Ian McClelland

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Suspension Act, March 24th, 1994]

No, you worry about it. That is right.

Lo and behold I am having my corn flakes this morning knowing that I am going to speak to this today and from today's Globe and Mail I would recommend to hon. members and to those of you watching these proceedings on television a very worthwhile article called ``Debasing the Franchise''. This is part one of three articles. I recommend it to everyone so they can catch a bit of the flavour and a bit of the history of just what we are talking about here. It is in today's Globe and Mail and there will be another article tomorrow and then the next day. If I may I will read just a small bit from today's Globe and Mail . It has to do with representation by population and distribution.

In any event in 1947 they had a pretty good idea that what they were going to do was base the number of seats by the representative population that Canada had and then divide that by the number of provinces and presto, you have the number of seats. As one province increases they get more seats and as another province decreases it gets less seats, except in the case of Prince Edward Island which was guaranteed four seats. That seemed like a pretty good idea at the time but it did not last.

I would like to suggest a way out of this muddle. I would suggest that we have a limit on the number of seats. There certainly will not be any problem from this side of the House in saying that we should not be increasing the number of seats in the House of Commons. Let us freeze it at 295. Let us have a strict representation by population in the House. Every province will be represented strictly in its proportionate number of seats by its population with no floors; no floors for Quebec and no floors for Prince Edward Island. Then how do we go about representing the regions or the provinces in Canada?

Let us have a Senate that represents the provinces. Let us have a triple-E Senate. That will get us out of this mess. We can have a House of Commons that will be strictly representation by population. That is magic, is it not? Then we have a Senate that represents the provinces.

A member opposite said they had not heard of this before. There may even be a few people out there in television land who

have not heard of this before. It is called a triple-E Senate. Through representation by population in the House and a triple-E Senate in the other House, we achieve what we want to achieve.

We achieve representation of all provinces equally in Canada and we achieve representation by population in this House without it growing forever. There, I submit most humbly, is my answer to the dilemma that our honourable House faces. How do we go about achieving it? It is simple.

Let us get on with it now. We know how to achieve it. We need to do something about the Senate. We are all in basic agreement with that. We will get representation by population in this House and we can get a triple-E Senate in the other House and we can all go home happy.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Suspension Act, March 24th, 1994]

Not to worry about it? Fine, not to worry about it.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Suspension Act, March 24th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I will try to find a germ of relevance in my representation as well.

I have listened with a great deal of interest to this debate today. We are talking about closure, redistribution and political interference or non-political interference in the political process in Canada. That is one of the things that we can treasure.

When we look at other countries in the world and reflect on the tragedy that happened in Mexico yesterday, we think of the very real and very great political discourse that goes on in the country. We see our colleagues from the Bloc who are here and while we are at completely different poles we are able to discuss these things rationally and without fear of personal harm. That is something we really need to treasure in our country and to hold very dear. I guess that is one of the reasons that I wanted to speak to this motion.

When this bill was first introduced I really did not feel all that strongly about it. My riding of Edmonton Southwest is affected very little. We lose a little bit to the northwest but as members would know, Edmonton Northwest is represented by my colleague who shares the same last name. So we do not win or lose on that one. In the south we lose a little bit and we gain a little bit so that the effect on our constituency is not all that much.

What we do have is a sense of fairness that when we get into a political debate or into an election here in Canada most of us do not have to go to bed at night thinking that there has been any gerrymandering going on with our electoral boundaries. This is something that I think is particularly important.

In the last election I was running as a rookie. The people from Elections Canada who were looking after things were all appointed by the Conservative government that preceded this government. I must compliment all of the people that I was associated with at Elections Canada. They were impartial and fair to everyone. In particular, I would use this occasion to compliment our returning officer, Patricia Collins, who went out of her way to be fair to me.

When we as a political institution start to change the rules that are established, whether we like them or not, we are treading on fairly thin ice. That is the reason that I am standing to speak against this motion today. If we do not like the rules then we have the privilege of changing them any time we want. However, there is no reason to suggest that the electoral boundary change cannot go forward as it would normally have done.

I am not in favour of changing the number of seats in the House. It could have been frozen at substantially less years ago. However the very people who are now making the case for freezing the number of seats, during the Charlottetown accord when the number of seats in this House were going to grow amazingly, not one word was raised against it. Different times make different priorities.

When I thought I wanted to speak to this and the new wrinkle of closure was added to the soup that an earlier colleague described, I thought why not phone the Library of Parliament and ask them to send over a few topic headings under the term "closure" and then I would glean from that a few examples of members' opposite when they were in opposition railing against the government of the day on the issue of closure.

There are three pages. So we just grabbed one to use as an example. Then I thought I had better be a little careful because I am sure that when members opposite were railing against closure when they were in opposition they had no idea that these words would be coming back at them in such a short time.

However, I must use one example and this is from Hansard , May 29, 1991, the hon. member representing Ottawa-Vanier:

Since I began my remarks on the government's heavy-handed motion to reinstate certain bills, for which it could not receive unanimous consent because they are indeed not very good bills, a new element has been introduced into the debate-closure. It is now using its majority, the tyranny of the majority, to impose upon the rest of us its will.

That is far from being democratic.

Therefore, I am a little nervous about introducing this because I know that if we are as successful as we hope to be, we will be sitting on the other side of the House.

[Constitution Act, 1982, March 23rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I will share my time. I have a few very brief comments to make.

I recognize the motion put forward by my hon. friend from Notre-Dame-de-Grâce and accept the fact that it is a basic contradiction to speak against the motion. If article 33 is to be used to take away rights or freedoms, chances are that it will be used to take away rights and freedoms from where they are probably needed the most. There is a basic contradiction in speaking against the motion, which is what I intend to do this evening. I do so despite the fact that I am appreciative that it really is a conundrum when the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has an override provision on perhaps the most personal aspects of the charter.

Under the Constitution Act, 1982, as was pointed out by my hon. friend from Quebec, when the Constitution came back to Canada it did not have unanimous support of all provinces. It also changed the fundamental values in the way our country relates, the way we relate as citizens one to another. We no longer have common law. The legislatures are not longer paramount in Canada; it is the Supreme Court. We found ourselves as a nation reacting to interpretations of the way we relate one to another by virtue of how the Supreme Court interprets a particular law.

The net result is that we have become a nation of entitlement rather than of responsibilities. I keep suggesting that perhaps we

could immeasurably improve the Charter of Rights and Freedoms if we were to change it to the charter of rights, freedoms and responsibilities, because there is no such thing as a right or a freedom without a corresponding responsibility.

Bringing in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms with the Constitution Act has fundamentally changed the way we relate to each other as citizens and to our governments. The notwithstanding clause gives elected parliaments the opportunity to override the court which is unelected and appointed.

Perhaps there would be some way we could evolve to some sort of compromise so that we could have the best of both worlds. I do not know what that compromise would be, but I know the people of Canada, at least in my opinion, would far rather have a country where elected bodies in our nation were paramount to appointed judicial bodies.

For that reason I would vote against the bill and I would speak against the notion of striking the notwithstanding clause, keeping in mind that when invoked the notwithstanding clause must be redone every five years.

[Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95, March 23rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, as the House may or may not be aware, the hon. member for Swift Current is involved in the agricultural community.

I wonder if the member could enlighten me and other members of the House of the effect on the agriculture industry of this chronic overspending and our inability to live within our means. Is it making our agricultural products less competitive in the world market?

[Supply, March 22nd, 1994]

Madam Speaker, as always the hon. member for Burin-St. George's said what he wished to say eloquently. It is absolutely amazing how he is able to say so little but so well. I applaud the hon. member.

As this is such an exceptionally serious topic that we are debating today and the hon. member knows so well that his home province, of all the provinces, suffers the most from unemployment, could he say something about having the portability of labour across the country that includes Quebec so that people from all parts of this country can go wherever they want to find employment?

[Hockey Canada, March 18th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, if the minister recognized parts of that question it is because it was a question essentially put to the House 15 months ago by a present cabinet minister of the government to the previous government. The problem has been ongoing and the same essential evasion of an answer has been ongoing for quite some time.

Be that as it may, my supplementary question would be to the Minister of Justice. Would the minister assure the House of the government's full legal co-operation in pursuing the extradition of Mr. Alan Eagleson to face trial in the United States?

[Hockey Canada, March 18th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Deputy Prime Minister.

As the Deputy Prime Minister is aware Mr. Alan Eagleson, a former board member of Hockey Canada, is under indictment in the United States and awaits an extradition hearing in Canada.

Meanwhile serious questions have been raised about the financial dealings between Mr. Eagleson and Hockey Canada, a federal non-profit organization created by the Government of Canada and subsidized by the taxpayers of Canada to tune of over $3 million.

Would the Deputy Prime Minister provide to the House full financial disclosure of all aspects of Hockey Canada including the air travel logs and detailed income and expenses for Hockey Canada since Hockey Canada has been incorporated?

[Business Of Supply, March 17th, 1994]

I thank the hon. member for the question. That was on my list but I did not get to it. That is a good example of one of the cases where we have to be careful. We do not want to let the pendulum swing too far in either direction.

At the time of reforming the penitentiaries in 1971 it was very Draconian and there is no question we were not saving as many souls as we were possibly able to under those conditions. Therefore in swinging the pendulum there is a very good possibility we went too far in the other direction. Now is the time to put the rights of the victims at least where they should be, which is always ahead of the rights of the criminals.

I accept the hon. member's point and thank him.

[Business Of Supply, March 17th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I am particularly pleased to follow my hon. colleague from Fraser Valley West. I thought he used a particularly poignant example to conclude his address. After hearing it, it is very difficult to move to another phase of the debate. However I would like to talk about the cost of crime as it pertains to ordinary citizens. We do not even think about it on a day to day basis.

I know when I was door knocking during this campaign, and I am sure it was the case of virtually everyone in the House, what we noticed was that everyone has a burglar alarm. Did hon. members notice that? When we went into the higher income areas, then everybody had burglar alarms plus dogs.

The cost of crime and the paranoia associated with crime and the fear of crime is a tax every one of us pays to businesses which have increased costs because they have had to install burglar alarms.

For those of us here and those Canadians at home watching, we all know what happens when we have been the victim of crime. During the campaign when I was making this point I would just ask people: "How many people here in the last year have been a victim of crime either personally or someone in their family?" Members would be amazed. I think it was something like 15, 20 or 25 per cent of the people would raise their hands every time. That was just in the past year.

I know as a victim the first thing that happens is you feel like you have been violated. You think your sense of safety is no longer there. The street that you have lived on, the neighbours that you have had all those years, all of a sudden you are locking the door. You just do not feel good about it anymore. Gradually that fades. You get over it. You get your alarm company. You get your alarm in. You start feeling good about it. Then you go into a drawer to get something that you have forgotten about and you find it is not there because that is one more thing stolen.

The frustration comes back in the neighbourhood with young offenders, when people know who is breaking in. A street with 20 or 30 houses and 5 of them have been broken into and they are all the same people.

That is the situation. It is partly due to our wonderful Charter of Rights and Freedoms that has put the cart before the horse. We have the rights of the criminal paramount to the victim.

Let me give another example. A rape victim wanted to find out whether she had been infected with AIDS. She went to court to get a court order so the convicted rapist would be tested for AIDS but it was said to be a violation of his rights. He raped this gal and it is a violation of his rights that she cannot have the peace of mind of finding out whether she ended up with AIDS because of what he did.

My friends, we have to rethink, we have to deal with the situation as it is. No wonder people think that we have lost the handle on this.

In doing a little research I asked: Where did we start to go off the rails? No one on either side of the House got up one morning and asked: "Well, how are we going to screw up the criminal justice system? How can we make it worse instead of making it better"? It did not start that way. But that is how it has ended up.

It is only a mistake if it is recognized as a mistake and it is not changed, then it is experience. Let us get some experience from it.

This is how it started and I quote from Hansard , Thursday, October 7, 1971, and the words I am going to read from the Hon. Jean-Pierre Goyer, Solicitor General, are going to shock you.

Folks at home, when you hear the words I am going to say you are going to realize why we got into the mess we are in. It is quite a long and involved quote but it says: "Consequently we have decided from now on to stress the rehabilitation of individuals rather than the protection of society". That is right out of Hansard . The Solicitor General of Canada, Thursday, October 7, 1971 in this very House and I well bet he was standing right over there somewhere when he said: ``Consequently, we have decided from now on to stress the rehabilitation of individuals rather than the protection of society''. Is it any wonder we are where we are at today?

It started because in 1971 the recidivism rate was 80 per cent. People went to jail, they served their time and 80 per cent of them were back in after they were released. Something was wrong somewhere, so we had to change things. This was an attempt to change things.

I think they were on the right track. They just went too far. It ended up with the rights of the criminals coming before the rights of the victim. It has come to the point where we do not have enough money to go around to pay for day care and other things that people would love to have but we can put $675,000 into expanding the recreation complex at Bowden Institution. Or we can build a jail in Grande Cache where all the rooms face the mountains.

I want to point out the fact that we did not get started on this track yesterday. We have been on this road for a long time and it is now time to make about a 180 degree U-turn.