Ken Epp

[Business of the House, March 30th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, this is but a very small point. I regret greatly that I am unilingual and I do not understand French. However, when you are putting those motions, I do not know what I am voting on until the interpreters have finished their work. I would appreciate a little longer pause before you actually ask the question on agreement.

[Petitions, March 29th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, today I have two petitions to present. The first is a list of names of 462 people, mostly in Sherwood Park in my riding but also in the outlying areas. This is a petition which basically states that the duty of Parliament is to exercise its supremacy. The petitioners urge us to practise that supremacy to make the laws with respect to marriage and not have an unelected court do it. The petitioners urge us to do everything possible, legislatively and administratively, to protect the definition of marriage as being that between one man and one woman exclusively.

Mr. Speaker, the second petition I am presenting is worded somewhat differently but it is on the same topic. This petition comes from most of my constituents in the Fort Saskatchewan, Gibbons, Lamont and Bruderheim areas, as well as St. Michael and Star, Alberta, two towns in my riding that I do not know if members have heard of. The petitioners are very frustrated with what is happening in Ottawa with respect to marriage.

At great effort they had many people sign this petition, which basically calls upon Parliament to immediately hold a renewed debate on the definition of marriage and to reaffirm, as it did in 1999, its commitment to take all necessary steps to preserve marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.

I am delighted to represent the people of my riding in presenting these petitions and urge the government to listen carefully to what these and thousands of other Canadians are saying on this very important topic.

[The Budget, March 29th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know if this is parliamentary, and you will correct me if I am wrong, but that member and all the Liberal horde over there are full of hops. So much of what he has said about what we have stood for over the years is just totally false.

He talks about the urban agenda and the infrastructure program. He said that we were against it. What we are in favour of is an efficient application of taxpayer money in order to give the maximum amount of money to the people who are building the infrastructure instead of wasting it in this quagmire here in Ottawa.

He says that they will defend health care. The Liberals keep saying it. They hope Canadians will believe them. The fact of the matter is, they started out with 50%. They are down to 16%. One of my colleagues over here has said that they are now funding 14% of health care. That is a big deal. They say all the words, but there is no action. We do not believe them.

There is $1 billion down the hole for the gun registry. Has it done anything? No. Meanwhile we have people like one of my friends whose daughter was brutally attacked by a guy on parole. How is that protecting our citizens. It is a total wipeout in terms of efficiency.

The hon. member has said that we are anti-Canadian. Does he remember that in 1993 we had a thing called zero in three? It was a plan where we said that the budget could be balanced in three years. The Liberals said that was un-Canadian, that we would cut everything, et cetera. The Liberals balanced the budget in three years. All we did was figure it out. We said that it could be done. They happened to win the election and they did it, but he was against it.

Affordable housing is a joke. The Liberals have poured millions of dollars into it and there is very little more affordable housing for poor people right now.

Finally, every year in the budgets that I have heard in the last 10 years I have been here, the Liberals announced that they would clean up the Sydney tar ponds. I think they will never do it, because then they would not have anything to say in the budget.

[Older Adult Justice Act, March 29th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I want to add a few very brief words. There was an incident in Edmonton not very many years ago in which someone broke into a senior's home, brutally attacked a senior woman, and actually left her for dead. I do not know how we can pass a law that could prevent this, but certainly if the person who did such a heinous crime is found, he--or she if that is the case--should be subject to the highest impact of the law.

We need to protect our seniors. In my one and a half minute intervention here I would just like to say that all the members in the House should support this bill and make sure that this private member's bill is enacted. I support it highly.

[Canada Elections Act, March 26th, 2004]

That is not only a shame, as my colleague says, it is a serious and, I would venture to say, a fatal flaw in our democratic system. If we do not fix that I am afraid our democratic system here will increasingly become eroded and members of the public will have an increasing disillusionment with the need to support, with their tax dollars and with their votes, the democratic process.

I therefore chastise the government for imposing that on its members in committee. If members had been able to debate openly and freely and to vote openly and freely, we would have had amendments that would have prevented the serious consequences that will come about as a result of the passage of Bill C-3.

I would venture to say that there must be some Liberals over there as well who must feel badly about their participation in this, as they have gone along with it. As well, now we have a so-called new Prime Minister. During his leadership campaign, the new Prime Minister often used the phrase “democratic deficit”. I do not know where he got that idea from, because all the time the party over there of which he was a part and a member of the cabinet did not really practice democracy. I suppose he detected it. He heard it from us, from this side. He probably got it from some of his own members over there. He knew that it was a hot button--it certainly is for Canadians--and he campaigned on it.

What do we see now when Bill C-3 is introduced in this Parliament? Do we see the removal of the democratic fetters that were shackled around the ankles of all the Liberals and around their hands so that they could not raise their hands to vote at a certain time but had to at a different time?

I seriously chastise this Prime Minister and the government for shutting this down.

As you know, Mr. Speaker, from time to time I have mentioned that I am an amateur mathematician. I took training at university in mathematics and physics and taught math and computing for some 31 years, so I have a bit of a mathematical thing going on here as well.

The committee has eight members from the Liberal Party. It has seven from the opposition. I am not prepared to concede that only the Liberals have a positive IQ and the rest of us have a negative one. I am not prepared to concede that only the Liberals are capable of clear thinking and the rest of us only of muddy thinking. I believe it has to be, statistically speaking, about eight to seven.

I do not know what those fractions are exactly. I could have figured it out, but in eight to seven out of fifteen times, seven times the opposition would have an idea that would be superior to the eight on the other side. We just have to wonder about it when time after time all the opposition ideas, amendments and motions are put and defeated simply because they come from this side. That is a serious flaw.

I happen also in my lifetime to have been, I like to think, a serious student of the scriptures. There is a proverb which states that in the presence of many counsellors is great wisdom. The Liberals make an error when they say, “There are all these people on the opposition side and we will not listen to them at all”. They make an error because we are part of the team that wants to build good laws for this country. They should from time to time--I would say seven out of fifteen times on average--listen to us and they should adopt those ideas.

Enough of that, because next I want to talk about one of the very serious flaws of the bill.

Perhaps before I do that, because I am a guy who likes always to accentuate the positive and diminish the negative, let me say that there is one positive thing in this bill and I sure do support it. In order not to be guilty of the same thing I am accusing the Liberals of, let me say that I wholeheartedly support the removal in this bill of the requirement in the past that if a party went down to fewer than 50 candidates in an election it was required to turn in all its assets.

Let us say that there is a new party that works hard to try to get established with some ideas that a significant number of citizens believe in. It falls short of the 50 mark. What does the government do, this high-handed government? It says that the party started out in the race with the rest of us but did not reach the first quarter mile so it will make that party go back to the start line. That is what it does.

I would like to applaud the government for having removed that. It is totally wrong for a party that has 40 candidates in an election, let us say, to have to give up all its assets. I wish to say thanks to those Liberals over there for removing that very offensive clause from the present Elections Act and for at least providing a way out of it so that this party can re-register and not have to give up everything it has worked for.

In the little time remaining, I want to point out what to me is probably the most serious flaw in this legislation. As my colleague from North Vancouver so ably pointed out earlier today, it is the flaw of having some bureaucrat or politician determine whether or not another member can enter into the race as a political party.

I am not going to repeat all of the stuff that has been said here already about how this problem could have been avoided. Certainly it could have been avoided if the members opposite had not been so bullheaded in their ideas and had listened to some rational counter arguments.

The flaw is that if we do not pass this bill, the Canada Elections Act will fall apart at the next election, whenever that will be. I sincerely hope that it will be in the fall because this needs to be fixed before we go to the next election. To fix it the way the Liberals are proposing is no fix at all. All it will do is put into cement a problem which will perpetually dog us.

The idea that one person constitutes a party is offensive, indeed. That one person could run as an independent in any riding of the country. There is no residential requirement in the Canada Elections Act. He or she could choose to run in any riding in the country and put forward ideas as an independent. There is no discrimination against a person because that individual is not permitted to run as a party. That person could still run. Having only one person opens up a very serious problem in the next election. I can see it happening in many constituencies, having one member in a party.

For example, I know of a lady who is an avid pro animal protectionist. If she catches a mouse, it has to be caught live and released even though it may find its way back to the building before she gets back. She is going to start a party called the PM party. It does not stand for prime minister or member of parliament; it stands for protection of mice. She is going to start that party and she is legally entitled to do so. There are a lot of people who will support her. She will easily get 250 members.

We are going to have in our all candidate debates every one of the individual one issue candidates, maybe 18 or 20 of them. All of them will be entitled to the benefits of the legislation under Bill C-24.

Mr. Speaker is giving me a signal and I acknowledge that it is 1:30 on Friday afternoon. I would ask that I be granted the rest of my time when this issue is debated again.

[Canada Elections Act, March 26th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I hope you enjoy saying Elk Island because after the next election that riding is gone. I hope not to be because I am running in the new riding of Edmonton--Sherwood Park and hope to win the election there.

Today we are dealing with Bill C-3. There are so many lessons that can be learned from the process in Bill C-3 that I think it is worthy of us to pay close attention to what is happening.

I have the difficult chore today of trying to persuade the members opposite, that huge crowd of Liberals sitting in their seats and listening to my every word and argument, to change their minds. However it appears to me that the best I can say is that they are dozing in their seats.

Let us look at the different aspects of the bill, the first being the process. The bill was to go to committee before second reading. The theory behind that was that the members of the committee could have some real input into the shaping of the bill.

I would venture to say that of all of the members in the House, including the hon. member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, I would place the member for North Vancouver even above him in terms of knowledge of electoral processes, general principles of democracy and how they can best be worked out.

It is incredible to me that when the committee came together, only ideas that came from the Liberal side were considered worthy of support and every idea that came from the opposition side was considered worthy of defeat.

We recognize that in a democracy the majority rules, and right now the Liberals have a majority in the House, that is at least on the roster if not presently in the House, but they do have the majority, which means that if a vote is held the majority carries the day. What I object to, though, strenuously, is the fact that in committee there is such an imposition of party discipline.

I have been here now for over 10 years. I was told by my predecessor, Mr. Brian O'Kurley, that the best work I would do would be in committee. When I was appointed to my first committee I looked forward to it. I felt that it was good because it was the place where we could have a democratic process. We could all give our points of view and try to persuade the people on the other side. I felt that being rationale people they would listen to my arguments and if my arguments were sufficiently persuasive that they would surely vote in favour of whatever I proposed.

In many committees over the last 10 years I have had to hang my head in democratic shame over what happens in this place because of the fact that the people with whom we are debating are not permitted to vote according to the persuasion of their mind or their conscience.

[Canada Elections Act, March 26th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, is it not true that there was some time left for questions and comments on the previous speaker?

[Elk Island Constituency, March 26th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, for totally unwarranted reasons, the Alberta Boundaries Commission has decided that the Elk Island constituency will cease to exist. This may be my last opportunity to give tribute to all of the wonderful people of my riding.

The editor of the Sherwood Park News , a major small-town paper in the riding, referred to me and my beloved riding of Elk Island. It is true that I have grown to love the people of this riding over the past 10 years. Their kindness to me has been overwhelming.

When I inherited the north part of the riding in 1997 from the member for Beaver River, I had a hard act to follow. She served the people so very well and I have tried to do the same.

While I will be seeking re-election in the new riding of Edmonton--Sherwood Park, I know that the people of rural Elk Island will be well served by the present members for Lakeland and Athabasca.

So, with nostalgia, I say thank you to all of the people of Elk Island. It has been a privilege to serve them.

[The Budget, March 25th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot sit here without correcting a misperception that is perpetrated constantly by members of the Liberal Party, that is, that they were the ones who were successful in bringing under control the debt that was left to them by the Mulroney Conservatives.

I remember in 1993 when I was campaigning that the debt was around $520 billion. I complained about it. I told people that was why they should vote for Reform; that is what we were at that time. In reply, the Conservative candidate said they in fact had a balanced budget on program spending, but the amount of the debt was simply and purely the accumulated interest cost year over year on the debt they had inherited from the Liberals nine years earlier. I did the math because I am a math type of guy. I found him to be correct and I stopped making that particular point in our all candidate forums.

In other words, starting with Mr. Trudeau, during the times when Mr. Chrétien was the treasurer and had record deficit budgets, that is when we accumulated this huge debt hole that we got into. It was accumulated by the Liberals. In nine years, I admit, the Conservatives did not in fact pay down all that debt, but they did simply inherit the Liberal debt and then they left the Liberals with the same debt, just with the accumulated interest. It is their own debt.

I also would like to point out that the debt right now--we have had an accounting change to a full accrual system--still stands at an amount greater than when the Liberals took over in 1993.

[The Budget, March 24th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I will be very brief. I have noticed that the members from the Bloc, this member included, always speak of Canada as being Quebec and the provinces. I like to think that we are all one big happy family. I happen to come from a province where, as far as I know, in the last 40 years we have been payers into the equalization payments fund and we have not received a penny out of it. We are happy to do so. We are part of the family. I believe in that equalization formula.

I would like to ask the member whether he is not at least slightly grateful for the fact that he does qualify for equalization payments in Quebec to the degree that his province needs them, and he, like I, should rejoice in the fact that it does not need very much because it is already relatively prosperous.