain statements almost bragging about their care in hospitals. A growing number of people will die before they get emergency hospital care in this country. That is not a highfalutin statement, that is a fact. This government has come in a total of 46 times and said it will shut this House down.

What is the record of the government? Going back to the 1930s, the 1940s and the 1950s we had some great hockey players. What will be the record of this government? It will be known as the most undemocratic procedural government in the history of Canada. Nobody can deny that.

I heard an hon. member say that the government gives out this money with no strings attached. My question is, what is in this bill that will prevent the government from making the same bookkeeping manoeuvres as happened just a few months ago in the Newfoundland election when all of a sudden it got rid of its deficit? What is in this bill to stop that procedure? Nothing. What is in this bill that will absolutely ensure that the government does not intervene during the life of this bill to pull strings just to suit itself? Absolutely nothing.

The government has had five years to come up with this, not five weeks and not five months. And today it has moved closure on a bill which has not really had any discussion in this House. That is Liberal democracy. This is not good planning. The one thing it does show Canadians is that this is government arrogance at its worst. Most people on this side of the House have not had an opportunity to provide input on the bill. This practice is very dangerous. It is a growing practice opposite and an extremely dangerous practice for any government in a democratic society to use.

What will happen if closure is exercised as much in the next four years as has been done in the past four years? There will be no point in any member of the opposition even sitting here, absolutely none. There will be no point in members getting on their feet and debating an issue because the government will say it has the right to use this procedure and it is going to use it. I heard that this afternoon. And use it the Liberals have done. Forty-six times they have said “The opposition does not count. We are not going to listen to them. We are not even going to have a debate on it”. That is where we are at with this bill.

If equalization works, why are there still seven have not provinces? I draw attention to my own province. It is rather interesting. A member of my family recently had a commercial trucker haul two loads of grain to the terminal. His bill for the trucking was in excess of $500. The amount of money taken off was over $1 a bushel for freight. When we analysed it we found that in my province we probably pay more money to the government opposite in federal excise fuel tax per capita than any other province. I heard the only member of that party from my province say that we will not get any more back from the federal excise tax because we are a have not province.

The rationale the government uses when it takes out millions of dollars is simply “We cannot give back even 20% of the excise taxes taken out of the province because it is a have not province”. That is the rationale being used.

I watch as our highways go to pieces. The rural roads are being completely ruined. After the millions of dollars the federal government has taken out, what guarantee does this bill give? At any given time a minister could decide that 48% of all the federal excise tax will be spent in a region of Canada and the people who really need the roads will get 3%. This bill does not correct that deficit and the Liberals bring about closure so we cannot have a debate on it.

Because of the policies of this government and because it told the people we had to get rid of this freight rate and so on, people are leaving my province like never before. They are saying that this government continues to tax them and the amount of money they are getting in return is not equal in any way. Three per cent has been the most in the last four years.

Will this bill ultimately stop political patronage? Every member on the government side of the House says no. What they are saying is “We will use this bill and we will use these payments the same way as we have used them in the past. We will use them to throw money into any region of Canada we want to, as long as we can buy money with that money that is going out”. That is what has happened and that is what is going to continue to happen.

This bill is more complex than the government admits. This bill is going to committee and we know what will happen in committee. The bill will pass all the way through. Opposition members will have motions but they will not be heard. We might as well tear our papers up now because the government is on the same old course it has been on 43 times before: shut down the opposition; shut down any criticism; “let us decide where we can put the money the most”.

I found out from reading the paper that there is a little bit of skulduggery going on like there was on the toll highway in New Brunswick. Somebody is going to be bidding on highway 407 in Ontario. Has anyone else heard about that? It is these types of things. When my friends from the maritimes stand up to discuss the toll highway the government responds to them in complete mockery.

I am not very proud to stand here and say that I condemn the government. I am not very pleased to know it has used closure 46 times. After one day of debate, it is a smack in the face to democracy and the people of Canada should realize it.

[Canada Elections Act, February 15th, 1999]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-478, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act.

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to introduce this bill which will amend the Canada Elections Act.

The bill prevents the disaster that happened in the last federal election in which people in Saskatchewan voted behind everybody else. This amendment to the act will remove that embarrassment.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Code Of Ethics, February 12th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I was alarmed to note that the first speaker on the government side deliberately tried to mislead the House and confuse the issue in that he claimed that they had a code of ethics. We were not talking about the general code of ethics and government members know that. We are talking about a public code of ethics and we are asking for a copy of the ethics code which the Prime Minister has for his ministers. It is two different things.

Let me put it this way. Every speaker on this side of the House knows full well the difference. They have stated so. When ethics counsellor Howard Wilson reports, he reports only to the Prime Minister.

That reporting is in secret. That is exactly the thing the Reform Party is trying to clear up before not only this House but this nation. Canadians deserve an independent ethics counsellor accountable to parliament and who will operate under the authority of a public ethics code. That is what my hon. friend from Prince George has in his motion. That is what Canadians want. That is what we will be voting on. I fail to see how the party opposite can continue to confuse a very simple issue.

I have a copy of the Ottawa Sun which states that the auditor general says that the defence department is blocking his bid to investigate buying practices. It goes on to say that almost a year after tabling detailed department questionable equipment purchasing practices the auditor general told the Commons defence committee that he is still being stonewalled. By whom? None other than the defence minister, a member of cabinet. That is the real guts of this motion. This is what Canadians want.

The private sector, the banks, the businesses, the major industries all pride themselves on having ethics codes. But not this government. When it comes to taxpayer funded institutions such as the House of Commons, what do we get? Stonewalling. This is zero accountability.

In the life of this parliament we have seen what is happening. Look at the APEC inquiry to judge the actions of the RCMP. What does the government do? It orders in a whole troop of lawyers. The government is not being investigated. When the students want lawyers, no way. That in itself is a real conflict. Canadians are seeing it as a conflict.

There is a growing trend. The last survey that I saw on the accountability of government listed professions that are respected the least. Who topped the list? Members of parliament. Who came a close second? Lawyers.

I asked a group of grade 11 students to write down what was the most common thing they had heard or what they thought about the House of Commons. The leading comment was that they were a bunch of crooks.