Ken Epp

[Modernization Of House Of Commons Procedure, March 21st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, presuming the motion passes, and I am sure it will, you will be the chairman of the committee that will be looking at these changes, and I really welcome that.

I want to present an argument in favour of something my colleague mentioned about saving time of the House by conducting votes whenever possible right after question period when all the members are already here. I am sure the committee will want to look at whether there should be a change in how long the bells ring.

One very strong argument which I have not heard today with respect to changing the vote time is that it would not interrupt committees, particularly when we have witnesses. I find it so disconcerting to have witnesses come from various parts of Canada, sometimes from far away, and lo and behold the bells start ringing and we give them the rush. We tell them to hurry because we have to go and vote. Then we do not go back to them. Many of them have had their presentations truncated because of that. That is a very strong argument for one of the things that my colleague presented.

With respect to the general decorum in the House, I agree with him 100%. We should debate the issues, put forth our arguments and argue them in the way a lawyer argues in court. I have been to court very seldom, and each time it was just to observe. When I was there I never heard a lawyer yelling at a judge or at other lawyers. They do not do that.

They are there to present their case and to allow an opportunity for reason to prevail. I really miss that in this place, as my colleague said. Perhaps he wants to comment more. My intervention is more a comment than a question.

[Modernization Of House Of Commons Procedure, March 21st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, of course they were switching channels during the commercials and just happened to run across CPAC, and there was an engaging speech so they stayed with it. I concur with that.

I have a specific question for the hon. member. The theme that has come up over and over today is the whole question of free votes versus making every vote a confidence vote. I am a little puzzled by it. I know the standing orders probably as well as the next member and I do not really know how we can, by changing the standing orders, force the government to not put pressure on its members or on any other party. I wonder if the hon. member has any ideas as to how that could be done in the standing orders.

To protect members, I suggested a rule that says if they vote against their party they will not incur sanctions from the party leadership. For example, the party cannot send the person to the furthest office in the precincts as a form of punishment. That is a rule I thought of. I wonder if the hon. member has any specific concrete ideas as to how to handle that one.

[Modernization Of House Of Commons Procedure, March 21st, 2001]

I am certainly pleased to do that, Mr. Speaker, and I thank my colleague for the opportunity.

Yes, there are a number of other specific amendments. There is one, but I do not know if it can be put into the standing orders. I asked a question earlier in debate about whether or not free votes can actually be put into the standing orders. We have done a bit of that with respect to private members' business by changing the voting order. This was done in the last parliament. Instead of starting with the frontbenches so that all of the members can take their cue from how the cabinet is voting, we now start the voting at the backbenches. That goes for both sides of the House. I think we should be careful to retain that particular provision.

Furthermore, we should have true free votes. I would like to see that happen more often. I do not mind. Let us say that I have a motion or a bill and put it forward as private members' business and state the strongest case that I can for my idea, which hopefully represents the wishes of my constituents back home. I have a couple such bills in the hopper right now, which I cannot get to vote on and cannot even get to debate because they are not drawn.

Let us say that I put that bill or motion forward and present my strongest arguments in favour of it. If afterward the 300 members of the House of Commons say to me “hon. member for Elk Island, that is a dumb idea and we are going to vote against it”, well, I gave it my best shot. In their wisdom the members said they would not vote for it. That is fine and I will accept that. I did not have a strong enough argument. I did not express it well. It is my problem.

However, if I am able to persuade them and they still vote against it because of some implied instruction from someone else, then I get a little upset, because I do not believe that our country, our democracy and our citizens are well served when we cannot, as a group of people in the largest council in the country, vote totally freely. I would like to actually see a standing order provision that would make it illegal, a breach of the orders, for anyone voting against the wishes of his or her party to ever be disciplined in any way by that party. I do not know whether that is possible. It is something that perhaps the committee would want to tackle.

[Modernization Of House Of Commons Procedure, March 21st, 2001]

My colleague said that congress is already doing that.

Second, I would like to mention petitions. Right now Standing Order 36 says a member can submit a petition. As one of my colleagues said earlier, nothing is ever done with them. When we had the issue of child pornography in British Columbia, I believe we had we had over 500,000 names on petitions, yet that evoked no reaction from parliament.

One thing we could do to connect Canadian citizens to parliament and increase the respect of the House, would be to have a plan of action. If petitions came into the House in certain numbers, using a threshold say of 100,000, 200,000 or whatever, and of course would be up to the committee to decide, then it would necessitate a motion being put before the House and debated for a day with an action plan on how to deal with the petitioners' request. I think that makes a lot of sense. Otherwise, the work that citizens do to gather petitions really becomes a meaningless exercise other than just to bring their issue to the fore and into the conscience of more people.

In my remaining time I would like to talk primarily about private members' business. There are other topics too. Many of my colleagues and people from other parties have mentioned them today so I will not repeat them. I agree with much of what has gone on, but I want to talk about private members' business.

I happen to be one of those members who is not lucky. The only time I have ever won anything in my life was when I was trucking. There was one place where we used to stop to eat in Alberta. It had what we call out west student scribblers or notebooks. It had the numbers one to fifty written down the side. We signed it whenever we bought a meal. When all the numbers had been signed for, the restaurant would write one to fifty on pieces of paper, put them in a little bowl and pick one. I won a free meal once in my life. Other than that, I have not won a great deal other than winning the hand of a beautiful woman in marriage many years ago. We have been married 40 years. That is a major win.

However, I am not very lucky, and in this House I have bombed. I have been here for seven years going on eight. I have not yet been selected on private members' business. Therefore, I propose a small change. Instead of having a random draw, I propose that all members elected to a parliament be put in a random order. I would be willing to provide my limited computer skills to do that. I have taught that sort of thing when I was teaching at the college. It could be computerized and the members would be listed in order. That means that we would go down the order and each one of those members would have the opportunity to have a bill brought before the House. If they declined, that would be fine. They would be moved to the bottom of the list and that list. That list in that order would stay for the duration of the parliament.

If members resigned, then of course their space would become vacant. Any new members elected in a byelection would automatically be put at the bottom of the list. If there were four byelections on the same day, then those four members would be put in random order at the bottom of the list. At least then we would be able to move up.

I did a rough calculation. We could increase the number of hours per week on private members from the present five to 10. This could be accomplished, for example, by having another private members' hour from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. If we had 10 hours per week, then in a parliament which lasted more than three years, of course with this current Prime Minister three and a half years is more or less the norm, every member could have their bill put forward and, if it were so arranged, there could be three hours of debate on each bill.

Then I propose that every bill be votable. It is useless to come up with a good idea and simply talk about it for one hour and then say it is dropped to the bottom of the order paper. Actually it is dropped into the garbage can. It is dropped off the order paper. Every member's bill should be votable.

I also would like to say that there is there are limited resources that are wasted here. When we came back to this parliament I had a couple of bills that I wanted to get into that first draw to increase my odds. I know all about this math stuff. When there are fewer people, the probability of being chosen is higher. I could not get them in because the staff were so overloaded they did not get to my bills. I did not get in on that draw.

What I propose is that each member be limited to no more than two bills or motions in the draw or at a time. That is fair, because they can only pick one. It goes through the whole rotation before there is a repeat of the list.

I have another consideration in regard to the standing orders that does cause a bit of a problem. I propose that no member be allowed to move an amendment to a private member's bill or motion without the consent of the mover. Sometimes the movers can be persuaded that they would have a better chance of getting it passed if they would agree to an amendment. If that amendment is not offensive, a member can choose to accept that amendment and then the debate and the vote will be on the amended motion. However, we have had several instances where a member's motion has been totally gutted by amendment. Then the government, with its majority, pushes it through and basically the private member's business is stolen from the member who proposed it.

I have more ideas here that I could talk about but I should respect the time. I will just mention one more item. I do not favour the suggestion that perhaps Fridays could become private members' days. I am worried about Fridays around here. I am one of the members who always makes it a point when the House is in session to be here the full week. I am often here on Fridays, and without saying anything about anyone specifically, you and I both know, Mr. Speaker, that the place is not exactly crowded on Fridays.

I would be a little worried about having private members' business relegated to Fridays, because its purpose is for the debates to occur in order for us to be able to persuade by reason, by argument and by good logic that a bill or a motion is worthy of support.

I will close my speech by giving the following bizarre suggestion, and that is that members' salaries would be paid for the week only if they actually showed up for private members' business on Friday.

[Modernization Of House Of Commons Procedure, March 21st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for staying with us here so late this evening. Of course thanks also to the people at the table, the other staff who are here, including the interpreters and technical staff. It is great that everyone here is participating in making it possible for us to keep up the reputation of this place as the place of many words.

I was reminded of a friend of mine who went back to what he called his motherland. I will not mention what country it is because it is not nice to pick on the people from Holland. He said he went back to visit his relatives and there was one thing that amazed him. Everybody spoke at the same time and no one was listening. I hope that is not true here tonight.

I will be quite specific to the topic we are addressing tonight, and that is the change in the standing orders. Right now it is only about 10.40 p.m. back home in Alberta and only 9.40 p.m. in British Columbia. That is why some of us who are from the west are still feeling so energetic and ready to go for a couple more hours.

However, if any of them are watching, and perhaps others, they should know that the standing orders are the rules which regulate, not only the debate in the House but also pretty well the management of committees, and the way things are done around here in terms of taking an idea through the process where it actually becomes legislation.

In my intervention I would like to reinforce a few things and perhaps come up with one or two ideas which members may not have heard during the debate today.

First, I do not think this requires a change in the standing orders since they already permit the television broadcast of committees. However, it was mentioned by several that perhaps there should be greater coverage of committees by television. I would like to make a suggestion, and I am not sure it requires a change in the orders as they are.

One thing that occurred to me was that there are probably increasingly more people who have access to the Internet than who have access to cable or satellite. With the new satellite dishes, perhaps that will change. I do not know the exact numbers, but I would like to recommend that a very inexpensive way of making it possible for Canadian citizens to watch their parliament at work would be to have an Internet where people could go to the House of Commons. There would be a place to click committees to view a committee. Then they pick which committee they want to see and there it is with the video streaming on the screen. We could enable I imagine millions of people who would be glued to their computers watching. Technically, it is quite possible to do that. It is relatively inexpensive and does not cost any more. I know we are putting up satellites in order to get Internet access to all the remote parts of the country now. It could be a tremendous unifying force for our country.

[Interim Supply, March 20th, 2001]

Mr. Chairman, I would like to point out, for the benefit of the Liberals, that we expedited the voting by having voice votes. Several times when we were in committee of the whole previously there were no yeas yet there were nays. I simply want them to wake up and vote. They can do at least that today.

[Supply, March 20th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I think the hon. member has put his finger on it. What will solve the problem? Successive governments in the past have failed to respond with a long term solution to agricultural problems. The problem before farmers right now is very clearly that their production costs exceed the compensation they get for the sale of their products.

Some may say it is not the government's responsibility, but it is the Liberal government, with its majority, that has mandated that western Canadian farmers must sell their grain to the wheat board. In essence we are back to the Trudeau salute. Trudeau asked western farmers why he should sell their grain for them. It is because the government passed a law that said it would.

I simply comment on the member's speech. We are looking for emergency aid. It is needed. It is absolutely necessary for farmers this instant so that they can stay out of bankruptcy and not lose their businesses, their farms and their homes. That is the immediate measure. How we wish the previous Conservative government had signed agreements with the Americans and other trading partners in the world that they were willing to live by.

Will the hon. member comment on the fact that he is part of a government that has failed in the very area he is talking about: the lack of a long term policy to meet the needs of Canadians for a secure food supply through our agriculture industry?

[Criminal Code, March 16th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I commend the member for putting forth the proposed legislation. I too regret, as he mentioned in his speech, that Bill C-240 is not votable.

It is great to be able to talk about issues in this place called the Parliament of Canada, the place of speaking, the place of words, but the ultimate purpose should be to put our words into action in a practical sense so that our goals as members of parliament representing our constituents are actually met.

Our primary goal with legislation like this is, as has been mentioned over and over again, the protection of children and women. We are talking about the ability of serious criminals to change their name.

The other day we spoke at length about the need for a national registry of sex offenders, those who prey on women and children. The purpose of things like that is very clear. We know we cannot make people good just by passing a law, but we also know that the function of law is to restrain those who are evil. That is why we are here and why motions and bills like this should be votable. We should be able to actually implement ideas that will make our society safe and restrain those who would do very bad things.

I am very concerned that there is almost a passive response to these initiatives on the governing side. I know our current rules of debate will be subject to revision and we need to really seriously ask the question whether we should be even able to have such a debate without bringing it to a vote. The second and the more important issue here is that, with the parliamentary secretary having given a speech that said basically the Liberals do not favour the legislation, it would mean that even if we were able to vote, it would go nowhere because they would tell their people to vote against it and that would be the end of the matter.

We are suffering from a lack of a democratic environment in the House. We are in a situation where we need to change some of these laws.

I would like to address another issue in the bill, the issue of jurisdiction. It has been pointed out that the keeping of vital statistics is a provincial matter, and I believe that is correct. When our children were born in the province of Alberta, we registered their births in Edmonton, not in Ottawa. I should not say they were all born in Edmonton because we also had a daughter born in southern Alberta, in the little town of Brooks. However, their births were registered in Alberta. I personally have a birth certificate from Saskatchewan, the province in which I grew up.

However, the fact of the matter is that we are dealing here with a criminal issue. We are dealing with people who can change their names, move to a different jurisdiction and, consequently, by changing their identity can become an unknown danger to people around them.

The member from the Bloc made a very good point when he said that we ought not to put a wall in front of people who are genuinely rehabilitated, who want to get on with life and who, from this point onward, want to be good, law-abiding citizens.

However, I think we err when we buy into the argument that a person convicted of a crime and having paid the penalty to society, as it is often said, is then off the hook. In our country we often find people only serving two-thirds of their sentence because the government does not enforce the full rule of law.

The fact of the matter is that all of us have obligations. I have never been convicted let alone even charged with a crime and yet I have an obligation. When I walk down the street at night and there are other people sharing the sidewalk, I have the same obligation not to attack them as the person who has served time in jail for having attacked someone.

I submit that our obligation to society does not end when we have fulfilled a sentence for having broken the law. All of us carry an ongoing obligation to society to maintain our surveillance and protection of others around us.

It boggles my mind that there is such resistance to many of the measures that we are trying to implement and promote, which would enhance the safety of Canadian citizens. We should have a number of really good laws like the one being proposed that would improve the safety of Canadians.

We can say that it is too harsh but I do not believe that it is. I do not believe that some of the penalties we are proposing, for example, serving consecutive sentences for crimes that are committed rather than concurrently, are too harsh. If people think that is too harsh, let them simply not break the law. The law will never apply to them, and they will have freedom for life.

Let us say they break the law, violate the safety and violate in some cases the property of other people. In the case of property, there should be restitution. In the case of personal violence against individuals, there should be time penalties and incarceration. There should be no discount for consecutive offences. There should be rules that tell us that if we do certain things there are consequences, and then we should stick to it. I do not see why that is difficult.

I have always said that I personally do not care whether there is capital punishment for murder or not because I am not going to commit murder. Therefore, I do not expect to face a charge which will lead to capital punishment. For people who are contemplating it, hopefully it would restrain them. That would be the overriding purpose.

I have drifted a little from the purpose of the bill, which would disallow offenders from actually changing their names in order to hide behind the cloak of anonymity when they re-entered society. We need to help these people all we can. Knowing that they have committed a crime, I do not think is a hindrance to their rehabilitation. I do not think it is not as useful for them to be able to hide and pretend that they did not commit a wrong, as it is for them to face up to the crime, admit they did it and ask their new neighbours to help them to be strong, to do what is right and to fix their life. It is an ongoing process.

It is like alcoholics. When they go to Alcoholics Anonymous, even though they may not have drunk liquor for a number of years, they still begin their speeches by saying their names and that they are alcoholics. They recognize that there is an ongoing temptation and that it takes great inner strength and the strength of those around them to support the positive changes and not reoffend in that sense.

Yes, it may be difficult for a person who has committed a crime to live with that identity. I am aware of several individuals who have committed crimes of a lesser level. I am their friend and I help them. They are doing fine. We do not shut our eyes and pretend it never happened. We have to realistically admit that it happened and work together toward the goal that will guarantee it will never happen again in that individual's life.

I believe in the whole basis of taking responsibility for what one does. That is the missing link in a lot of what leads to criminal behaviour in our society these days. There are youngsters in school. They could be youngsters who go home, the parents are absent, certain things happen and they are allowed to do whatever they want without being personally held accountable for it. That develops and eventually we have the commission of these crimes. I urge all members to support the bill.

[Species At Risk Act, March 16th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I am delighted to enter into this debate on behalf of my constituents in Elk Island. As the House knows I have a number of people in my area who are very interested in this legislation. Most of the concerns expressed to me deal with some of the things which my colleagues have already mentioned.

I remember growing up on a farm in Saskatchewan where we had the delight of having a dugout right in our yard. When I was a kid preserving water was one of the greatest things. With the dugout came all sorts of different animals such as birds, ducks and occasionally some geese. They would live right in our yard and we enjoyed them so much.

I should point out, in terms of a personal commitment, that my dad, my brother and I were always very careful not to interfere with the lives of these animals unless they declared war on us, which they did occasionally. For example, we had an ongoing war with rats which caused a lot of damage to our buildings, grain storage bins and so on. I know that when we buy a loaf of bread we do not want it to be infested with rat droppings and other things like that, so we had to take measures to fight them varmints.

There were other animals which gave us a lot of pleasure like the ducks that swam around on our pond. We watched mother duck raise her little ones.

On occasion we would accidentally disturb or sometimes even destroy, what is called under Bill C-5, the natural habitat of birds. We never did that deliberately. Whenever we saw a nest we would drive around it even though it meant perhaps not seeding that portion of the field. Sometimes we were not aware of it until we had driven over it and then it was too late. There was nothing we could do about it.

In Bill C-5 when that happens to a farmer maybe the penalty given to them will take into account the fact that there was nothing the farmer could have reasonably done to prevent such a loss. Yet the farmers in my area are very concerned that they may be subject to prosecution if they make an error like that.

My wife and I now live on an acreage east of Sherwood Park. I had a very interesting experience a couple of years ago. I was cutting my lawn with my little garden tractor. We have about an acre of lawn so it is a nice, fun project. I was driving along and I noticed this killdeer running around. I am aware that when a killdeer has a nest in the ground the mother does everything possible to try to distract a person away from it. If we are walking and that mother runs in that direction, we know that the nest is somewhere behind her.

I did everything possible to see whether I could find the nest before I proceeded to cut the grass. I could not find it. Eventually, I drove over it. Fortunately, I perfectly straddled it with the wheels of the tractor so that the nest was left undisturbed. Once I was able to determine where it was, it was protected until those little babies grew up and left home.

That is just the way we westerners are. We do not deliberately go out and kill animals whether they are endangered or not. For the Liberal government to bring down heavy-handed legislation which threatens all sorts of penalties and jail sentences to a farmer is really very offensive. We voluntarily do everything possible to prevent that, as I have indicated from my own personal experience.

However is there need for some legislation? I suppose there is. There are some who would deliberately destroy the lives of endangered species. Perhaps some restraints for them is a legitimate process of legislation, and I am not against that. However, the legislation should specifically say that if a specific move is made to destroy that life, then there should be penalties. We are very concerned about the application of the laws as they are going to be used.

Just as a little aside, where we live there is a lake with some exotic ducks. I have forgotten their name. Every year we have observers from all over North America who come and set up their little booths to watch this particular breed of duck. It is a very special thing. We enjoy the visitors, especially from the United States.

One day my wife and I were sitting at the kitchen table looking out on our backyard. There were probably 250 or 300 Canada geese that landed just right behind our house. It is one of their staging areas in their annual migrations. We saw a coyote coming out of the trees. It was very fascinating to watch. He put his tail way down and sort of slunk along because he was having goose for breakfast that day.

When he got close, he was not aware that every time there is a flock of geese, there are always two, three or more scouts out there while the others are busy looking for something to eat. There are always some geese with their heads up. They are looking and watching to see if anything is coming toward them. When he was probably about 15 to 20 metres away from the geese, somehow they must have given a signal and they all took off. It was so fascinating to see the coyote sitting there on his hind legs looking up and watching his breakfast disappear into the sky.

My wife was cheering for the geese. I, of course, was lamenting the coyote who was going hungry. We really enjoy wildlife in that way. It is definitely worth preserving. It is a policy with which we agree.

Coming back to the issue of rights and property, we want to let it go to committee so that the committee can deal with these things and bring in the amendments. We talked about amendments regarding the definition of endangered species and taking the politics out of that definition. Some of my colleagues have spoken about some of the other issues.

I want to talk specifically for a few minutes now about the right to own property. This is one of the high points of the Canadian Alliance policy. We believe that we should have assured in our charter of rights the right to own and enjoy personal property. That is not given to us in our present charter of rights and is something which the Liberal government seems dead set against because it means it would lose control over every citizen's life, if it could ever stop controlling every little thing that someone does.

I always thought it was an oxymoron or at least a contradiction in terms that the Liberals use the word liberal because it comes from the same root word that I think means liberation, freedom and liberty. Yet the Liberal government is more intent on controlling every aspect of our lives than any other government. It is a contradiction in terms.

I speak now on behalf of a number of residents in my riding who have expressed their concern with respect to compensation. They say that if portions of their land, where they make their livings, very meagrely these days I might add, have to be taken out of production, surely they should be entitled to full compensation for it. Bill C-5 does not permit that.

Bill C-5 says if their loss is more than 10%, it would be considered, but they would only get up to 50% of that. Which one of the Liberal members would accept it if someone came to his or her house and said the going value of the house was $200,000 but he or she would be given $100,000 for it. It was not a matter of take it or leave it, the member had to take it. There was no option. This is what is being offered to farmers for their property, their land and their source of livelihood. That is not good enough.

This has nothing to do about animals but it is about the government confiscating property. I remember when I was a kid on the farm. The government came along and said it was going to put a high tension power line through the property. The government actually said this to my brother who farms in Saskatchewan. There was this big dual pole property line and the soil was sterilized for about 30 metres in diameter from each pole, probably even more, diagonally across a field.

My brother had to work his machinery around those posts, and all that land was taken out of production. He did not get a fair value for the land nor for the production.

One of the big issues right now is that farmland is almost being given away because of the depression in the agricultural industry. If land which usually sells for $500 or $600 an acre is now selling for $200 because of this temporary, we hope, depression in the agricultural industry, what is fair market value? According to the bill, if we take half of it we are down to $100 an acre. That is not acceptable. That must be amended. I for one am going to vote against the bill, unless there is an amendment.

I could go on longer but I am going to terminate my speech out of deference for my colleagues who also wish to add some comments on the bill.

[Agriculture, March 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, farmers are struggling for their very survival. Many are facing the loss of their homes and their businesses to the banks and the federal Farm Credit Corporation. Some of these farms have been in the family for close to 100 years and these people desperately want to keep them but cannot because they are not being paid for their work.

What these farmers need is simply a fair return on the sale of their product. They need to cover all their costs and to make a reasonable living for their families. They are asking for the payment which they have already earned.

Would a lawyer work for only one-half to one-third of his fees? Would an accountant accept $500 when he bills for $1,000? Would a labourer whose collective agreement calls for $18 per hour accept $8? Would a doctor take a second job so he can keep on practising medicine?

Our policy is to end subsidies when other countries stop theirs. The Liberals stopped the subsidies first and let the farmers take the hit.

Why not give the farmers their pay? They have earned it, they deserve it and they need it now.