Ken Epp

[Budget Implementation Act, 2001, February 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, could the member to comment on the security board that would bet set up to manage security issues all over the country? The 11 person board would be appointed by governor in council, which means the minister can pick whoever he or she wants on the board.

Has she given any thought or comments on the efficacy of that board and whether it will be a good, a useful board or a costly board?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2001, February 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed the speech by our colleague on the opposition side of the House.

I have often thought that a worthwhile role for the federal government would be in really improving our national infrastructure in the form of a true Trans-Canada highway, one that would be safe and would be more effective in moving our goods and our people across the country from province to province. The member made mention of this in her speech and talked about the infrastructure program.

I would really like to get a statement from her that implies, even if partially, that there is an advantage to being a Canadian inasmuch as all together we can build this ribbon of highway right across the country, from Atlantic Canada through Quebec and into the rest of the country from thereon west.

I do not know if she is willing to concede that but it is federal money. She seemed to have said that she wanted greater participation in it.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2001, February 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, with respect to the timing of the bill, all I said was that the bill was about 60 or 70 pages long and that I only had an opportunity to speed-read it once. There must be some things in there that I did not catch, but, yes, I have been sort of geared up to this for most of the time.

With respect to the actual debt, I will acknowledge, and I need to give some encouragement to the government, it could have spent the extra money but it indeed paid down some debt. However, there is a great curiosity here. The debt under the Liberal government, from 1993 to 1997, rose from $508 billion to $583 billion. That is the amount by which it increased. One could say that the Liberals inherited the deficit from the previous Conservative government. It does indeed take time to reduce the deficit and stop borrowing.

Members will recall that in the 1993 campaign we put forward plans for a balanced budget in three years. Eventually the government did it. Our planning proved to be accurate. We looked at the fiscal possibilities and it was possible. All the government did was put out a bunch of rhetoric about all the different areas where it would cut and it made up some that it thought would have the greatest political impact. It was not true. It actually did what we proposed and the world did not crash. There was a lot of panic there.

I would say that the amount by which the debt has been reduced happens to be $36 billion and that, interestingly, is exactly the amount of overpayments into the EI fund.

Some people think that the government has been capable of good fiscal management. However, instead of treating the EI fund fairly as a balanced fund, according to the actuarial requirements, it kept the money. It took $30 billion out of the pension fund of government employees. I would like to know where that money went. How come the debt did not go down another $30 billion on that account?

The government used it for phoney things like firearms registration. It is doubtful that it would have any effect on the reduction of crime at all. There are $3 billion overpayments just counting errors. There was the $1 billion boondoggle in HRDC. It goes on and on. There are indeed areas where good fiscal and prudent management could result in a great deal more money available for debt reduction.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2001, February 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to represent the people of Elk Island and, I suppose, the majority of Canadians when I stand in the House to discuss budget issues and demand from the government a proper and transparent accounting of the way the government spends taxpayers' money.

We all know that the government has a number of important functions. Undoubtedly one of the most important is to provide for the personal security of its citizens. That would extend into areas like health care. We need to have a fiscal regime in which business thrives, because that is the true development of our standard of living in this country. We also need to have a fiscal regime that will protect the value of Canadians' savings, of retirees and others. In the last eight years the Liberal government has done a dismally poor job of this. I do not want to be involved in too much hyperbole here, but I honestly do not think the government could have done worse if it had planned to do a bad job.

I base that on some very important principles. First and most important, to me at least, is the fact that there is no better time to pay down the principal value of a debt than when we have good times, especially nowadays when interest rates are very low. In the last three or four years the government has missed a tremendously wide open, golden opportunity to reduce our debt and thereby substantially reduce our interest payments. We know that the government has done some work in this area, but it could have done so much more.

We are talking about some of the measures taking place, here a billion, there a billion, with a little bit for the military, a little bit for homeland security. We are talking about $1 billion, $2 billion or $3 billion in different categories. For example, we want to give more money to our armed forces. That pales in comparison to the $40 billion a year spent on interest. I cannot emphasize strongly enough or often enough the missed opportunity. The Liberals had the opportunity, but it has now slipped away from us. In our present circumstances we are forced to pay attention to the security needs of the country. Our surpluses will be gone next year. The capacity to reduce the debt has evaporated. The opportunity was there and it was missed.

This reminds me of a story I heard many years ago about a guy who was mountain climbing. He was on a shelf in the mountains and unfortunately his rope slipped out of his hand. He knew that he had only one opportunity to grab the rope and that was the next time it swung back toward him. With nothing beneath him, he leaped for the rope, caught it, swung himself out and back and got back on the ledge with the rope in his hand. Had he missed that opportunity, he would have been stuck on that ledge with the rope hanging out there beyond his reach and that is where he would have stayed until being rescued who knows how many days or weeks later. That is like the government. It has missed an opportunity to substantially reduce the debt.

I want to address some of the issues in the bill before us today, Bill C-49. Interestingly, the bill was introduced in the House on Tuesday. The first debate on it was held yesterday. Here we are, two days after it was introduced. The bill is only 50 or 60 pages long, but I am quite certain that there are some negative things in the bill which I have not identified simply because of the lack of time. Other duties of course keep us busy as well.

One of the first things in the bill is the issue of air transport security. I fly frequently as do most members of parliament. I have really wondered about enhanced security at the airport. Sure, now we have to turn our computers on. Every day when I walk into the airport through security I am asked to show that my solar powered calculator works. That is supposed to somehow enhance security.

My little one inch blade that I had on my nail clipper was taken away. I was told that was very dangerous for a law abiding Canadian citizen to have. Frankly, when that happened, my mouth said to the security personnel that they could have it. I appreciated what they were trying to do, but in my head I was wondering how was this flight safer?

Now if we have hijackers on board we will just have to tackle them with our bare hands. Of course we have other devices which we will not tell them about.

The culture on airplanes has changed. We have had a number of instances of passengers becoming unruly and in some instances seeking to do harm to the plane and all its passengers. Passengers are now taking action. No longer are passengers docile, sitting there and obeying, and hoping the plane may be allowed to land safely. We know that is no longer a certain possibility so passengers are thinking quite differently.

One of the things that we promoted was the bringing on board of armed air marshals. We said that very soon in the aftermath of September 11. Eventually the government caught up with it and this is now being done.

We are talking about Bill C-49, the budget implementation bill, and this really disturbs me. The federal government wants to put greater security enhancements for air travel but it is proposing to ding the passengers for that cost.

There would be a new $12 or $24 tax depending on the destination and other different factors that are built into the bill. As an aside, let us proudly announce to Canadians that it includes the GST. The actual bill reads that the amount of the tax would be $11.22 but when the GST is added to this security tax, it would come to $12. The announced $12 or $24 would actually include the GST. Let us congratulate the government for doing that at least. It is about the most I can say.

However, it is a wrong decision for aircraft security to tax only people who are flying. By far the most people who were killed on September 11 were not in airplanes. There were a number of them in the airplanes themselves that went down on that fateful day but most of the people who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were not in airplanes. It is in the public interest to have air security.

It is a wrongheaded idea for the government to target a tax with a fixed rate to provide for this air security. First, it does not distribute the price to those who are actually benefiting from it, and second, it is a tremendous disincentive to fly. This tax would have a great impact on our aircraft companies which are already suffering in these tough economic times and added security risks.

I will use the example of travelling between Edmonton and Calgary. If one drives within the speed limit, and of course I always do, this is about a three hour trip. From the time I leave my house, go to the airport and take the one hour or one hour and a half that I need to go through the security lineups and the check-in lineups because everything is so very slow these days, I could be over halfway to Calgary if I stay in my car and drive.

Now, taxes have been added. The cost has become prohibitive, not because of the cost of providing the service, but rather because of the cost of the taxes that are involved.

It is justifiable, to a degree, to charge air travellers for the cost of running airports and we do not worry about that too much. In the example I gave I picked a typical airfare ticket of approximately $119. In the particular airport I chose, a $100 ticket has now attached to it $150.12 worth of taxes and fees. In other words, the taxes are in excess of the ticket itself. We then add a security fee of $24 and believe it or not, a ticket where the value of the travel was $119, has attached to it $174 of taxes, fees and the security fee. That is a total of 146% of the value of the ticket before taxes. That is atrocious.

Every small community that enjoys travel, and I am thinking of places in Alberta between Grand Prairie and Edmonton, will be included in the fee because these are listed airports. It will add tremendously to the cost to the point where these businesses will not make any money because they will be unable to attract the clientele to use their business.

WestJest put out a press release yesterday. This is a very innovative young airline in our country. I should not do any free advertising for it, but I was on the Internet last night trying to get some stuff out of our national airline, Air Canada. Its website frustrated me to no end. It insisted that before it answered any question, I had to enter an e-mail. When I tried to enter my e-mail, after five or six characters it stopped accepting them. I tried to enter without my e-mail and it said “Sorry, your e-mail is invalid. You have to enter an e-mail”. I said forget it.

In contrast, WestJet has a website which is easy to use. It is the most user friendly site I have ever used. I have used it quite a bit because it is so easy to book a ticket. It has electronic tickets; it is great.

The press release put out by WestJet's CEO, Mr. Beddoe, stated that this boost in the price of airline tickets by $12 for a one way trip and $24 for a two way trip was enough to convince many people that it was better to drive 300 to 400 kilometres than to fly. He said it would be inevitable that many of the small cities that were served by WestJet would probably lose the only air service they had. That is shameful, just because of a tax.

The government, in previous times, used taxes in trying to prevent people from smoking. I talked about this before. The $12.75 cost of cigarettes has $16.69 worth of taxes. That is a tax of 130.9% on the price of the product. The government claims that is sufficient to cause people to stop smoking in some numbers. If a 130.9% tax for cigarettes would cause people to stop smoking, what would a 146% tax on flying do? It would probably stop people from flying and as a result we would end up with less service.

It does not have to be this way. Different airlines have asked that instead of making this a flat fee to simply make it a percentage of the ticket. That would be fair. It would be in proportion to the cost of the product.

The Liberals keep saying that they are in favour of a progressive tax, not the regressive one that taxes the little guy or the poor people inordinately in disproportion. They are doing just that in this particular case.

I would like to mention a few other things. One of the other items that the bill would do is make some income tax amendments. There is one shortcoming that I wish would have been here. During our finance committee hearings we had a number of people make presentations who asked to have the capital tax removed. It is a huge business disincentive. It prevents corporations from settling down in Canada to make this their business home because of this excessive tax. The costing of this would have been manageable within the budget parameters.

Our finance committee recommended it to the finance minister and it was one of the things he chose not to do. The capital tax remains and the disincentive to businesses operating in the country remains. It is a shortcoming of the budget and one I regret. The government should have done a lot better than that.

The bill talks about the ability of apprentice students to deduct from taxable income some amount of the cost of purchasing their tools. This part of the bill is so restrictive that all it does is give the Liberals something to crow about.

I have been a member of parliament for over eight years. There has been a member every session for as long as I can remember who has had a private member's bill to make a mechanic's tools tax deductible. It is a huge expense to mechanics. It is required for them to earn their income, and they are discriminated against because they cannot deduct that expense from their income.

I remember the member for Lakeland having a private member's bill as well as one of the Bloc members. Finally, a Liberal member came up with a bill after some prorogations later. It passed in the House that a mechanic's tools should be tax deductible.

What does the government do? It puts it in the budget but with restrictions. It applies only to apprentice students. Mechanics who are operating from day to day who have finished their apprenticeship training are not eligible. It has a $1,000 deductible. In other words, the first $1,000 is not deductible. It is only the amount of those expenses that exceed $1,000. An apprentice student in training needs to have that deduction on the first $1,000 not just on the amount by which it exceeds $1,000. It is also limited to 5% of income. As soon as apprentices make more than $20,000 a year, which means they are still on the poverty line, then that limit goes up. If, for example, they make $30,000 a year, then they would only be able to claim that amount over $1,500.

In summary, I would like to say that changes that the bill would bring in our income tax and fiscal considerations are woefully inadequate.

[Criminal Code, February 6th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I could not resist the temptation to rise and add my expression of support for the bill. I profoundly disagree with a lot the member does, and I have made some snide remarks, even in the last few days, about his being the sponsor of a bill to legalize prostitution, but it is quite a contradiction in the personality of the member to now come up with such a very fine bill.

Having done the negative on previous occasions, I felt it was important for me to now stand up and positively support what he is doing.

Most members in the House and certainly our pages have no idea how things were many years ago. I love to take my grandchildren on my knee and read them storybooks. I am at the age now where I do that sometimes.

While the speeches were taking place, I was thinking about when I was a youngster. I recalled that at about seven or eight years old, I, for some reason, became convinced that I was not the biological child of my parents. Thinking in that way caused me considerable personal distress. In those days, a long time ago, there was indeed a considerable social stigma attached to being a child without recognizable parents. The word illegitimate was used and I felt that I was illegitimate. This feeling caused me a lot of what they now call a lack of self-esteem.

I found out later on that it was not true. However I was so afraid that it may be true that I could not bring myself to ask my parents. I remember one day when I was rummaging through my mother's pictures and other paraphernalia that she had and in there I found a little newspaper clipping. The newspaper clipping said “born to C.K. and Mary Epp on May 11, a son”. That was in our local newspaper way back in 1939. Members have no idea what a relief that gave to me. I was indeed my mom and dad's son. It was very important to me and the stigma was gone.

Today we know that stigma has, through societal changes, been substantially removed and today's bill will help to further that.

As my wife and I were raising our children and as I now look at our kids raising the next generation of four grandchildren, I look at it over and over and realize what a marvellous design it is that requires two people, a male and a female, to produce a child. It is a marvellous design because when I see our children raising their children it's a full time job.

I was on a bus in Ottawa not long ago and a young lady was there with a child. I did not inquire as to whether she was a single mom or what, but I felt genuinely sorry for her. Her child was totally out of control and she was so frustrated. I was thinking in my mind that the child needed a firm hand, as I did on occasion, of a father's grasp on the shoulder, the back of the neck or the leg which meant settle down. It is the team work that is needed. I would like to give some encouragement to everybody who happens to notice this. As adults let us make choices that are good for children. Let us make choices that give those children a stable home in which to grow up.

I grieve for the many children who go through life from broken homes because of divorce. Children suffer immensely in those situations. I do not think there is a law that we could pass that would change that. I would certainly encourage the ideal, the best situation, a mom and a dad with a lifetime commitment to each other who provide a stable, secure home for the children as they grow up.

I support this bill. It is a very important step in taking the stigma away from those children who had zero to do with the situation. It was not their choice. Let us do the very best we can for all children, regardless of their circumstances.

[Questions in the House of Commons, February 5th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am privileged to stand in the House today to defend democracy to the best of my ability.

The motion before us today is from the hon. member for New Brunswick Southwest. Even though it was read at the beginning I will refer to it again. It asks:

That an Order of the House do issue for copies of any letters since April 1, 2001, from the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and/or the Clerk of the Privy Council to Ministers and/or Deputy Ministers concerning answers to questions in the House of Commons.

I will try to unravel that semi-formal comment. It means we believe that not only parliamentarians but members of the public have a right to know what is going on. The underlying principle which is so important here is that of accountability and transparency.

I should probably not tell hon. members this because it was so long ago I can hardly believe it. Some 40 years ago my wife and I were married. We moved to a little town in southern Alberta where right out of university I became the math department in a rural high school. I taught all high school math from grades 9 to 12 in a town of 200 people. The school had 320 students because they were bused in from a 50 mile radius.

The reason I tell members this is because friends asked me how I could stand living in a little town where everyone knew what I was doing. That is true. Whenever the math teacher left town to go to Calgary for the weekend everyone knew it. When we came back they all expected a report and they got it. My cousin asked how I could stand to live in a town where everyone always knew what I was doing. I shrugged my shoulders and asked why not. I was not planning to do anything bad so I did not care what they knew.

I recognize that the government probably has a few things from time to time that pertain to national security or taxation changes, and that these things would be detrimental if leaked at the time. However in the end transparency and openness is the ultimate accountability.

We have before the House the issue of whether ministerial expenditures should be made public. It is one of the things now before the public accounts committee. Here again I ask why not.

I almost hesitate to resurrect this case but some time ago it became known that a cabinet minister was using the government credit card for personal purchases such as a fur coat and a trip to Mexico. When it became publicly known it was our duty as the opposition, and I was the critic in the area, to get the facts out and confirm on behalf of the voters and taxpayers of the country that the money was repaid.

When we asked for the report using the Access to Information Act we got pages and pages which were totally blank except the page number and something at the bottom about the bank statement. There was a little code on the page. I do not remember what it was but it said the information could not be disclosed because it was personal.

That was my point exactly. It was a government credit card funded by the taxpayer. If anything in the report was not showable because it was private it should not have been there.

Why not simply use one's personal card for personal expenditures and the government card for appropriate expenditures in fulfilling the duties of government?

I was very disappointed at that time. I remember saying to the press and to others that it made me uneasy to have to go after a minister like that. It is against my nature to attack people, yet in that instance it appeared that we were doing so in order to try to ferret out the truth.

If there were knowledge beforehand that those accounts would be made public, what better accountability could there be? From then on no one would use the cards inappropriately because they would know that by the next week it would be on the Internet or in the paper. Therefore no one would do it. End of case.

If anyone wants to look at the accounts, let them. They would show that I went from here to here on government business, I conducted such and such government business there, I had to stay in a hotel room and I got my meals paid for because that is part of the deal. When someone works for an employer usually the employer will cover the expenses. That is legitimate. However, any personal things would not be on that card if they knew that it would be made public.

This is what we have here today. We have a motion. The parliamentary secretary has said that the government will not be able to support the motion. That is just too bad. I really regret that, because if there is an ultimate accountability of transparency, then it is not a case of whether members of the opposition get something from their enemy, the Liberal government. It really is a case of whether or not the taxpayers get satisfaction that the functions here are properly conducted. During budget time, for example, sure, that has to be kept secret, but it does not have to be kept secret after the budget is released. At that stage the documents could be made public.

I think there is a great deal that is hidden. The fact that the government member said that government members would not support this motion for the production of these papers says in essence that they have something to hide. Otherwise they would just show them.

I want to illustrate this. I do not know whether the member knows this, but a number of years ago I also had a motion on production of papers. It had to do with a totally different issue. I asked for all the papers involved in the decision to have a new Mint facility built in Winnipeg. Again, that was part of my job as critic for public works and government services. I put forward that motion and pleaded for openness and transparency. In that instance, the government voted in favour of it. Even though after that motion passed it took a couple of weeks, I had delivered to my office two or three huge boxes of paper. In a way it was almost as useless as having no information because there was so much of it. However, when my assistants and I were not busy on the immediate and the urgent and could afford to, we worked through that and finally got the answers to the questions we were asking.

Therefore the government has a precedent of supporting such a motion in my own case. It is a very good precedent. I was hoping that the government would once again say “yes, because during the election we promised the Canadian people transparency, openness, honesty and accountability, because we promised those things, we will support this motion and produce the papers”. Maybe it thinks that they are secret. Maybe it will say it will not do so now but will six months down the road because presently Canada is in a war situation and that could jeopardize it, whatever the reasons are. Maybe that could be used for part of it, but ultimately I would like to see every aspect of government totally open after a period of time.

For example, if every document were to be made accessible after 25 years, then that too would help to formulate what these members do now, because they would know that even though it must be kept secret now it ultimately would be made public and then it would look like egg on their faces if they did not do what was right. The object in the present is to do what is right. If that helps the motivation, then I think that function is fulfilled.

How quickly time goes when one is in the middle of something that one enjoys debating. I am sorry my time is gone. I appreciate the opportunity.

[Supply, February 5th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I must confess that when this member stood up to speak I could not help but recall that he is the same member who tabled a private member's bill in this House to legalize prostitution. Here he is talking about the wonderful work that the Liberal government would be doing to reduce the freedom of sexual predators. It just is not happening. What the government says and what it does are two different things. I would like to ask this member a specific question.

CPIC is inadequate. Notwithstanding what the solicitor general said, it fails on a number of important points. For example, a sexual predator or a rapist can go to a different province from where the crime is committed. There is no necessity for him to report that he is changing his address. CPIC shows him as living wherever he was living at the time his offence was committed. I am using he because most of the time these are men. If he moves to a different province, there is no requirement for him to phone anyone and say that he is moving to Manitoba and to tell the people in Winnipeg that he is now there and that they better keep their children safe. There is no requirement for that.

Does the hon. member not agree that there should be legislation which says that this person must declare his new address when he moves? Does he agree with that or does he not?

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, February 4th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. There is a rule in this place that a member cannot say that someone is not telling the truth because it is assumed that everyone always does. That member should not be saying that we are calling to put 10 year olds in jail because that is untrue. He should not be saying it.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, February 4th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I believe I could support the motion to hoist the bill, that is, to set it off for six months so we could work on it more and thereby get it right. However, I am afraid I would have to take some exception to the arguments put forward by the Bloc, namely that it does not recognize them as a unique society, a special group or having special laws.

I respect the fact that individual provinces have certain rights and privileges under our constitution to make rules and laws because that is the way it has to be done. However one of the biggest reasons we have so much trouble in the country these days is because federal governments over the last 25 or 30 years have not respected that. I agree with that component of it.

The fact is that if any member of my family were murdered in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Ontario or Quebec, it would make no difference to me what kind of sentencing the criminal received. If one of my family members were murdered, assaulted, raped or whatever, it would be a huge affront to my family. I am not in favour of individuals being subject to different sentencing depending on where they live any more than I am in favour of individuals being subject to different sentencing depending on the colour of their skin or their genetic code. We should work hard to do everything we can to prevent these misdemeanors from occurring.

If there is a bias in the courts with respect to aboriginals, then we should fix it. I do not believe that is the case, but if it is then we should study it and fix it. If aboriginals are imprisoned because they have been charged with a crime and the evidence has found them guilty, they are no different from other Canadians in terms of the penalty they should pay. We have to remember that the purpose of the law is to restrain those who would do these dastardly deeds.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, February 4th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it is a tremendous challenge to enter into a meaningful debate with the government side at the best of times, but when one's speech is interrupted by question period and the audience substantially changes it is even doubly difficult to carry on a meaningful debate.

In the remaining time I have, I will restate what I said before. Hopefully the people here will respond, think about what I have said and then vote accordingly.

The basic issue is that if the Senate brought an amendment to the House stating that sentencing for aboriginals ought to be 50% higher, those members would object. I believe every member on this side would also object because we believe in equality for Canadian citizens under the law and that there should not be a more stringent sentencing law for aboriginals based on their race.

This one is exactly the same except it is a different group. Instead of aboriginals being given a higher sentence, it is non-aboriginals being given a higher sentence. This is fundamentally wrong. As I said in my previous intervention, on all counts this is wrong.

We, as members of parliament, must exercise our right to vote against things that are wrong, and this is one of them. I have appealed before and I repeat that appeal to the members of parliament here to exercise their authority as elected members to look at this amendment and to use their own heads to decide to vote against it because it is wrong, and to go down in history as having helped prevent the Liberal Party of Canada from being named the Liberal racist party of Canada because they have given assent to a law that entrenches racism into the sentencing law for youth and specifically for aboriginal youth.

This is the plea I am making to members. In view of the fact that I cannot give my whole speech over again, I will simply reiterate that this is of utmost importance. I believe it is a false assumption to think that people in the Senate are incapable of ever making a mistake. They are ordinary humanoids like we are here. It is a false assumption to think that the government cannot ever make a mistake when it brings in legislation.

Instead of trying to solve the problem by bringing in the big mallet, time allocation, when the opposition strenuously talks against and opposes a bill or a motion, such as the one we have here, the government would be well advised to simply listen to the arguments and to do what is right. In this particular case, we need to vote against the amendment. If the bill goes back, so what.

I remember a long time ago seeing a little placard stating, “If you do not have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it again?” This is one of those cases. This is not being done right. It will take more time of the House of Commons, parliamentarians and committees to fix it if we were to pass it now than if we were to simply get it right now. I urge all members to consider carefully doing that.

I wish we could put away this idea of the whipped vote this time. I do not think members who vote against a bill should be punished by their party or that we must have another election. That is absurd.

The vote today is not about whether there should be an election. The vote is about entrenching a racist policy into sentencing in our youth law. The answer to that question is no, we should not.

The answer to the question of whether we should have an election is probably also no. There are two reasons to vote against the bill. I urge the Prime Minister, the House leader and the whip on that side to give the members over there a free vote so they can, in this particular instance, vote the correct way, do what is right and, without any serious consequences, make it possible for us to have a better law in Canada than what we are getting.