Ian McClelland

[Canada Pension Plan, February 17th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, no matter how you dress it up, this is a pig. You can put any face you want on it but it is always going to be a tax. It is going to be an unfair tax and will be particularly onerous on younger Canadians at the expense of older Canadians. That is the way it is. It is going to be a particularly expensive and onerous tax on young Canadians.

The increase in payroll taxes paid by every employer and employee will be about the combined monthly car and mortgage payment or about half the tuition fee for someone in university. It

will suck $10 billion out of the paycheques of Canadians every year.

How many permanent jobs will be lost by taking this $10 billion out of the economy every single year?

[Canada Pension Plan, February 17th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, Canada pension plan premiums are payroll taxes. They are set by the federal government and the provincial governments and employees and employers have no control whatsoever. They are taxes pure and simple. This $1,300 increase in Canada pension plan premiums as announced by the Liberal government will result in a massive payroll tax increase for every working Canadian.

On May 3, 1994 the finance minister said right here in this House: "Payroll taxes are a cancer on job creation". Does the Minister of Finance believe today that payroll taxes are a cancer on job creation?

[Canada Pension Plan, February 14th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, today Canadians from coast to coast must be feeling a terrible chill as the shadow of the most regressive tax increase ever to hit our country has just been announced by the Minister of Finance.

Today the government announced the fact that it is going to be increasing the current Canada pension plan payroll tax from 5.85 per cent of earnings to 9.9 per cent. This is a huge increase in personal taxes, taxes that come out at the payroll, taxes that come out before income taxes are paid, taxes that come out even before Canadians get a chance to pay the GST. No matter how we slice it, this is a tax increase to Canadians.

If this were a pension plan, as people understand or contemplate pension plans, it may not be that bad, people providing for their future, but that is not what it is. For example, today if you pay 5.8 per cent of your salary in order to get a pension of $8,724.90 which is the maximum Canada pension plan, you would get $8,724.96 in pension. After the changes are made, you and your employer will have the opportunity to pay $3,193.36 to get the same $8,000. You are paying $3,200 a year to get approximately $9,000 in pension.

Does that make any sense? This is RRSP season. If the government were selling mutual funds, and the government said to each individual taxpayer: "We have this great new plan. This new plan means that you and your employer will get to pay $3,200 a year in premiums and for that you will receive about $9,000 a year", the taxpayer would laugh because it does not make any sense at all. That is the basic problem with this plan. It does not give to the person who owns the plan and puts the money into the plan, the individual Canadian, a balanced, decent and honest return on their invested money.

The government has said it is conscious of the negative impact that payroll taxes have on jobs. This is a historical fact. It is on record. The government has said and has evidenced that in recognition of that, it will reduce the employment insurance premiums by the magnificent sum of 10 cents per $100 of earned income.

To put the increase into context, this increase in payroll taxes is $4.10 per $100 of income. So the government giveth and the government taketh away. When the government taketh away, is it balanced? I think not. And there again is the problem. Canadians are taxed to death. We cannot look at any individual tax alone. We have to look at the cumulative effect on our economy. The tax grab is an anchor that sucks the lifeblood out of our economy.

When the payroll taxes go up for the individual and for the employer-as they will in this circumstance, after six years the tax will go up to $651.90 each-where does that money come from? The employer says: "We have been contributing $1,889.56 per employee annually but now we have to contribute $3,193.36. Where are we going to get that money? Can we raise our prices? No we cannot". We live in a competitive world. It shrinks profit. The shrunk profit means there is less money to reinvest in our economy. What does that mean? It means fewer jobs.

If we want to see what is going to happen to our economy as a direct result of this tax grab because of the fact that we have mismanaged the pension funds over the last 36 years, just watch the unemployment rate rise after this kicks in. What is going to happen? Businesses are going to do the only thing they can do in order to get by. They are going to lay off staff because there is no other way to get money. How can businesses survive when a government thinks of them as a bottomless pit of resources? It just does not happen.

The hon. member opposite used to be a highly placed member of the Toronto Dominion Bank. The Toronto Dominion Bank is going to look at all of those businesses and say: "Gosh, you have 100 employees. Do you realize you are going to have to come up with some $90,000 a year more just to cover the Canada pension plan premiums? Where are you going to get that money? More money will have to be injected into your business".

They businesses are going to say: "But wait a minute. We cannot automatically assume that business is going to increase so the only thing we can do is lay people off or not hire them". That is the problem with this. We must inculcuate a sense of fiscal responsibility within all governments.

When the government says to someone that it is investing this money on his behalf, I ask hon. members and I ask Canadians, what person in their right mind would ask a government that is $600 billion in debt to be his investment adviser? Only a government that is $600 billion in debt could say with a straight face to Canadians: "Give us $3,200 of your money each year and we will invest it for you. For that, after your retirement, you will get almost $9,000 a year". Give me a break.

Anybody investing in even the most moderate RRSP would know that a privately managed investment plan would return more than double the same amount over the same period of time. How can the government possibly look Canadians in the face and say that this is a good deal? It is not a good deal. It is a tragedy.

It is a tragedy for all Canadians because once again the government instead of facing reality is saying: "We can get ourselves out of this problem by increasing taxes". Every time you increase taxes, you poke another hole in the lifeboat of the economy. It makes it harder to keep our national finances in shape.

We as a government and governments all over the country have fiduciary responsibility to our children and to their children to live within our means. That does not mean sucking money out of the country by means of a payroll surtax to lend to other governments at below market rates and make ourselves look better today at the expense of future generations.

The government has no reason to be pleased about this tax increase which will negatively influence employment. It will be terribly detrimental to the employment of young Canadians, especially the most vulnerable young Canadians, those trying to get into the workforce for the first time.

There is no excuse for the fiscal mismanagement of our country, our pension plans and our money which has brought us to the situation we are in today.

[Employment, February 14th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians understand intuitively when a finance minister rises to speak that his hand goes into their pockets at the same time.

Employment insurance premiums currently take in over $5 billion more than is paid out in benefits. It is nothing more than a federal payroll surtax. Canada pension plan premiums will be increased 69 per cent because the plan is seriously flawed.

To limit job killing regressive payroll taxes, will the government limit increases in Canada pension plan premiums to a corresponding reduction in employment insurance premiums?

[Employment, February 14th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the finance minister.

Anyone who has signed a paycheque understands that payroll taxes are a disincentive to hiring. Employment insurance, workers' compensation and the proposed new Canada pension plan premium of nearly 10 per cent means payroll taxes will be almost 20 per cent of earnings. Then the victim pays income tax and then the GST. No wonder Canadians are tax poor.

How can the government create an economic climate conducive to job growth, particularly for first time job applicants, when payroll taxes make it more cost effective to pay overtime or to utilize part time contract employees?

[Divorce Act, February 14th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, the changes to the Divorce Act particularly as they impact the care and nurturing of children are important parts of a piece of legislation that affects all of society.

Even if we as individuals are not touched directly by the terrible stresses and strains caused in a relationship by divorce, we in the greater society are affected profoundly by it. We are affected if people who have children do not look after their responsibilities as parents. We are affected because we as the greater society then have to step in to look after and nurture those children.

We are affected by the consequences of divorce even if we are not involved in divorce ourselves because we know statistically that children who are nurtured in a two-parent home do better. That does not necessarily mean that single parents cannot nurture children, but the ideal is a two-parent home where the children are nurtured in an environment that is conducive to love, respect, a sense of family and a sense of community responsibility.

That is not to say that there are not circumstances in which people will be raised in a single parent home where single parents, female or male, are heroic in their responsibilities and in their ability to raise children to become citizens of the first order.

Having said that, we know statistically that children who are reared in a two-parent home have far less propensity to get involved in crime and do better in school.

Our legislation should speak to two particular objectives. It should speak to what we can do as a society to encourage families to stay together. Then, if in the unfortunate circumstance we find ourselves, myself included, in the throes of divorce, how can we make divorce least disruptive? How can we keep as many lawyers as possible out of it? How can we ensure that both parents, even though they have divorced, do not divorce the kids? How can we make the best of a bad situation?

The first objective is what we can do as a society to ensure the problems do not happen in the first place. We know that many divorces result from family distress brought on by financial problems. Obviously there are other reasons but we all know that a family under financial stress is far more likely to have other problems crop up than a family not under financial stress. What can we do as a government to address this problem? The first we can do is nurture families. We can make it possible for families to look after and nurture their own children. The way we can do that is to provide tax relief to families initially. We can say as a society that our future is encompassed in our children, our grandchildren and their children. Everything we do as legislators should be focused to that end.

We will be talking about the seniors benefit later today. I am absolutely amazed that as a nation we have decided to have a guaranteed annual income for seniors. That is what the seniors benefit is all about. All seniors will have tax free annual income after the year 2000 of $11,430 whether or not they need it. Then it will be taxed back very quickly for those who do not need it. That is another story.

If we as a society can afford to have a guaranteed annual income for seniors, why can we not have a guaranteed annual income or a negative income tax for children? Children are the future of the country. We as a society will get a far better bang for the buck and a return on our investment if we do everything we possibly can to nurture children. That means we should do what we can to take the financial load off families and to keep the stresses in families to an absolute minimum to make it possible for them to nurture their children.

We know that is the ideal and we know that is not the circumstance. We know families take in a whole spectrum of different models. Whether or not one person likes it does not have anything to do with it. As a society we must firmly focus our interests on children.

How do we go about protecting children in the case of divorce and the circumstances that lead up to divorce? We say in our legislation that when a couple decides to divorce it might be in society's best interest to get involved in conflict resolution right off

the bat. Rather than each party going to their lawyers and having a couple of barracudas working at it to see who is going to get more from the other, we could have some conflict resolution. They have made the decision to split up and on how they can best achieve this with the least possible damage to the children. The part of the legislation that envisions this is highly laudable and highly supportable.

We appreciate there are cases that involve spousal abuse. There is no reason whatsoever for a spouse who is being abused to stick around for a split second. This raises a whole new set of questions. Why is it always the female and the children, the abused, who have to leave the domicile and go to a shelter? It does not make any sense to me.

The reason is that we have to protect the rights of the abuser. Again the victims are being penalized and the abuser is not. We cannot just haul the abuser off to jail, keep him there and tell him that he cannot go anywhere near those people or abuse them. We usually have to take the mother and the children and put them in a safe spot, hopefully.

We are now in a situation where we as legislators have determined that we will do everything we can to prevent the break-up from happening in the first place. We know this is the ideal. We know it will not happen in every circumstance but we should be working toward the ideal.

That means we have to take financial pressure off families through tax relief focused directly at them. How on earth can we be concerned about tax relief and subsidizing Bombardier and other major corporations when we do not subsidize and nurture our children and make it possible for them to have a future? It does not make any sense. It is so completely wrongheaded that it defies reality.

Now we come to the point where families are splitting up come hell or high water; it is going to happen. This is not a holier than thou speech. I have been in the middle of it. I know about what I speak. Whose responsibility is it to look after the children who are involved? Is it the state's responsibility or is it the parents' responsibility?

When any of us decide to have children those children become our responsibility, our family responsibility, period. The only time the state should be involved is when the parents are unable to look after their responsibilities.

How do we go about making it easier or palatable for families to look after their responsibilities? First, we do not say that one person is right and the other is wrong. We do not say that either the male is 100 per cent wrong or the female is 100 per cent wrong and we will put one or the other into debtor's prison. We will make it impossible for one or the other ever to have another life.

It seems to me that we should go right into a position of joint custody and joint responsibility. We know there are situations where we will not have that. We know there are situations where one partner, usually it is men, flee from whatever the responsibilities are.

Again, we are addressing this legislation to the ideal. Our society has inculcated a culture where people intuitively know and automatically understand that, when they get married, when divorce or separation is envisioned down the road, their further responsibility is to nurture, protect and look after their children in a manner that is harmonious as it can possibly be. They know they should put marital problems behind them so that their children do not suffer further.

In my experience the number one problem that people have brought to me relates to access to children. It is not paying maintenance. It is paying maintenance and not having access to the children. That is what drives people crazy. It is kind of the chicken or egg situation.

Fathers or mothers who are non-custodial should have access to their children in a default co-parenting situation even if they split up. It cannot be said that maintenance and access are not inextricably linked because they are. If I or anyone else has a commitment to make a maintenance payment to his ex and does not do it, then obviously the ex will be enraged. The ex will be figuring out how to can get back at me.

The only way to get back is through the children. Situations come up where maintenance payments are made, but for whatever reason, the custodial spouse makes it impossible for the non-custodial spouse to have his or her regular visitation. It breaks the link with those children. Somehow we need to ensure that, when maintenance payments are to be made, they are made but it does not exacerbate the already difficult situation caused by the divorce.

It can be done in many ways. However, if the state has an involvement, it seems to me that when a custody or maintenance payment is made, it could be put into the general revenue and come back from the federal treasury to the individual who will receive it. If it can be done for GST rebates, why can it not be done for other things?

The whole idea is to somehow mitigate or lower the potential avenues for distress, for disharmony and fighting between the two. Remember, our eye is on nurturing the children. It is not getting even.

If we could, as a society, somehow inculcate the sense of responsibility so that people intuitively say: "I know we have broken up, but having broken up, we will be both responsible for nurturing our children". It is really none of the state's business why a marriage breaks up but having broken up, the default position on maintenance is 50:50.

That means the cost of raising and nurturing the children is 50:50. The tax circumstance is 50:50. I do not know why it has to go all one way or all the other. Why is it not possible, in a maintenance payment, for the person making the payment to pay 50 per cent of the tax and the person who is getting it pays 50 per cent of the tax. They are partners. It took both of them to create those children. It took both of them to get married in the first place and it took both of them to break up the marriage in the second place. Why can they not just go further and automatically have it that the default position is a joint responsibility?

I know that is the ideal. I know there are all kinds of circumstances where that is not necessarily going to happen. However, it does not have to mean that legislation cannot be framed for the ideal and the other problems cannot be dealt with as they arise.

I would like to address one more issue in this debate and that is the role of the Senate. In particular, I would like to recognize the role of Senator Anne Cools in this debate. When this legislation first went through the House Reform members were saying essentially what we are saying now, that the legislation is well intentioned but it certainly has some huge problems and these are of such major consequence that the bill should be changed.

It is government legislation so there are winners and losers. This is legislation that speaks to the future of our country and how we raise and nurture our children and how we accept responsibility for our children.

We were not able to change a comma, a period. As hon. members know, if the government is set on what it is going to do, the opposition has absolutely no role in it. As a matter of fact, I will take it one step further. If the cabinet or the Prime Minister or persons surrounding the Prime Minister want to go in a particular direction, that is way we are going to go. There will be no changes whatsoever.

This is not a democracy. This is really an place where, if you are lucky, you may have some influence and might be able to change something.

When Senator Anne Cools saw the legislation, she was able to do in the Senate, because of the precarious position of its majority, what we could not do in the House of Commons and that was to force the government to make some modifications which will greatly enhance this bill.

It is incumbent on the official opposition, ourselves and other people in opposition to recognize the courage that Senator Anne Cools has shown in standing up to the government machine. It means that she becomes the person in the room from which there emanates a faint odour. It is not a very comfortable position to be in.

I think democracy is made better when it is tested. Leadership is made better when it is tested. On this and other legislation Senator Anne Cools has shown the resolve and the fortitude to test the government when it needed to be tested and when it was impossible because of the way this House works for the opposition to be able to test it. It has had to come through one of its own members in the Senate who has the strength of character to stand up against the government machine.

This legislation will come back. The deal is done. It will be debated here. It will become law in its somewhat redefined and changed form. It is better than it was but it still does not recognize the primary problem in family law and that is that family law should not be of an adversarial nature. The family court should be unified. It is not the same as criminal law. It should not be adversarial. We should be going into conflict resolution and doing everything we possibly can to nurture the children of the future in as harmonious a circumstance as we can.

[Youth Employment, February 13th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the government announced a youth jobs strategy. While it may or may not have political overtones, I think it is fair to say it is very clear there is a direct relationship between job potential, the ability to get and to retain a job, and the level of education.

In my opinion it is absolutely hypocritical of the government to cut funding to post-secondary education at the same time it would

put funding into a job scheme which in the eyes of many is really a transparent method of getting votes.

There is a direct relationship between the scholastic level achieved by young people and their ability to get a job. For instance, six months after graduation, only 3.5 per cent of the 1990 graduates of the University of Alberta were looking for work.

If young Canadians want to be part of the job market, they must stay in school.

[Excise Tax Act, February 10th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, as this debate winds its way to a close, the member for St. Paul's earlier said that this is an occasion for marvellous sound bites and it is. It is an occasion for the Liberals opposite to rest uncomfortably in their chairs as the odour of this particular piece of legislation wafts through the country.

The hon. member for Ontario, who just concluded his comments, suggested that this is legislation that is really very good for the country, that it has no detrimental effects and that the rest of the provinces should get on with it and harmonize the GST.

As Canadians know, this bill will put the legislation through the House to finalize the deal with the three Atlantic provinces. The three Atlantic provinces are the barber shop trio. They are singing in harmony with the federal government. They are singing in harmony with the Liberal government because they have been bribed, as earlier speakers have indicated, with our money.

The problem is this. The reason this issue raises the ire of Canadians and has raised the ire of the opposition is that the Liberal government has a majority. The majority is in good measure because of the government's promise during the election campaign to scrap and abolish the GST. The number of seats that the Liberals were able to achieve during the last election and the number of votes they were able to achieve, which may well have swayed some of the other votes, which would have affected the official opposition in the country, is the direct result of the Liberal promise to scrap the GST.

The Liberals were very vocal about it in the 34th Parliament. They knew full well when they made the promise to scrap the GST that they could not. The country had to have that revenue. If they went on the hustings and were elected on a promise to scrap the GST, to abolish the GST, the hated tax, which they failed to do while in opposition, then it logically follows that the government was elected on a fraud. It should not be sitting here in the first place.

Our responsibility is to ensure that Canadians understand full well that the Liberal government did not tell the unvarnished truth during the election campaign and it should not get away with it.

In politics in our country we should expect our politicians, when they knock on the door, and our Prime Minister, when he looks us in the eye on television, to tell the truth. Is it too much to ask that our politicians, the highest elected officers in our land, tell us the truth?

A few months ago I read an article in a newspaper which said that Canadians do not really expect the people who they elect to tell the truth. Therefore, why should we be surprised when they do not? That article was written by a respected pundit of this country. It went on to say that people should not expect politicians to keep their promises because circumstances and situations change. The situation and the circumstance of the GST did not change after the election. The circumstances were exactly the same. That promise should have been kept.

What kind of a country do we have when the end justifies the means? Should we not go into an election prepared to tell the voters exactly where we stand, exactly how we feel about an issue and then be held accountable for it? That is what the real issue is. The real issue is not the harmonization of the GST. It is the fact that the Liberals were elected on a promise to scrap the GST. They did not, and now they are trying to crawl out from under it.

It will cost us roughly a billion dollars in a bribe to the Atlantic provinces. It will cause untold grief, untold extra work all across the country, but that does not matter. What matters to the Liberal government is its ability to say that it kept a promise, to whitewash this whole issue.

I would hope that when the Liberals come knocking on the door asking for the support of Canadians in the next election, every single Canadian will look them in the eye and say: "Did you keep your word? Did you do as you promised to do prior to the last election?" They will say: "Oh yes, we harmonized the GST". Then, Mr. and Mrs. Canadian, look them in the eye and say: "Where in your election platform did you say anything about harmonize? You said scrap. You said abolish. You said get rid of. You did not say harmonize".

Every single Liberal should be taken to task, even the member for Broadview-Greenwood who is certainly no friend of the GST, whether harmonized or not. Even the member for Ontario who spoke so recently is no friend of the GST and neither is the Deputy Speaker who changed political parties because of the hated, despised GST. Members can imagine how uncomfortable that hon. gentleman feels as he stomachs that hated GST.

There are two aspects to a consumption tax. Most people, in fairness, will say that a consumption tax is not a bad way to tax. It is incremental. It is broadly based. It means that everybody pays on everything. People cannot get out from underneath paying the tax. However, there are two aspects to it. There is the rate, that is, whether 8 per cent or 7 per cent.

That was the problem with the old manufacturers' sales tax. People were afraid to go to sleep at night because they knew the federal government would raise the tax because it was hidden. That is why it has to be visible.

There is the rate and there is the base. The base means to what is the tax applied. This is never brought up. The problem is that the base, the products to which the taxes are applied in the provincial sales tax is quite a bit narrower. Not nearly as many products are taxable under a provincial sales tax.

When the tax is harmonized, it becomes a question of applying it on as broad a base as can possibly be done so that the rate is as low as it can possibly be. It is a combination of low rates and wide base that makes sense. To apply it on a narrow base but at a very high rate is counter productive.

As this debate winds down-I recognize that I may be the last person to speak on this-I want once again to make sure that all Canadians are reminded of the hypocrisy, the duplicity, the outright lie on which the Liberal government was elected. It should be ashamed and ashamed for a long time to come.

[Supply, February 7th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, in my view the only way that we will ever retain any confidence-not just us but the Canadian people and the military-in it is to exorcise all the ghosts and demons. No matter how long it takes and no matter how much it costs, it will be worth it.

Let me bring one more instance into this. Sergeant Mark Boland was asleep at the time that this took place. He was a section commander. He accepted responsibility for what happened because it happened on his watch. Even though he was not on site, these people were under his direct command and he accepted responsibility. He pleaded guilty to dereliction of responsibility because it happened. He did a plea bargain and got nine months.

He is a career military person. He recognized it was wrong. The military said: "Okay, plead guilty. We will give you nine months and you can get on with your life". He got his nine months and then the military appealed. Then he got over a year and they could then kick him out.

Mark Boland was an exemplary career soldier. If the commission wants to hear horror stories about what really went on in Somalia it should interview him. Mark Boland was given a direct order by a superior commissioned officer who was pissed out of his mind to shoot a Somali in cold blood. He would not do it. All the commission had to do is ask him.

Mark Boland does not have standing before the commission. How can this possibly be? When the military police came to Mark Boland's home in Petawawa to arrest him the second time, they did so in front of his wife and children. He hauled him out of his home with his children screaming: "Daddy, what is happening? What is going on?"

This was the kind of treatment afforded the lower deck as differentiated from the treatment afforded the upper deck. That is why there is a morale problem in the Canadian Armed Forces today and people do not have to be rocket scientists to figure it out.

[Supply, February 7th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to take part in this debate. I want to take it in a slightly different direction and try to put a somewhat more human face on the actual tragedy that befell one particular individual, Kyle Brown.

I would also like to show how the terrible circumstances of March 16, 1993 in Somalia inextricably linked three lives and how these lives were affected so differently as a result of it. There was the Somalia teenager, Shidane Arone, who was tortured and killed, for which there is no excuse; Robert Fowler, who was at that time the deputy minister of defence; and Kyle Brown, who at that time was a corporal in the Canadian Armed Forces serving in Somalia.

I joined the navy when I was 17. When I joined the navy it was really the first time in my life that I learned a sense of brotherhood. It was the first time in my life that I ever felt I was just the same as everyone else because I grew up on the other side of the tracks. As with many people who are in the military for the first time, it is the first time that they really get a foundation. One of the tragedies is the fact that we do not have a military any longer that allows for this kind of involvement, citizenship, renewal and growth.

I want to get back to the specific situation of trooper Kyle Brown. He was born and raised in Alberta. When he was 14 years of age, Kyle's mother died of a drug overdose. A year later his father committed suicide. Kyle Brown and an elder sister raised and helped look after a younger sibling. Kyle Brown was a struggler and a fighter all his life. Kyle Brown did not come from a privileged background. He came from a background that many Canadians come from, of struggle, and joining the Canadian Armed Forces was the pinnacle of his life. He was so proud of this and worked so hard to get in. He did not get in right away. He had to work to get into the armed forces.

I know something of the way the military works, having joined the navy when I was 17. When I saw the results of what had happened in Somalia I thought it was passing strange. It was wrong. There was something inherently not correct in the fact that the lowest ranking member found himself with five years in jail,

yet the very people who allowed the culture to develop got nothing. It just did not seem right.

When I was in the service, if the ship hit an iceberg the captain was at fault. It did not matter who was on the bridge. It had to do with responsibility. It goes all the way up the line to ministerial responsibility. In our culture, in a greater sense, the fact is that we as legislators or leaders accept the mantle of responsibility that comes with leadership we must also accept responsibility.

I initiated a meeting with Kyle Brown because I wanted to speak with him to find out what was going on but, more importantly, I wanted to say to Kyle Brown: "Look, Kyle, what went on is inexcusable but you are not alone. Some of us know that we all bear some responsibility for what has happened to you".

I first met Kyle Brown when he was in the Edmonton maximum security penal institution. It was the first time I had ever been in such an institution. I went through all the checks and the clanging doors to get in to see this man. At our very first meeting he was gun shy because everybody he had encountered in a position of authority had screwed him and had worked him over some way: journalists who had used him for a story and had dropped him; the military justice system that screwed him right from the beginning. Kyle Brown, by turning over the film, incriminated himself and prevented a cover-up from happening. This is the individual who by knowingly incriminating himself prevented a cover-up from happening, knowing full well that he would end up carrying the can for it. Nobody else would. He ended up in jail.

I believe that denotes character of the highest order. It is character from a person who did not come from a privileged background. Contrast that to the character of another person involved in this, Robert Fowler. He came from a privileged background. He had a position of high moral authority in our nation. What did he do? He misled the Minister of National Defence, to whom he was responsible, for one reason or another and as a consequence he was left in his position, either because the Prime Minister of the day was incompetent and did not remove him or for another reason. That person is still enjoying the confidence of the government.

I visited the person at the other end of this, the one that showed character by incriminating himself to ensure that a cover-up did not happen. He knew right from the beginning that what was going on was wrong. He knew his participation in it was wrong. He participated in it because of the culture of the regiment of which he was a part. He was a minor serving person.

I saw him in jail. He had tears in his eyes. He said: "I bear the responsibility for this in the eyes of every single citizen of this country. I am the lowest form of life. I joined the army and when I went to Somalia I wanted to bring honour to our country. I wanted to come back to Canada having brought glory to my country and to my regiment. Instead I am in jail. Other people that were involved in this are scurrying for cover. No one has accepted responsibility".

The statement which I am about to quote is in response to questions posed at a parole board hearing when Kyle Brown was at Bowden waiting to get out. I would point out as well that Kyle Brown had to pay for his defence himself. His sister went into debt to pay for his defence because he had no confidence in the military justice system. The first two counsel who went to Somalia took the first two people in the line of the people who had been charged. The other four people in line had no defence whatsoever. The first two people got off. The other four got charged. After that, because they are not stupid over there, they realized that anybody who came forward with any information was charged, so no one else came forward with information.

Kyle Brown said at his parole hearing: "A soldier is taught to obey orders without question. He is also taught that he has the moral obligation not to execute an illegal command". Kyle Brown has said to me and to others: "I got what I deserved. I knew better and I should not have done it. I did it. I should have fought to protect him. I was wrong. I accept the punishment I got". But why the hell did anybody else not end up in jail? Why did the person who allowed the culture to develop not end up in jail? Why is Bob Fowler, who was the deputy minister of defence who misled the defence minister, at the United Nations representing our country?

Kyle Brown said further at his hearing: "The thing that we are not told is what to do in a situation where superiors not only give illegal commands but execute them". What do you do in a situation in Somalia where the senior non-commissioned officers are going around drunk? There is no leadership. There is no accountability. Then the lowest ranking member of the armed forces ends up in jail. What kind of a signal does that send to everybody else in the armed forces? That is what we are talking about here.

We are talking about people in positions of authority accepting the responsibility for their positions and not sloughing it off to somebody else like the corporal who showed character while the deputy minister showed none. That is what this is all about.