Ted McWhinney

[Supply, May 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for that very thoughtful question.

It has always seemed to me that the solution is not limited to medical treatment, or hospitalization, or pharmacare, or in-house treatment, which I would regard as necessary parts of the package. When I spoke of the larger social security network I meant members of victims' families and their dependants. Their lifestyle is dramatically changed, just as it is for those who have contracted the disease. The fear is there.

We are getting into the area of human resources. Part of a comprehensive solution must involve the ministry of Human Resources Development. It must involve an expanded and an accelerated view of disability pensions. It might involve an ombudsman being appointed to accelerate these cases and to get them through.

We need that sort of comprehensiveness. It is in the social security network. It may need extra shortfall funds in particular cases. It certainly is not going to get into the $3 billion expenditure that some people feared when the original announcements were made.

If we can get into that larger perspective we have a better solution than what has emerged so far in the debates in the House.

[Supply, May 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question from the hon. member. The problem here I think is the meaning of the term compensation. I spent a good deal of my time making the distinction between a lawyer's one shot compensation and a compensation within the larger community, social security network. This would cover not merely victims of hepatitis C but all victims of unattended, unexpected medical disasters. We have had them before with thalidomide and we are going to get them again in the future.

In that context, I believe the minister would be in agreement with him.

[Supply, May 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Halton.

May I thank the hon. member for Palliser for introducing a constructive and helpful motion in a non-adversarial spirit. I think the ultimate solutions to this issue will come in a spirit of co-operation that will include all members of the House. I will have something to say on the content of the resolution shortly, but let me simply say in historical retrospect a good deal of present problems stem from the way in which this issue was first handled.

I have consistently in the past as an expert witness on constitutional affairs before numbers of federal parliamentary commissions and others argued against the use, even the abusive use, of royal commissions of inquiry on issues that properly can be handled by parliament and should be handled by parliament.

It is the Mackenzie King ploy which is peculiar to Canada among all the common law countries that if you have a difficult problem you postpone the decision by setting up a royal commission, knowing that it will take a long time. This is I think one of the problems. When the Mulroney government made the decision to go to a royal commission I think it had enough facts to make a decision at that time. All the social problems were known and I think it could have been handled.

Instead we, in a very delayed way, handled in a forum not conducive to broader community solutions a problem that could have been handled otherwise. As the United States supreme court has said, only limited aspects of social and community problems are seen through the narrow windows of litigation and legal processes. I think this has been one of the problems in dealing with the hepatitis C crisis.

It is, however, one of the interesting paradoxes that the gentleman whose name has been so often cited on both sides of the House, with the impression in my mind that very few members have consulted his report and those who have may have been lost for the large continuing truths in the thicket of information that goes through so many volumes, is somewhat opposed to legalistic solutions.

He was a student of our greatest torts and delicts lawyers and Dean Cecil Wright of the University of Toronto. Wright's basic solution for problems of this sort was to take it away from lawyers, take it away from legal processes, get into the larger area of community compensation in relation to social problems.

It is interesting that the first direct application of that thinking was in automobile insurance, take it away from the torts lawyers. You get a different aspect and a different approach. Horace Krever who was my colleague for four or five years has essentially reflected that approach.

A very perceptive editorial in the Globe and Mail today makes this comment, that he does come out in a way with a non-legal solution. He looks at the issue and wants a solution that sees a problem as a community problem, not a one shot solution as such, but what do you do with people whose lives have been potentially shattered and in certain cases actually shattered. Is it not part of the community problem solving approach, the social security network, to be able to handle medical emergencies that arise, that have arisen in the past and that will surely arise again in the future in this period of new patent medicines so suddenly without full tests? Is it not better to handle it in that larger context?

I think the answer to that is yes, it is better handled in that context. I rather regret that the Mulroney government did not 10 or 12 years ago bring the parliamentary standing committee on health into the act.

The health committee in this parliament is one of our best committees. We know its members work hard, are dedicated and do not travel much. They do their work, and why not in this particular context.

One of the problems, however, in the interpretation of the Krever commission report as it has emerged has been to confine and fetter the solutions into the context of a lawyer's package, a financial legal settlement. When the issues are before the courts, a great deal of this goes toward lawyer fees. However, even outside the context of a legal settlement by lawyers before the courts, I think some questions are relevant.

It is generally assumed, by the way, that somebody is liable in this case. I am not sure as a lawyer whether this is true other than the Red Cross, but I think this is the approach that distorts a solution along the broader lines I have suggested.

The arbitrary figure that has emerged of $60,000 per person is apparently, on the statistical evidence, unnecessary in a third of the cases, somewhat arbitrary in another third but totally inadequate, clearly, in at least a third of the cases we have been seeing. It will not meet more than a fraction of the burden, the disruption and destruction of the total life picture.

I think what we are looking for is a solution within the existing social security network. People on this side of the House take great pride in it but we can recognize also the contribution from a provincial political leader of the hon. member for Palliser's party, the contribution made to a comprehensive social security network which not only includes health, medicare and pharmacare but family and disability insurance. The basis for a proper solution is available within the existing governmental services.

I think the motion from the hon. member for Palliser is constructive because in a certain way I do not think we have really heard what the hepatitis C victims really want in this particular issue. We have been told that this is the solution asked for but I would have rather thought that we would get a more nuanced approach such as I have suggested if they were consulted.

Bringing the representatives into the health ministers' meeting is not for the federal government alone to make the decision. However, I am sure the other governments would agree that bringing them in is a way to enlightenment of how the problem is viewed and to producing a compensation that is not going to be lawyers' compensation but may go well beyond that in the sense that it is really making sure the victims can live out their lives decently with their families and dependants. We can bring it to a solution in this particular way.

I look forward to the meeting taking place on this basis and to the responses made in that context.

[Bosnia, April 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it is late in the evening. There has been comment on the length of the debate and on the opposition side some disparaging comments on the quality of the debate. I will not enter into that but I would take issue immediately with the hon. member for Beauharnois—Salaberry who made the comment that parliament did not have a big enough role in this debate and in these general questions.

Parliament has taken a very dramatic step forward in the life of the present government, although it began in the last parliament under the present government, that is to say the commitment made by the government that when Canadian forces would be involved in military style activities abroad under the United Nations or otherwise, parliament would get an opportunity to debate. It is not a decision making role but it is an unprecedented step to allow parliament to debate.

This has been honoured by the government since that undertaking was first given in, I believe, 1994. It has been refined to the point where if there is an issue of urgency such as when the matter arose during the summer recess with the extension of our mandate in Haiti I as parliamentary secretary contacted the official spokespersons for all opposition parties and asked for their interim approval. It was given.

We have made a step forward here. There is an involvement of parliament and I think the debate tonight reflects that.

It is worth noting of course that the present government inherited the obligations to the United Nations in lineal descent from obligations entered into by the preceeding government, the Mulroney government. That was in response to a request by Boutros Boutros Ghali, the then secretary general of the United Nations.

Although SFOR is a different type of operation from the one the Mulroney government engaged us in, the lineal descent is clear and I think one of the large oversights was on the part of the Mulroney government in not insisting in Canadian involvement in the decision making group. We have not been part of the contact group. We were not at the original time and we have not been since, and so in a sense we are carrying out macro decisions that others are making. It is not something one would recommend to governments in future situations.

Going back to history which was referred to by the member for Red Deer in a somewhat general way, of course we also inherit past history. In Santayana's terms, we also inherit the non-observervance of history, in his famous aphorism. The lessons of the past were not applied, were not understood and so wise decisions were not made. But they were not our decisions.

The present grand lines of the Balkan Peninsula, with the disintegration of the Ottoman empire, were created at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 and through two world wars and two Balkan wars which were even bloodier in a limited environment they were confirmed in their large lines. Everything else has represented incremental changes or territorial adjustments.

There was Bismarck in 1878. There was not an equivalent Bismarck in 1989-90 when the Berlin wall was falling down and the cold war was ending.

One of the problems in a certain sense is that the European statesmen in 1989-90, it has been said by historians, rushed to a premature recognition of successor states to the old Yugoslavia.

I think their error was not in their recognition of the new successor states for it was very clear Slovenia and Croatia had to be independent. But they followed Tito's internal historical boundaries which he had created through successive constitutions from 1944 onwards, which were really designed to give population and geographical balance but which ignored much more than the previous historical boundaries under Austria-Hungary and under Serbia, and ignored ethnocultural concentrations.

To a very real extent one had sown the seeds of later conflicts in 1991-92, the problem of either exchange of populations or radical constitutional adjustments for which nobody was prepared. It was an example of the doctrine of uti possidetis being misapplied and I think we are reckoning with some of the consequences of that.

This is not to say, however, that facts cannot themselves acquire a normative quality and I think one of the interesting facts is President Chirac and his visit to Sarajevo earlier this month. President Chirac is one of those who had the most reservations about the dispositions made in 1989-90 in the diplomatic terms, but he is referring in essence, echoing German legal philosopher Mr. Jellinek, to the normative force of facts. New frontiers have been created and it is time now with eight years of experience to try to make them work. We enter in that context.

As we go into Bosnia again and the mandate is extended, we must recognize this is a not a Canadian classic peacekeeping mission under chapter 6 of the charter; nor, however, is it a chapter 7 mission, the peacemaking mission with all the legal powers under chapter 7 to apply armed force. It is in between, so it creates problems in deciding the limits of competence of our troops.

We have to tread carefully because in a certain sense the peace building role is not defined in terms of what can and cannot be done.

We are subject to the general laws of war but we have a mandate essentially to help in limited aspects of matters, maintaining elections, trying to get the cities running again, and this is something we do very well. I think it is probably the biggest justification apart from historical continuity. We have been there and we do not leave a job in the middle before it is completed. That is the biggest justification for going on.

I would note here with great pleasure, as I think some earlier speakers have, that there will be a massive role for our limited number of Canadian forces in mine clearing. We all remember the land mine treaty to which Canada contributed so much. We took the initiative. We went ahead in spite of the reluctance or opposition of superpowers and big powers, and 121 countries have signed. There are 300,000 to 1 million mines remaining in Bosnia in 18,000 mine fields. At the moment SFOR is clearing 22,000 mines a year. We hope to bring it up to 100,000 but it is quite a challenge. I think all Canadians will feel great pride that this is one of the responsibilities of our force in Bosnia at the present time.

In suggesting to the House that it approve, not in the legal sense the decisions made, but that it give its enthusiastic backing to this extension, we entered in the task in good faith. There were conditions that we would not have created if we had been in the decision making at the beginning. But we continue in good faith. We have a mission to fulfil and I think we are very proud of what we are doing.

[Borders, April 24th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, our discussions with the United States on the application by the U.S. of border controls on Canadians go back a long time. The results we have had have been pursued in that context and have been successful to date. We are working on the second question the hon. member is referring to. The United States government is sovereign. That is a fact of life but we have succeeded by friendly persuasion so far by encouraging Senator Abraham and a group of allies in the United States senate.

[Borders, April 24th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, we did have some very positive news yesterday as a result of the amendment brought forth by Senator Abraham to section 110 of the U.S. immigration act. It has been adopted by the senate judiciary committee to exempt Canadians from the U.S. border controls, the draconian measures. That is a victory for constant representations by government members and by the minister to the United States government and the United States legislators. On the issue of the 1974 administrative controls and their applications, we would recognize of course that each country is sovereign.

[Petitions, April 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure to present a petition signed by 390 people living mainly in the Delta, Surrey and White Rock areas of greater Vancouver. They are asking parliament to remove the GST from books, magazines and newspapers.

[Nunavut Act, April 20th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member is all at sea, or as somebody said, all in the grass, in his statement because it has a number of purported statements of fact that just are not so.

Far from being an insult to the Musqueam people or to Chief Sparrow, the government went out of its way with the APEC conference to recognize the role of our native peoples.

The single event of the APEC conference that was held outside the downtown Vancouver area was the episode at the Museum of Anthropology in the University of British Columbia, the heart of my constituency. The significance of it is simply that it is on territory historically with which the Musqueam people are associated and in functions there they take a major part.

In fact Chief Sparrow was given the unprecedented opportunity of greeting every one of the APEC leaders who arrived with our Prime Minister. She was the only person other than the Prime Minister to be allowed to do so.

The only issue on the speeches was simply the time factor. All those who were to speak were given strict time limits. It was found that times were in excess and this is how the program was changed. However, there is no particular issue that Chief Sparrow met the heads of the APEC countries and that her ideas and influence were certainly present.

The leaders' declaration issued after the APEC conference contains language that reflects the links between economic development, the well-being of people, including workers, and of course the role of native peoples. In fact this is a theme dear to the present government. If one consults the most recent declaration of the Americas conference which just concluded in Santiago, one will find a similar expression inserted at Canada's insistence on the role of native peoples in our culture.

[Child Labour, April 3rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, we have established the child labour challenge fund which rests on a voluntary code of conduct for businesses. It does provide financial inducements to corporations.

We do recognize the need for sanctions. We are negotiating directly with the International Labour Organization in Geneva for a new international convention. We expect it to be completed next year. Implementing legislation by the Canadian Parliament will follow immediately.

[The Late Maxwell Cohen, April 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the late Maxwell Cohen was a long time professor of international law and dean of the faculty of law at McGill University, founding president of the Canadian branch of the International Law Association, co-chairman of the Canada-U.S. International Joint Commission and judge ad hoc of the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

He was a scholar and administrator with high imagination and intellectual courage with the capacity and will to innovate and to modernize outmoded classical legal doctrine.

As a scholar and writer he had a remarkable capacity for synthesis of disparate ideas and a sparkling literary style. He was throughout his lifetime on the leading edge of legal change. With his contemporaries, Percy Corbett, Horace Read and N. A. M. Mackenzie, he was one of the founders of international law in Canada.