Ian McClelland

[Excise Tax Act, June 21st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to add a few words to this very important debate.

I am going to be speaking in opposition to the bill specifically to that part which deals with the excise tax on cigarettes. This is an omnibus bill. It includes quite a number of other issues most of which make sense and if they were separated I would support.

I do have to acknowledge at the beginning of my dissertation that the Liberal government of the day did not start this mess, they inherited it. My objection is how they handled the mess they inherited. We acknowledge the fact it was the Conservative government that did not have the backbone to deal with the problem when it was a small one so it became a big problem.

This extremely difficult problem was exacerbated by the fact that day after day Bloc Quebecois members would stand in this House and deride the government for doing nothing about this, all the while raising the temperature of the whole debate. This put it on the front pages of every newspaper and raised the ante, forcing the government hand to react. It had to do something. On balance the necessity to do something caused the government to come up with half a loaf.

The Conservative government when confronted with this dilemma said it would put an export tax on a carton of cigarettes, thereby taking the profit out of smuggling. It put an export tax on of about $8 a carton. Shortly after that the tobacco industry told the government that if it did not remove the export tax the industry would export itself south of the border. Canadian producers would lose their jobs and Canadian manufacturing workers would lose their jobs. The net result would be net, net, net losses to Canada.

The Conservative government of the day said to the tobacco industry: "You have been pretty responsible in everything you have done to date so we will take you at your word. We will reduce the tax. We will take it off and we will expect you to be self-policing". What a brainwave that was. It showed once again how brain dead the Conservatives were. The net result was that tobacco smuggling took on unprecedented proportions as the price of cigarettes went up.

There are products which have nothing to do with cigarettes that we in Canada pay a particularly high price for. Milk, eggs, cheese, butter, and chickens: All of these products are protected by marketing boards. As a result, Canadians pay a higher price than the Americans for these products. What do you suppose would happen if we started selling chickens out of the back of a truck in a shopping mall? Within about 30 seconds we would be in the hoosegow.

What is the difference between selling chickens we are paying too much for, or selling eggs we are paying too much for, or cheese, or butter, and selling cigarettes? The difference is that the cigarettes were coming through a reserve. There had been a very tense and difficult time a few years earlier in that same area. No one wanted to ruffle any feathers. Therefore the laws of Canada were not enforced.

The situation is that a noxious product which is highly addictive, and most addictive to young people, is made far more affordable to the very people most susceptible to the noxious aspects of the product.

There is a direct correlation between price and consumption. It is called price elasticity. It is a fact of life in marketing that is well known and well documented the world over: the lower the price, the higher the consumption; the higher the price, the lower the consumption. That is an irrefutable, indisputable fact. What do we accomplish if we lower the price of this noxious weed by half? We make it far more affordable, far more usable by the very people we do not want to become addicted.

I would like to quote some information from the Canadian Cancer Society. It has gleaned these statistics from Statistics Canada. Speaking to the issue of tobacco taxes and consumption: "The retail price of tobacco increased dramatically in the 1980s as federal and provincial governments increased tobacco tax rates. This led to an unprecedented decline in consumption, even factoring in contraband sales".

As an indication of exactly what happened from about 1980 to 1992, in 1980 the per capita consumption of cigarettes in Canada was 2,900 cigarettes. In 1992, as a direct result of increased cost and even factoring in the sale of contraband cigarettes, the consumption was down to 1,500 cigarettes per capita, almost half. It was a reduction of almost 50 per cent.

What led to this? There were other things which we will get to that led to this. The primary reason was because cigarettes were pricing themselves out of the market as a direct result of the taxes imposed by governments for the specific purpose of reducing consumption. The decline was even more dramatic among teenagers. Between 1979 and 1991 the percentage of Canadians aged 15 to 19 who reported they were smokers declined from 46.5 per cent to 22 per cent, more than a 50 per cent reduction in the number of teenagers who smoked.

The federal government acknowledges the effect taxation can have on smoking among youth. Then finance minister Michael Wilson stated in his 1991 budget that studies show tobacco taxes are particularly important in discouraging younger Canadians from smoking. As a result of the tax increases included over those years, it is estimated that there will be 100,000 fewer teenaged smokers as a result.

We do not even know what the cumulative effect is of this reduction of cigarette smoking at the teenage years, but just imagine what it is later in life. Because it is a statistically proven fact that where you have a home where both parents or one parent smokes, the incidence of children smoking is significantly higher. We have a cumulative effect of the reduction of people smoking, particularly adults and teenagers.

Clearly tobacco tax increases in and of themselves are not the only reason for the reduction in consumption. The ban on tobacco advertising, improved health warnings on cigarette packages, public education and the increased restriction of smoking in workplaces and public places have all contributed to the decline. The measures act synergistically, together.

If you remove the single most important impediment to cigarette smoking, price, what does it do to all the rest of them? Then you come in and say: "My goodness, what are we going to do? Let us go to plain packaging on cigarettes".

Plain packaging on cigarettes is not going to hurt, it is going to help in preventing cigarette companies being able to market and merchandise their product. When you decrease the price that much everything else that we do is just whistling in the wind. If we as a nation have decided that to reduce smoking, particularly among the young, is an important national objective, then we must pursue that at all costs. Those tobacco farmers who are impacted by that must accept the fact that the industry is changing and that we will require fewer tobacco farmers in the

future. To my knowledge, the industry was very much aware of that and many tobacco farmers were converting to other crops.

Just because we have people in Canada manufacturing a product which is known to cause almost 40,000 deaths per year due to lung cancer, more than the combined deaths of AIDS, traffic accidents, suicides and everything else put together, why should we put the concerns of those farmers who know the writing is on the wall ahead of the health of the country as a whole?

The government is talking about imposing gun controls on the nation, little realizing that every time someone puts a cigarette in their mouth they are playing Russian roulette with their lives and the lives of everyone around them through secondhand noxious smoke. There is a hypocrisy here.

This essentially is a law and order issue. If we accept the rationale that because we have lawlessness we must therefore reduce the impediment for Canadians to obey the law, if it is non-enforceable then change the law, then maybe we could carry the same logic to removing speed limits. Then we would not have anybody breaking the law by speeding.

If the law is wrong, then it either should not have been written in the first place or it needs to be changed so that Canadians do not feel a sense of dislocation with the law makers who actually promulgate the laws in the first place. If we as law makers promulgate laws that will not be adhered to or are afraid to enforce laws that are on the books, that brings the very notion of law abiding citizens and the responsibility for obeying the law into disrepute. One leads to another.

We wonder why we have lawlessness in our society. We wonder why we have a rash of the perception and the reality of lawlessness in our young people. If we as law makers do not set the example by saying: "Look, this is the law. We are all going to obey it. It is the same law for everyone, no matter who you are and where you live in the country", why should anyone obey the laws except those laws that they agree with?

As I bring this to a conclusion, I would like to make a couple of suggestions. We in Canada might consider the experience of Italy which had a problem similar to ours. If I may I will read this: "The Canadian government might be wise to copycat the Italian example to deal with smuggling. In Italy to prevent tobacco companies from selling cigarettes to the contraband market the government threatened to suspend all legitimate sales of the brand particular to that company until the illegal tobacco products were no longer being sold to the contraband market".

That is coming down hard on those very tobacco producers who said that they were going to be self-policing. We could do the same thing and give them another nudge. This would effectively deal with the contraband problem and would not in any way conflict with the charter or with any of our trade agreements.

The government is in a very difficult position on this bill, between a rock and a hard place. It was confronted with the problem of the lawlessness that was going on when it took office. It was compounded by the antics of the Bloc in raising the issue to a fever pitch and by the support of people in government to those who are breaking the law by selling contraband cigarettes or turning a blind eye.

It had to be dealt with before it got totally out of hand. To give credit where credit is due, it did deal with it. Now the problem is going to be what will this government do to pick up the pieces.

Will this government by the end of its mandate return tobacco taxes to their original level whether as excise or however it does it? Will this government when that time occurs ensure that those who would sell contraband tobacco and break the laws of Canada no matter where they live would be punished? When this occasion arises with this product or with any other illegal contraband product, will the government turn a blind eye? Will it have an ostrich attitude and pretend the problem does not exist until it becomes a problem that cannot be handled by enforcing the law and therefore change the law in order to accommodate lawlessness, the law breakers and the tobacco companies? That is where the shame lies in this law.

[Excise Act, June 13th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, when the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health responded a minute ago and said that this could be amended at any time, am I to assume that the government would support such an amendment at a future date?

[Department Of Citizenship And Immigration Act, June 13th, 1994]

Careful the wheels don't fall off.

[Supply, June 2nd, 1994]

Madam Speaker, in response to my hon. colleague's questions, I do not remember saying anything about a grab all in my presentation. One must be very cautious in using the term grab all. What we are talking about is putting money into the hands of individuals, in lending a helping hand and a hand up. I do not think that anyone seriously quibbles or quarrels with that.

What we do have a problem with is when the federal government taxes individuals and takes the money into government. It takes a dollar from the hands of the taxpayer and then spits out 20 cents into the arms of a business. That business will then go into competition with the business which supplied the taxes in the first place.

This debate has nothing to do with transfers to individuals. It has to do with regional economic expansion, which is federal government money going to businesses and the federal government picking winners and losers, or any government picking winners and losers. I submit if members were to make a list of winners and losers that all levels of governments have picked, the list of losers would be as long as their arms and the list of winners would be very short indeed.

[Supply, June 2nd, 1994]

Madam Speaker, it might not be a bad idea for members opposite and those Canadians viewing the debate at home if we were to go over the motion again so they know what we are talking about.

Today is a supply day which means the opposition, and in this case the Bloc, supplies the motion for debate in the House. The motion the Bloc Quebecois put forth for debate today reads:

That this House condemn the federal government's ineffective regional development interventions, which create overlappings and inconsistencies, resulting in an administrative chaos that hampers regional economic growth.

Although I probably would not have put it in those terms at all, the whole notion of Canada's regional development is one of the basic differences between Canada and the United States, Canada and many countries in the world. There are not many countries in the world that take resources from one part of the country and transfer them holus-bolus to another part of the country in order to create some sort of evenness across the country.

What usually happens in terms of world affairs is that they make sacrifices for the future. Perhaps none of us would be here in Canada today, or very few of us except the indigenous people, if our forefathers had not left where they were so that they, their children and their grandchildren could have a better life in a new country.

What has happened in Canada over the years is that rather than making the sacrifices for the future, we made the future sacrifice for us today. Today when we are making transfers of money from one part of the country to another, by and large the transfers of money are transfers of borrowed money. We are really transferring money and wealth from future generations to this generation and then once again transferring it to another part of the country, in the hopes that it will make one part of the country work a bit better and that we will have a more even playing field.

I guess the debate is not really out. Does it work? Is it effective? If it worked probably there would not be much debate about it because we would recognize it as a good thing.

Given that we have been doing this transfer of resources from one part of the country to another over these years and given that it really has not changed the nature of dependence in various parts of the country, it is reasonable to question whether it works at all.

The basic premise of the Bloc motion is to suggest that perhaps this money transfer could be done in a more efficient and more effective way. From the Bloc's perspective it would like to see all the money transferred to the province of Quebec and the province of Quebec making the determination, controlling all the strings, even though it is federal money. The real question, though, is whether or not we should be doing it at all.

I would draw the attention of hon. members to the situation that exists in the United States. The southern United States, as many members would know, for many years languished relatively poorly compared with the northern and western United States. Yet today the south is vibrant and flourishing in part because it was not force-fed resources from the more prosperous parts of the nation and in part because they have a triple-E senate. Things were able to find their natural level. The cost of land and the cost of being in business today in the southern United States are less than in the north. Therefore people establish their businesses in the south.

We do not have the same playing field in Canada because we have a federal system of government that favours central Canada at the expense of the regions, particularly the maritimes. If we had a system of government that did not favour one part of the country over another because the vast majority of the population of Canada is centred in Ontario and Quebec, we might not have the need for regional economic expansion.

I suggest we should give some thought to why we got into this situation in the first place. The Bank of Nova Scotia headquartered in Toronto is not called the Bank of Nova Scotia because it started in Toronto. It is called the Bank of Nova Scotia because it was established and started in Halifax. Why did it move to Toronto? It is because that is where the economic base of the country is. Chapter and verse the concentration of wealth is in Ontario and Quebec because that is where all the votes are in the country.

We need to change things in a much more fundamental way. As a Parliament we should consider a triple-E senate because in my opinion it would help dramatically in regional economic expansion.

Does it work? Is it worthwhile? We have read with considerable interest that the new entrepreneurial class in Quebec in the last 20 years or so has created a revolution in thinking and in spirit. My colleagues from Quebec could speak in much more detail about it, but that is the perception many other Canadians have of the entrepreneurial class in Quebec.

Quebec and Alberta in harmony embraced the whole notion of NAFTA or free trade with the United States. As a matter of fact Canada has free trade with the United States in very large measure because Quebec wanted it and Alberta wanted it.

Let me just read a few statistics about what has happened to the west after five years of free trade with the United States. I submit that in these statistics lies the avenue for expanded economic activity for Quebec, for the maritimes and for all other parts of Canada. I am quoting from a report by the Centre for International Business Studies, the Faculty of Business, University of Alberta, Edmonton, dated April 1994:

Over the five year period, 1988 to 1993, the value of exports from western Canada grew by 23 per cent, while exports to the U.S. market rose by 58 per cent. The growth of total exports amounted to 51.3 per cent for Alberta, 18.4 per cent for Manitoba, 9 per cent for British Columbia, and 3.7 per cent for Saskatchewan. The growth in exports to U.S. markets was 77.1 per cent for Alberta, 70.4 per cent for Saskatchewan, 46.4 per cent for Manitoba, and 34.2 per cent for British Columbia.

I recognize that in quoting all these numbers it ends up being a major jumble. However, the fact remains we are not going to get rich in our nation by transferring wealth from one part of the country to another and then quibbling over who got more and who got less or where it came from. We are going to be wealthy as a nation because we produce wealth all over Canada. As an exporting nation we export primarily to the biggest and wealthiest market in the world which is right next door to us no matter where we live in Canada, the United States.

If we would put half of our energies into developing our manufacturing base, our competitiveness and our export markets and break down the internal trade barriers so that we are competitive within the country and put those energies into exporting and developing our markets in the United States and elsewhere in the world, we would gain dramatically. This incessant bickering about who gets more and who gets less within our Confederation is destructive and leads nowhere.

[National Access Awareness Week, May 31st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday marked the beginning of the seventh annual National Access Awareness Week. This week is important in raising awareness and making Canadians more sensitive to disability issues. This year's theme is "Choices and Challenges".

In celebration of National Access Awareness Week it is imperative that we provide individuals with disabilities equality of opportunity. This means governments must rethink the way we provide benefits to the disabled. Presently persons with disabilities find themselves in a catch-22 position. Many want to work and yet once they find employment we remove the support that allowed them to get a job in the first place.

If we want to ensure that persons with disabilities are net contributors to our society we must remove the barriers that impede their abilities.

[Canadian Film Development Corporation Act, May 30th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to take just a little different approach to this than my hon. colleagues who preceded me on both sides of the House.

I think that we have to look at this in reality as what it is and not be ashamed of it. It is an infrastructure program for the film industry. We should not be ashamed of that. If you look at every film industry in the world, save the United States or India perhaps, there is a good deal of government intervention in the film industry of one kind or another.

We are trying with this particular bill to make the intervention that we have in our film industry work a little bit better.

The film industry in Canada, as other members have mentioned, because we are so close to the United States with its ever pervasive influence in our culture, is particularly important because our sense of identity as Canadians, as we all know, is very much wrapped up in the reflection of what we see of ourselves when we are watching television. Much of our sense of Canadianism or what it is to be a Canadian we take from what we see on TV every day.

In the expanding universe of television of 500 channels of the future, when you see people up north living a nomadic or semi-nomadic existence in the barren lands of Canada watching Detroit television, you think: "My God, what kind of vision are we reflecting of ourselves as Canadians". Television and film production to Canadians reflects the kind of people that we are or would want to be. That is of particular importance.

We have to break this bill into two separate issues. One is television and the production of film for television. The second is the production of feature films. All of the infrastructure money in the world or loan guarantees in the world is not going to make one iota of difference in the feature film industry if you cannot get your feature films on to the screen and all of the screens in Canada are controlled by Odeon and Paramount out of Hollywood.

We have to look at this in two very distinct and very real approaches, one being feature films and the other being television. Canadians have had a good deal of success in producing television indigenously here in Canada.

I draw hon. members' attention to this interesting fact. We have the CBC in English Canada and Radio-Canada in Quebec. In Quebec the CBC has far more viewership per capita than the CBC in English Canada despite the fact that we spend more money on television in English Canada with the CBC. I submit that the reason for that is the French CBC has far more indigenous programs, far more programming that originates in Quebec.

In English Canada if you look at CBC's primary productions on any evening, what is it? It is a repeat. I know I am getting into the CBC thing again, but prime time viewing on CBC is all rehashes of American programming.

If we really want to do something about feature films and particularly made for TV production in Canada, our national carrier in English Canada should be carrying a lot more Canadian originated TV production.

That leads us to the question of public money, financing and how you get it to how do you get money into the hands of entrepreneurs that want to do a movie for TV or feature film. I am 100 per cent behind our caucus position. We do not have the right to take money from future citizens of Canada, children yet

unborn, to give to people today so that we can live better today than we should.

As an hon. member mentioned earlier, when we start weaning our economy from government dependence, we have to wean our economy slowly. We have to wean the whole economy, not just one sector, away from dependence on government grants and handouts.

This industry is no different than any other industry. It has to work on its own independent of government financing. How does it go about doing that? One way would be to relax the rules whereby people could get public equity participation in a movie.

Imagine how difficult it would be with an intellectual property if you go to a bank and say: "I'd like to finance this movie". When you show the script, you are asked: "Where's the bricks and mortar?". You say there are no bricks and mortar.

The information highway, computer programs and software are not bricks and mortar either. Somehow we have to allow our entrepreneurs to get money from people who are putting hordes and hordes of money into RRSPs to invest in ideas in this country.

The only way we are going to be able to do that is to relax the rules in our corporations act so that people are able to invest in a movie production. Yes, it would be extremely high risk but the rewards would be there.

I do not think we can say this is all one way or all another. I agree 100 per cent with my colleague who said earlier that we should not be using government money to finance any private venture. The minute you start using public money in a private venture it is no longer a private venture. It is a public venture.

On the other hand it is particularly important that we in Canada support our cultural industries particularly our made for television movies because TV is so much a pervasive part of our day to day lives. We see ourselves reflected back from TV with a sense of value as to what it is to be a Canadian.

If everything we see on television is imported from some other part of the world it is going to be even more difficult to get a sense of Canadianism, to be together as a nation.

I would like to see us import more of the films done in Quebec and dubbed into English and vice versa. Perhaps that would be a way to start getting some communication going back and forth.

This is in some ways a difficult bill for our caucus to wrap itself around because of the involvement of public and private money but I think on balance it is worthy of support. Again, it is not new money. It is a realignment of present moneys. Telefilm must be more sensitive to the regions and more accessible to producers outside Montreal and Quebec, Toronto and Ontario, but I understand that it is working in that direction.

We need access to big screen television for our feature films. We have got to break the monopoly of Paramount and Odeon to get our feature films on to our own screens.

[Income Tax Act, May 30th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I too am very happy to speak to this motion and I wish to congratulate the hon. member for Nepean for bringing it to the floor.

The motion, for those watching this on television, has to do with the taxing of child support payments. It states that taxes on child tax support payments should be paid by the payer rather than the recipient. On its face it tends to make sense, but when we delve into it a bit deeper we find a host of interrelated considerations.

This bill is particularly timely following as it does the Thibaudeau decision recently received from the Supreme Court. This decision has caused a general review of the whole situation of tax status and the support paid to families after a marriage breakdown.

I have a couple of insights I would like to bring to this debate and to the broader debate, but I want to assure those watching on television that whether this bill survives or passes the Commons, this is not the end of the story. It will go on. Parliament will come to a reasoned position, one that will be satisfactory to all of the various perspectives on this issue.

The broad perception is that the tax treatment is not fair. I have a fair amount of personal experience in this because I have been paying maintenance payments, as many people have, for years. My ex-wife and I have talked at great length about this. We have come to an agreement outside the judiciary on how we would handle it.

The real problem was alluded to in a presentation by the hon. member who preceded me. It is that the vast majority of people who are required to make maintenance payments do not and they skip. When we are looking at this we have to look at it in the broader context. How do we get the deadbeat parents to accept responsibility for looking after the children that they brought into the world? Why is it that every time we turn around in our country we are able to escape whatever responsibilities we should have as individuals and pass them off to the state?

The broader question is how do we go about nailing the deadbeats, whether they are male or female. Perhaps we should look at changing the income tax structure so that if money is paid by the state, then the people who owe it have to pay it back.

If the individuals owed the tax department the money, would they get away with it? I think not. If they do not make their payments and look after their responsibilities we as a people, as a nation, are forced to look after their responsibilities.

As we go down this road it is going to be very important not only to consider what is fair to the people who are involved, but what is fair to the taxpayers and to once again inculcate the sense of responsibility to people when they bring children into the world to look after their responsibilities.

The problem is interprovincial because if people skip from one province to another, they have to be tracked. It is a question of will. If people involved in the breakdown, in the divorce, are rancorous and do not want to pay, how do we go about doing this with a sense of fairness so that they will pay? It is the children who are involved that we want to protect.

I would like to read briefly from a very thoughtful letter I received from a constituent on this issue just the other day. Her name is Zanne Cameron and she wrote quite a long and involved letter. It is very touching:

As a single parent receiving support payments, I was immediately bumped into a 33 per cent tax bracket. The GST was introduced the same year, and I have seen health care premiums increase from $80 in 1983 to $180 quarterly in 1994. A middle class income is no longer $35,000 a year. It is somewhere over $45,000 or more. Yep, it is tough out there. You know what, though? It is not tougher for me than for married couples or single people with no children. Making a living is not easy.

In the broader context of doing what is right, we have to do what is right for the family. The question then comes up, if people are not divorced and choose to stay home and raise a family or if one parent does, how is it that family then does not

get the same tax break? That family cannot income split the same as a divorced family does.

We should be ensuring there are reasons for families to stay together rather than to break up. We cannot look at this as a straight forward tax this person or tax that person situation. We have to look at it based on what is best for the children and what is best in the context of our nation.

I would like to read once more from Miss Cameron's letter:

No matter how you dice it, support payments are income to the receiving parent. This is not really a feminist issue at all. All parents, single or married, must pay taxes on their income. We as women are not special here, nor are we the only single parents. The fathers of these children are also their parents, some more so than others, but these are private issues. I do not feel that it is fair to assume that all divorced men with children neglect them.

In conclusion, we cannot automatically assume every marriage breakdown is the same. We cannot automatically assume every divorced dad or every divorced mom is not conscious of their responsibilities and may not end up being a better parent because of the situation they are in.

Miss Cameron goes on to make a solemn kind of suggestion which is that the income be split. The more one thinks of it, the more sense it makes. Rather than taxing all one or the other, split it down the middle and tax 50 per cent to the recipient and 50 per cent to the payer. It does not necessarily have to be all one way or the other. In a divorce, heaven knows there are all sorts of very complicated issues which arise.

As part of a judgment why not decide who is going to get the tax benefit so as to induce the most possible income will go to the children? Why could it not be left that a person who is in a fairly high tax bracket will make the payment to someone in a low tax bracket to give the benefit of the tax deduction 100 per cent to the payer? In another situation, if the recipient does not want to pay any tax and the payer is quite happy to pay the tax, then why could that not be done, or any combination?

We do not have to go all in one direction or all in another. If for the sake of the tax department and for the sake of simplicity we need to have it all one way or another, then it would seem to me the appropriate thing to do would be to split it 50:50.

I want to reiterate to all of the people affected by the Thibaudeau decision that on the face of it it does tend to make a lot of sense. Many people out there think that perhaps this Parliament is not sensitive to their needs. However, I want to assure everyone that at least from this side of the House, I know from the government side, but I think also from the Bloc, we are going to work together as parliamentarians to come to an agreement on this which will be palatable both to the payers and the recipients and fair to all concerned. This is particularly to benefit the children involved.

[Supply, May 12th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, in my presentation I spoke briefly about statistics, their value and what they say or what they do not say. The statistics we received at the justice briefing had to do with the number of charges and convictions but it had nothing to do with the number of offences and break-ins. If the

number of break-ins and the number of offences are combined, those statistics are up dramatically.

What I am responding to and the statistics that I quoted came from surveys in my constituency of people who are specifically concerned about the effect of crime.

It is absolutely essential, as we proceed with this debate, we do not make the blanket statement that all young people are bad. They are not. The vast majority of them are great. The vast majority of them are inspirations. We see them coming through here on tours and we are involved with them. It is something that we need to be very cautious about as we get into this debate and as we proceed down the road that we do not suggest for a moment that all kids are bad.

However there is a time when we have to recognize things as they are, not as we wish them to be. There comes a time when young people, regardless of age, show by what they have done that they need special treatment, that they need the care that society has to give them or that society needs to be protected from them.

In my view we need to draw a distinction between people who make a mistake and people who make the same mistake over and over again and do not learn from it. If you make a mistake once and learn from it that is experience. If you make the same mistake over and over and over again that is character. We have to make the distinction between those who need a nudge to get themselves on the right track and those who are a danger to society. We have to be very careful that we do not paint everyone with the same brush.

[Supply, May 12th, 1994]

I thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the House for the opportunity to speak to this very topical and important debate today.

What we are talking about today is the confidence that Canadians have in their legislatures to be aware and to be part of what is going on. For instance, we cannot have rallies in Edmonton and Calgary of 5,000 people and then our parliamentarians here in Ottawa pretending that there is not outrage in the land over the perception of the Young Offenders Act, or criminality in general.

The debate today is focused on one aspect of the Young Offenders Act. In reality what we are talking about here today is whether or not Canadians feel safe in their own homes, whether or not Canadians have security of the person, whether or not Canadians have a sense of safety with their property. When you leave your home and come back, what is left?

All of us knocking on doors in the last election can recall walking down street after street where people are hostages in their own homes, paying monthly remittance to burglar alarm companies. Why? Because people can break into a home, walk down a street, break into another home, and if they are under certain ages all they ever get is a slap on the wrist.

The statistics that we have had here today will show that crime by those who have been accused and convicted is not particularly high. Let us talk about the number of crimes committed, not the number of convictions. Let us talk about the number of people who are convicted on one crime but who have done perhaps a half dozen or 15 or 20, or perhaps two.

Statistics are not always the measure of the security that people feel in their homes. Perhaps better security would be the growth of the private protection agencies in Canada, growth of the industry in providing protection in people's own homes and their own businesses.

We have to have balance in this debate. As we go forward over these next weeks and months as the government introduces its Young Offenders Act and the changes thereto, we need to have balance. To do so we need to know where we started and have some idea of where we are going to go.

I will read the motion for those viewers who might have just tuned in.

That this House urge the government to respond to the evident lack of confidence that has arisen from Canadians over the Young Offenders Act, and recommend modification to the definition of "young person" in section 2(1) of the act to mean a person ten years of age or more, but under 16 years of age.

The effect is to lower it by two years. This, as other hon. members have mentioned, would serve on the upper end to ensure that there is a venue for more strict retribution, and on the lower end to bring people into the system so that they can be helped at an earlier age.

This motion responds to a very evident concern in my constituency. Fully 80 per cent to 90 per cent of my constituents are calling for a strengthening of the Young Offenders Act; fully 80 to 90 per cent of my constituents want stricter penalties and harsher penalties in the courts.

We are talking in this House about gun control laws, the potential changes to gun control. Yet our courts do not enforce the rules we have now. That is the primary problem, the primary cause of the crime that we have in our society today.

If we are going to do anything about crime, young offenders or adult offenders, there must be three certainties. These are the three certainties that we have when raising our own children: the certainty of detection, the certainty of a swift and fair trial, and the certainty of retribution.

I would submit that many Canadians feel that our criminal justice system, particularly as it applies to young offenders, not only does not have one of these pillars to make it successful, it has none of the pillars.

When your home is broken into, when the police finally get there they do a report and you submit it to your insurance company and that is the end of it. Once again we are hostages. We are paying increased premiums for insurance because we accept the fact that our homes are going to be broken into. A swift and fair trial-how many of these instances ever come to court? And retribution, give me a break.

Here we have a criminal justice system particularly as it applies to young offenders which has none of the pillars that would be required to change attitudes, not one. It is not the way we would respond or react in our own homes with our own children.

If our children did damage to our own property and came home would we be upset? Would there be detection? Would there be a swift and fair trial? Would there be retribution? You bet there would. Why is it then that while we would take this responsibility personally as a nation we absolve ourselves of this responsibility and we say because a child may have wet the bed, they therefore have the right to do whatever they want to do to society, it is society's fault.

An extension of that argument, logical or illogical as it may be, could well be that every child who is born and lives in modest circumstances would naturally go on to be an offender of some description and every child born into more privileged circumstances would never get into trouble. We know that is not the case. Offences, whether young offenders or not, cut across all demographic lines, across all racial and linguistic barriers. It has to do with societal values and what we as a society have decided is okay and what we as a society have decided is not okay.

My colleague who just spoke said that he does not agree with the fact that this young fellow in Singapore doing whatever he was doing, abusing the law, ended up getting the punishment of the day in Singapore which is caning.

I would submit that there is one heck of a lot less crime in Singapore than there is here. I would question where people would feel safer, in downtown Ottawa, downtown Toronto, downtown Vancouver, downtown Edmonton or downtown Singapore.

I am not suggesting we go all one way or all the other but I can remember from my personal experience a brush with the law. I got involved with the Reform Party at a very young age. I went to reform school I think when I was about 11. I was at a camp with other young boys and we decided we had had about enough of that so we ran away. I guess we were 11 or 12 or something like that. We were on the loose for three or four days.

I can look back at it now and imagine the pain and suffering that caused to everyone associated. I would have gone crazy if one of my kids had done that.

In any event, we sort of lived off the land. If we had had the brains we would have been able to figure out how to steal a car but we could not, which is not to say we did not try. What we were doing was mischief. It would be perceived as mischief today.

I will never forget walking along a street and feeling the hand of the law on the back of my neck as he picked me up. He could probably be arrested for that. There I was walking along the street. The next thing I knew my feet were off the ground and I had this hand around the back of my neck holding me up, a voice saying: "Get in the car, kid". To this day I have trouble eating Shreddies because that is what they served us at the detention home. That is not to say that every kid who gets in trouble as a youth is going to turn out all bad. They may end up being members of Parliament, perhaps a logical extension. I throw no collar on hon. members opposite. I am speaking strictly about myself.

How are we as parliamentarians going to get somewhere with this perception, not just of youth crime but criminality in general? I submit it goes much deeper than changing or applying the law. It has to do with the values that we treasure in our society. It has to do with things like family values, with a sense of community. It has to do with accepting personal responsibility. It has to do with leaders leading. It has to do with people who are responsible taking responsibility.

We have heard today of students in school being wild and doing whatever they want to do. Do the teachers like that? I submit they do not. The teachers will tell you time and time again that they are handcuffed. We have put them in handcuffs so they cannot do anything. They cannot touch the children. They can say: "You are a bad little Johnny, you are a bad little Sue. You should not be doing that". Saying that is not going to change a thing.

We have to change our values. We have to make personal responsibility and personal accountability, whether you are a young offender or a mid-sized offender or an adult offender, the primacy.