House of Commons photo

Crucial Fact

  • His favourite word was constitutional.

Last in Parliament October 2000, as Liberal MP for Vancouver Quadra (B.C.)

Won his last election, in 1997, with 42% of the vote.

Statements in the House

International Civil Aviation Organization December 7th, 1994

Mr. Speaker, today is the 50th anniversary of the International Civil Aviation Organization, ICAO.

As the only United Nations agency with headquarters in Canada, it covers the bilateral international accords governing landing and access rights and passage through air space, control of aerial piracy, illegal diversion of aircraft. It also covers issues of hostile military action against civil passenger aircraft as with the Korean Airlines incident of 1983 and the Iranian airbus incident of 1987.

As a former director of the McGill University Institute and Centre of Air and Space Law, I salute ICAO and its mandate for the freedom of the air and politically secure and economically viable international air transportation.

Salmon Sport Fishery November 30th, 1994

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.

The Sport Fishing Institute of British Columbia has developed a proposal called Quickstart to rebuild stocks of coho and chinook salmon. All sectors of the industry in British Columbia, commercial, sport, and aboriginal fishers, will work together in rebuilding the stock and also restoring habitat with broad community involvement.

Has the government endorsed the Quickstart plan, and when will it come into effect?

World Trade Organization Agreement Implementation Act November 29th, 1994

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his very thoughtful question. We believe in the rule of law. The World Trade Organization has its constitution, its charter and its rules, including the rules as to how decisions are made. We will try to apply that to other countries, including if necessary our neighbours the United States.

The charter will evolve of course. I would hope that we will be submitting amendments in the future that will strengthen the dispute settlement procedures and submit, in the ultimate, issues to the compulsory jurisdiction of the World Court. We are not afraid of that. For a number of reasons the United States is. But we can perhaps bring them along to our point of view.

World Trade Organization Agreement Implementation Act November 29th, 1994

Mr. Speaker, it is an historic occasion to enter this debate because it does mark the end of half a century of specialized experience in world trade, what we would think to be flawed experience, and the moving into the 21st century.

I am reminded of the vision of the great wartime leader President Franklin Roosevelt whose plans for the post war period included not merely a United Nations organization but a parallel international trade organization that would promote principles of liberalism, free trade and that would remove trade tariff barriers around the world.

President Roosevelt did not live to see his vision implemented or to see it fail. The reasons for the failure are a matter for historians. Some wrongly blame it on the cold war but we would have to say it was the persistence of protectionist feelings in the United States associated with that tragically ill-advised attempt retroactively to cure the world depression, the Smoot-Hawley high tariff wall approach.

Mr. Roosevelt and his heirs, Mr. Truman and others, had to fight against that. They also had to fight against the neo-isolationist American thinking that one found bound up with the Bricker amendment controversy seeking to limit an affirmative American role in western Europe's political and economic recovery.

The failure of the International Trade Organization, the failure of the high hopes of Bretton Woods toward the end of the war led to the creation of this strange institution. Some have said, borrowing from Guys and Dolls : ``The oldest permanent floating crap game in the world,'' but in fact it is a periodic, recurring international diplomatic conference, GATT.

GATT had many things to offer in terms of history, but if one looks back on it it was a concentration of particular problem solving operations, each bringing in its own set of specialists, each producing an arcane set of diplomatic negotiations that were never open to larger public debate.

GATT had a function to fulfil but the quest for overarching principles or an overarching vision of a world economy was simply not there. This is the significance of the revival half a century later of the concept of a World Trade Organization. It will finally balance in the economic sense what the United Nations is intended to do in a governmental sense.

With the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, it completes a triad of international economic organizations. That is all to the good and we might say that it is about time. It is a federalizing process. It is a constitutional process. It will mean that the large issues of world trade are no longer debated in secret in those holiday resorts visited off season because that is really where the GATT conferences were held.

They got cut rate rates. One visits Uruguay in winter instead of the beach in summer. GATT had its function but it did not really answer up to the problems of the emerging 21st century. This WTO initiative comes with a period when the walls are falling down all around the world, all the walls. The Berlin wall falls politically. You cannot shut out the economic ideas when you open the way to political ideas.

It has been said, and it is true, that you can achieve a market economy without having a liberal democratic society but you cannot maintain the one without the other. The English historical experience was that certainly free trade principles emerged before the political liberalization but the political liberalization marches hand in hand with that.

In very many respects this is an historic occasion for us. The debate has been constructive and helpful. I noted in particular the interventions of my colleagues, my friends of the Bloc with their concerns about federalism. I can assure them that on this side of the House we share the desire for a more flexible, co-operative federalism in which there is, not merely as a matter of political common sense but also of a genuine sense of goodwill, co-operation and liaison between the federal government and provincial authorities. So much of the achievement of

free trade depends on the working co-operation at all levels of government.

Those interventions have been helpful and have been taken note of. You may be assured that in the implementation of the government's structural reform programs they will be operated on so that we move from a period in which Canadian economic policy has been governed by bilateralism plus multilateralism through this periodic international diplomatic conference that is called GATT into what has been called a mondialist, one world type of conception, a parliamentary constitutional organization where the debates are open, where the delegates can make thrust and counter thrust but where everything is into the open. That I think accords with the spirit of our times.

It is not a closed organization, although it is important to stress-and I think we have borne this in mind-that you cannot in our debate on an act to implement the World Trade Organization and in the guise of making amendments to national legislation insert unilateral reservations to an international treaty. If we are to be in at the beginning as a charter member of the World Trade Organization, we must do so without reservations and with the full confidence of our ability to make the system work.

We have disengaged more easily and more elegantly than some other countries, certainly more easily than our neighbour, the United States, from the old order. The swords are being turned into ploughshares. Economic forces guide the next century. The old order on which the cold war was based is over. As a charter member of the World Trade Organization we are in a position to make very concrete suggestions on the accession of new members. We can help the entry of China into this organization. We can look at the special case of Taiwan because I do not think Taiwan can be ignored. We can look at a place for Russia with its new liberalizing phase still to be completed.

There is an enormous challenge in this transition from a cold war, politically and militarily based world order to one based on free trade and the free commerce in intellectual ideas that goes with this.

This is something of a challenge to Canada because we have led in foreign policy in so many areas. We invented peacekeeping. In very many senses if you look at the substantive principles of the United Nations they are our ideas for a democratizing of a world organization that perhaps too easily fell into the concept of a permanent members' club. We are in the fight there.

This is the challenge of the new bill and in some sense the happiness that we find such a consensus around the House from virtually all the members of the House in support of this principle and this idea.

In moving the new system into the 21st century there is no derogation from our special relations with the United States and Mexico under NAFTA. These agreements subsist but they are seen in the larger context of one world with its own principles in which a pluralism of decision making occurs. This has been the Canadian way from the beginning. I return to my original point. It is a moment in history. Half a century, in a certain sense, of the carryover of the old, pre-World War II economic order comes to an end with new hopes and new visions. It is a privilege to have been part of it.

World Trade Organization Agreement Implementation Act November 29th, 1994

Mr. Speaker, this is an historic occasion.

World Trade Organization Agreement Implementation Act November 24th, 1994

I hope the hon. member is listening to the debate. Good. The truth will make you free. It is an important point to remember.

Let us come back to this again. I heard so much tired ideology, 19th century ideas, on trade and commerce that take no account of the fact that we are into the 21st century, that I deliberately eliminated the amendment of the hon. member opposite from my discussion. I am referring instead to the member for Laval East because there are matters of federalism that are of special concern to the government, and we are with them in trying to improve the mechanisms.

My suggestion is to cut down the scope of this amendment and direct it generally to the issue of federal-provincial jurisdictional matters. You will find a continuing governmental concern with attending to that. It may well be the time has come to re-examine the Labour Conventions decision. That is not a matter the government would approach unilaterally. It is a matter on which we can make subtle arrangements, much as the German federation did, and we will do so also.

On the other matters, you have gone beyond the scope of an amendment directed to federal matters. You are really directing attention to the need for some improved federal-provincial economic consultative mechanism. That is well within the mandate of the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. In fact we know it is part of the continuing constitutional revision he is undertaking.

That is the main substance of my remarks. I compliment the hon. member for Laval East for the thoughtful intervention. The thrust of it is one that the government takes very much to heart. I would think again that probably the main thrust is in article 3.1(a) and that the other matters could be raised at another time in another arena in a substantive discussion of federal-provincial relations.

World Trade Organization Agreement Implementation Act November 24th, 1994

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to discuss the amendment to Bill C-57 proposed by the hon. member for Laval Est. I respect the hon. member's dedication to federalism and the learning and thoughtfulness that she brings to this task.

Allow me to make a general comment in starting that it is necessary in approaching the matters of amendments to substantive bills to exercise a prudent economy in drafting and at all times to consider criteria of relevance so that the main purpose and thrust of the bill be not deflected.

The opening paragraph of amendment 3.1(a) is one that is of course very dear to the heart of the present government. The Prime Minister of Canada has led a very successful delegation to China with the full co-operation and presence of nine of the ten provincial premiers.

The intention of the government is to proceed in full vigour with ideas of co-operative federalism as developed by Prime Minister Lester Pearson and carried on by his successors. We want to work with the provinces because we recognize that the

common problems of the world community entering the 21st century require a co-operative path in Canada of all the players.

We recognize a certain ambiguity in 3.1(a) but we have no particular problems with that. I simply mention that what is within provincial jurisdiction is by no means clear. There are no watertight compartments. The Canadian rule under the Labour Conventions decision of 1937, much criticized incidentally, is followed by no federal state other than Germany.

In general, the view in federalism is that once an international agreement is entered into the legislative power to implement the agreement follows. That is not the Canadian position. I would stress that all Canadian governments, particularly the present one, have been very respectful of provincial interests and very anxious to ensure co-operation.

Some of the suggestions here seem to go well beyond the scope of an amendment and what good federalism requires or even sensibly suggests. Is it suggested, for example-I looked to see if there was any ambiguity as between the French and English texts-that the issue of trade dispute resolution, the machinery and processes, to which both the French and the English texts of article 3.1(b) are directed is a matter that should be discussed-now that the agreement is there-between federal and provincial governments?

It is a well known Canadian position that we support compulsory third party settlement of disputes. We have constantly raised the necessity for implementing the jurisdiction of the international court as final arbiter. Our problem with many international agreements, including NAFTA, is that this is not something with which the United States is happy. The solution for the United States is to understand the World Court better and to learn to adjust its claims better to the processes of decision making there.

On these issues, Canada obviously will continue to study the matter and continue to raise new issues of dispute resolution. I wonder at this stage what is useful in retaining this as another matter for extended federal-provincial discussion. You could drive a Sherman tank through the proposition "any economic matter of major international significance". I wonder whether it sensibly belongs in an amendment.

It seems to me that what the hon. member for Laval East is proposing reaches other areas of continuing concern for the government of federal-provincial relations including federal-provincial economic relations. The Constitution is not a static institution even though the amending powers may not work. There are enormous possibilities for creative adaptation of machinery by custom and convention.

I would have thought these matters were probably better addressed through another arena and perhaps another minister. The Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs is concerned with studying the issue of continuing federal-provincial economic consultation and co-operation.

I wonder whether 3.1(c) is a useful amendment to Bill C-57. I look at 3.2 and 3.4 and wonder again. Article 3.4 opens a Pandora's box. In essence you are getting into asking the minister to take measures that may run in direct conflict with the international agreements. In any case it is not a matter to be reached by indirection in the interstices of what purports to be an amendment. I would suggest again some prudent economy there.

Supply November 22nd, 1994

I think frankly since the review is going on and since there is no urgency before the elections, it can be done in its proper time. I do assure the hon. member I accept that viewpoint too. I would rather see more balance in the pension and a different approach to the salaries, but there is no correlation between this and university fees. I do not accept as a consequence of the green book that fees will go up.

Supply November 22nd, 1994

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the thoughtful question from the hon. member. It is true that I have a very great university within my constituency. I met with the student leaders there. I met with the administration two weeks ago. I have also met with universities outside my constituency. For a number of reasons they have come to me to discuss their concerns.

I do not regard it as a consequence of the social security green book that university fees will go up. In fact, I have given my personal undertaking that I will do my best to see that whatever emerges under the social security green book proposals that consequence would not arise. It is not a necessary and inevitable consequence of the green book at all. Frankly, the remedies are more within the provincial domain and have very little to do with federal policy. That is a separate issue from the larger issue the hon. member raised.

It is true that in my riding the sentiment seems to be to favour larger salaries for members. This has been put to me by people who say they would never run for Parliament because the salaries are too low. Accepting the notion of a pension plan more in line for example with university pension plans in terms of balance of contributions would be acceptable. I see that argument and in fact, I accept it.

Supply November 22nd, 1994

Madam Speaker, this has been a valuable and informative debate because the government is committed to reform of the pension plan. It has taken this commitment by members of the government party very seriously and we are in the stage of discussion and dialogue and testing out ideas. It is quite clear that this problem can be resolved before the next general election.

Although hypothetical cases have been cited of members who could resign tomorrow and acquire large pensions, I do not think anybody is contemplating resignation at this stage. We have the time and we have to do this thoroughly.

It is also agreed that salaries and pensions are part of the same package and there is some disposition to think that members are underpaid but may be overgenerously treated in pensions.

That is the sort of balance the government must and will consider. Be assured of the one general consideration today that we act in the sense of doing equity to everybody and that members of Parliament suffer with the general public. Therefore in approaching the reforms we have considerations of this sort well in mind.

Some aspects were discussed during the election campaign. If they were not discussed in government papers they were raised at all-candidates meetings. It is interesting to note the consensus that develops easily enough on these considerations.

It is agreed that it is unjust for members of Parliament to receive pensions on retirement from the House while still young, active, healthy and able to engage in other activities. A commencement age at 55, I would have said 60 or 65, whatever the regular national pension scheme finally may be is correct and is equitable. That is certainly within the government's consideration.

The double dipping issue was raised during the election. All of us agree that the flagrant examples, and there have been several of them cited, are ones that arouse genuine public concern. Even if numerically they are not very large they do raise the issue of justice not merely being done but not being seen to be done. Equity must be done to all citizens. If there is one case of a former MP taking a large government job at an inflated salary then people are justifiably saying that is not right.

There are some complications in relation to this. I do not think they are insuperable. I think a member opposite said double dipping reaches only within the area of federal sovereignty. Sovereignty of course is indivisible. I myself would be interested in testing a declaratory judgment whether a ban on double dipping could not reach to pensions of members who have served in provincial houses or possibly at the municipal level. I raise this as a theoretical point, but theoretical questions can and

should be answered when they have practical consequences and if the practical consequences disturb the general public conception of what is right and proper.

I hope in considering revisions of the pension plan we will not merely consider barring former MPs from collecting their MPs pensions while they take on a judicial, civil service, ambassadorial or other post. I hope we will consider whether it should not in equitable terms reach out also to those who have taken pensions from the provincial domain or even from the municipal domain.

As I said sovereignty in classical theory is indivisible. I see no reason why artificial boundaries should be set up. Some might even raise the issue of whether civil servant pensions should not be viewed in the same way and when they are federal civil service pensions the logic becomes very persuasive and convincing.

I have taken note of the comments already made in the debate on the balance between contributions by members of Parliament and contributions by Parliament itself. This is one of the issues the government will be looking at in its revised plans for the pension scheme.

To be frank I have in mind one possible reform that would be crucially affected if there was more nearly a balance between the two contributions and that is the portability of pensions. Those of us who know the American system of government or those of us who have been familiar with universities or other public institutions will know that the principle of portability is very well assured.

People may serve at a distinguished university like the University of Calgary and then move on after a year to another university. It is a quite common practice for a pension right to vest after a year's service. It may not be very much. It may provide only for one good dinner at the Palliser Hotel or somewhere else but the principle is important enough.

It has always struck me as rather artificial that the pension rights vest after six years. That provides an inducement to members to serve a second term where it may be in their own best interests and the best interests of the country might better be served if they contented themselves with one term. Obviously if the pension contributions by one party, by Parliament, are out of line with the member's own contributions that sort of sensible reform as I see it tends to break down, or the logic for it tends to disappear.

On the indexing issue which has been raised, it is very clear that this enters into larger approaches to social security and the Canadian social security network. Obviously what is good for one category of society should be good for all categories.

We either move to a general system of indexing, which may be one way of facing inflation and the generally rising costs of living, or we have to move out of the areas where that exists. These again are well within the ambit of the government's proposals and the government's consideration of reform of the pension system and should be considered in that light.

This issue has been raised in the House and I think it is worth considering: Where and when will reforms begin? Can they be prospective only? Is there such a system as vested rights? Can you not touch what has gone before?

It is true that as a matter of constitutional law what we are dealing with is really only a constitutional privilege. That is to say Parliament has the full competence to apply any reform measures it may devise retroactively as well as prospectively.

If we were considering that, one thing to consider would be the condition of the earlier MPs who came in before the present pension system was devised. I am quite shocked to learn of some of the pension provisions for people serving from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, and some of them are still around, before the present scheme came in. These are really hardship situations.

Obviously there is a difference between what is constitutionally permissible and what considerations of equity would demand. Any revision by the government should perhaps include a look at these pioneer members of Parliament who retired before the present scheme came into operation.

It would obviously be easier in terms of general conceptions of what is right and proper to deal only with present cases, that is to say members elected in 1993. It may well be that the main thrust of the reform proposals is directed there.

There has been discussion of self-administered pension plans. A good deal depends, Madam Speaker, as you are very well aware, on the competence of those administering the self-administered pension plans, the financial advisers. We do need some more details here. If the opposition parties have suggestions they should submit them in detail into the debate.

Most members of Parliament whatever their other competencies do not have great expertise in this general area. One is reminded of the fact that many members of Parliament are lawyers. Frankly many lawyers have great difficulty in devising a pension plan that is fair to themselves.

The self-administered pension plan looks to be an easy way out. However it would have to be some sort of plan that would look to a co-operative unit within Parliament and that would require discussion among the parties.

These are my thoughts on what has been a fascinating debate. It has been a discussion of useful ideas which the government will certainly be taking into account in its announced reforms of the pension plan.