Ken Epp

[Ethics Commissioner, February 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately the media is falling for the government's catchphrase regarding the establishment of an independent ethics commissioner, but saying so does not make it so.

We all want a truly independent ethics commissioner, but the proposal in Bill C-34 simply perpetuates the Chrétien status quo. I was upset when court testimony exposed the fact that the former prime minister vetted any ethics commissioner report before it was presented to him formally. I guess in dealing with the Shawinigate scandal he must have said, “Well now, what should I say to myself about myself?”

It is clear that the proposed ethics commissioner will be appointed by the Prime Minister and will be answerable to the Prime Minister when investigating alleged ministerial misconduct. This is not acceptable. This is one parliamentary officer that should be chosen, appointed and held accountable independently of the Prime Minister.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, February 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I wish others would get into the debate as well.

I certainly agree with the Bloc members when I observe that on many instances the federal government has encroached on provincial jurisdiction. I think that is wrong and I agree with them.

From the western perspective, the problem with Ottawa is in that sense very similar to the problem that Quebec has with Ottawa. The federal government has adversely used its spending power. It has intruded into areas of provincial jurisdiction and usually to considerable detriment to the outcome, for example, health care. I think there is a lot of room for working closely with the provinces. We must always recognize the supreme jurisdiction of the provinces over the delivery of health care.

There are a number of other areas. I recognize and acknowledge that. I also recognize and acknowledge that Canada is a wonderful country. Canada is comprised of all the provinces from Newfoundland and Labrador in the east all the way to British Columbia in the west and the Northwest Territories.

I was born in Saskatchewan. I am a member of the Saskatchewan community and a strong Canadian. My parents immigrated to this country when they were very young, and so I am a first generation Canadian. I cannot forget how my grandparents were grateful that they could come to this country.

I love Canada and I wish that they too loved Canada as the rest of us do.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, February 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I wish that we could have engaged the Prime Minister in some questions because he wanted to have some debate in the House.

He wants to improve parliamentary democracy and make this a place of true debate. I was very sad that unanimous consent was denied at that time.

However, I would like to ask a question of the leader of the Bloc who just spoke. I feel deeply concerned about the fact that, as per his subamendment, he actually expects the government to talk about a Quebec nation within the country in the throne speech.

Canada is a nation and Quebec is one of the provinces, as are all of the other provinces. To say that it has some unique characteristics is certainly true and acceptable.

However, for the Bloc members to continue after 10 years to say that they no longer want to be part of this wonderful country is a great regret to me. I wish that they would change their theme, that they would start singing a new song, and participate fully and wholly in our Confederation in order to make Canada a very strong country from coast to coast.

I know that this has been their raison d'être for all these years. I was hoping, through debate and by reaching out to the Quebec people, that we could make them feel warm and comfortable in our Canadian family.

I would like to hear the member's comments on that specifically, since that is the subject of the subamendment.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, February 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would like to say that it is an epic experience to have the speech by the Prime Minister.

I know that a number of people, probably on both sides of the House, would have a number of questions for the Prime Minister. I would therefore ask for unanimous consent to enter into a short time for questions and comments.

[Address in Reply, February 2nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member for Kitchener Centre for a very well delivered speech. She is probably a good spokesman for the government because she sounds credible.

Herein is the dilemma. When the throne speech speaks about ethics, the throne speech itself is unethical because it represents that there will be an independent ethics commissioner and it uses a word for someone who is not independent at all. That person will still be appointed by the Prime Minister. There is no meaningful input by the rest of Parliament.

Furthermore, the legislation that the government is purporting to reinstate says, explicitly, that when the ethics commissioner deals with matters pertaining to the cabinet, where all the problems have been in the last 10 years, then the ethics commissioner does not deal with them in the same way. It still requires confidential reports be given to the Prime Minister. It still requires that the ethics commissioner consult with the Prime Minister prior to tabling a report.

It can be nicely laundered and it can look really good but it is a shame that on the matter of ethics the government cannot come clean.

I ask the member why in that single phrase it erroneously says that there will be an independent ethics commissioner when in fact that is not the case?

[Canada Elections Act, November 7th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I know you recognized the member yonder, and that is your prerogative, but I wonder whether I could ask unanimous consent, as a member of the official opposition, to pose a question to the minister and to get a response.

[Privilege, November 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am somewhat distressed about this. I believe that if any individual were to commit perjury in one of the courts in our country, it is not very likely that the judge would say that since they were sorry, it was okay, and they should just carry on because it really did not matter. That would not happen.

Perjury in court is a serious matter. This particular matter is very serious if we want to uphold the supremacy of Parliament as the highest court in the land. For us to simply pat Mr. Radwanski on the back and say that it is okay, is insufficient

It is obvious that he now sees that the committee was determined to ensure that justice was done. This is, on his part, nothing more than a defence reaction on how to get out of this, probably on the advice of his lawyers.

We err as a House of Commons if we give the message to anybody who comes in front of any of our committees that the person can say whatever he or she wants, whether it is truthful or not, and if that happens, there will be no sanctions or consequences. It is a very serious error.

[Canada Pension Plan, November 4th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to respond to the bill introduced by my colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca.

I have always been interested in pensions, actually long before I was a member of Parliament. Part of that was due to the fact that I was involved in staff relations, union activities and staff associations, and at various times different negotiations took place with respect to the future pension benefits of the people whom I represented.

The other reason I was interested in it, and members may get a chuckle out of this, was for purely mathematical reasons. To watch an annuity grow over time is truly quite an interesting mathematical phenomenon.

I remember when I was teaching at the college level at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, there were various times when we got into taking numbers to powers, called exponential functions. We did that when they first invested electronic calculators. I did it in my computer programming courses. I also did it when I taught sections on logarithmic and exponential functions.

I used to have quite a bit of fun with my students. I would write down an expression on the board and have them evaluate it. Then of course we would first have a debate about what the right answer was, because when we had 30 students, usually there would be about 20 different answers to the questions, so we had to first reconcile what the answer was.

One of the examples I used to give them was a function for which I wish I had a visual aid here so I could show it to members. It was quite a complicated function from the mathematics of finance showing the growth of an annuity to which money was deposited regularly.

I would have the students evaluate this and then I would ask them if they knew what they had computed. I would go through this and ask them what they thought 365 was. They would answer that it was the number of days in a year. I would tell them they were right. Then I would ask what they thought 65 minus 20 was. They would need a little prompting on that, but I would tell them that we expected them to graduate and get a job when they were 20, and they would retire at age 65, so that would make an interval of some 45 years during which they presumably could contribute to their pension.

Five dollars was the amount at that time of a package of cigarettes. Then I had the 0.1 in there which represented 10%, which was a possible return on some RRSPs in those years. These students were always amazed because when they evaluated the function, it came out to, and I just did it again here so I would have the accurate number, $1,312,001.33. That was the total accumulated value of one pack of cigarettes per day over a working lifetime, from age 20 to age 65.

I challenged my students by saying to them that instead of smoking, why not put it that into an RRSP. If they did that, they would have $1.3 million in their retirement fund when they retired. I used that as an example.

That is one example of how one can provide for one's future by making regular payments into an annuity, beginning when one is very young. I am sure members have heard people who sell retirement plans and investments talk about the magic of compound interest, and that indeed is one of the examples of it. That is one of the reasons why I have been interested in this over the years.

There are two fundamental questions which need to be answered. When we deal with retirement plans, the first question is, to what extent can those retirement plans be diverted into other necessary plans? For example, we have right now a component in Canada pension which has to do with disability.

Let me emphasize that I have absolutely no problem with having a public social system to assist those who are disabled and who need financial assistance in order to pay for their day to day needs. However, we should honestly ask the question whether that should be administered through a plan like the Canada pension plan, which originally was designed to provide for retirement income.

As I said, I want to emphasize the fact that I am not opposed to helping those people who are disabled. I do not want that point to be misinterpreted. I am not opposed to helping those people who are disabled, but I am not at all sure that we should put it into the mix of a retirement plan. That should be a separate plan and administered separately for the benefit of those who have true needs. It could be a needs assessed plan.

The other fundamental question that I think one should ask with respect to retirement plans is this one: Should income for a person's retirement be derived from payments that are made by the present generation? In other words, if I were to retire--and I know there are some Liberals in here who wish I would--should my retirement income be paid for by the young people of this generation? When the pages in here get a job should they have to pay taxes in order to pay me a retirement income? Or should I have contributed to that retirement income myself?

In other words, who should pay for my retirement income? Should I pay for it in those years leading up to my retirement or should the present working generation have to pay for those who are in retirement? This is one place where the Canada pension plan, I believe, was wrongly based foundationally right at the beginning.

[Hazardous Products Act, October 31st, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to add a few words of wisdom to this bill.

There are a number of substances in our society which increase hazards significantly to people.

We know of the hazards of alcohol. The number of people who die or are killed in car accidents because of alcohol every year is astounding. As a matter of fact, it is probably a low estimate to say that 100 people a day die because of alcohol usage. If we had 100 people a day dying in an aircraft, we would soon ground the aircraft.

We have probably another 100 people a day who die from smoking, that is directly. They contract diseases that are related to smoking, such as heart and lung disease, and they die from it, again at the rate of about 100 per day.

Bill C-260 addresses yet another hazard that arises from the use of tobacco, and that is the fire hazard. It is a known fact that many house fires and other accidents in vehicles are caused by a smouldering cigarette.

Although I do not know the exact number, I have an estimate from several years ago. It indicates that about 100 deaths per year are the result of fires which are caused by careless smoking, as it is called. Careless smoking simply means people either go to sleep or they do not pay attention to where they have put their smouldering cigarette. The cigarette lights the chesterfield on fire. The chesterfield lights the house on fire, and lo and behold people are injured or killed.

Bill C-260, proposed by the member for Scarborough East, states that there should be standards on the flammability of cigarettes. If a cigarette is left unattended, instead of smouldering away, it goes out. In other words, a person has to keep sucking on the thing to keep the fire going. If a person fails to do that, then the fire goes out.

That is a very marginal step. It is an important issue. Surely this would result in fewer fires. I do not think it would eliminate them all, but it would reduce the number of fires from unattended cigarettes and thereby hopefully reduce property damage and reduce loss of life and injury to people.

The correct thing for members of the House to do would be to support the bill. I will be voting in favour of it, even though, as I say, it is a very timid step in reducing the damage done by this one harmful substance, which we use in great quantities in Canada.

It is also good to notice that a lot of people now are quitting smoking. I want to commend one of my constituency assistants, Jason, and he will be pleased to hear me say this, who has quit smoking. I say, “good on you, Jason. I hope you keep it up”. He is much richer now that he does not have to spend that money.

Many people are quitting. As a federal government, instead of just reducing the fire hazard from cigarettes, it ought to do more and more to reduce the usage of cigarettes in total.

I would like to say that I am very pleased that in our present society it has now become politically unacceptable or politically incorrect to smoke in meetings. I am an older guy, and for many years I went through the early youth of my career before all the anti-smoking stuff was in vogue. For many years I shared an office with a smoker. I was in many meetings with smokers. I had a lot of headaches because of that. I was adversely affected by the smoke.

Now we have whole buildings that are smoke free. I really appreciate it, especially because there is some conjecture that my present lung ailment, from which I am suffering, could be a result of that second hand smoke which I was forced to inhale for all those years.

In conclusion, I recommend to all my colleagues in the House that the bill is worthy of support, and I certainly will be doing that.

[Ethics, October 31st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, ministers sign the cheques and drive the legislative agenda. They are the ones the lobbyists go after.

The much touted new ethics package of the Prime Minister will not change the way the ethics commissioner deals with ministers who accept freebies. The commissioner will still give confidential advice to the Prime Minister and to the ministers, just as he does now.

Why did the government set lower standards for ministers than for ordinary MPs?